Log
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Dec 2020. The End of A Decade
Ring, ‘security’ (or perhaps better, surveillance) devices appear to have been compromised so that external parties can watch and listen as well as inject audio to the speakers.
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On the Crisis in the Humanities .
This article was brought to my attention as it shows the decline in the number of students dong humanities degrees in the US (1948-2017). There have been at least two articles that comment on it.
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Downgrading iTunes
With Apples new release of iTunes they decided to do that thing that is quite annoying and removed usable functionality and replaced it with something much poorer.
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Governments and data logging
There was a recent article in The Age whereby police gained access to a journalist’s phone records without a warrant.
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Society, Suffering, and Death
I was listening to a colleague talking about how as a society we don’t talk about or spend much time with suffering and death, how we avoid it or move over it as quickly as possible.
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An Important Watch .
Often we hear about privacy and encryption and think it’s a bit hard and complicated or that it’s overblown and paranoid and in the realm of conspiracy theories. This 45min talk by Cory Doctorow helps us to see that yes it is complex, but it can be life and death (for some) and needs to be taken seriously and be much higher on our social and political radar than it currently is. Because the government and many corporations have no reason to.
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Personal Podcast Station
With the advent of iTunes it seemed that many people flocked to that platform to put up their podcast channels and so we subscribed through there. That was our introduction to the world of podcasting.
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A Shift Away From University Entrance Rankings .
This is a pilot to use alternative measures of student ability as a basis for entry into Swinburne courses. I think that this is a shift we will see more of, and that other indicators of credentialing like MOOC completion and Open Badges will gain consideration rather than a single figure for each unit of study or overall being the sole determiner.
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Why Are White Deaths Rates in the US Rising? .
Interesting analysis on the increased death rate of whites aged 25 to 54 over the past 10+ years. They suggest an answer can be found in regard to their “reference group” - those whom they compare themselves against. These white males see themselves as being worse off than the previous generation while other men in that age group are seeing themselves as being better off than their reference group.
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Dealing With Attention .
An interesting idea to externalise awareness and decision making: “An attention charter is a document that lists the general reasons that you’ll allow for someone or something to lay claim to your time and attention”
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A New University .
This is interesting as it is (1) a research oriented university and (2) with “No majors, no lectures, no classrooms”. The idea is to use project-oriented learning with project completion marking ‘study’ completion. I think many will be watching.
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A Different Anniversary
A little bit different for Kate & my 14th anniversary:
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Jekyll + Octopress + Github =
This site is an adventure in producing for the web.