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I’ve been fighting off a not so friendly cold over the last few days and haven’t had much of a chance to check my email, let alone news. However, I did come across a recent Mises post that was odder than usual. The poster wanted to link to an article, including a pdf, but for whatever reason, the “site manager” on which it was listed at states you cannot.

Good grief, do not post something on the Internet if you do not want someone to link to it, or talk about it.

And anything short of a DMCA-laden letter landing on my office desk is not going to stop me from posting the following interview:
Shadowing Reality: Economist Keeps Tabs On Government’s “Creative� Statistical Reports (pdf)

Two weeks ago I discussed the future of automated stores with a friend of mine, focusing on the Shop24 automated store. It is similar to those automated DVD kiosks you see popping up around town. The widespread adoption of this technology donned on me while I was driving through Taco Bell one night and wondered when someone would eventually automate the entire process of making the food (though I suppose you may need someone for customer service in case an order was improperly made). The process is partially being done with via drive through subcontracted attendants and you can already order online from numerous restaurants (like Freebirds).

While the concept is apparently not new (as seen in these comments), Boing Boing points to a new pilot program that Taco Bell and KFC are testing. It involves self-service ordering via automated touch screens. I can’t wait until someone does the Chinese food version of this.

Or dare we hope, nanotech replicators?

Congressman quizzes Net companies on shame:

Lantos, to Yahoo: Are you ashamed?

Yahoo: We are very distressed about the consequences of having to comply with Chinese law…We are certainly troubled by that and we look forward to working with our peers.

Lantos: Do you think that individuals or families have been negatively impacted by some of the activities we have been told, like being in prison for 10 years? Have any of the companies reached out to these families and asked if you could be of any help to them?

Yahoo: We have expressed our condemnation of the prosecution of this person, expressed our views to the Chinese government…We have approached the Chinese government on these issues.

Lantos: Have you reached out to the family? I can ask it 10 more times if you refuse to answer it. You are under oath.

This same grand standing pompous hypocrite not only voted to invade Iraq, but he also voted for the ratification of the USA PATRIOT Act. Ever heard of secret military tribunals? Warrantless searches and wiretaps? Confiscation of library records and liens on bank accounts? If there was ever a single set of legislation considered to arguably stifle American civil liberties since the Alien and Sedition Acts, the PATRIOT Act does so splendidly. See also the ACLU and EFF.

Note: I am not necessarily excusing the behavior of the Internet firms either. This is merely an illustration of the pot calling the kettle black. Here is Google’s reasoning behind creating a Google.cn domain (Google.com is still accessible in China is entirely unfiltered by Google).

As Mark Twain succinctly put it: “Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself.”

I didn’t watch it, not when everyone and their cousin would transcribe it in real-time. For those of you unfamiliar with Bush’s latest State of the Union address, he notes:

Tonight I ask you to pass legislation to prohibit the most egregious abuses of medical research, human cloning in all its forms, creating or implanting embryos for experiments, creating human-animal hybrids, and buying, selling or patenting human embryos.

As one scientist cum pundit has noted, this is just political chicanery shrouded in an emotional appeal against a non-existent Frankenstein.

Oddly enough, the increasingly thought provoking blokes at ‘Damn Interesting‘ recently wrote about a real life, naturally occurring chimera:

Imagine if you discovered one day that two of your three children were genetically not yours. Recriminations, marital troubles, perhaps a divorce, right? Now add a twist. What if you were these children’s mother? Suddenly the question becomes not “Who?� but rather “Huh?�

Yet that’s what happened to “Jane�. At the age of 52 when her children were full-grown, she and her children underwent genetic testing for a possible kidney transplant. Completely unexpectedly, two of her three children tested as genetically not hers. A mix-up of babies was ruled out, and she and her husband had not undergone in vitro fertilization, so it was absolute that her children were hers.

Should we count the days until this freak of nature is stoned for procreating such an odd hybrid?

Ten more stories that deserve some attention:

Space-elevator tether climbs a mile high - science fiction is becoming science fact with the help of nanotubes and air balloons. Would you ever pay for a 65,000 mile elevator trip into orbit?

