Sunday, February 23, 2003

Mary Hemingway. "Worry a little bit every day and in a lifetime you will lose a couple of years. If something is wrong, fix it if you can. But train yourself not to worry. Worry never fixes anything." [Motivational Quotes of the Day] 6:02:25 PM    comment []

Content Conundrum. A friendly conversation about Reusable Learning Objects, courtesy of David Davies. [...] Q: So, where has this little discussion got us? I can create my own RLOs, although I was anyway only I called them learning resources. I can't use any fancy RLO content creation tools yet because there aren't any good ones although there may be soon. I can search RLO repositories just as I can search Google though I accept I may get a better chance of finding what I want searching an RLO repository given the fact that it's a resource dedicated to a particular topic as opposed to Google's come one, come all approach. Metadata may help me to find RLOs but nobody's yet been able to demonstrate that in any compelling way. And finally, although we didn't talk about it, even if I did find someone else's RLO I may not be able to use it because I may not be able to modify it for my own purpose. Not so good, eh? A: Actually, I'd say quite the opposite. Because we've been able to identify these as some of the central issues surrounding the use of RLOs, that people are taking these issues seriously and that there care some high-level group attempting to address by consultation with all stake-holders then I'd say there are likely to be some important breakthroughs in the use of RLOs in the future, or at least some clarity over what we really mean by RLOs. [...] [David Davies' Weblog] [b.cognosco] 5:53:35 PM    comment []

Product Placement Ads in Washington?. WP: The great duct tape conspiracy?. Interesting WP story stating that 46% of all duct tape sold in the USA is manufactured by an Ohio-based company whose founder donated over $100,000 in the 2000 election campaign cycle to the Republican National Committee and other GOP committees. His son, John Kahl, who became CEO after his father stepped down shortly after the election, told CNBC last week that "we're seeing a doubling and tripling of our sales, particularly in certain metro markets and around the coasts and borders." The plant has "gone to a 24/7 operation, which is about a 40 percent increase" over this time last year, Kahl said. The company had more than $300 million in sales in 2001. And Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge keeps pushing the product. "You may want to have a safe shelter for four or six hours," he told PBS's Jim Lehrer on Wednesday, "until . . . the chemical plume moves on." So "you may need that duct tape." Link to Washington Post story (stupid, annoying registration survey required), Discuss (via strangelove) [Boing Boing Blog] I took all this with a grain of salt until my eyes happened upon something I'd printed out a month or so ago that was still sitting on my desk. It was an article about the criminalization of TiVo and the heavily theorized "Product Placement" solution to the problem of people skipping commercials. So I chuckled a bit, then turned back and re-read this and the pit of my stomach sank into nausea. Great. We've got product placement ads during terrorist alert briefings. My brain goes into hyperbolic mode at this (ok, BACK into hyperbolic mode) and I can see members of congress wearing suits with the labels still on the left sleeves, giving speeches with shiny white teeth and toothpaste tubes sitting "incidentally" on the podium... Press conferences ending with "Thank you for your understanding, but I think the staff and I are going to Olive Garden!" Great. Just Great. [The Universal Church Of Cosmic Uncertainty] 5:46:37 PM    comment []

Rice saunas: high-carb relaxation. Japanese relaxation technology is still light-years ahead of poky ole America. Behold the rice-sauna! Here is my mom buried in rice. She introduced me to this AMAZING experience. It's a wooden box full of the outer layer of rice mixed in with special bacteria that does what bacteria does and produces major heat. You basically strip down and get covered in this stuff for 15 minutes...and that must be the maximum because when you get out, your body is jeeeellllooooo. The rice and bacteria combined with the heat open your pores, suck out bad stuff, and infuse you with good stuff (minerals?). Sorry I can't be more specific, but there's something phenomenal going on: you get heated to the core in a very different way than a hot bath. Link Discuss (Thanks, Dav!) [Boing Boing Blog] 10:26:14 AM    comment []