The issue of whether the leaf collecting and reporting assignment had educational value has come up a few times and, without having seen the assignment, I'm guessing that it probably isn't the most scientifically interesting project that could have been assigned. But that is absolutely irrelevant to the plagiarism issue. Larry S. said he'd rather hire the student who cheated rather than wasting their time on such a stupid assignment. There are other options which maintain personal integrity: just don't do it. Hand in a report on why you chose not to do it. Use your time to actually learn some biology and hand in a report on an interesting biological topic. Do more work than the project would have required, not less. And then take your 0, or 50%, or what have you. Or, if your grade is so important to you, just deal with it and do the report. If the vacuousness of the project was the reason the students cheated, did they bring that up with the teacher and ask for a real project? Did they tell their parents so, while there was still time to adjust things? Did they ask the school to intervene? Or did they take the easy way out and plagiarize?
A friend just sent me a bookish question, and I was interested enough in the answer, I though I'd share it with you all. Says friend:
You know how some books don't have straight edges on their pages? What's that for? I find it really irritating... you go to turn a page, and you turn a couple instead because you grab the one that sticks out the farthest on the side.I knew nothing about why some books are printed that way. Upon searching, I found a glossary of book terms which says they are called "deckle edges", or sometimes "uncut edges". Further searching brought me upon Bookbinding and the Conservation of Books: A Dictionary of Descriptive Terminology which says:
Early printers looked upon the deckle edge as a defect, and almost invariably trimmed most of it off before binding; however, collectors wanted to see traces of the "deckle" as proof that the book had not been trimmed excessively, or CROPPED (1 , 2 ), as deep trimming was a notorious practice particularly in the 17th century (and even to this day). In the latter part of the 19th century, it became the fashion to admire the deckle edge for its own sake, and to leave books printed on handmade paper untrimmed. This left the book with ragged edges that collected dust, were unsightly (to some), and difficult to turn. In modern books, deckle edges are largely an affectation, and entirely so if the book is printed on machine-made paper.In fact, the effect of ragged edges on paper, such as usually seen on handmade paper, is in general called deckle edges. I like deckle edges, both on books as it adds texture, and just as an aesthetic feature. My personal stationery has deckle edges on the notepaper and envelopes.
In June of last year, when hackers gained access to its volunteer database and escaped with information about 50,000 users, the administrators said they would not rewrite the software to add more security because it is a nonprofit project without the time or resources to do so.This doesn't seem to indicate that the software was used to break into users' computers, and they don't collect much personal information, only an e-mail address and country/zip code are required, but stolen e-mail lists have a nasty way of being sold as spam lists.
I'm definitely amused by their closing paragraph, in which they say that SETI@Home has lost users because the Berkeley network is so clogged by students trading "digital music and other electronic files" that some SETI communications aren't getting through. I feel sorry for the students who aren't downloading MP3s or running SETI, but trying to do their coursework on a network that sounds so backed up. It makes me thankful that I went to a school that was willing to take steps like forbidding MUDs when it started to show a negative impact on the ability to do the intellectual work of the college.
Absolutely AMAZING geeky fun if your web browser is set to pull up a telnet client on demand: Star Wars rendered in ASCII. If just following that link doesn't work for you, try manually opening a telnet window and telneting to "towel.blinkenlights.nl", with your window set to 25 rows and 80 columns. It really is just amazing - they bothered to work up the entire movie in ASCII animation. Oh yeah, and if you're not up on your telnet, "ctrl-]" is usually your escape character, and then just type "quit" (it'll keep playing over the prompt but that's okay). [via #!/usr/bin/girl]
I think everything has been successfully transfered, but let me know if you see any problems. During the next week, I'll probably set up some kind of redirect links, so now's a good time to update your bookmarks, if you've got them.
And now, on to the linking!!!
Ebert's "great movie" which he reviewed this weekend was Say Anything which he had the good taste to rave about. He offers a nice analysis of the honesty of the movie, and what makes it similar to Crowe's other fabulous movie, Almost Famous. Definitely read the review. And if you haven't seen this movie, you should. And, if you're and fan of it already and didn't hear, Say Anything is finally being released on DVD on March 5, with 10 deleted scenes, 13 extended scenes, and 5 alternate scenes, and commentary. I know I'll be waiting by my mailbox for my pre-ordered copy! [via JRE]
Coming soon to a nation's capital near (some of) you: the International Spy Museum, opening this spring in Washington D.C. While the timing on announcing a museum on international espionage in late November 2001 seems politically interesting, I'm intrigued by the exhibits they describe. Spy shoes! They'll be displaying Enigma! Yeah, this is some successful pro-spying promotion they're setting up here.
