Perhaps I was a bit rash in judging the iPhone. Who am I to resist the iWitch, and eternal life?
The VideoArchive for January, 2007
Having written about “google bombing” and how our searches are potentially manipulated by others, I was reminded of a rather creative, and yet dark, flash presentation. It is presented as a “future-mentary” (my mashed word for a documentary set in the future.)
I recommend it as a possible clarion call for where this world may end up, when we leave behind rigor in journalism, and begin to allow opinions and attitudes drive our “news” rather than relying on facts and legitimate analysis.
As blogs have noted (see here and here) that if you type in the word failure (or, as Google’s own sight points out “miserable failure“) you will find the official Bush White House site as the top link found. Cute. Funny. But it brings to light something that is far more insidious.
As Google has now pointed out on their own site, this is a result of “Google bombing.” Here is Google’s explanation:
By using a practice called googlebombing, however, determined pranksters can occasionally produce odd results. In this case, a number of webmasters use the phrases [failure] and [miserable failure] to describe and link to President Bush’s website, thus pushing it to the top of searches for those phrases.
Google then goes on to explain that they don’t manually edit or change the search results, even though it appears it is a result of people Google has labeled as “pranksters.” In fact Google writes: “but we’re also reluctant to alter our results by hand in order to prevent such items from showing up. Pranks like this may be distracting to some, but they don’t affect the overall quality of our search service, whose objectivity, as always, remains the core of our mission.”
So we have pranksters that have fun with this. Rabid liberals get another chance to poke fun at President Bush, continuing their on-going “hit and run” strategies of poking fun at the President without ever having to provide or engage in, any “serious” discussion of the issues. And I am sure that if Google had been as pervasive in the 1990s rabid Conservatives would have had some fun with search words and President Clinton (I will leave those to your imagination!)
But does “google bombing” really not “affect the quality… objectivity… the core of our mission?” Read the rest of this entry »
I had quite the interesting conversation with my brother about the whole Apple announcement thing. Mostly it centered around my failure to predict the price-point accurately (although I could argue I did, when I asked “Would you be willing to pay $500 or more for this?”)
First, the pricing news. The new device, sold exclusively through Cingular and Apple, will sell for $499 for a 4 gig model, and $599 for the 8 gig model. Note that $499 is quite close to what I thought would be “too expensive.” And therein lies the conversation we had.
My brother said that this price point makes sense since this is competing with the Blackberry and the latest Treo. I said then, and still argue, that it is a bit overpriced. A rather reasonable disagreement, until he told me that I didn’t understand what this product is. That I was somehow “missing it.”
Interesting. A little history here. Read the rest of this entry »
Just kidding. I have been watching as someone “live blogs” about the new iPod phone with pictures.
If anyone thought Zune was going to win this one–well, perhaps they are smoking the same reality altering stuff my friends at A Liberal Dose smoke.
One question that remains at this moment is: at what price. My uninformed theory is that it will be the same pricepoints that all the other iPods have had. $349 is perhaps the high end price, but maybe $399.
Would you be willing to pay $500 or more for this? Or more specifically, could you?
I happened across a quite thought-provoking story today at the website “Ask Dr Kirk.” Dr Kirk draws our attention to a professor who has creatively chosen to use cartoons to convey the message of the syllabus. Not just putting a cartoon here or there, to highlight a point, or introduce levity. It’s the whole thing. All 4 pages of each of the samples are carefully crafted, highly skilled works of cartoon art created by the professor himself!
First, I have to say I admire the creativity involved, and the artistic ability of the professor, Dr Phillips. The graphics are, to my mind, superb, and reflect the hand of a highly skilled artisan. Check out this explanation of grading. Lovely work!
Second, I believe creativity in and out of the classroom helps the students better grasp the material, and stay engaged. I don’t know about you, but when I find something to be interesting I usually stay with it longer than I do with something boring, tedious, or just down-right painful.
Alas, the point: I found it difficult to actually make heads-or-tails out of the syllabus. Perhaps I am just too comfortable with structure. Perhaps I am too captive to the traditional language of the syllabus. But I couldn’t figure out at times what the specific requirements are for the course. In the graphic above, as a student I will know how points are earned, but I have no idea how many points are required for a given grade.
