Well my November plan to update more often failed fantastically. I didn't even make it to two posts. Would you believe me if I said it was because I was working so hard?

I've got a new plan for December though, so look out!

- Recently there has been a bit of a hubbub over Dave Eggers's apparently changing his opinion completely on Infinite Jest (or sucking up to be hip, if you dislike him) over the span of a decade. I agree with Matthew Tiffany's thoughts on why it is all a bit silly.

People who know me know I love McSweeney's in its many incarnations. However, I've only read two Eggers short stories in my life and none of his novels, so I have no personal love (or hate) of him personally. In addition to Tiffany's points, the main thing that stands out to me is that Eggers wrote the alleged review (I haven't been able to corroborate it yet) four years before his first novel and long before he was any kind of important figure in the literary world. I shudder to think that anyone might hold me to opinions I publish on this blog a decade from now if I should happen to be famous. All the complaints about Eggers needing to acknowledge his old opinions and his old review make sense on the face of things, but don't make sense to me given the details I just named. The review is totally obscure, a decade old and written before he was famous. Why does he need to acknowledge it? If this was Joan Didion reversing opinions she expressed in Slouching Towards Bethlehem or something along those lines I would understand the outrage. But Eggers not mentioning an old unknown review from ten years ago?

- Tiffany also points towards a good quick rebuttal of that silly "at least they're reading!" argument people throw around to defend horrible writing. As if reading bad writing was somehow innately good for you!

- Pictures of beached Doritos

- Grier points how this fun little animation to me

- I thought this few week old McSweeney's piece was pretty fun

That's it for now.

Just how they did it, I’ll never know… but Survivor/13 tonight managed to trump last week’s episode- and last week was so good I hooted and hollered and clapped when it was over. (Buh bye Nate!!!!) But man oh man, now Candice is gone too? YEAH! So at least for the last month I won’t have to suffer through her and Adam’s making out. Bleh.

I don’t know how much impact the intitial race based teaming really mattered in the long run- but this has been one fine season of tv. Indeed. I’ve been reeled in- hook line and sinker. I didn’t watch for years, not at all since the debut season, but I’m back- and the TiVo is already set and ready to go for next season in Spring 2007.
Go Jonathan! Go Yul! Go Ozzy!

I'm not usually in front of the camera, as I am in this photo. I guess I know how it feels when I stick the camera right up in people's face. Kinda weird. I don't know if I like being on the recieving end of a photo, even if one can't see my face. I think I will stick to making photos of other people... not of me.

It’s official- the first of their promises for the new session of congress is history. They will not be enacting all of the 9/11 commission recommendations.

From today’s Washington Post:
It was a solemn pledge, repeated by Democratic leaders and candidates over and over: If elected to the majority in Congress, Democrats would implement all of the recommendations of the bipartisan commission

Today, The Chronicle posted a short story about a Ph.D. candidate who was shocked by the fact that college students were less plugged in than he was (video of the lecture is included and I think it’s pretty interesting). I’m more saddened than shocked. More students are online than ever, but so very few seem savvy about what they can do with the web. None of the students in the lecture had blogs. None seemed to know what RSS was. The students expressed doubt about the importance of web entities like Second Life. How creative will the next generation of marketers be if they question the importance of the web?

A few years ago, an absolutely brilliant engineering student at one of my former institutions came to see me. He nervously clutched a spindle of blank CD-Rs and shifted his weight from one foot to the other. I couldn’t imagine what was making him so anxious. He softly asked “Dean J…could you teach shins to me?”

I was almost in shock. “Shins” is how a certain type of file extension (.shn) is pronounced by those who use it. Along with FLACs (.flac files), they are used by tapers and traders of live music. Trading live music, encouraged by a whole range of bands, changed from mail based to Internet based in the late 90s. I assumed that all teenagers were familiar with .shn and .flac files and converting them to audio (.wav) or MP3s. The fact that my extremely savvy engineering student didn’t know about these simple files or how to get them through Bit Torrent (which, unfortunately, has since become popular with sharing copyright protected music and movies) was pretty shocking.

