Archive - May 2008

Metafilter just posted thist site called Favrd a site that aggregates 'favorited' twittrs, but not the ones that are sales pitches(how does the machine know the difference??).

I never understood what the big deal was about twittr but I like this site.

some good lines:

"Dungeons and Dragons should really be called Mom's Basement and Tang."

"FAKE OR REAL INDIFFERENCE IS A POWERFUL PERSONAL WEAPON"

"Till 5 seconds ago, I thought it was "no holes barred" not "no holds barred." Damn."

Is one of my favorite quotes from "Spin Control" another SF book I read this week.

Simon just sent me this article;

Solitaire-y ConfinementWhy we can't stop playing a computerized card game.

I am addicted to solitaire on my phone, that's why Simon sent the article to me. This is going to humiliate me but I am going to say it anyways. At bedtime after I have turned out the lights, I play solitaire on my phone until my eyes start to fall shut. Then I put the phone down and pass out.

I am reading Light by M. John Harrison Lyrical SF it is, or maybe literature accidentally catagorized as SF. I am too much of a purist for that, if there are space-halos and brains who live in tanks and pilot ships it's SF.

Not the point, the point is how incredibly nice some of Harrison's prose is. These are my favorites so far:

I don't have a ton of time here, since I am *still* plugging away at the OLPC paper, but anyways.

So mike tipped me off to this incredibly apropo and I want to say trenchant, even though I don't really know what that means, blog entry by Ivan Krstić discussing (still) the problems that plague the OLPC project.

(This is partly why my paper never ends, the problems ne'er seem to either)

So Ivan links to this article in the NYtimes about how 1-to-1 laptop programs are being abandoned in schools stateside, as students show no real sign of improvement.

Which led me to read this quote from Mark Warschauer, an education professor at the University of California at Irvine:

“Where laptops and Internet use make a difference are in innovation, creativity, autonomy and independent research,� he said. “If the goal is to get kids up to basic standard levels, then maybe laptops are not the tool. But if the goal is to create the George Lucas and Steve Jobs of the future, then laptops are extremely useful.�

And I just about threw up the very tasty guacamole and goat cheese sandwich I ate for dinner.