Grad-School-Ruled

This might just turn me back on to paper.

Mead Releases New Grad-School-Ruled Notebook

The Onion

Mead Releases New Grad-School-Ruled Notebook

RICHMOND, VA—Company officials say the new notebooks feature lines 3.55 millimeters apart, making them “infinitely more practical” for postgraduate work than the 7.1 millimeter college-ruled notebooks.

In college, people are at a stage in their education where they require 9/32nds of an inch between each line, which is why we make college-ruled notebooks. But I think we can all agree that grad school is a completely different world than college—a world where 9/32nds of an inch is simply too much room.

Cell Bar Code Sales

I blogged awhile back about cell (2D, including QR) barcodes. The Times published a piece about a pilot program at Case Western Reserve Univ using the technology… the result?

But interest in the pilot project, which started Feb. 1 and will run at least through May 15, has been tepid, according to students on campus, in part because of the cellphone fees associated with it. (It costs 2 cents or more to check when the next shuttle bus arrives, for instance.)

Two cents doesn’t sound like much, but it does add up, and more importantly acts as a disincentive when the value of the information doesn’t match the price + effort. This really makes me wonder about how the costs compare between the U.S. and countries where scanning is more popular. As far as I know, the only cost is for mobile time to connect to the Internet. I’d love to hear about prices abroad in the comments.

Googling Truth

I’ve had a few household problems lately where I’ve turned to my usual trusty answer-source–Google. Today it was a flood, and the question is how to (or can you) kill mold with bleach.  Most of the top hits said the same thing: bleach is ineffective at killing mold (especially on porous surfaces).

I have no reason not to believe this, but it brought up a feeling I’ve had lately.  Why do we trust Google top hits as correct?  It seems plausible, at least for topics like this, that people with an axe to grind might be the most likely to link and thus drive up page rankings. Perhaps Google has found a way around this, or perhaps the larger question is: has our perception “truth” changed?

Connecting infrastructure investment

This quick article about a government loan to promote rural broadband scratches the surface of a connection I’d like to hear more about–how are we doing on investing in public Internet infrastructure today, when compared with past projects like highways? It turns out that it’s a difficult thing to track, but I’d agree with the author who argues it’s a “good idea–one which is long overdue.”

Perhaps we haven’t done more because of the expense of keeping up existing infrastructures?