An announcement went out today that the Office of Sponsored Research recently released its 2006 Annual Report. Curious, I took a look. Some interesting data from the main report: Total funding for FY 2006: $593,390,527, a 2.38% increase over FY05. Unsurprisingly, the School of Medicine was by far the largest recipient of grant funding on campus, to the tune of 48.57% of all funding received at UNC-CH. By comparison, SILS.. Read More
Kvetching about Facebook
I have a profile on Facebook. It makes me feel somewhat juvenile, actually, despite the fact that most of my students and many of my colleagues have profiles. I blame Fred: I created a profile as a means for better understanding what the hell he was writing about in his Facebook research. (Come to think of it, I started blogging in part because of Fred. I’m not sure how to.. Read More
Grading completed, on leave
I have finished all of my grading for the semester and submitted my grades. I am feeling the unbearable lightness of being. I’m especially feeling it since I now don’t have to grade anything for about 9 months. I’m on leave for the Spring 2007 semester, so I may not even set foot in a classroom until next August. Unless I have a meeting in a classroom. For those of.. Read More
Thoughts on one very small part of Weinberger’s Henderson Lecture
I went to see David Weinberger‘s talk on campus earlier today, and this post is a reaction to that. Before I go down that road though, let me just say that I really enjoyed the talk. I just finished reading Small Pieces Loosely Joined maybe 2 days ago. So that’s fresh in my mind, and of course I haven’t yet read his next book, Everything is Miscellaneous, because it isn’t.. Read More
More thoughts on the death of Google Answers
This article in the NY Times repeats a lot of the same coverage, and even much of the same text I’ve seen elsewhere, but it does have one additional bit: “It has been one of our most successful launches,” said Tomi Poutanen, product director for Yahoo Social Search. … Mr. Poutanen described it as a way to harness the “wisdom of the crowds.” First of all, it’s the wisdom of.. Read More
The old home town, year 3
Newton has fallen from grace. My old home town is no longer the safest city in the US. It has been surpassed by Brick Township, NJ; Amherst, NY; and Mission Viejo, CA. The 13th annual America’s Safest (and Most Dangerous) Cities report says so. Though Newton is 3rd in the cities of 75,000 to 99,999 population category. Which is interesting, since I’d have thought for sure that the population was.. Read More
Google Answers closing its doors
Adieu to Google Answers, from the Google Blog Later this week, we will stop accepting new questions in Google Answers… Though it does not say why. I first learned about this from a student who is a Google Answerer, who forwarded an email announcement from Google that he received to me. In it was this: We considered many factors in reaching this difficult decision, and ultimately decided that the Answers.. Read More
Spam Über Alles
9 out of 10 e-mails now spam, from CNN The number of “spam” messages has tripled since June and now accounts for as many as nine out of 10 e-mails sent worldwide, according to U.S. email security company Postini. And the press release from Postini that CNN is reporting on. …a 59 percent spike in spam over that period [from September to November 2006]. Unwanted email is currently 91 percent.. Read More
Amazon Decade-versary
I was on Amazon recently, tracking an order, and for no good reason decided to look at my past orders. And I discovered that it’s been a decade that I’ve been doing business with Amazon. Just over, actually: my first order was placed on 31 October 1996. Halloween, though I don’t remember if that had anything to do with it. My first order was for Idoru, which seems somehow appropriate… Read More
Re-search
I was thinking about the word research yesterday. It is not, I suppose, unusual for me to be thinking about research, but it’s usually that I’m thinking about my research. It’s that whole signifier/signified thing. Anyway, it’s a weird word, when you think about it. Re-search. As in, searching again. I mean, replication is desirable in research, and replicated research surely is re-search. But the research being replicated, I suppose.. Read More