The Flying Luxury Hotel - this is not your grandpa’s blimp. This bad boy is on steroids, a cruise ship floating in the air. And it moves a helluva lot quicker, 174 mph with a capacity crowd of 250. Not too shabby.

Ad-Supported Free Books Arrive - apparently the mega-publisher HarperCollins (you probably used their text books growing up) is now experimenting with offering books online for free, albeit supported by ad revenue. Welcome to the 21st century (see the Digital Library section as Macmillan is doing something similar).

Opening up iTunes U - so despite the hoopla surrounding free educational podcasts from Apple, they are making it very difficult to virally promote individual lectures (no copy/paste function). Can someone else capitalize off of this short-sightedness?

Time Right for Gaming Journal? - why was this not around when I was a kid? First GuildHall, now an actual journal. Next you’ll be telling me thousands of people make a career of playing games online. Craziness.

Since higher education is my pet project of late: Credentialism. Rejoinder. Left-field thoughts.

If Robots Ever Get Too Smart, He’ll Know How to Stop Them - I wrote about this book at the end of last year and this is an interesting follow-up interview with the author.

Intel wants super 3G in every PC - there are a lot of news releases lately (including a super spiffy IBM wireless chip) but this one is in the here-and-now, hence my enthusiasm towards its uses.

639-Year Concert Lets Loose 2nd Chord - post modern music still sucks. So its new allure is extreme elongation. Perhaps they will be splattering paint on house-size canvases to make up for their lack of skill. Or maybe they can get some real training.

“The most toxic place on earthâ€? - not quite, but pretty close. Similar to Thomas DiLorenzo’s “Why Socialism Causes Pollution,” apparently the Aral Sea suffered much of the same fate at the hands of a militaristic Statists.

Ironic quote of the day: Congressman: Yahoo, Google, Cisco Systems, Microsoft are “agents of repression” — cause you know, these firms bombed and invaded China.

And more importantly, support UMA natively.

Behold, the Nokia 6136.

For those of you who haven’t seen the data, be sure to comb through David Sifry’s latest “State of the Blogosphere” report. Unlike the political counterparts to its namesake, he actually publishes zeitgeist-like trends a couple times each year and always unearths interesting factoids (such as the title of this post).

One nugget in particular that rings home to me is his mentioning of “splogs” or spam blogs. I hate them. I wish providers of “free blog service” would somehow rework their system to remove these from their databases and [temporarily] ban the creators IP address (similar to Wikipedia abusers). I know they have tried extra super-duper hard since Mark Cuban’s outcry months ago, but what do you say when almost 90% of the sites that link to your piece are automated bots adding no original content — just using you for a pagerank? Comment spam is also frustrating, but is more manageable from my end allowing bloggers to kill the devil before it spreads (i.e. I filter out what I want commented on and WordPress, among others, has an easy-to-use function for this capacity).

The only thing Sifry touts that I really don’t buy into the “tagging” system. I like it in theory, but I see it as too broad and too easily abused — just as meta-html-description-tags of yore. Adding the tag “Google,” “Microsoft” or “Apple” to a post does very little in telling potential readers what your story is about. Why? Because there is so much involving these companies, from lawsuits to innovations, that one word conveys little. I think it is perhaps the most overhyped feature of “Web 2.0” (aside from the very concept of “Web 2.0″ itself). For to-the-point people like myself, it does not help me locate the pithy thesis quickly or succinctly.

Anyone want to buy the domain pund.it from me?

Big mail on campus:

San José City College (SJCC) has embarked on a technology improvement program, and for the first time will be offering student email accounts. That’s where we come in. We’re testing a new service with the school by hosting Gmail accounts with SJCC domain addresses (like student@jaguars.sjcc.edu), plus admin tools for efficient account management. Massive storage and features that tame the most unruly inboxes, like powerful mail search, conversation view for messages, and a fast interface, make Gmail very handy for students. Together, we’re pleased to provide this channel for better communications and a stronger community for all 10,000 SJCC students.

I literally was discussing this topic with a friend of mine last week. Texas A&M has an internal team developing webmail and the user interface looks and feels like it was created in 1994. Webmail from commercial providers such as MSN, Yahoo and others has steadily advanced over the years, integrating must-have features such as spam blocking and address books. And of late, I’ve wondered why none of the big web players have teamed up with Universities or large Corporations to provide customized solutions on this matter.

