I just volunteered to review papers in 2008 for several divisions and SIGs of AERA, the American Educational Research Association. It’s a very long list (12 divisions, 3 committees, and 160 SIGs). Below are the SIGs that grabbed my attention.
I get really tired of e-mails from seemingly reputable organizations that make it difficult to unsubscribe. I’ve repeatedly filled out the unsubscribe form for Alternet.org and yet I keep getting e-mail. Here’s what I just wrote them.
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This is a map from National Geographic’s February Issue. 
The original post at The Creativity Exchange is worth visiting for the entertaining and thought-provoking comment thread.
Slate writes about GrandCentral, a phone service that wants to simplify your life.
I played with it a couple months ago when the NY Times covered it. I mostly wanted it to get a 412 number so people here in Pittsburgh can call me without paying long distance to my 510 mobile number. fwiw, I can now be reached at (412) ACE-NOMAD.
After toying with it a bit, I abandoned it. I didn’t like it much, mostly for the reasons described in the article. I also was creeped out by the features like “post to blog” for a voicemail you’ve received. That says something scary about the designers.
For listening to voicemails on the computer, I like GotVoice.com. It’s free and doesn’t try to take over your phone patterns. You just set it up to call into your voicemail and it plays the tones to match the button presses you would make if you were calling in. Only it records the audio of the voicemails and makes it available to you over the web. And they recently added a mobile web interface too.
I just wish they had a version for home answering machines so my mom could backup the messages she loves to save from me and my sister. There’s no room for new ones.
Any Other Income?
Select any of the following that apply. These are not common.
These items will result in an adjustment.
- Crime Hotline Reward
- Beverage Container Recycling Income
- Sale of a debt instrument issued (at a discount) in 1985 or 1986
- Income (loss) from foreign sources by a nonresident alien
- Water and Energy Rebates
- Cost-share payments relating to forest land
- Compensation for false imprisonment
- Grants received for more energy efficient buildings
- National Guard Surviving Spouse & Children Relief
- Ottoman Turkish Empire Settlement Payments
- Other Income Adjustments
Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man to beast.How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.Admirer as I think I am
Of stars that do not give a damn
I cannot, now I see them, say
I missed one terribly all dayWere all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total dark sublime,
Though this might take me a little time.
Marginal Revolution: Loan Sharks:
Loan Sharks
Old definition:
A loan shark is a scumbag who charges the poor obscenely high rates of interest.
New definition:
A loan shark is a scumbag who charges the poor obscenely low rates of interest.
The post above doesn’t allow commenting, but I’m compelled to say this somewhere: No.
Real New definition:
A loan shark is a scumbag who charges the poor obscenely high rates of interest, or charges deceptively low rates at first and raises them unexpectedly.
This discussion is sparked by a Robert Reich post in his new blog. Alex Tabarrok of Marginal Revolution called the argument illogical and Reich a credit snob.
I see Tabarrok’s point… it’s fair to say that Reich doesn’t trust the poor entirely with their money. But that’s good policy. The poor can’t afford to take the same risks as the rich because when they lose out, they’re not eating. It’s even worse since the last reduction of bankruptcy protections.
It’s in the interests of society that people are well-informed when making their financial decisions. That’s why you get all those little pamphlets with your bank and investment accounts. Why shouldn’t the poor also be informed in ways relevant to their decisions?