A little like Google Zeitgeist for numbers, the somewhat memory-intensive Java applet The Secret Life of Numbers lets you browse through a graphical depiction of the frequency of integers between 1 and 1 million on the internet. You see some of the patterns you would expect - smaller numbers have higher frequency with a large drop-off after 2002 (it appears lots of numbers appear as years). You can also check out, for specific numbers, what concepts are often associated with that number to get an idea of the contexts in which it is appearing. I had fun with this until it crashed my computer in a blaze of flickering, uncontrollable Java madness. [via Larkfarm]
Sorry - the past week just caught up with me and I have nothing else interesting to share. Feel free to browse my portal while I catch up on my sleep and other vital relaxation activities.
Caught a "lying" psychological web-quiz in the act. It's the one where you make three choices about things like whether you would allow yourself to be transported, or have your brain replaced with silicon, and so on, and it then analyzes your world view. Not only were my choices accused of being inconsistent (which I disagree with, obviously), but also said that 7 out of 9607 people chose the same path through the scenarios I did. I was shocked by that, until I read a thread discussing the quiz and someone posted yesterday that they took the same path I did and was told only 7 other people made the same choice. And 5 people in just that 18 post thread took the same path I did. Either the quiz's accounting is screwed up, or those darn philosophers are fixing the output to their expectations. [via BadHairDays]
I'm not sure how legitimate a use of Slashdot content this is, but if you want a nice at-a-glance summary of the site, AlterSlash posts the five best comments from all of the current stories, along with a link back to those stories, all on one page. I suspect one could configure a Slashdot profile to get similar performance, but the compressed format makes it really fast to skim. Still, it probably takes page hits away from Slashdot without really changing their content, so at the least it probably isn't a Very Nice Thing. [via Anita's LOL]
Security can't keep out the webloggers - if the television coverage isn't doing it for you, how about the weblog of someone working the olympics? Mostly short blurbs, overheard conversations, and the like. [via PCJM]
Keeping things fun... What you might have heard at my house last night:
(from hallway): *squeak* *squeeeak* *squeak* *squEEEEEEak* *squeak* *SQUEEEEAK*It's a wonder they let me renew my lease each year.
(called from living room): What _is_ that?
me: I was just trying to figure out which of these floor boards was squeaking.
them: I think you found it.
I'm not what you might call tech-saavy, but I'm trying to become a little more aware of proper computer maintenance and repair. And then I read Damien's magical hard-drive recovery trick in his Feb. 10th Mr. Barrett entry (scroll down) and am in awe. I suspect that situation would have had me in tears, or running to my own tech-magician friend, or possibly both. And I love that the solution made sense - physics in action!
This is why I love the web! U-Haul lists the entire set of state themed graphics from the sides of their trucks on their website, with entire "Venture Across America" info pages for each state and its corresponding image. You can also download your favorite state's "SuperGraphic" as wallpaper for your desktop. I can't believe they actually made New Mexico's image an alien. And that Jello-mold image for Texas I've seen and never understood? It's a marine plant.
Because criticism is more entertaining than praise, it was amusing to skim this response to the AFI's best movies of the centuries list: 100 Years, 100 Stinkers: The Worst Films of the 20th Century. This one caught my eye and sounds hilarious; of course, it was made in the 80's:
43. Gymkata (1985) Director: Robert Clouse Starring: Kurt Thomas, Tetchie Agbayani, Richard Norton, Edward Bell Well, here's something you don't see every day. A martial arts film where the hero throws in a few gymnastic flips along with his karate kicks. Fresh from winning America's first Gold Medal for gymnastics at the 1984 Olympics, it was a sure bet that Hollywood would find something for gymnast Kurt Thomas to do. No, he's not sweeping up spilled popcorn at the local multiplex. In this epic, Thomas is not only a world-class gymnast, he also works for the government! He is sent to a small European country to be America's entrant in "The Game," a rigorous maze of certain death. If he makes it through in one piece, the foreign government will allow him to leave the country alive along with one favor. His favor if he wins: allow the U.S. to install a "Star Wars" satellite in their country to keep the world at peace. Now, most people would have asked for a few hundred million dollars - tax free, but not Kurt. It's a good thing for Thomas that every time he gets in a tight spot, a piece of gymnastics apparatus (like a pommel horse) just happens to be nearby. Hopefully, this film won't give other gymnasts the acting bug. Insanely overpriced VHS only.
In a response to my entry about celebrating individualism the other day, Breaching the Web points out some of the potential problems with an exhibit such as the one that was proposed for the Museum of American History. She observes,
"The sucess or failure of individuals in American History has far more to do with the social group, class, etc. to which they belong than to their individual accomplishments. Yes, certainly there are historic examples of black doctors and female physicists in the 19th century, but these were exceptional individuals -- as a rule, there were very few black doctors and female physicists because of the social and political conditions of the time."I absolutely agree that the historical lack of, say, black doctors is not due to the inability of black people to be doctors but rather to the context of their lives. However, individual effort absolutely plays a major role in one's accomplishments. Even if you are given opportunities, you have to choose to take them. I'm sitting here at Cornell surrounded by some of the most advantaged students in the country, and the ones who do not work will not excel. There may be factors making it difficult for women working to get engineering PhD's here, but none of the white, American men are getting their PhD's handed to them without working for them.
