Seb's Open Research

Saturday, March 27, 2004

How Blogs Work in 7 Easy Pieces Roland Tanglao: How Blogs Work in 7 Easy Pieces. Read once, then start your own blog; a week later, read again and you'll be in the loop. What do you think? []  links to this post    12:01:37 PM

Friday, March 26, 2004

Pot-in-pot This from hinterlands:  This is Mohammed Bah Abba's Pot-in-pot invention. In northern Nigeria, where Mohammed is from, over 90% of the villages have no electricity. His invention, which he won a Rolex Award for (and $100,000), is a refrigerator than runs without electricity. Here's how it works. You take a smaller pot and put it inside a larger pot. Fill the space in between them with wet sand, and cover the top with a wet cloth. When the water evaporates, it pulls the heat out with it, making the inside cold. It's a natural, cheap, easy-to-make refrigerator. So, instead of perishable foods rotting after only three days, they can last up to three weeks. Obviously, this has the potential to change their lives. And it already has -- there are more girls attending school, for example, as their families no longer need them to sell food in the market. How neat! And I'll bet he hasn't patented the invention. And I must say it's a much more laudable way of getting a large sum of money transferred into a bank account in Nigeria. More info. What do you think? []  links to this post    11:51:59 AM

Wednesday, March 24, 2004

The hilarious tragedy of the commons Thought-provoking thesis and counter-argument on the amazing ThoughtStorms Wiki, on how the expanding information commons may make some of us "rich": In the future we'll see the world increasingly divided into two classes : the information-rich haves, and the information-poor have-nots. But ironically the exploited, impoverished, have-nots, will be those who are duped into paying increasingly more for decreasingly valuable proprietory information products. Meanwhile the cash rich, information rich will increasingly rely on superior, free information products : open source software such as Linux, public service programming from the BBC, the online communities of enthusiasts in every field, united through blogging, mailing lists and other discussion forums etc. [...] What do you think? []  links to this post    7:00:31 AM

Tuesday, March 23, 2004

Getting it heard Howard Greenstein: I was kidding with my daughter today, and made up a silly joke. She immediately went and told the joke to my wife. I said to this very precocious almost-6-year-old, "Hey, you're stealing my material!" She said, wisely, "Daddy, isn't it more important that people hear the joke and laugh than who said it?" We then got into the philosophy discussion, such as one can with a child, about people who make stuff and only want money versus people who create things and want to share them with the world. She's still on the side of getting material heard. What do you think? []  links to this post    10:35:18 PM

Monday, March 22, 2004

Ralph W. Sockman. "The test of courage comes when we are in the minority. The test of tolerance comes when we are in the majority." [Quotes of the Day] What do you think? []  links to this post    3:41:14 PM   e-learning chair position at Université de Moncton There's an open professor position across the street from my office. Stephen has already blogged it thusly: Chaire de recherche du Canada en e-formation I don't report on job opportunities, but this is a special circumstance. The Université de Moncton, which is located across the road from us, has an opening for a Canada Research Chair in e-learning. The advertisement to which I link is in French, but so is the position, so if you can't read the ad you probably shouldn't apply for the position. That said, this is a good opportunity, and you'd be working across the road from Seb Paquet, myself, and the rest of the NRC e-learning group, and alongside people from TeleEducation and the crack team at Université de Moncton's IDITAE e-learning design centre. What do you think? []  links to this post    3:22:39 PM   More on NRC grad scholarships I've written about the NRC Graduate Student Scholarships a while back. Here's a bit more info: the application deadline is April 19, 2004, and the scholarship amounts are as follows: Scholarship Supplements of $5,000 (Master) or $7,500 (PhD) per annum will be granted for up to 4 years. Those Supplements are added to adequate basic funding received by the student through a scholarship or other sources. (If you want to have a look at the forms and application details, I'll be glad to send them to you by email.) What do you think? []  links to this post    2:58:14 PM

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