Monthly Archives: August 2007
Six reasons I don’t like Blackboard
I don’t like Blackboard, and I don’t know why.
That’s not entirely true. I have several reasons I don’t like Blackboard, but I don’t know whether they are reasonable, or they are just rationalizations of a deeply irrational dislike for the software product.
Allow me to begin by saying I don’t hate Blackboard. I don’t [...]
You may not see my receipt.
I’ve been saying “no thank you” to the increasingly ubiquitous receipt checkers at the doors of (mostly) big-box stores. It’s insulting and an inconvenience. Generally, the guards are pretty nice about it. At Bed, Bath, & Beyond, they kind of shrug, and smile. At CompUSA, they actually shout after you like you are the criminal [...]
Not X?
This blog is rated… PG?
That doesn’t quite explain why I’m blocked by major filters. The rating changes depending on what is on the main page. I have a feeling that if it slurped up my archives, it would get a different rating, but even my cyberporn category only gets us down to an R. I’m [...]
School and online socialization
Meant to post about this earlier, but I was on a WNPR call-in program this morning, Where We Live, talking with Kristine Nowak and John Dankowski. The show was about social networking sites and high school students. I muddled through. There is an MP3 if you are curious.
“News, Race, and the Status Quo”
Posting will continue to be sporadic over the next month, as I continue to juggle about six different deadlines, in addition to all the stuff that goes along with the start of the school year. But in the midst of this it was nice to hear from some of my old colleagues about a paper [...]
My power-lawed blog
Over the last several years, a number of researchers have written about the hyperlinked structure of the web and how it changes over time. It appears that the natural tendency of the web (and of many similar networks) is to link very heavily to a small number of sites; the web picks winners. Or, to [...]

Two new courses