Perish the Published: Making Texts Affordable

From the New York Times:

EDITORIAL
That Book Costs How Much?
Published: April 25, 2008
Colleges and universities will need to embrace new methods of textbook development and distribution if they want to rein in runaway costs.

Artificial Intelligence: My Current Passion

Reading some social network site or the other, I saw that colleague James Angelini said it has been a year since his graduation ceremony at Indiana University.

That means that it's been three years since my own graduation. It may not seem like that long, but it seems like an eternity to me.

It's been a great three years at Ohio State and Texas Tech, but one part of my brain has not received much attention: computational modeling.

My love for these models flourished at Indiana's program in cognitive science. That program is among the handful of top programs in the world, and it marked the three greatest intellectual years of my life.

I'm slowly working on a project with Tim Laubacher, former OSU master's student and current Columbus, Ohio, advertising executive. This is the first new computational idea in a while, and it is quite exciting.

Nonetheless, I am reminded of he dormancy of this part of my brain on days such as today when I open the New York Times to read:

TECHNOLOGY

Pursuing the Next Level of Artificial Intelligence

By JOHN MARKOFF

Published: May 3, 2008

Daphne Koller’s work has led to advances in artificial intelligence that can be used to predict traffic jams, improve machine vision and understand the way cancer spreads.

Ah, I wish that I were doing work such as this!

Cool Colleagues: My Friends in Columbus

A creative approach to work

Dublin ad agency's outside-the-box policies aimed at inspiring workers

Friday, May 2, 2008 3:23 AM

By AMY SAUNDERS

THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

At Dublin advertising agency b&a, employees are allowed to drink on the job, Hula-Hoop in the conference room and return from vacation whenever they feel like it.

As a result, they come to the office, behave responsibly and do their work. Really.

"Why wouldn't they?" asks principal and founder Jack Buchanan. "They have a job to do."

My Family When I Am at Work

Most of the people who helped run the lab this year.

From left, Harsha Gangadharbatla, Brandon Nutting, Nikki Siegrist, Wes Wise, Jessica Freeman, me, Kelli Brown, Justin Keene, Wendy Maxian, and Glenn Cummins.

Wreck 'Em!

Poor Miley: Did Vanity Fair Exploit?

Photo courtesy of Vanity Fair magazine.

---

Poor Miley Cyrus. You might know her as Hannah Montana.

I have four daughters, three of whom are of television viewing age. So I know Hannah Montana.

Now some risque pictures in Vanity Fair magazine have raised eyebrows.

Until now, many parents were pro-Cyrus because the 15-year-old didn't dress like, well, a whore.

These new pictures will surely shock some of our more Puritan residents. From the behind-the-scenes shot published early online, they're not that crazy.

That is, there are no Janet Jackson-esque style wardrobe malfunctions.

For one, Cyrus was posing for renowned photographer Annie Leibovitz, and there was surely pressure to push the envelope a little bit. They are in the business of selling magazines, after all.

But Cyrus also has the pressure to stay relevant to her fans. She cannot be a little girl forever. Her fans are getting older every day, too. And that wholesome image loses traction over time.

Britney got breast augmentation before she was legal. These pictures hardly cross that line.

Perhaps they show the evolution of a young woman.

The public opinion backlash will be interesting to watch.

Blog Falls Behind at Semester's End

AUSTIN, Texas -- I am in the state capital presenting research to colleagues.

Life is crazy busy, and the blog has fallen behind on the priority list.

Next week will, hopefully, be better.

Propaganda Sadly Alive and Well in America

When I started my journalism career, I attended a lunch paid for by Memorial Medical Center, then the sole hospital in Las Cruces, N.M. I was flat broke at the time, and my wife was pregnant with our first child. Nonetheless, after the event, I wrote a personal check to MMC to pay for the lunch to avoid any appearance of impropriety.

The evidence suggests that one cannot believe a single word ever uttered by a military analysis on U.S. television news since before the start of the war in Iraq.

Critics will write this off as bashing by the liberal media. But if you take the time to read all 11 pages of this story, I cannot imagine how you fail to be moved. Everything that is good and sacred about the First Amendment is brought into question herein.

From Sunday's New York Times:

Message Machine
Behind Military Analysts, the Pentagon’s Hidden Hand
By DAVID BARSTOW
Published: April 20, 2008
The Pentagon has cultivated “military analysts” in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the Bush administration’s wartime performance.

TV Keys Happiness; World End Surely Near

From Gallup's: TV Ownership May Be Good for Well-Being: Benefits of TV ownership largely independent of income

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- In most countries the world over, Gallup data show that people who have televisions in their homes report greater well-being than do those who do not have televisions in their homes.

When asked where they currently stand on a "ladder" scale on which "0" indicates the worst possible life and "10" indicates the best possible life, people with televisions in their homes report mean scores about one step higher than those without televisions report. Relative to people living in households without televisions, those with televisions also say they are more optimistic about their futures.

...

The beneficial effects of owning a TV hold up even after taking into account many of the desirable things that often go hand in hand with TV ownership, including wealth and access to electricity and running water. Even when comparing people with identical incomes, TV owners still enjoy higher levels of well-being and optimism. That is, in country after country, when equating TV owners and non-owners for income, TV owners still felt better about their current lives and their likely futures.

Really, I have not much to say here. Although Gallup used control variables, I am sure that they failed to measure all of the relevant possible confounding variables.

Nonetheless, this kind of makes me sad in my heart.

My Life's All a Twitter

The devil made me do it, really.

I have added another social networking site to my life.

The devil, by the way, is named Tim Laubacher.

I called him out in a blog post yesterday for not using Facebook or MySpace.

His retort suggested that he was, indeed, using Twitter, which appears to be a stripped-down social networking site that has only status updates.

In my never-ending quest to learn more about "new" media, I signed up for Twitter. You can now follow me there if you are deathly bored and care what I am up to.

You can also follow me via Twitter on the little box in my sidebar (likely down and to the right).

I'm still not sure how this helps my life, but it has caused me to learn how to update my Facebook status using SMS text messages, so that is a bonus.