King's Corner

End of a term. Not a lot of posts lately. Not much time today, in fact, since I’m grading like crazy. Still, I wanted to share a post by a friend and colleague with a unique set of talents: artist, actor, and accomplished geek. Not many people have the mental capacity to bring artistic skills and sensibilities into the same skull as technological skills, but Kathrine Bailey does.

The particular post points out some of the social dark side of social networking, along with a warning more techy in nature. It’s a good reminder that brings together elements in a creative way. As Yoda might say, “Exposed you may be!”

One of the great things about parody, of course, is that it is all at once funny and not-funny-because-it’s-too-true. Robert Lanham has produced a syllabus for a course called Internet-Age Writing, and it makes me laugh and cry, just like those people I heard about in a student’s speech who named their dog “Fungus.” What worries me is the number of people who will not get the cultural references on either side of this thing. Note: if you skim it instead of read it, you are already Too Far Gone.

Computer programmer from Finland has lost finger replaced with USB drive – Telegraph. OK, I’m not sure what to think of this one, but I suppose it’s the ultimate in having information right at the tip of … I can’t say it.

NPR’s Weekend Edition Saturday featured Michael Demers, a geography professor at New Mexico State University, talking about how he uses Second Life to help his students learn more effectively. You can listen to the segment online.

Of course, so far I haven’t been able to get it to play myself. [sigh] Your luck may be better.

Update: I managed to get it to play. Worth listening to!

You may know about this already from its original site, which was reportedly taken down because of bandwidth and hosting issues. It is available again, thanks to TechRepublic. The article is called “Computer bloopers and blunders from the technically clueless.”