a thaumaturgical compendium

The Australian Department of Education, Science, and Training has realeased Changing Research Practices in the Digital Information and Communication Environment. Neat stuff, with a nice minable bibliography. From the introduction:

There are a number of inter-related factors driving changes in the ways in which researchers create, access and communicate information. Among the more significant of these are increasing demands for the commercialisation of research outcomes and for measurable research performance, and the impact of information and communication technologies (ICTs). It is only by understanding both the evolving needs of researchers and the emerging mechanisms for meeting them that we can effectively resource their activities at the individual, institutional and national levels.

This project examines evolving research practices, focusing on how practices are changing and what the implications of those changes are for scholarly communication and the future development of the research information infrastructure. It was supported by the Australian Commonwealth Department of Education, Science and Training’s Research Evaluation Programme, and is intended to provide an input into the Government’s thinking on the future development of Australia’s research infrastructure.

(via FOS)

Graduate students quickly learn to loathe human subjects review. It’s not that they don’t see the need, nor that they would like to be doing intrusive research. It’s just that most of what we do, while it certainly has an effect on our subjects (how could it not?!), has an effect that is extremely small. And we would like to think, at least, that such a small impact is vastly outweighed by our contribution to human knowledge. Yet, we often have to wait several weeks to hear back only that they do not have to review our research.

The US Office for Human Research Protection has recently changed the rules so that oral history recording need not be cleared by a human subjects panel. The funny thing is, the methods they use — interviewing individual subjects — do not differ much from what we do. In some ways, since anonymizing our sources is second nature, our subjects are far more protected. Why, then, are they allowed to bypass IRBs? Because the OHRP has suggested that doing history isn’t really “research.” That’s an interesting take. An article in the Chronicle (subscription only) argues that this is yet another marginalization of the humanities. My take is: how do I convince people I’m not doing research and avoid the several-week delays?

CogDogBlog has posted a presentation on “Connecting Learning Objects with RSS, Trackback, and Weblogs”. A well done presentation (using Breeze), and a well-spent 20 minutes.

Some cities (not Buffalo, AFAIK) have devices on their stoplights that allow for emergency vehicles to change them remotely. The trafic signal crack has always been something of a Grail for hackers. Phrack ran an article recently on possible ways to get at a city-wide grid. But what if you could just buy your own remote. Clearly these must have some form of encryption, but just as clearly, this many devices lying around and the necessity to make them easy to use provides an opportunity for intrusion. As is often the case, physical security trumps encryption, especially when it comes to swarming attacks. (via Felton)

For future reference, a listing of open access journals in the social sciences generally, information science, communication/media, and sociology.

Nietzsche, in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, famously wrote that “God is dead.” He less famously wrote that he “should believe only in a god who understood how to dance.”

I extend this generally to thinking that humor has a lot to do with being able to see multiple perspectives on things and that must give the omniscient a tremendous sense of humor. (Here, I would love to link to some of the apocryphal episodes of Jesus laughing, both at his crucifixion–which some texts suggest was an illusion–and at watching Peter get drenched after attempting to water walk. Unfortunately, I cannot find any. Maybe I dreamed this.)

In any case, I think it’s pretty amusing that the A.D. for Mel Gibson’s new film depicting that same crucifixion has now been struck by lightning twice. Were I a religious man, I might take this as more than an atmospheric anomaly.

This from a Harvard Institute of Politics survey of 1200 undergraduate students (doc):

53. One of the newer uses of the Internet in this campaign season has been the blog – the online diary that details the day-to-day life of a campaign and also allows people to communicate with the campaign and each other. Does the ability to communicate directly with a favored campaign make you much more likely, somewhat more likely, or no more likely to become involved with a campaign?

Much more likely: 10%
Somewhat more likely: 40%
No more likely: 49%
Don’t know: 1%

54. Have you ever read or participated in a presidential campaign blog?

Yes: 3%
No: 96%
Don’t know: 1%

This is an interesting response. The same students thought that political engagement was an effective way of solving issues facing the country (88%), seemed to shrug off the use of a blog by the candidates. Part of this may be that the majority of undergraduate students are pro-Bush republicans, and therefore may not have been exposed to Dean’s blog, or the blogs of some of the other democratic candidates. More likely, I am guessing, students simply do not value the opportunity to interact in this way with a campaign.

Unrelated, but interesting: 58% support the invasion of Iraq, but if the military draft were reinstated, 46% would avoid it. 60% think “Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the September 11 terrorist attacks.”