That little incident made me realize that while students are more “plugged in” than ever, many are only familiar with technology that’s packaged in easily digested bits. It used to be that social interaction on the web was done by newsgroup and IRC (Internet Relay Chat). I believe listserves came along next, making messages come to the user instead of requiring the user to go to the messages. Then Prodigy and AOL came along and created “environments” that sat on the web, but didn’t require users to actually go to the web. Around that time, I remember seeing a lot of students writing down their email addresses without an “@domain.com” because they only interacted within AOL, where that wasn’t required.

I could go on and on with the time line, but as I stated earlier, what we arrive at is a time when the majority of students are online, but the minority of students are truly savvy about the web. Ask a student to personalize their MySpace page and they can put together a page full of bells and whistles. Ask them to create a website and many would need explicit instructions for registering a domain name.

Students, for a while, were the teachers when it came to the web. Perhaps we’re approaching a reversal of that.

The Alexander Litvinenko story spreads… If you have flown BA to any of these destinations since October 25:

• Moscow
• Barcelona
• Dusseldorf
• Athens
• Larnaca
• Stockholm
• Vienna
• Frankfurt
• Istanbul
• Madrid

you should read this article.

Update: here is the official British Airways notice.

The Alexander Litvinenko story spreads… If you have flown BA to any of these destinations since October 25:

• Moscow
• Barcelona
• Dusseldorf
• Athens
• Larnaca
• Stockholm
• Vienna
• Frankfurt
• Istanbul
• Madrid

you should read this article.

Update: here is the official British Airways notice.

Vote Disparity Still a Mystery In Fla. Election For Congress ought to become the poster-child for why we need a paper trail with voting machines. An estimated 18,000 votes went missing from the machines, and we have no way to verify the problem. If there were a paper trail, a comparison would be easy and we would know what to fix. Instead, we’re left with this mess.

Vote Disparity Still a Mystery In Fla. Election For Congress ought to become the poster-child for why we need a paper trail with voting machines. An estimated 18,000 votes went missing from the machines, and we have no way to verify the problem. If there were a paper trail, a comparison would be easy and we would know what to fix. Instead, we’re left with this mess.

I write this during First Coffee, which is between first and second period. We just had Marketing and now have Operations before finishing the day with GEM (Global Economies and Markets). Generally everything is going well, but we are, of course, staying busy. It's hard to believe that the second quarter is almost done; it really is amazing how quickly the time has gone by. It seems like only...

TechDirt has a posting about our most famous local home, Monticello, and their view on intellectual property.

Take a read…

"Paper Airplanes" Oil on scrap metal. 2006
Recently I received a request to post an image of my recent "Paper Airplanes" painting. This piece in now part of a private art collection in Houston, Texas. Click on the image above for a closer look.

Nothing to say tonight, because that's how I feel.

Held at the Darden School of Business in Charlottesville, Virginia, November 9 - 10, 2006

Clinton Showalter, of Beyond Silver has put up some great photos from the 2006 Business Forum. Here are a few samples: The keynote speaker, Steven Burke,just beginning his talk. Steven Burke with David Martin, President of M•Cam, and one of the founders of CVG Steven Suddith, of Fuel Co., and good friend of CVG BGN's own David Ferron, also of M•CAM, with a question Jason Hull, of Open

This podcast is the first installment of a two-part series. Labor Records has released a series of recordings entitled “Music of Tribute,” based on a fascinating premise. Each disc mixes music by a particular composer with music written by others in homage, dedicated to, or just influenced by that composer. Four discs have been released so far — Heitor Villa-Lobos, Claude Debussy, Gabriel Fauré

This is the second installment of a two-part program. Labor Records has released a series of recordings entitled “Music of Tribute." Each disc mixes music by a particular composer with music written by others in homage, dedicated to, or just influenced by that composer. Four discs have been released so far -- Heitor Villa-Lobos, Claude Debussy, Gabriel Fauré and Dominico Scarlatti. The third

This is the first of two special programs featuring music for the holidays. In this podcast, we journey from England to Mexico to Latvia and finally land back home in America. All the selections come from releases available through DCD Records -- and if you listen carefully to the program, you might not hear the sound of reindeer, but you will hear about our special gift to you. Christmas is my

People often ask what is education law- a good question. We represent families before the school system. This may take many forms, e.g. special education resources or discipline issues. Although we have not encountered No Child Left Behind cases, we certainly expect to and will be able to assist with them. Needless to say, we [...]

