Heh

Today's XKCD is one for the sci-fi fans (more so than most).

That said, I really wanted the rollover text to be "Burma Shave!"

Late Night's take on Glee

For all the attention given to Conan/Jay in recent weeks, the folks on later -- Craig Ferguson and Jimmy Fallon -- have been providing some absolutely wonderful moments. Here's Jimmy's extended Glee parody, complete with a perfect song choice at the end.

A law I coined last night

shadesong, feste_sylvain, and I and were talking last night, and 'song mentioned that someone on a board she was reading had asked the too-often-asked question about someone charging "reading fees." We naturally started talking about Yog's Law.

At this point, our youngest and evilest cat Victoria sidled up to me, and gave me her patented "pick me up" look. So I did, and I swooped her towards 'song, while coining:

yendi's law: "Cats flow towards the writer."

It's true. I've tested it.

(No, I don't have a Victoria icon, so I'm using Max. Here's a picture of Victoria, though.)

Digital Nation

PBS ran a highly-flawed, but intriguing, Frontline last night called Digital Nation: Life on the Virtual Frontier. There are all sorts of problems with it (You can watch the entire special on the website, and the site also offers a lot of supplemental material that greatly enhanced the stuff that aired on TV. If you've got a few hours to spend on it, there's fascinating stuff there, as long as you can handle the alarmist attitudes underlying the filmmakers' approach.

Henry Jenkins was not amused. He has a great post on his reaction to it here.

ETA: Cathy Davidson also has a good takedown of it here.

I'll be leading a roundtable discussion of it at work next week; for all the flaws of the movie, I think the act of examining how students interact with technology is a valuable one, and making sure that some of my more changephobic colleagues are aware of the problems with the documentary is also important.