The Chronicle: Chemistry at Home. Quote: "Two science professors have cooked up a way for distance-education students to fulfill their science-lab requirements, by turning their kitchens into chemistry labs. The professors say their approach, currently being fine-tuned, can help provide online students with laboratory courses, which are often required for an undergraduate degree." [Serious Instructional Technology]

Okay, I guess you can do science labs at a distance. We will have to see how well this works., Of course, broadband would be very useful. Of course, does this mean that my son will attend college from MY house? When do I get to kick him out of the house?  10:54:26 PM    

Security guards at Rolling Stones concerts are ordering people to hang up their cellphones and stop "violating copyright" by letting long-distance pals listen in on the show. [Adam Curry: Adam Curry's Weblog]

I hope this is not some sort of Urban Legend, since the Rolling Stones tour is sponsored by a wireless phone company.  10:52:34 PM    

Transparency at Delta. Jon Udell blogs about something that those of us who fly Delta regularly have known for a while: Delta is an airline that gets IT.  Jon, in describing about the gate information system, says the following about one of its features: [Windley's Enterprise Computing Weblog]

We may very well be flying Delta for Christmas. Hope this is in place at SeaTac.  10:49:43 PM    

Jane Austen. "I do not want people to be agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them." [Quotes of the Day]

James Thurber. "Early to rise and early to bed makes a male healthy and wealthy and dead." [Quotes of the Day]

Steven Wright. "I have an existential map. It has 'You are here' written all over it." [Quotes of the Day]

Ted Turner. "If I only had a little humility, I'd be perfect." [Quotes of the Day]

Al Capone. "You can go a long way with a smile. You can go a lot farther with a smile and a gun." [Quotes of the Day]

Poets, writers, comedianes and thieves. Nice mix.  10:44:10 PM    

The National Academy of Sciences has released a re .... The National Academy of Sciences has released a report, Preparing for the Revolution: Information Technology and the Future of the Research University. The conclusions on preserving and communicating knowledge start on page 33. Also see Vincent Kiernan's review of the report in today's Chronicle of Higher Education. [FOS News]"QB

Some pretty provocative predictions. Like most prognostications, it may get the the general idea correct but miss some of the details. I'll have to read it but how does it deal with the matter of trust and security? How do you know who is really taking the test? How do you rank someone? What will be the meaning of any degree? The most prestigious universities are generally the ones with the best research programs. In large part this is due to the added interactions of the scientists, their support personnel and the student body. Creativity arises from these sorts of interactions. Any online university of the future will have to capture these interactions, otherwise it just becomes a technical college. Teaching students how to learn should be an important task but will it be, particularly when this may be viewed like a commercial enterprise. I guess we will see.  10:39:17 PM    

Chokehold on Knowledge, an editorial in yesterday' .... Chokehold on Knowledge, an editorial in yesterday's LA times. "The Bush administration's plan to strip the Government Printing Office's authority is a threat to democracy....Currently, a federal agency such as the Pentagon can't delete an embarrassing passage from a historical document without first going through the hassle of asking each reading room to obscure the passage with a black marker. If [OMB Director] Daniels gets his way, all an agency will have to do is call up the document in Microsoft Word and quietly hit Control X to delete the passage for eternity." (Thanks to C-FIT.) [FOS News]

This is an issue to watch. We have already seen government web sites altering or removing public information from their own web sites that was not in line with current views. What will happen when the agenices get to decide for themselves what gets published and how.   10:28:49 PM    

The Google 100.

Cory Doctorow: "Feeding the query string 'http' to Google causes it to barf up all the pages in its database in order of their PageRank value." [Scripting News]

This is fascinating. I was surprised to find that Google itself didn't hold the #1 spot.

[Seb's Open Research]

Very nice. You can see which sites are the most linked to.  10:03:07 PM    

Schlotzsky's Warchalks to Push Wi-Fi [Smart Mobs]

I love Schlotzsky's. Hope they have this up here. Free Wi-fi.  9:38:05 PM