Twitter Followers
My favorite part of FaceBook is the status update. I love to see what my friends are saying about their activities. As a result, I really like Twitter. For me,…
H1N1
I had my annual physical last week and my nurse practioner mentioned that they had an abundance of the H1N1 flu vaccine. Because I have asthma, I almost always get…
Digital Rights Management Part 2
I've written about digital right management before. My latest encounter with these technologies came this weekend and I'm reminded that the "rights" mentioned are not the rights of the consumer.…
Differences in Media
I've been thinking lately about the differences between media types. This thinking was inspired by the new movie Disgrace based on J. M. Coetzee's novel of the same name. I…
Making Sense of All Things Digital
For the last few years, I have been volunteering my time at a local senior center, teaching computing skills. One of the struggles is to explain the subtle cues that…
Arrested for Poking
A Tennessee woman was arrested after poking another woman on FaceBook. What's interesting to me about this story is that ABC News decided it was newsworthy. It just doesn't seem…
Corpus Libris
Interesting "ongoing photo essay on books and the bodies that love them" at Corpus Libris. I like this photo a lot.
The Ambassador of Semiotics
I heard Madeleine Albright this morning on Morning Edition, the fifth or sixth interview I've heard with her since Sunday morning. Albright just released a new book and the ensuing…
Human Pain
I've been watching Battlestar Galatica on DVD. One of the roles of science fiction, I think, is to raise controversial issues, to help us understand what it means to be…
Patrick Swayze
At 8:05 tonight, the AP announced that Patrick Swayze had died. By 8:25, my Aunt Ava had posted a FB status update that he had died of pancreatic cancer. Within minutes…
Playing With Swine Flu
Everyone seems to be talking about and planning for the H1N1 virus these days. My university, for example, sent out a memo to encourage us to plan for extended absences due…
Summer Play
As I've mentioned before, I'm chairing a panel at NeMLA in April about using Web 2.0 technologies to play. Because of this panel, I've spent much of my summer playing…
Eunice Kennedy Shriver and Radical Medical Technology
Unless you have been on an island somewhere lately, you probably know that Eunice Kennedy Shriver has been hospitalized for the past few days and died this morning at age…
Recognizing Patterns for NetFlix
My area of research when I was in computer science was artificial intelligence. AI is a broad field with many subfields, each of which has many applications. Within AI, I was…
New Kindle Developments
I was talking to my dad tonight about the Kindle. He's a fan and wants one, but feels as though he doesn't read enough to justify the expense. I've written about…
Board Games ‘R Us
A friend of mine recently posted a list of board games that she had as a kid (and wished she had never gotten rid of). She had quite an interesting…
Experiments in Online Education
Ian Schreiber, co-author of Challenges for Game Designers, is undertaking an interesting experiment in online education this summer. He is offering an online course called Game Design Concepts via Web…
The Decision Engine
I've seen a couple of commercials on TV for Microsoft's newest product, Bing. Microsoft claims that Bing is a "decision engine." What exactly is a "decision engine"? According to a press release from…
Travesty of Justice
The Supreme Court yesterday ruled in a case from Alaska that the state does not have to provide physical evidence (which the state still has) to a man who has been in…
Changing Medical Technology
I just finished reading My Lobotomy by Howard Dully and Charles Fleming. Howard Dully received a transorbital lobotomy (also known as an "ice-pick lobotomy") when he was 12 years old. The…