These two blurbs appeared in the same issue of ACM Technews (March 21, 2007)…
Girls Ask Alice for Programming Skills
eWeek (03/19/07) Taft, Darryl K.A program called Alice, originally conceived by Carnegie Mellon’s Stage 3 Research lab, has proved effective in getting young women excited about computer programming. Alice allows those who do not have high-level programming abilities to try their hand at creating 3D computer animated stories, using characters, scripting tools, and pre-existing graphic elements. Originally designed to help build virtual environments, Alice was eventually given a drag-and-drop interface, which has made it an effective tool in introducing both women and minorities to computer programming, according to CMU. A study was conducted to see what impact a version of Alice with storytelling support had on girls, compared to a version without storytelling support, and the “Results of the study suggest that girls are more motivated to learn programming using Storytelling Alice; study participants who used Storytelling Alice spent 42 percent more time programming and were more than three times as likely to sneak extra time to work on their programs as users of Generic Alice–16 percent of Generic Alice users and 51 percent of Storytelling Alice users snuck extra time,” says CMU graduate student Caitlin Kelleher, who developed Storytelling Alice. Using Alice in middle school, where many girls are found to lose interest in math and science, provides students with positive exposure to programming. The program has also been used in colleges and high schools. The program “really seems to be hitting its stride this year,” said IBM Rational division chief scientist Grady Booch, after attending the ACM Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education’s (SIGCSE) 2007 symposium in Covington, Ky. To learn about ACM’s Committee on Women and Computing, visit http://women.acm.org
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Now Beauty Is in the Eye of the Computer
Sydney Morning Herald (Australia) (03/18/07) Dasey, Daniel
After spending several years refining computer software designed to rate the attractiveness of women, Australian computer scientists Hatice Gunes and Massimo Piccardi at the University of Technology, Sydney, are now looking for commercial partners. The software is designed to quickly analyze a photograph of a women’s face, and immediately produce a beauty rating on the scale of 1 to 10. “Potential applications exist in the entertainment industry, cosmetic industry, virtual media, and plastic surgery,” the researchers write in a paper in the International Journal of Human-Computer Studies. Piccardi is especially excited about the idea of having doctors use the facial analysis technology to ensure that modifications for plastic surgery patients improve their attractiveness. The program can predict how beautiful humans would consider a female face to be plus or minus 1.5 marks, and the researchers say the margin of error could be reduced with continued development. The beauty quotient of the software is based on 14 facial measurements, 13 related ratios, and images of supermodels, actresses, and more than 200 other women.
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City Pages - Savage Love
With nothing but time on my hands this week, I slipped out of the office and went to the movies. Have you seen 300 yet? It’s about a handful of lightly armed ancient Greeks—the Spartans—who take on the mighty and massive Persian army. Some feel the film is homophobic; some feel it’s a conservative, pro-war piece of agitprop.
Homophobic? It’s Ann Coulter on a meth binge.
The Persian army is an armed gay-pride parade, a threat to all things decent and, er, Greek. The king of the Spartans—among the most notorious boy-fuckers in all of ancient history—dismisses Athenian Greeks as weak-willed “philosophers and boy lovers.” The Persian emperor? An eight-foot-tall black drag queen—mascara, painted-on eyebrows, pink lip gloss. Emperor RuPaul is positively obsessed with men kneeling in front of him. Why gay up the Persians? So that straight boys in the theater can identify with the Spartan king and his 300 soldiers—all of whom appear to have been recruited from and outfitted by the International Male catalog.
What isn’t up for debate is the film’s politics. The only times the Persian army doesn’t look like a gay-pride parade in hell, it looks like a crowd of madly chanting Islamic militants. And if the Spartan king has to break the Spartan law to defend Spartan freedoms? Well, sometimes a king’s gotta do what a king’s gotta do. Because, as the queen of Sparta points out, freedom isn’t free. And, yes, she uses exactly those words. George Bush is going to blow a load in his pants when he sees this movie.
This “service” is a harbinger of a possible future.
The idea was simple. I don’t have a lot of money. But I do have friends. And my friends call all the time.
What if I sold advertising on my phone? After all, I sell banners on my web site.
What if I could run ads for movies and music and stuff me and my friends like? My friends would think that was cool. And if I could get paid every time I get a phone call, THAT would be awesome.
So we built this service. Anyone can use it. We line up the advertisers for you. You earn rewards the very first time a friend calls you. And you get paid REAL CASH.
In the future, every interaction of humans and computers will be a monetary transaction. Yay.