Category: culture

  • Voting and Elections

    There are elections in the US coming up soon, and it looks likely that there will be elections here in Japan as well. I’m really saddened that in both of “my” countries, only about half the people vote. I have to spend a lot of time to vote in the US, and I can’t vote here in Japan, and I can’t understand people that CAN vote, but DON’T. Sad. Watch this YouTube video and see what these famous actors think.

  • Boycott Thomson Reuters

    I use an excellent program for research, called Zotero. It helps me catalog everything I find about my research subjects into one easily accessed place. One of the best features is that it can pull the bibliographic information off a web page such as Amazon, and put it into a traditional format, such as APA or MLA. This has long been the most time-consuming part of research for me, getting all those niggly little commas, underlines, and dates, names and titles in the correct order and format. It helps tremendously. Highly recommended.

    Now, Thomson Reuters, publishers of a similar software, endnote, are suing Zotero because Zotero can read endnote’s formatted files and put them into an open standard. (Reported by Liberal Education and EdTechPost). Trying to close down research by suing a company that can read files your customers make is unconscionable.

    If you order Thomson Reuters textbooks, I urge you to switch to another brand.

  • Banned Books Week

    Lisa Gold is an accurately self described Research Maven, who help Neal Stephenson write the Baroque Trilogy, about late 17th Centery and ealry 18th Century physics, banking, and world politics. Here she points out that Banned Books Week is September 27 to October 4. Noting Sarah Palin’s propensity to block purchases to her local library, this is an especially important year for observation. Follow her links.

  • The Ellsberg Paradox

    Close-up of two bottles of marbles

    Mark Frauenfelder over at BoingBoing is reading Gregory Bern’s Iconoclast. He talks about the Ellsberg Paradox. Read his description of aversion to ambiguity.  Which one would you choose?

  • Utterly Cynical GOP

    Saw this first on Digg, where the GOP is trying to use foreclosure roles in Michigan to deny people the vote.

    How sadly, sinisterly ironic is this. Deregulate the mortgage lending industry so that the market collapses and voters get booted from their homes. Use this information to eliminate these disgruntled voters from the polling place. (posted by Knute5)