The always-provocative Philip Greenspun has an interesting idea on how to motivate kids to pay attention in their math and science classes: instead of teaching these subjects in the abstract, make them concrete by having students use their last four years of school to build a functioning bicycle.

Dubya’s Resume We can only hope this means he’ll be looking for work in two years :-/

Ed Cone: “Try weird stuff, see what works.“

I’m writing a piece for Ant’s Eye View that will explore this theme in greater detail, but I thought this study I found on the Web site of Common Cause was worth noting all by itself. I’ve written before on the deplorable state of our democracy, where incumbents are so entrenched that the results of […]

One of the issues I am very involved with is Web accessibility for the handicapped. That’s why I found this discussion so interesting. It’s about something I’ve wondered about for a long time — many sites now prevent people from writing programs to create fake user accounts by putting a graphic with some random text […]

Here’s another example for the continuing saga of companies using EULAs to give their customers the shaft: Watchfire, the company behind the popular Bobby Web accessibility testing package, is using the EULA for their new Bobby 5.0 release to camouflage a major change to the way the software is licensed, and to deny refunds to […]

Any user of Microsoft’s Windows products is by now probably familiar with the wonderful ritual of patch-applying. I use Microsoft’s Windows Automatic Update software to let me know whenever there’s a significant, must-install patch released for Windows 2000 Pro, which I use both at home and at work. It’s annoying when the notifier bugs me […]

Ever wonder how Google attracts and keeps so many smart people? Here’s one way — check out Google Daily Menus, a compendium of what’s for lunch in the Google cafeteria. (Thanks to Ev, who is probably looking forward to lunch, for the pointer.)

You have no idea how much I wish I could write like Chris Locke… MAN, he is something else.

So somebody explain this to me. I have a friend living out West who was on unemployment for a few months last year. Now she’s doing her taxes, and she’s discovering that — wait for it — she actually owes income tax on the money she received as unemployment benefits! So in other words, if […]

“The Streets” are: A one-man pseudo-rap act made up of 23-year-old Brit Mike Skinner, who kicks out the jams in some kind of radioactive mutant Cockney accent; INCREDIBLY F***ING ANNOYING Is it 1 or 2? Wait! You’re both right! My favorite radio station can’t stop playing this guy’s tuneless, pasty white-boy hip-hop. Apparently Salon liked […]

Jonathan Rauch has a great piece in this month’s Atlantic Monthly entitled “Caring for Your Introvert“. The worst of it is that extroverts have no idea of the torment they put us through. Sometimes, as we gasp for air amid the fog of their 98-percent-content-free talk, we wonder if extroverts even bother to listen to […]

Here’s an item I saw in the Washington Post over the weekend, buried in their “In the Loop” section way in the back, that should be of interest to the conspiracy-minded among you: The GOP Home Shopping Network: That most lamentable duct tape suggestion last week by a Homeland Security official — which drove countless […]

Glenn Fleishman wrote an insightful piece recently about how the major media cover blogging. It’s very good overall, but it does have one problem that jumped out at me: Blogs are all about individuals and the millions of separate opinions. In representing blogs to a non-blogging audience, reporters seem drawn to sweep them into a […]

When you’re planning to launch a major war, you need to be sure your best minds are working on all the little things you’ll need to ensure success — or at least to deal with the fallout. Regarding that latter option — good to see DARPA is on the case…

Hey, look! Someone at Random House had the bright idea to hold a contest to pick some random moron to write another sequel to “The Godfather”. Ain’t it great when the accountants figure out how to turn a masterpiece into a “franchise”? Bleh.

You almost certainly by now have heard about Saturday’s catastrophic failure on board the Space Shuttle Columbia. The national conversation about this has already moved from the initial shock and grief into the deeper question of what this means for the Shuttle program specifically and U.S. manned space flight in particular. Here’s my two cents: […]

How far would you go to stand on principle? Would you sacrifice an hour’s pay? A day’s? A week’s? Would you actually turn down a job opportunity, if you were unemployed, if the job was counter to your principles? (Be honest now!) Well, Shelley Powers did just that — and after being unemployed for a […]

Is anybody else out there as tired of the Great IT Depression as I am? For those of you outside the computer field, this may feel like a recession. To those of us in the tech biz, I’ll be frank — it’s not a recession, it’s a depression. A real, honest-to-god, holy-schnikies depression like the […]

In her State of the Union address, Burningbird (aka Shelley Powers) says it all.

Best part of this year’s otherwise anemic Super Bowl? “Terry Tate: Office Linebacker“, hands down.

From Scripting News: I asked what [my prescription] would cost if I didn’t have insurance. $400 per month. And that’s just one drug. How do people pay for this? How does the government justify going to war in Iraq. Where are the priorities. If Bush had to pay $400 per month for one drug, out […]

Anil Dash has a great essay up on his blog about diamonds and the incredible contempt for the public that goes into their marketing. Definitely worth your time.

You think we’ve got it bad, civil liberties-wise, here in the States? You should try living in the UK. As if being constantly monitored by video cameras wasn’t bad enough, now they’re in the final stages of evaluating whether to mandate that all British subjects obtain a national identity card. The government over there, moreover, […]

Boy, if we were gonna identify the one brutal dictator in the world who seems most likely to be the next Hitler, I’m sure glad we picked the right one! (sigh)