$4 per gallon? is that all?

So, the Average price of gas hits $4 a gallon. That’s about $0.96 a liter. Toronto gas is about $1.30 and in france I was paying $2.40 a liter. I guess America’s too poor to pay what we pay or something? I don’t get it.

Well I do get it… the last I heard the US is spending $25 million to study magnalev trains. Of course somethings are going on: Breakthrough Hydrogen Car Gets 650 Miles Per Tank | EcoGeek. And from EcoGeek Bill Gates Produces 10,000 Times More Carbon than the average human, and that’s 10x more than Oprah! (check out the pdfEnvironmental Life Style Analysis (ELSA)). Hello?

How about a national strategy in Canada and the US to improve trains? I guess not.

I’m walking.

Encyclopaedia Britannica dips toe in Wiki waters

I saw Slashdot | Encyclopedia Britannica to Take User Contributions on Slashdot linking to PC Pro: News: Encyclopaedia Britannica dips toe in Wiki waters:

Britannica has long been a vocal critic of Wikipedia’s user-generated content, and has repeatedly attacked the accuracy of its articles. Unsurprisingly then, it is keen to stress that its new website will not be following the Wiki-model, describing it “as a collaborative process but not a democratic one.”

Indeed, under the new Britannica scheme those who wish to contribute will need to create a profile outlining their qualifications and expertise in the area they are commentating on. They will then be able to add comments to encyclopaedia entries, or write their own. This content will then be reviewed by the expert editors of the site, and if any of it is deemed worthy of inclusion, added to the main article with a credit.

This of course will crack most people up who have ever had to explain the relative value of wikipedia vs encyclopedias, and the whole notion of who is ‘qualified’ to have a voice in terms of the co-construction of new knowledge.

Dr JuliaD!

IMG_0216, originally uploaded by clevergirlcanada.

Congrats on your graduation!

Nick Carr: Is Google making us stupid? | The Open Road - The Business and Politics of Open Source by

Slashdot | Is Google Making Us Stupid?leads to the fuller article Nick Carr: Is Google making us stupid? | The Open Road - The Business and Politics of Open Source by Matt Asay - CNET News.com that talks about something not even available yet on the net, and they have to ask if google makes us stupid. Perhaps it does.

If Google is responsible for making us thing that data is information, information is knowledge and knowledge is wisdom… and wisdom is judicious action.

Google cannot make us stupid any more than a book can. Google does not find information for us if we don’t know what we’re looking for, any more than a library can. And the library has the added advantage of allowing us to surf the stacks, something google can’t do, yet. I wish it could. Does Wikipedia, the OED or Encyclopedia Britannica make us stupid? Does learning how to learn, vs memorizing facts, make us stupid? Hmmmm… perhaps it does, and I’m a total idiot. But then again, perhaps not.

Does the lazy culture of instant gratification make us stupid… well, probably. And this is because we take what is immediate and easy rather than struggle for more interesting and more difficult goals. But google doesn’t cause that… schools, media, industry all do that more. Google helps the lazy remain lazy perhaps, but I don’t see them adding to it.

I read books. I love books. I love pen and paper. I use it. And I love google… especially advanced functions. What do you do?

Blogging–It’s Good for You: Scientific American

Blogging–It’s Good for You: Scientific American

Self-medication may be the reason the blogosphere has taken off. Scientists (and writers) have long known about the therapeutic benefits of writing about personal experiences, thoughts and feelings. But besides serving as a stress-coping mechanism, expressive writing produces many physiological benefits. Research shows that it improves memory and sleep, boosts immune cell activity and reduces viral load in AIDS patients, and even speeds healing after surgery. A study in the February issue of the Oncologist reports that cancer patients who engaged in expressive writing just before treatment felt markedly better, mentally and physically, as compared with patients who did not.

Scientists now hope to explore the neurological underpinnings at play, especially considering the explosion of blogs. According to Alice Flaherty, a neuroscientist at Harvard University and Massachusetts General Hospital, the placebo theory of suffering is one window through which to view blogging. As social creatures, humans have a range of pain-related behaviors, such as complaining, which acts as a “placebo for getting satisfied,” Flaherty says. Blogging about stressful experiences might work similarly.