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Last week, the New York Times had a piece about the potential monetary losses resulting from bad spelling. The author discusses how some misspelled auction items on eBay sell for very little because few bidders find them.
Reading about the frequency of spelling mistakes on the Web was no shock to me. In fact, the geek that I am, I even ran analyses [pdf] in my dissertation to see what explains whether and how often people misspell words during their online actions.
Last week in class I asked my students where we had all learned that it is illegal to kill people. [UPDATE 1/27/04 10:30am CST: Since the comments have gotten long and some may miss this clarification: this is not the exact wording of what I had said in class. I said something along the lines of “not supposed to kill people”. My question was not about legalities it was more general.] (Let’s set aside for the moment why this question would come up in a grad seminar on the Social Implications of Info and Communication Technologies.. the question seemed to make sense at the time.:) When I posed the question I wasn’t sure about my own answer to it so I was especially surprised when I saw that most students (of the eight in this class) had an immediate response: church.
Sometimes I wonder how companies come up with names for their products. I just noticed that the shower knob in my bathroom is called Monitor. (I just moved so most things at my place are new to me.) I guess that may seem innocent enough, but not after having just watched this episode of The Practice. In it, one of the characters finds out that her superintendent has been making video tapes of her in the shower (using a hidden camera in the vent) and has been posting these online. As if this wasn’t bad enough, we find out that there is nothing illegal about such videotaping as potentially relevant laws only apply to audio recordings. So it’s not that I’m overly paranoid, but I would’ve probably preferred a name with less meaning on my shower knob (except who runs around thinking about shower knob name preferences?!;).
I saw a play last night (in Budapest) in which no one said anything. Everything was conveyed through music and dancing. It wasn’t a musical as none of the actors sang at all. They moved and danced. The set changed a bit, but most events took place in a café. The play portrayed Hungary’s history from the 1930s through the 1990s. [If you’re getting sick of Hungary-related writing this week, don’t give up on this post just yet, I’m aiming at something hopefully with a bit more general appeal.:)]
While I believe that taxes in many countries could probably be used better and for more things than they are currently, I do think there should be limits to how government spends its tax payers’ money. A recent decision by the Hungarian government seems to suggest that some see no limits. The state has decided to spend $4 million sponsoring a driver for participation in Formula One next year. If this happened in a country with adequate social services and few people living in poverty then perhaps one could contemplate its legitimacy. But in a country with as many social problems as Hungary, I find it hard to swallow. Read it and weep.
I just saw the movie Good-Bye, Lenin! It is about a young man in East Berlin struggling to make it seem to his sick mother as though the Berlin wall hadn’t fallen and nothing had changed since when she fell into a coma (just before the political changes) in order to make sure she doesn’t have a relapse. It was a good movie, I recommend it.
I was in Israel this past weekend and was trying to describe to my cousin the size of Lake Michigan. (This was in the context of telling him about my new surroundings in Chicagoland.) I realized I don’t know the actual size of the lake so I thought we’d go online and check. I did a search on Google for “lake michigan” map size. No more, no less. The top result was a map of Israel and Lake Michigan superimposed on each other. Thanks, Web. This was certainly an effective way of explaining to an Israeli the size of Lake Michigan.:) (I realize the question of a map of Israel can be a tricky issue. I am not posting this to start an argument about that. I thought from a Web-search point-of-view, this was an interesting/amusing case worth sharing.)
The seven dirty words are still a no-no on US radio (unless they’re not sexual in nature, it turns out), but what about other suggestive lyrics? It doesn’t seem clear when things do and do not get censored. Take, for example, the song Semi-Charmed Life by Third Eye Blind. I haven’t heard that one on the radio, but a friend tells me that it is not bleeped out despite the line “she comes round and she goes down on me”. Recall, however, Alanis Morissette’s song You Oughta Know from a few years ago when a portion of the line “Would she go down on you in a theatre” did get bleeped out.
For some of us, ’tis not only the season to get annoyed by some Christmas music. I’m wrapping up my 20s and planning a big 30th bday bash this coming weekend. I would like to play some fun/funny birthday songs and am looking for suggestions. I know there are some, I just can’t think of them.
I’ve enjoyed reading the various book rankings. One problem with such lists, however, is that they rarely offer new books to consider. Were there any books on those lists that we haven’t heard of? Unlikely. I realize that isn’t necessarily the point of such lists, but it got me thinking along those lines anyway. I recall enjoying the thread generated on Kieran’s blog back in the summer about long reads.
I would like to read some more about books that I am less likely to have come across already but come highly recommended nonetheless. I thought one possible approach could be to compile a “best of” list consisting of books on our bookshelves that seem obscure (at times even to us owners of those books) or are perhaps not so obscure per se but are nonetheless unlikely to be found on the shelves of others.. not because they’re not good but because they are less mainstream.
Play safely this holiday season. (Heck, play safely even if it’s not a holiday season.) Brought to you by the UK National Health Service. [Warning: content – including audio – may not be appropriate in some work environments.]
I am about to hire a programmer to write some code for me that will help collect data for my research. It suddenly occured to me that there will be a final product here and I have no idea who would have ownership of that product. I’m not trying to complicate things, I am just wondering. My preference would be to make the program available free of charge to other researchers who could benefit from such a product. But will I have the right to do that? What kind of agreement would I have to have with the programmer up front? Is she automatically the owner of the program? If I pay for all the time she spends on creating it and the program specifics came from me would it be mine to distribute freely? I suspect some of this might depend on what kind of agreement we come to ahead of time. Could I ask her to create the program under a Creative Commons license, for example Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 1.0? I realize I can certainly ask her and she could say no, but I’m wondering if that sounds like a reasonable approach.
Five years ago when a few savvy instructors rushed to integrate the Web into their teaching and put their syllabi online the idea exchange so crucial to academia was alive and well in the teaching realm of our work. A few years later, witness how various password-protected courseware adopted by so many campuses is making it increasingly impossible to see others’ teaching materials. Sure, some people may not want to share their syllabi, but I suspect many wouldn’t mind. Regardless, the increasing proliferation of these services makes the teaching side of our work less and less visible to a wider audience. So while blogs may be opening some aspects of teaching, courseware is closing others.
For those celebrating Thanksgiving this week, I wanted to share some tried-and-true recipes. I’m an especially big fan of the pecan pie recipe. In addition to the dishes on that list, I will also make a batch of peanutbutter bars courtesy of Laura’s family (one of the Lauras who sometimes posts in the comments).
This map should be of interest to those who are curious about financial contributions to the US presidential candidates.. and those who like to compare numbers and dissect graphs. Be sure to try out both county and state-level illustrations. And don’t miss the differences in scale of contributions depending on the candidate. [via Neat New Stuff]