For Canadians who want to be annoyed by what they read

Originally uploaded by derb.

A great store display I came across about a year ago in a major chain bookstore in Victoria BC.

Incidentally, Flickr (which I used to add this picture to my blog) now supports drag and drop uploading of files from Windows XP, 2000, ME and 98 as well as MacOS and someone has hacked together a Linux uploader for Gnome as well.

I now have qualified to have a free Flickr Pro account (only for three months though I discovered!) so I don’t need you to ask me for invites any more – just sign up on the site or find someone who already uses Flickr and ask them to invite you. More info on Flickr and why you might be interested is here.

I have recorded a discussion and am listening to it through my computer using the excellent piece of software called “Dictation Buddy”:http://www.highcriteria.com/main_productfr_dicbuddy_info.htm so that I can make a rough transcription. The weird part is that I’m making the transcription using Microsoft’s voice recognition software (via “OneNote”:http://office.microsoft.com/home/office.aspx?assetid=FX01085803). Of course if I could just get the voice recognition software to listen to and recognize the discussion I wouldn’t need to do this but I suspect even if the computer program was capable of accepting input from a file instead of the microphone it would not do nearly as good a job of recognition as I do so I am forced to use myself as a kind of of voice recognition peripheral!

By the way is there any documentation available anywhere on how to use Microsoft’s voice recognition software in detail? I would be particularly interested in knowing how I could add frequently used words to its dictionary like ‘Bourdieu’ (which it thinks is Bork To?) or ‘structuration’ (structure Asian?).

The Living Room Candidate is a fascinating site which archives campaign commercials from 1952 to the present including “‘independent’ ads”:http://livingroomcandidate.movingimage.us/desktop/shadow.php from interest groups like the “Swift Boat Veterans”:http://livingroomcandidate.movingimage.us/player/index.php?ad_id=1152 one which disgracefully tries to call Kerry’s war record into question. It even includes a “Desktop Candidate”:http://livingroomcandidate.movingimage.us/desktop/index.php section which links to various Internet-based ads.

P.S. To track the veracity of claims made in campaign ads on both sides of this year’s race, check out “Factcheck.org”:http://www.factcheck.org/ which has done a thorough analysis of that “controversial swift boat ad”:http://www.factcheck.org/article.aspx?docID=231.

It’s a little weird and off-centre but this post to fafblog has convinced me it is funny enough often enough to be worth adding to my “blogroll”:http://www.bloglines.com/public/derb/. I can’t explain it you have to take a look yourself…

Thanks to “Alex Halavais”:http://alex.halavais.net/news/index.php?p=767 for plugging Fafblog until I started to find it funny

How did it take me this long to find “Piled Higher and Deeper”:http://www.phdcomics.com/? Written out of Stanford it often seems to speak directly to me… I haven’t read through them all (the archive dates back to 1997) but already several have appealed to me like “this”:http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=472 or “this”:http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=47 or “this”:http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=463 or “this”:http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=453 or “this”:http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=302 or “this”:http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=360 or the series starting “here”:http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=408.

Rather than wallowing in despair after reading this strip for a while, it might be worthwhile to join “PHinisheD”:http://www.phinished.org/ – a virtual community for people working on their PhDs – or if you are at the LSE “LSE-PhDNet”:http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LSE-PhDnet/ (think I found another one earlier on too but have forgotten its address). Also see this “guide to professional skills for PhDs”:http://dlis.gseis.ucla.edu/people/pagre/network.html.

Thanks Kylie for the links

The Guardian has a new weekly “Improbable Research column”:http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/research/improbable which is introduced by the hyper-active editor of the “AIR”:http://www.improbable.com/, Marc Abrahams (he gives a potted history of his involvement in the first column). So now there’s a “paper magazine”:http://www.improbable.com/navstrip/subscribe.html a “website”:http://www.improbable.com/ the “Guardian column”:http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/research/improbable and, of course, a “weblog”:http://improbable.typepad.com/, all dedicated to the discussion of amusing stories to do with the stranger reaches of the pursuit of science.

And if you like that you might also take a look at “Feedback”:http://www.newscientist.com/opinion/opfeedback.jsp;jsessionid=DJEHNEAGEIKH?id=ns244999 from a fine magazine I used to work on – “New Scientist”:http://www.newscientist.com/.

Check this out.
Thanks Tara for providing me with this transient amusement….

Jill Walker mentions how people visiting a post on the “Noetech blog”:http://blog.noetech.com/archives/2004/04/13/overhaulin.shtml which mentioned watching a TV show seem to think that the blogger actually runs that TV show.

It’s bizarre but this sort of thing has happened to me, too. I “mentioned”:https://blog.org/archives/000617.html months ago that Philip Pullman’s trilogy was being streamed by the BBC and I received several comments (since removed to avoid confusion) that clearly suggested the commenters thought that Pullman was reading or even writing the blog. It’s as if readers just skimmed looking for their keywords, ignored the context and blurted out whatever was in their heads…

I guess if I want readers “all I need to do”:http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist.html is talk about how I enjoyed American Idol during spring break and when I finished I listened to Howard Stern talk about Iraq with Halle Berry and Lindsay Lohan.

Thanks to “Lila”:http://blog.mathemagenic.com/ for the link

Cleolinda Jones is one funny woman as “Troy in 15 Minutes”:http://www.livejournal.com/users/cleolinda/99710.html proves conclusively. If you have rather longer, rather than seeing “the movie”:http://www.metacritic.com/film/titles/troy listen to “Prof Robert Rabel”:http://www.npr.org/features/feature.php?wfId=1901156 and read an English language translation of the original in a “free etext form”:http://www.gutenberg.net/etext02/iliab10.txt instead.

If you laughed at Troy in 15 Minutes why not check out Cleolinda’s version of “Van Helsing in Fifteen Minutes”:http://www.livejournal.com/users/cleolinda/93639.html too?

Obdisclaimer – I have not seen the film or (alas) read the book either in Greek or in English.
Thank you so much Reid for letting me know about Cleolinda!

Kevin Kelly highlights “All Star Games”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0764420208/ref=ase_blogorg-20/104-3593973-1314354?v=glance&s=books a book of (clean) party games. They are for church leaders to help give teens safe things to do but could be useful for anyone with kids or who wants to hold a rather retro party.