Once again, I assigned HTML portfolios to my professional communication course. Many of these students experienced HTML for the first time this semester, so most of the sites are pretty remarkable.
Month: April 2003
Invisibility
This is fun. News Observer reports that Ray M. Alden, an inventor, can make things invisible. By using an intricate system of “pixels” to transmit and receive light from an object’s surroundings, the suit (or whatever) would blend that object into the background, obscuring it from any perspective. Cool. Could I wear it in my office?
iPods in GA!
In a article today (thanks, A!), MacCentral reports that Georgia College & State University is using iPods in an innovative way. Two classes expanded their interdisciplinary curricula to include music, lectures, and course information to be disseminated by iPods:
Two iMacs were placed in separate computer labs to serve as the “mother ship” for student iPods. Each participating professor received an iBook and an iPod. EIS assisted in digitizing the audio portions of a video of a lecture by one of the professors and in digitizing an audio cassette, converting both to MP3s for use with the iPod.
Two classes were successfully taught in the fall of 2002, and the enthusiasm for this approach is spreading. Way to go, GC&SU!
Theory Lost?
From an email forward (thanks, W):
The reasons for the demise of Theory are several but are spun together by historical trends: worth thinking about are the ascension of the Capitalist right to power. Money seems to be the premier good of our current culture and through the judicious use of money to finance candidates, think tanks, dirty tricks and media control, a minority of very powerful capitalists have taken control of the Anglophone political and economic discourse. As several contributors have noted in this forum under other topic headings, American are unable to contemplate their own best interests when they go to (or return from) the polls because the discourse is so cleverly controlled by the right.
Interested in the whole post? Send me an email.
This has been a biotech news kind of week. Scientist David Gelernter reviews Bill McKibben’s latest book Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age in Wired. McKibben forcasts “a frightening catastrophe brought on by human obliviousness” from casual genetic modifications to human beings. He sees designer babies as bound to backfire, like buying the latest computer and expecting it to be relevant or even able to compete as technology improves: “If you upgrade your child with 25 bonus IQ points, you can count on a 50-point boost becoming available by the time your children have kids of their own. You’ve just made Junior obsolete.” In addition, what right do we have to further modify or children — we’re already giving them our genes, do we need to futher determine who they are by including a strong desire to read poetry or play football: “you are wiring your own tastes into their genes, literally twisting their minds and bodies into the shape you have chosen.”
Points taken, but I wonder what he’ll have to say about the idea of the “human”? Only a cursory and somewhat alarmist and religiously tinged mention appears in the article which suggests that we find nothing particularly significant about the human today. Might be worth a read, unless it’s mired in outmoded discussions of religion and the sancity of human life. Good stories all, but we’ve never let that stop progress before, only severely hamper it.
Big Brother
This has been a biotech news kind of week. Scientist David Gelernter reviews Bill McKibben’s latest book Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age in Wired. McKibben forcasts “a frightening catastrophe brought on by human obliviousness” from casual genetic modifications to human beings. He sees designer babies as bound to backfire, like buying the latest computer and expecting it to be relevant or even able to compete as technology improves: “If you upgrade your child with 25 bonus IQ points, you can count on a 50-point boost becoming available by the time your children have kids of their own. You’ve just made Junior obsolete.” In addition, what right do we have to further modify or children — we’re already giving them our genes, do we need to futher determine who they are by including a strong desire to read poetry or play football: “you are wiring your own tastes into their genes, literally twisting their minds and bodies into the shape you have chosen.”
Points taken, but I wonder what he’ll have to say about the idea of the “human”? Only a cursory and somewhat alarmist and religiously tinged mention appears in the article which suggests that we find nothing particularly significant about the human today. Might be worth a read, unless it’s mired in outmoded discussions of religion and the sancity of human life. Good stories all, but we’ve never let that stop progress before, only severely hamper it.
Fight the Spam
The Center for Democracy and Technology published their findings for a six-month study on spam. Their major conclusion suggests that spammers get our email addresses through publicly accessible web sites and news groups. They also offer suggestions for guarding your email address(es) against this plague.
Nebula Awards Announced
The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America announced 2002’s Nebula Award winners. They include: American Gods by Neil Gaiman as best novel; “Bronte’s Egg” by Richard Chwedyk as best novella; and “The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring” by Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens and Peter Jackson as best screenplay. Also, they announced the nominees for the 2003 Hugo Awards. The Nebula and Hugo Awards are the most prestigious sf awards in the US; the latter is named for a pioneer in sf publishing, Hugo Gernsback.
Katrinko Must Die
Techno-Alterations and the Human Code in Bruce Sterling’s Chattanooga Trilogy
Read: Essay
Molecular Engineering
The future generations of nanotechnology will rely on being able to effectively arrange atoms. Molecular manufacturing, and the use of molecular assemblers to hold and position molecules, will be key to the future, controlling how molecules react and allowing scientists to build complex structures with atomically precise control. In this essay, K. Eric Drexler discusses the benefits and challenges of future molecular manufacturing.
GRL Archive 