This internal development of software is yet another example of how the University is superfluously involving itself in activities it is not efficient at doing. Universities by-in-large do not make their own computer chips, monitors or printers, so why do they create their own e-mail packages? Hopefully firms like Google will be able to combine the webmail service of Gmail with the college-specific features required by administrators, such as class rosters, effectively.

Update: Now Google is offering a streamlined method for hosting email services for your domain. Note: several months ago I mentioned the future direction of Google hosting services; keep in mind that their new Desktop version 3 also expands into this market by remotely hosting your files on their servers.

Update 2: Paul Kedrosky has some interesting thoughts of the privacy and legal issues surrounding off-site hosting from Google.

Scientists are split on the different ways men and women think

Peter Lawrence, a biologist and fellow of the Royal Society, accused Science of being “gutless” after it explained that its decision was because the piece did not offer “a strategy on how to deal with the gender issue”.
[...]
But Mr Lawrence dismissed “the cult of political correctness” that insists men and women are “equivalent, identical even” and argued that “men and women are born different”.
[...]
Mr Lawrence, a developmental biologist who works at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, said: “It was a lame excuse. I could not get it published for reasons that I think were political.”

Mr Lawrence’s piece - Men, Women, and Ghosts in Science - has since been published online by the Public Library of Science Biology and has become one of the most popular articles over the past few days, attracting about 60 e-mails, almost all from women.

I mentioned the PLoS in the article on the University as an alternative method for researchers to publish in. As an aside, anyone else surprised that men and women are wired differently?

Via Lew Rockwell.

Again, more tabs than I have time to talk about:

- NASA Public-Affairs Appointee Resigns in Disgrace - So this guy named George C. Deutsch apparently used to attend Texas A&M as a journalist of some repute and left in 2004 to work on the Bush reelection campaign. Several moons ago he somehow got a job at NASA, a position he is seen as largely abusing. Turns out not only was he trying to “silence” various scientific opinions, but that he never graduated from A&M in the first place — despite explicitly saying so on his resume. Oops. And no, even though we are the same age, I don’t recall ever meeting him on campus.

- The two black holes in Intelligent Design - Speaking of newspaper journalism, this is a concise critique of “intelligent design” in editorial form from our friends in Austin.

- Supply Without Demand - Is there really a shortage of mathematicians or scientists? The senior editors of Science - you know, that fairly reputable peer-reviewed journal - suggest no. As does Lew Rockwell.

- Job hunting online gets trickier - So administrative agencies like the EEOC are purportedly legislated “to help” egalitarianize the field of hiring. However, just as “minimum wage” laws have the reverse effects (by creating an artificial price floor, this removes individuals whose productivity levels do not meet this “minimum” standard from the labor market), so to does these new federal rules for job candidates. It is going to be more difficult for people such as myself to rely on simply making a generic resume, as I know must specifically cater a resume to each firm I apply to. This is just one big hassle and helps no one but employees of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission keep their jobs.

- Why Colleges Think They’re Better Than AP - Although a couple years old, it’s still good as it notes the elitist attitude many institutions of higher education try to engender themselves. Fact: very few freshman courses across the country are identical. Yet somehow numerous professors at these dissimilar institutions criticize the AP test which is well, standardized and universal — designed by a group of college instructors and open to changes. This goes hand-in-hand with what the critique of the US News & World Reports methodology of heterogeneous programs being compared — it’s not only futile but impossible to do.

- Calculating Beyond Their Years - Check out the quote from Alfred S. Posamentier. The educator complains about gifted and talented students racing through their mathematical courses to calculus and beyond. He suggests that they miss out on Algebra and Geometry. Guess what math subjects he is an author of? Qui bono anyone?

