Steve Fischer's Random Blog

Category: Technology

  • Mainstream Media Timeliness

    Or lack thereof.

    CNN: When did Face become so uncool?

    Guys, that happened a long time ago. Get with the program.

    The scary thing is they bought the app that is totally cool. So what happens next?

  • Awesome Rube Goldberg

    As an Indiana University alum, I’m programmed to not like Purdue, but it is a good engineering school and this video is hilarious. I love the shouts of “oh please work…” in the background.

  • Wind

    Hypnotically cool map.

  • Just Cool

    People can complain about Google as an ad company trying to gather information to target ads. But this is the stuff that makes me like Google.

    Technology because it is simply cool.

    May never make money for Google. But damn, this is cool…

  • Jupiter and Venus

    Thanks to Bad Astronomy’s Phil Plait, my daughters saw Jupiter and Venus from our roof tonight.

    Google Sky Map helped me make sure…

  • Apple Doesn’t Like “Stop Stealing Dreams”

    An interesting discussion. I don’t think Apple has to sell any book in their bookstore if they don’t want to.

    But I also think that we can all recommend that people not buy things from their bookstore because they are being ridiculous. Put the Kindle app on your iPad/iPhone and order from Amazon.

    I strongly recommend that everyone read Stop Stealing Dreams. It is highly thought provoking and it’s free. Seth Godin isn’t making any money here (I’m sure he hopes you buy other books of his), he’s trying to improve the world.

  • What Is School For?

    I’m currently reading Stop Stealing Dreams, by Seth Godin. So far, I would recommend it to everyone, just because it will get you thinking about what schools should be. Plus it’s free.

    An amusing example:

    43. How not to teach someone to be a baseball fan

    Teach the history of baseball, beginning with Abner Doubleday and the impact of cricket and imperialism. Have a test.

    Starting with the Negro leagues and the early barnstorming teams, assign students to memorize facts and figures about each player. Have a test.

    Rank the class on who did well on the first two tests, and allow these students to memorize even more statistics about baseball players. Make sure to give equal time to players in Japan and the Dominican Republic. Send the students who didn’t do as well to spend time with a lesser teacher, but assign them similar work, just over a longer time frame. Have a test.

    Sometime in the future, do a field trip and go to a baseball game. Make sure no one has a good time.

    If there’s time, let kids throw a baseball around during recess.

    Obviously, there are plenty of kids (and adults) who know far more about baseball than anyone could imagine knowing. And none of them learned it this way.

    The industrialized, scalable, testable solution is almost never the best way to generate exceptional learning.

  • Owl Video

    I’m not totally sure why, but me and my daughters think this is cool.

  • The Compass

    Interesting analogy today from Seth Godin…

  • Really Big and Really Small

    Here’s a very nice visualization of the scale of the universe, from the Planck Length to the entire universe. Click on things to learn more about them.

    It takes a while to load so be patient.