I was browsing some old images this evening and decided to post this one. It is a pretty straight forward shot, that I find pretty visually appealing. I would however, like to know what you think. Does this fairly straight forward shot hold up under the eye of the viewer? Does there need to be something more in the image to help tell some kind of story?

Have a great week. You deserve it!

• Are you a big fan of the author Ann Brashares? Visit the Sisterhood Central website to enter the "Sisterhood in the City" contest, and you could win a trip to New York City to meet her!
• Want to win a free copy of Francesca Lia Block's latest book, Psyche in a Dress? Visit the Harper Teen website for info.

The Pox Party (The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing Vol. 1) by M.T. Anderson

M.T. Anderson's new book, The Pox Party, just won the National Book Award for Young People. I can certainly see why it won - it is a very thought-provoking, interesting book. I didn't exactly enjoy reading it, but I felt like I had had an important experience after I was finished. It tells the story of a boy named Octavian who is basically being raised as a science experiment during the pre-Revolutionary War period in America. He and his mother are slaves, although he doesn't know it for the first years of his life, because he is given a classical education and called a Prince (his mother is a true African princess). But he slowly begins to realize that there is something wrong with the way he is treated, until a horrifying incident in which his "caretakers" true intentions are revealed. Then he must struggle to escape, if not in body, then in soul, from their power over him. Have you read this book? Let me know what you think by adding a comment!

This site has been enjoying some down time lately, and I can’t say I haven’t been enjoying it too. Every couple of days I’ll check back and see the Timeout error and think to myself, “I COULD fix that if I put the effort in”, before going back to stuffing some more dark chocolate and pinot grigio down my gullet. For the geeks in the audience, this site has always used in-line SQL, and I was experimenting with using a free .NET ORM tool. I guess the tool’s db cleanup work leaves a little to be desired. If you want the job done right…yeah. So, I’ll probably be back down before you read this because I am too tired to care more right now.

Thanks for the book recommendation Ryan. I wrapped this one up tonight, and now it’s on to the new Thomas Pynchon.

You’re talking to your friend about your cat. She asks how you got him and you respond, “Well, it’s a long story. You see, he was actually bought off a street corner in Indonesia. But we didn’t buy him. Another family bought him and -”

Suddenly, you’re sitting there with your mouth agape in horror. Your friend looks at you.

“Is something wrong?”

You can’t move. You can’t breathe. You just stare in horror because you’ve suddenly realized that you’re quite clearly losing your mind, because that wasn’t the story of how you got your cat, but how you got your dog. And not only are the two stories not similar at all, but you’re pretty sure that if your cat ever hears about this he’ll never forgive you, and that thought is just horrifying.

I’m getting a new comfy jacket for Christmas, aren’t I?

Here is an interesting article about how we assess risk in our lives.

Here is an interesting article about how we assess risk in our lives.

If you lie or cheat there’s someone who will help you… for a price. They are a Chicago based company called “The Alibi Network.”

From today’s Las Vegas Sun:
Mary is married, and Mary is having an affair. The Chicago wife told her husband she was sightseeing in Los Angeles last August, but that was a lie. Mary and her boyfriend were vacationing in Las Vegas, and Mary paid a professional

A couple of articles from today's papers that involve No Child Left Behind.

The New York Times Magazine today has a cover story on the achievement gap. Very much worth reading. A comprehensive and somewhat hopeful look at an issue that challenges a lot of communities, including ours.

And Bob Gibson has an article in the Progress on the recent visit to Charlottesville by Ellen Sauerbrey, assistant secretary of state for refugees, and of how grossly unfair NCLB is to schools when it comes to non-English speakers. Refugees and other non-English speaking students are given one year - one year! - to be on grade level, as measured by the SOL exams. Otherwise their performance is counted against the school system for meeting NCLB standards and accreditation.