In this month’s issue of Wired magazine, comes a timely piece from Sean Cooper that sticks out today, “Alien Animal Planet.” The gist of it is, a group of NASA and SETI Project researchers modeled hypothetical creatures on two distant worlds: one of which is a planet orbiting a red dwarf and the other, a moon orbiting a gas giant which itself is orbiting two stars. The main assumption each model works with is the presence of water. From here, the computers plug-and-chug, churning out some interesting creatures which are compared to Earth-like cousins. More Science than Fiction…

Well, you do not need to travel to distant planets on the other side of the galaxy to discover new species. Nope, apparently, despite all the satellite imagery, scavenger hunts and continental wars, a remote unexplored island in the South Pacific is home to dozens of new birds, frogs, flowers and a smorgasbord of other heretofore unknown entities:

Among the new species of birds, frogs, butterflies and palms discovered in the expedition through this pristine environment, untouched by man, was the spectacular Berlepsch’s six-wired bird of paradise. The scientists are the first outsiders to see it. They could only reach the remote mountainous area by helicopter, which they described it as akin to finding a “Garden of Eden”.

For those of you that have seen King Kong, you may have wondered why the dinosaurs depicted in the movie were not the typical kind seen in movies like Jurassic Park. Some of the lizards were shorter, others bigger or faster and just plain dumb. Peter Jackson said that he envisioned how evolution would have occured over the millennia on an isolated island; similar to the evolution of creatures on Galapagos islands. The end result was a change in their biological development due to environmental factors they had to continuously adapt to — hence their physical differences.

If nothing else, the newly discovered plants, animals and insects in the Foja Mountains empirically shows the dynamic biological evolution species underwent and continue to do so. After all, it is not like these fragile horned frogs, spiny anteaters and tree kangaroos somehow swam their way across an ocean or two from “Noah’s ark.� Or perhaps Chuck Norris somehow put them there.

I mentioned in the last portion of the last footnote in my University article that in “More undergrads playing hooky when the classes go online,” the Chicago Tribune recently noted that the advent of technologies such as podcasting has actually decreased attendance of many classes. This unsurprisingly has caused consternation among some faculty members who have started pulling the material offline in order to restore regular attendance.

Today, an AP story came across the wire, “Nebraska Professor Uses IPod for Lectures.” Among other odds and ends, the story notes that,

The technology-savvy professor was already loading up recordings of his classes to the Internet, making lectures available to students. But this semester, students don’t have to sit at the computer to listen. The portable player allows students to take the lecture anywhere.

“I’m not worried about attendance,” Garbin said. “I think I put on a pretty good show.”

That last part is prescient as it suggests that one potential competitive advantage that traditional institutions can leverage is the performance an instructor puts on during the class. While I am not suggesting that every class needs light shows involving ceiling-high pyrotechnics synchronized with raver tracks, perhaps a tune-up on the entertainment value could be evaluated.

While there may be a legitimate argument contrasting teaching and research, if you are going to teach — and you want the students to comprehend what is being taught — why not crack some jokes or in some manner, break the ice? Some of the more lucid reading I have ever encountered involve explaining truthiness in the realm of science, or the Cargo Cult Science. However, it was done in such a easy-to-understand, non-intimidating manner that I still enjoy reciting various passages from its author Richard Feynman.

Would you pay to have someone, a seasoned speaker covered in wit like Feynman, lecture to your class? While you may have answered yes, have you settled for less? Perhaps this could be another area that an enterprise could take advantage of (i.e. compiling hundreds of entertaining, yet educational lectures). Could you imagine Chris Rock doing a stand-up session on Shakespeare? What would happen if writers from The Simpsons or South Park created episodes on the Pythagoras theorem in this manner?

Cogently tangential

While I did note that I would not update the list of institutions offering online education programs, I did come across a resource that had a similar mission: “Earning Degrees by Distance Learning” over at Degree.net. The listings are extensive and purportedly up-to-date.

And speaking of online education programs, ever heard of an open-source platform called Moodle? It is a content management system designed to enable educators the freedom and ability to effectively instruct and manage curriculum with. Similar to the detested WebCT (no, I’m not a fan).

In closing, I’d like to refer to a recent post from Arnold Kling who compared college with summer camp; noting that college is a “consumption good” which may explain why Universities have gone to pains to offer more amenities on-campus. If this really is a goal (which I suspect is), then using the Shop24 automated stores could potentially save everyone money, as shown on at least one campus. And lastly, I noticed a discussion on open-access in which the author, fade theory, mentioned my own brevity and compared it with other ideas proposed recently. Neat-o.

“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” – Albert Einstein

If you have ever discussed free-market alternatives to the current road monopoly, then you probably at one point or another heard someone ask, but without the State who will build roads?

