 |
 |
 |
 |
|
Bets at the OU marker
|
The oldest building at Ohio University.
|
The main green at Ohio University
|
Bets and Tim
|
Some quick shots from our weekend trip to our previous Master's institution, Ohio University. Had a great time, although I had forgotten how much I loved the place.
Did you ever wonder where you might find Pinup girls on the internet? How about Zombies? How about both?
Zombie Pinups wins my vote for best internet art project of the day.
Very cool: from BoingBoing
*******
Neal Stephenson launches a Wiki to explain his new novel
Inpsired by Quicksilver, his giant doorstop of a new novel, Neal Stephenson has put up a wiki where his readers can collaboratively annotate the ideas in the book:
My own view of the Metaweb is pretty straightforward: I don't think that the Internet, as it currently exists, does a very good job of explaining things to people. It is great for selling stuff, distributing news and dirty pictures, and a few other things. But when you need to get a good explanation of something, whether it is a scientific principle, a bit of gardening advice, or how to change a tire, you have to sift through a vast number of pages to find the one that gives you the explanation that is right for you. Generally this is not a problem with the explanations themselves. On the contrary, it seems as though a lot of people like to explain things on the Internet, and some of them are quite good at it. The problem lies in how these explanations are organized.
We have been looking for a way to get an explanation system seeded for a long time, and it occurred to us that a set of annotations to my book might be one way to get it started. At first, the explanations here will be strongly tied to characters and situations in QUICKSILVER and so may be of only limited interest to those who have not read the book. However, with a few clicks we might move on to more general explanations. For example, Robert Hooke and Robert Boyle appear as characters in QUICKSILVER, and so early on we might see annotations concerning specific things that they are shown doing in the book. But later these might link to explanations of Boyle's Law. Such an explanation need not refer to QUICKSILVER in any way, and so it could be useful to, say, a high school student who has never heard of me or my book but who needs to understand Boyle's Law and why it is important.
It's late, and I should be working on my bibliography for my assignment due tomorrow in INLS 180. Instead, I'm going to blog about Jean's post about being excited about technology. Here are the moments when I remember being wow'd by technology in some way:
1. In 1993, when a friend and I figured out how to get Mosiac running on the university system at Morehead State University. It involved a lot of kludging with setup in UNIX, and we weren't even sure why we were bothering until we saw our first webpage with images. Then we understood.
2. In 1991, when I started at Morehead, and got my first email account on Bitnet. I had to send mail through a gateway to get to other systems (like the Internet). It was still amazing.
3. In 1992 or so, when I discovered Usenet, and the amazing things that you can find out if you have the capability of asking several million people all at once.
4. In 1997 or '98, when we managed to get DSL in our apartment. Like Einstein told us, things really ARE different at high speeds.
5. When I came to SILS in 2002 and discovered 802.11b. It took me a week to see it in action, and immediately run out and buy a wireless router. When you combine speed with ubiquity, it's like having your own personal god on the couch with you answering your every desire.
Somehow two of my favorite authors ended up on Slashdot today, in back-to-back stories:
A Slashdot call for questions for a Neil Gaiman Interview
and
A review of Neal Stephenson's newest book Quicksilver, the first book of the Baroque Cycle (for the budding cryptologists out there, no fair cheating and looking at this page to figure out the encryption)
We should have seen this coming…
Hotel Being Sued for Using the Dewey Decimal System [Slashdot]
cbull writes “Did you know the Dewey Decimal System isn't in the public domain? The rights are owned by the Online Computer Library Center. They are suing the Library Hotel in New York for trademark infringement. In addition, according to the article, libraries pay at least $500/year to use the system.”
Ok…IANAL, but I am significantly interested in law. This is some of the worst reporting I've ever seen on a legal matter:
'Spirit of Satan' may be considered by U. S. Supreme Court
“What is “the spirit of Satan?” The U.S. Supreme Court may have to answer that question if it accepts a recently appealed Iowa case in which an Iowa woman claimed a pastor defamed her by calling her “the spirit of Satan.” “
Now…first off….the Court has to decide no such thing. This is a libel case, compounded by a bit of church/state stuff. But in no instance does this have to touch on the actual existence of supernatural beings. To me, it looks like the court could simply find that libel is a tort that stands outside seperation of church and state for the purposes of determining if a statement itself is libelous. If someone within a religious denomination wants to insult someone in the same (or a different) denomination with language that offends, I see no reason why that can not be construed as libel. One quick definition of libel found online is: “Libel and slander are legal claims for false statements of fact about a person that are printed, broadcast, spoken or otherwise communicated to others.” Libel being the written instance, slander being the spoken.
NOW…if the Court is going to be forced to consider the truth/falsity of the statements in question, rather than the “intent to harm”….well….they may be in trouble. My guess is that in a case like this, where the language is religious in nature it is the belief of the injured party that will matter. That is, the injured party believes the statement to be true (as well as the defendant, I suppose), so the court could rule that those facts are enough to find libel in this case.
On the other hand, nothing would make me jump around in joy more to see the Supreme Court offer a ruling that said “Can't be libel. No such thing as Satan.” Hahahahahahahaha….
From Wired, an odd little piece of history, combined with copyright issues that librarians should take note of.
********
Old Hitler Article Stirs Debate. A blogger finds an old article in a Homes & Gardens magazine that lionizes Hitler and his manse. He posts the piece on his blog — and unleashes a debate about copyright issues and public interest on the Web. By Chris Ulbrich. [Wired News]
Arrr, in case you warn't aware, today (Sept 19th) is Talk like a Pirate Day.
Aye, me parrot concurs.
Savvy?