Sometimes things are even more vague. For instance:
In this clip (perhaps not too readable—sorry about that!) for week nine the syllabus suggests we “ask the owl” about whether a paper is due. Hmmmm… Is that clear and concise?
Now, lest I rush hastily to judgment, I thought perhaps this ol’ guy should check with a younger, more hip crowd. So I did. I asked my daughter’s boyfriend who is not only a college student, but a huge cartoon/comic fan, what he thought of the comic syllabus. I even handed it to him (printed out) with great enthusiasm, saying something like “hey, check out this cool syllabus! Whatcha think?”
His comments were similar to mine, with just a few added points.
1. “So, what do I have to DO in this class?”
2. “What do I have to do to get an A? B? I don’t see that listed anywhere?”
(and my favorite!)
3. “I hope he (the professor -ed) printed these out and handed them out in class. I would sure hate to waste all my ink on this.”
So there ya have it. Innovation is cute, but not necessarily effective. I am curious what other innovative things you, dear readers, have come across. Let me know, either in comments, or by email!
CAVEAT: We all understood that his syllabus is unique to his class, and perhaps at his school they all understand what expectations are for grades.
Okay, so the “props” thread on this one is huge. I found this link via my brother, so props end with him. But if you want to see a rather effective treatise on grading schema, then this link is for you! I found the various alternatives offered in the comments section to be quite illuminating, as well.
I will (loosely) categorize this one as “education.”
I have recently been introduced to a blog “Dispatches from the Culture Wars” where the authors appear to generally be more supportive of the Democrats than Republicans. That is why I found this post talking about Pelosi’s previous request for a minority bill of rights so interesting. In this blog post, the author points out that, while Pelosi was calling for a process in Congress that would result in adequate time for thoughtful consideration of legislation, and allow for minority comment and review, the approach taken in ram-rodding the “first hundred hours” legislation is in stark contrast to their previous position.
“Now let’s compare that to what the Democrats actually have planned. In 2004 they wanted “timely and deliberate dispensation of the work of the Congress” and argued that “Bills should be developed following full hearings, open subcommittee and committee markups, with appropriate referrals to other committees. Members should have at least 24 hours to examine a bill prior to consideration at the subcommittee level.” Now let’s compare that to the what my friends at Downsize DC are calling the “legislative orgy” planned for the first 100 hours of the new session.Not a single bill they will consider has gone through a committee or subcommittee hearing.
Not a single minute of testimony has been heard by the relevant subcommittees and committees on whether there is a need for them, what the possible positive and negative results are, and so forth. The Democratic rationalization for this is that some of the bills were proposed in the last session and had plenty of discussion then. But those committees no longer exist, nor do many of the members on them. There are 52 new members of the House, most of them Democrats.
The notion of a Congress ramming through a whole bunch of legislation in a short period of time should be a concern to us all. Remember, that’s exactly what happened at the end of the last session of Congress, which is how we ended up with the online gambling bill slipped in to a port reform bill and passed without a vote. It’s how we end up with lots of bad legislation that no one has bothered to read, and it’s how we end up with hidden provisions in them that are dangerous.”
This blog goes on to point out that when Gingrich sought to push through significant legislation in the first 100 days of their control of the House, the Democrats argued that it was not enough time to adequately consider the legislation. Pot? Kettle? similar color?
Of course, the most simple defense of this tactic is “The Republicans did it, so we will too” playing out in the school-yard called Congress. But as my friend the “Flesh Presser” pointed out during the discussion about Foley, this approach is similar to that of a three year old.1 And, as he pointed out, inappropriate.
I recommend every reader go check out both the blogs I referenced Dispatches from the Culture Wars, and also Fleshy’s pressing the flesh blog. Alas, you won’t see any more comments from me on fleshy’s blog. Apparently a sauce good for the gander is less tasty when it is your own goose being cooked.
The Professor
1 It is important to point out that his assertion, directed at me, was because he failed to “get my point” which was not a defense of Foley, but rather a scathing rebuke of how the Democrats had handled a similar issue in 1983.