Once in a blue moon I might actually discuss libertarian ideas in meat-space, primarily because the students in and out of my classes are not entirely open to this philosophy. Therefore why throw pearls before swine, right?

Last night, I met up with some candidates for admission in a service organization I am an officer in. It was a social at a dark and dank pool hall, but nevertheless, I somehow managed to find myself talking with a couple of peers on the topic of education, schooling and accreditation.

One of the guys works at HP as a full-time programmer (in addition to taking classes) and is perhaps the most computer and web-literate individual in the group (besides myself). Let’s call him Peter.

I’m not entirely sure how the topic came up; perhaps someone had mentioned that they needed to study or that they were wary of their degree plan. What did happen however was that I mentioned they could simply download a lecture from some other college, read lecture notes on the material from another school and otherwise proactively learn almost entirely for free via online resources – without losing the purported top-notch quality that is branded to a “college education.�

The responses were not entirely surprising. Peter scoffed at it, with a joking rejoinder: “yea, you go into an interview with some company and tell them that you listened to an entire degree worth of podcasts from Stanford. I’m sure they’ll believe you and consider you educated.�

One bystander, now known as Aaron, chimed in and said that there were a bunch of schools that now offered entire courses in podcast form. He then went on to explain to Peter that Apple had instituted a formal program called ‘iTunes U’ which includes Duke, Brown, the University of Michigan – among others - to develop these podcasts into a mature and reliable service.

For his part, Peter actually was a fair sport, in that he listened attentively to this and other factoids. In fact, I even mentioned the notion of a “mash-up� of OpenCourseWare (lecture notes, reading lists and tests) along with the audio and visual-based podcasts into a fully-comprehensive virtual product. He noted that while this was fun and games and could perhaps lead to a genuinely equitable education service, no one is printing off certificates of completion or mastery.

In essence, no one of acknowledged authority is giving you a gold star.

How do you fix this quagmire?

Well first off, let me note that I am not suggesting educational facilities such as libraries, training rooms, students, teachers or books are going to disappear anytime soon, if at all. I do make an argument based on specialization that the University as a residential institution will not survive, that it will have to strip it self of superfluous services such as housing, transportation and the myriad of other non-educational activities it preoccupies itself with.

When I talk about the destruction of the University system however, I am talking about a cartel and not the educational services it provides. Some criticism of this prediction however fails to acknowledge that semantic distinction. I think there will always be lectures, seminars, classrooms, researchers and the like. The question is how many? What is the pool of non-State interventionist alternatives? I am not talking about abolishing anything other than the cartel itself. As I mentioned in a comment earlier today, abolishing AT&T’s State-granted cartel did not destroy communications, therefore why is this distinction difficult to grasp?

To this end I have noted previously (1 2), numerous brick-and-mortar institutions which have increasingly adapted to this technologically changing landscaping – adopting web forums, email list serves, instant messaging, video web cams, voice-over-IP and all the other bells and whistles that are sometimes collectively called Web 2.0.

That is a good start, but there still exists a relatively expensive barrier to participate in this game of education and of becoming accredited as a customer (i.e. student) of the services.

I have discussed this topic with a number of individuals including economist Arnold Kling who pointed to a recent Eric S. Raymond piece that also discusses the Forbes article from computer scientist, David Gelernter. Dr. Kling mentioned that of late, this monopoly on accreditation would be difficult to crack. He suggests that one direction an entrepreneur could start from is by building a legitimate wedge between high school and college, perhaps along the lines of a vocational school – instead of trying to replace college entirely.

Another comment comes from a reader of David Friedman who proposed that universities are naturally more than one kind of business, somewhat in conflict with each other. Ideally, therefore, there would be examination organizations, certification organizations, and teachers would teach for a fee without needing to be employed directly by either of those (though of course firms of teachers would probably exist).

This would remove the conflict of interest that stifles competition to some extent in examination and certification, by unbundling those, and teachers would be free to make as much or as little as they were really worth.

This is of particular interest as one of the individuals that helped develop the University article also suggested a similar unbundling of services. The same unbundling idea is also making headway through large corporations who are being advised by authors such as John Hagel (see Unbundling the Corporation) to shed unnecessary operations and refocus around their core strengths (rather than overextend into many unrelated pies).

