So the blogosphere is abuzz about the hostess on The View who demonstrated tremendous ignorance with regard to the shape of the earth. You can watch the full clip here.

The signal:noise problem on YouTube comments means that things get missed. So I am reposting my comment here.

in all fairness, at least the clip ends with the celebutard saying, "baby, we have to go to the library". proper respect for that move. and its true. take yourself and your kids to the library. often. nothing else to it. the more your read, even if its tripe, the more you think, the more you will be able to think critically about the information that gets pushed at you every day.

I barely caught her final statement at the end, and I’m glad the original poster did not cut that out, and that I was listening so passively that I wasn’t completely incensed by her ignorance. No, this does not redeem her totally by any stretch, but it does go in the right direction. Read, folks. Read with your kids. Take them to libraries. Take them to bookstores. Donate time or money to libraries. Have your kids donate time or money. "Think of the children." Take them reading.

Using a content management system to promote collaborative writing in the sciences (and beyond)

NERCOMP Annual Conference 2006

View the slideshow. (Web-based using S5)
Download the PowerPoint. (524 KB)

by Ken Bolton, Eric Eberhardt and Cristian Opazo — last modified 2006-03-27 16:58

The Machine is Us/ing Us

This one from last week really sent me. And quite a few others. It sums up nicely what I tried to teach the students who worked with me at Vassar.

Introducing the book

Brilliant! Having worked in desktop support, this guys manner is perfect. Patience. Its new. Help them relax. I call it “having a good computer-side manner”. In this case, of course, its “having a good book-side manner.”