Facebook ennui
Friends are great. Invites to events from friends are fine. Notifications that friends have updated photos or blogs are wonderful.
But, with apologies, since I turned 15 some time ago, I really don’t need invites to a million “likeness” quizzes based on movies I like or don’t like, personality tests based on chocolate flavors I prefer, fan clubs, “presents” that aren’t really presents and certainly can’t be unwrapped, and invites to be “best friends” with someone that I’m already “friends” with on Facebook.
Arrgghhh!
Are we not satisfied with robbing children of childishness by incessantly driving adult tastes in everything to younger and younger ages, so that we must now also perform the inverse and infantalize ourselves with giggly fluffy pink nothings and superpokes and other such nonsense?
Social networking is cool and wonderful. It’s helped me reconnect with friends I’ve lost track of years ago.
But that doesn’t mean I want to act like a pubescent Japanese schoolgirl.
PS:
Since I’m already up in high dudgeon, here’s one more thing that bugs me. I’m not going to add 50 Facebook apps to my account every day, giving them and their creators access to any and all information about me.
So there. Bah. Humbug.
Shelfari
I like to keep track of what I’ve read.
What I’ve done till now is just post titles and authors to this blog. I noticed and checked out Shelfari years and years ago, but never really got the hang of it, and never really posted any books to it.
However, I just tried it a few days ago, and it’s incredibly easy … so I’m going to try entering my books there. They’ll still display here via the Shelfari widget.
One thing that I might miss is that occasionally I would add a mini review to a book. I know you can do it on Shelfari too, but I’m not sure how to expose that on this site.
We’ll see if this works long-term.
25 most innovative of 2007
PC World has released its list of the 25 most innovative products of 2007 …
Gears makes some sense because it has the potential to totally redefine what a web app can do, but it’s a little more forward-looking than most other products in the list.
Kindle is a bit of a shock … a book reader is hardly innovative. The one thing that is innovative is the connection to a marketplace. The device itself could have been much better engineered and far nicer … if possible, Amazon should get Apple to build it for them. (Or hire Jonathan Ive and a couple of Apple’s UI engineers.)
Mint at #20 is pretty cool too … just wish it was localized to Canada.
Un-tying
I am finally getting rid of the multitudes of ties that I’ve collected over the past 15 or so years … and never, ever wear:
Some are going to my father-in-law; the rest to a local church-run community services clothing store.
And I’m getting more space in my closet …
One day left
Tomorrow is my last day of work before the holidays - we’ve got a two-week company shut-down period, which is VERY welcome.
It’s been an intense last third of the year … two courses for my master’s program, a promotion (and subsequently doing both my new job and old job for some time), and all the typical family and home things.
Two weeks off is just what I need - if I can only get all my Christmas shopping done!
What iPhoto’s Events new functionality should look like
This is an excellent execution of what iPhoto 8’s events should do.
Nice!
Text Link Ads: please do what’s right
I make a lot of money off Text Link Ads.
Correction: I make a lot more money off Text Link Ads than I ever did off Google AdWords. Every month, I get a check for $50, $60, $70 from TLA. That’s more than I’ve ever made off AdWords (in fact, Google still owes me about $50 that they won’t pay me unless I sell more ads and raise it to $100 or so).
So I don’t really want to be nasty. I don’t really want to bite the hand that feeds me.
But a year ago or so I did take the Blog Honor Pledge. It says something like: if I take ads, you’ll know it, because they’ll look like ads. I won’t try to pass off paid links as if they’re not paid.
So I have a bit of a problem with this:
Please refrain from using titles that suggest the links are sponsored? This is skirting the edge of being duplicitous … which is a polite word for lying.
I can’t do that, so the TLA widget I’ve got in the sidebar does have a title. And it does say Text Link Ads
Shout-out: delicious for Wordpress
I just installed delicious for Wordpress, a beautifully widget-ized plugin that displays your most recently saved links.
The least I can do it send Rick, the creator, a couple of visitors …
Scrap NCLB; offer 1-year paid maternity leave
I happen to work in the education industry, which (in the US) is massively affected by NCLB - No Child Left Behind.
It’s a law/program/initiative intended to ensure every K-12 student in America gets on grade level in key curriculum areas such as reading and math by 2014. It also happens to be one of the major drivers of the high-stakes testing craze that is sweeping much of North America … and a very controversial law for educators.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to be working. From the NY Times:
The E.T.S. researchers took four variables that are beyond the control of schools: The percentage of children living with one parent; the percentage of eighth graders absent from school at least three times a month; the percentage of children 5 or younger whose parents read to them daily, and the percentage of eighth graders who watch five or more hours of TV a day. Using just those four variables, the researchers were able to predict each state’s results on the federal eighth-grade reading test with impressive accuracy.
“Together, these four factors account for about two-thirds of the large differences among states,” the report said. In other words, the states that had the lowest test scores tended to be those that had the highest percentages of children from single-parent families, eighth graders watching lots of TV and eighth graders absent a lot, and the lowest percentages of young children being read to regularly, regardless of what was going on in their schools.
Which gets to the heart of the report: by the time these children start school at age 5, they are far behind, and tend to stay behind all through high school. There is no evidence that the gap is being closed.
I recommend you read the entire article - it’s a great indictment of top-down educational polity in the US.
And it points out that the major issues in education are not at root issues with education: they are issues with our society, with our parents, with our families … and with the ways that we raise our children.
Recently on my bookshelf …
Going back to the library today …
- Bloom, by Wil McCarthy
Great book - read it first years ago, but always a pleasure. - Shooter, by Jack Coughlin
Disturbing book by a ex-Marine sniper. - Homegoing, by Frederik Pohl
Great, as Pohl usually is, with a twist. - Love Thy Neighbor, by Peter Maas
An excruciatingly honest and painful biography of a journalist in the Serb/Bosnian cesspool of the middle 90’s.
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About
Sparkplug 9 is John Koetsier's blog on life, the universe, and everything,
but mostly the stuff you see big in the tags to the left.
Welcome, enjoy, buy the T-shirt, take a picture, tell your friends. -
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