While George Santayana suggested that those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it, proponents of State intervention into the accreditation market are actually practicing insanity, doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results – and as a consequence, fulfilling the Santayana maxim.

Try something different. Go on a State-free diet. While you might not lose a few pounds around the waist, you could trim off some redundant layers surrounding the college tuition. You might even gain several extra inches on real-world applicability, enlarging your return-on-investment in the years to come.

It happens often, too often and most of the time without any warning. I have a half-dozen links tabbed in my browser waiting to be discussed at any given time. I still don’t have that time, but in case you missed it:

- The Onion’s AV Club interviewed Stephen Colbert. I’m a fan of his promotion of the concept: “truthiness”

- Eighty Percent Of Al-Qaeda No. 2s Now Dead. I wonder how many No. 2s there would be in a hypothetical invasion of Iran.

- Gates’ finances tax IRS. An odd article which discusses the fact that the IRS literally has one computer dedicated to sorting through the taxes of Bill Gates. It’s almost as if all the parties involved are bragging about this inefficiency… In fact, a recent study from the Tax Foundation found that complying with the federal income tax code during 2005 cost U.S. taxpayers $265.1 billion, or about 22 cents per dollar.

- Wolf T Shirt Long Sleeve Mens-Large. Aren’t those the most random comments?

- Federal patent office issues non-final rejection of 5th NTP patent. Despite the fact that their patents have been found to be null and void, the actual innovators and risk-takers - RIM - will more than likely be shut down. How on earth does this promote “the Progress of Science“? Note: both the UK and German courts have invalidated the patents as well.

- A Very Scary Speech. I don’t watch much TV (reading is more convenient, faster to do and something I can control more easily), nor did I watch the SOTU, but this was one of the better redux that I found floating in its wake.

- Contrasts in presentation style: Yoda vs. Darth Vader. Ever wondered what a Powerpoint from Vader would look like?

Apparently the Congressional committee for Human Rights Abuse is now petitioning a number of tech firms such as Microsoft and Google to appear before a board of inquiry, to find out why they are complying with China in censoring search terms (among other things).

Is this not one of the most bellicose chutzpah’s you’ve ever heard? Where on earth does anyone in Congress (sans Ron Paul) get off at pointing a condemning finger at anyone outside the beltway? It’s not like Congress doesn’t already eavesdrop or prevent certain things from being published. Who voted to invade a country and continues to occupy it? Last time I checked neither Bill Gates nor Eric Schmidt were setting up roadblocks, dropping paratroopers into neighborhoods or hijacking an entire economy.

At the same time, I am not ignoring the fact that it is the Chinese politicos who are also to blame for censoring darn near everything.

Perhaps the People’s Congress should subpoena the sycophants in DC and vice-versa. Then we could find out who has the best form of censorship…

Apparently some geeks over at the Return of Whatever blog put together a podcast a few days ago and they ended up discussing my article on the University (they mention it twice, once at around 10:30 min and again at 23:30 min).

Unfortunately, they didn’t discuss any of the economics or business side of the issue, which was by-in-large, the main thesis of the piece. Instead they debate whether or not a student could realistically create a virtual classroom that could legitimately replace the need to attend a residential institution. One of the guys suggests that it could be done with current technology, or technology in the not-so-distant future. The other, a teacher, argues that there is something intangible that cannot be conveyed or otherwise downloaded through a virtual experience.

My thoughts on their angle: I know an entire generation that is literally self-taught in terms of computer literacy. I didn’t learn to blog because of a course at school. I didn’t learn html, Photoshop or a plethora of other wares from any kind of formal course. In fact, I didn’t learn to type or use the basic features of a GUI from the instruction of a teacher. Nor have my friends or many of my peers.

I say this to suggest that if given the information in the form of lectures, notes, visual aides and the like - a motivated student could arguably learn many subjects as proficiently as someone sitting in a classroom (i.e. the social sciences and liberal arts fit into this category more than others).

And based upon their topical news, the folks at ‘Return of Whatever’ apparently subscribe to the same RSS feeds I do, all 96 of them.

On the plus side, they did mention the almighty Facebook — all hail to thee.