Author: AMH

Tech for tech’s sake

By AMH

I’d love to see additional details on how schools collected their data to conclude that giving students their own laptop does not improve learning. [via Arts & Letters Daily] There are many examples cited of the laptops being a distraction or being used for frivolous or illicit purposes. This isn’t at all shocking, and if laptops were otherwise improving learning this could likely be addressed through technological and disciplinary means. I’ve talked to someone at a small school that gives every student a laptop, and there are routine checks into the content on the laptop (no games or IM clients … Continue reading Tech for tech’s sake

Can you overdose on Ho Hos?

By AMH

It’s odd enough that anyone decided to track which cities eat the most Ho Hos per capita, and it’s random that Pittsburgh tops the list, but the best thing about the Post-Gazette coverage of this “story” was apparently the lack of application of common sense or basic math literacy, allowing the orignal story to claim that the average Pittsburgher eats over 1.5 Ho Hos a day. It’s a little sad that this slipped through the editing process given how clearly ridiculous that statistic is. I particularly like the computation in the correction that, if their original statistics were correct, Pittsburghers … Continue reading Can you overdose on Ho Hos?

Pretty, pretty food

By AMH

I’ve seen this type of side-by-side comparison done for models, but this commparison of ads of fast food with photos of the real fast food as it is served is – well, okay, not very shocking at all – nobody expects fast food to look anything like the ads. But it’s still interesting to see quite how different the reality can be from what they are selling. [via Boing Boing]

Things I Do Not Need, But Want

By AMH

Over the past couple of days I’ve come across a few things that I absolutely do not need, and absolutely covet – mostly because I am a huge geek: spicelab small magnetic spice rack – display your spices mounted in test tubes! I’d use up the spices that come with it and then use it to store the herbs I grow in my backyard…. blossom lights – led lit branches with faux flowering buds are so pretty pretty much everything at Pololu, a new-to-me robotics shop – I suspect they even sell gears!

The Context of Art

By AMH

This article describes an experiment where onne of the world’s top violinists plays for change in a subway station. The purpose is to determine if people recognize the quality of the performance out of context (spoiler: for the most part, no) but there is some interesting discussion of what this says about the current tempo of our lives and the ways in which we appreciate art. It would be really interesting to do the same experiment at the end of the day when the context is still the same but people are under less of a strict schedule, in general.

Free Software Advocacy

By AMH

A couple of weeks ago, I was at a Free Software Foundation member’s meeting at MIT, and during the lunch break I overheard an interesting conversation. I cluster of five stereotypical geeks (male, bearded, pony-tailed, etc.) were talking. One of thm was regailing his friends ith a story of a clueless woman he had the misfortune of listening to talk about her computer usage. This woman was talking to a friend about typesetting a paper using LaTeX – it was later determined that she worked in some capacity in a physics lab. She described how it was good for equations … Continue reading Free Software Advocacy

When at all possible, involve a robot…

By AMH

Two videos crossed my screen, via T, that represent what happens when students take their classroom experiences into their social world – though I suspect this isn’t precisely what the academic community is looking for when they hold up that goal. Down at Duke, a student modded a refridgerator to install an elevator platform and beer can launching arm that can be aim at, say, one’s sofa. Over at UC Berkeley, some mechanical engineers built a Beirut (Beer Pong) Robot that seems able to beat people, but also seems predicated on a pre-arranged table and cup layout. Both videos are … Continue reading When at all possible, involve a robot…

Illustrating Tags

By AMH

It’s been making the rounds quickly, but if you haven’t seen the Visual HTML Jokes pool over at flickr, it’s worth a browse. Some are just puns, but others actually do a nice job illustrating what the tags do, like the header tag/skyline one. I could see a selection of these actually making for a nice presentation of html tags in a class….

Price of business

By AMH

If you are a fan of The Office (the American version) and you are a bit of a geek, you will probably love That’s What She Said, a weekly weblog that calculates the litigation value of Michael Scott’s misdeeds in that week’s episode. [via ALOTTFMA] Their assessment is that the “Ben Franklin” episode is the most expensive recent episode, with so many horriifying examples I had forgot them all. The Office is possibly the funniest show on television today, in part because they manage to keep Michael likable even when he’s absolutely awful, allowing them to pull humor from situations … Continue reading Price of business