zeitkunst

JSTOR has changed for the worse. I now have to create an account and login in order to export citations. This is complete BS.

» MIT Media Lab and Bank of America announce Center for Future Banking - MIT News Office

This makes me feel so sad.

I find it very annoying that a data loss bug in OpenOffice Impress (their presentation program) has not been fixed for over three years. It makes it very difficult for me to suggest to people that they switch from PowerPoint if this bug exists. It seems like it should be an easy fix, but the OpenOffice codebase is so huge that I don’t even want to go down that rabbit-hole…

» Rice Shortages Creating Fears of Asia Unrest - New York Times

“

Several factors are contributing to the steep rice in prices. Rising affluence in India and China has increased demand. At the same time, drought and other bad weather have reduced output in Australia and elsewhere. Many rice farmers are turning to more lucrative cash crops, reducing the amount of land devoted to the grain. And urbanization and industrialization have cut into the land devoted to rice cultivation.

In Vietnam, an obscure plant virus has caused annual output to start leveling off; it had increased significantly each year until the last three years.”

It’s quotes like these that get me unnaturally worried about the future. As if we’re on a speeding train with no knowledge (that we want to admit) of how to stop it. And there’s a rock face (where people are climbing, of course) dead ahead.

I’m loosing the intensity from the workshop, and I’m not liking that…

“ Most troublesome to some experts was the way the No Child law’s mandate to bring students to proficiency on tests, coupled with its lack of a requirement that they graduate, created a perverse incentive to push students to drop out. If low-achieving students leave school early, a school’s performance can rise.

—

Read that last sentence. And weep. How could anyone think NCLB was a good program?!?

States’ Data Obscure How Few Finish High School - New York Times

And by now my phone’s lens had been entirely smudged by water, hence the “impressionistic” video.

It’s hard to describe how wonderful the snowflakes were, their shadows fleetingly appearing and disappearing on the ground.

Winter Wonderland in Ithaca (via )

It’s amazing how varied the weather can be in different parts of Ithaca. Down in the flat area, where I live, it was thick, wet snow. Up here on the hill of Cornell, the snow is lighter, but the fog is heavy, making it difficult to see across the arts quad. Makes you remember just how tall this hill is.