I do think it is interesting to examine what allowed a particular individual to succeed. Supplying examples of other people who have accomplished great things in their lives, and giving information about how they did that instructs us as to how the exceptional acheivements which have changed our world came about. And, obviously, don't just give a list of names and what awards they won on what dates; educate about what motivated them, what choices in their life opened opportunities, how they responded to failures ... lessons that anyone can take and use to make their own life better.
Now, I understand that the point being made in the response I linked to is that those things are not history. I don't really understand why that is - certainly history isn't only individuals and dates and battles but is also the society taken as a whole. But removing individuals seems to be going to an opposite extreme.
And I'll repeat what I said before that in a history museum, the historians and not the donors should get the final say on the content. But it seems that the objection isn't just to the content being funded, but to the idea of funding an exhibit on individual acheivement at all.
This game isn't up my alley but I've got some friend who would probably enjoy it: Name That Beer Bottle. Match the de-labled bottle with the label. I could get about two... [via #!/usr/bin/girl]
Having received a full set of knitting needles to fill out my collection for a recent gift-giving opportunity, I've been filling out my knitting pattern collection a little as well. I'm the type of crafter who likes to have a full complement of tools, patterns, and materials so I can pull together a project when the mood strikes me from what I have around the house, and I'm only just expanding that tendency into knitting.
If you're also an aspiring "knit-nik" (tm JRE), check out this magazine from Rowan yarns of summer sweater patterns. Most of them look simple, fun, and wearable. [via not martha]
Serious minded employers might not want to let digital cameras and internet access into their office, or else things like the Stinkfactor Challenges happen, in which office inhabitants are challenged as to their eating limits. Such as eating six saltines in 60 seconds, which only one of them was able to do, or eating an entire tablespoon of cinnamon, which left the challenger bleeding from his sinuses. And then they tried a variation of the psych experiment where you glue a quarter to the sidewalk, putting a dollar bill in a tree over the sidewalk and seeing who will climb the tree for a dollar. Very amusing. [via eatonweb]
In the "this is what is wrong with society today" category, a $38 million gift to the Smithsonian earmarked to create an exhibit on individual achievement is being cancelled due to criticism, in part that the amount of content control over the exhibit which the donor would have was inconsistent with the Smithsonian's standards of scholarly integrity, and in part because the exhibit would "emphasi[ze] famous individuals instead of focusing on demographic groups or ordinary Americans". I can support their insistence on final say over the specific content for scholarly purposes, but there is no scholarly argument that individual excellence cannot be accurately depicted through an exhibit. The proposed exhibit seemed intended to showcase individuals who had accomplished great things in a range of areas: science, arts, athletics, entrepreneurship, and activism. Are we so afraid of making people who haven't achieved feel bad that we have to hide when people do? Ambition is not evil or selfish; ambition compells people to create and invent and improve. These people can be presented in ways that show how they achieved, and why the effort they made to do more than just enough was worthwhile. That educated people would argue that individuals should not be celebrated..... it leaves me demoralized.
I've received a few copies of the recurring internet scam asking for help transfering millions of dollars out of some African country with an unstable government, and just received another copy the other day, with the timely addition of claiming that the husband of the sender, who was working to legitimately take the money out of the country, was killed in the attack on the world trade center. I suppose one can't expect scammers to be tasteful.
If you've ever gotten one of these messages and wondered what would happen if you replied, you may be amused by this e-mail exchange that occured when someone from thespamletters.com replied to them. In fact, one learns from the site as a whole that spammers don't have a very good sense of humor. [via Mr. Barrett]
Warning: You have three months to learn to program your VCR! Why? Because the finale of "Survivor: Marquesas" and the finale of "X-Files" will be airing simultaneously in May. Yeah, I know X-Files is the better show, and I'm sure the finale will rock, but it's like they're trying to get in one finally jerking-me-around parting shot. Let me have my guilty pleasures!!! [via eclectica]
I stopped running the SETI search distributed computing tool a few months ago to try out the Intel-associated United Devices distributed computing tool that was looking for drug-molecule interactions to find a cure for cancer. I just noticed today that the project has been slightly re-routed and the jobs being sent out are now looking for drug-Anthrax antigen interations. It seems they could use most of the existing tool that was out there to switch over to this problem.
For my friend who has a pair of scrubs she loves to wear as pajamas - you can buy pretty patterned scrubs in many different styles at Scrubs & Beyond. I don't think I'd want to see a doctor come to operate on my wearing some of these! [via #!/usr/bin/girl]
new monitor-top toys; my furry Texas friend is an armadillo