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Saturday, August 31, 2002

More on News Aggregators

Ben Hammersley writes in the Guardian:
I don't mean to brag but it's 8.30am and I've already got up to date with 75 different websites. I've read all their headlines, perused the articles of interest, and I'm only half way through my coffee.
I'm also cheating. I'm using an RSS newsreader.
Look here and here for more on news aggregators at Dartmouth.

Full post and comments below the fold.

Posted by Andrew Grossman at 9:09 PM (0 comments)

Thursday, August 29, 2002

Unsolicited Commercial Email

Received today in the Dartlog inbox (bold emphasis mine):
From: colin@namegiant.com
Subject: CACTUSJACK.NET
To: dartlog@dartreview.com>

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[...so on...]
Yours sincerely,

Colin
Namegiant.com
Wonder if this has something to do with it?

Full post and comments below the fold.

Posted by Andrew Grossman at 10:39 PM (0 comments)

Tuesday, August 27, 2002

New Dartlog Logo

"Books!"

Full post and comments below the fold.

Posted by Andrew Grossman at 10:49 PM (0 comments)

Monday, August 26, 2002

The One-Party Academic System

Paul Cella on the recent American Enterprise article:
The results are, very simply, devastating; they quite thoroughly document an American academia full of �virtual one-party states, ideological monopolies, badly unbalanced ecosystems.� A few samples. Cornell University, in the eight departments tabulated, includes 166 professors registered with parties of the Left and six registered with parties of the Right; the history, sociology, and women�s studies departments all do not have a single professor among them registered with a party of the Right. At Harvard University, the numbers for economics, political science and sociology are 50 to two.

Full post and comments below the fold.

Posted by Andrew Grossman at 2:18 PM (0 comments)

SLA fascists

I guess I'm out of the loop, but who are these famed "Student Life Advisors"? Frankly, no student should have to suffer the "advice" of these clowns...let's all sing in unison from Jonathan Edwards "Sunshine"--"[He] can't even run his own life, I'll be damned if he'll run mine"...someone put the mp3 up here, ah, a grand tune

"Take Care of Yourself and Pick Your Battles"--picking battles with these yahoos is like picking lint from one's navel

Full post and comments below the fold.

Posted by barrett at 10:52 AM (0 comments)

Good clip...just ignore the inane music.

http://www.politicsandprotest.org/

Full post and comments below the fold.

Posted by barrett at 10:37 AM (0 comments)

Sunday, August 25, 2002

Elsewhere

Christian Science Monitor: "About 34 percent of the 50,000 undergraduates at 900 institutions surveyed earned C's and D's or worse."

Women's E-News: "[C]ompanies have gotten a lot savvier putting mentoring programs in place" for women, says Tuck's Ella Bell.

The Cranky Professor: Commentary on the case of a Dartmouth '99 who, because of mental illness, will be graduating this year - after nine years in Hanover:
Under the Americans With Disabilities Act she has been provided with the help and facilities necessary to complete her degree.

NPR interviewed at least one person - a Harvard administrator - who asked if the run-of-the-mill psychological support services were being neglected in favor of the traumatic cases - kind of the question people ask about 'special education' in government elementary and secondary education.

No one asked about academics. The brave young woman at Dartmouth said that one of the best things about the support she has received is that on those days when she's so depressed she just doesn't feel like getting out of bed she doesn't feel so guilty about skipping class.

So what do I, the classroom teacher do?
(The original NPR story is here.)
The Professor makes a raises a good point, albeit inconclusively. Any responses? Yes, we can post correspondance anonymously; just ask.

The Weekly Standard:
Competition under the new SAT will be fairer, at least in that everyone will know that the college entrance exam is an achievement test and that the best preparation truly is studying hard in a demanding high school and reading and writing as much as possible. Still, as long as there is unequal access to excellent college preparatory schools, equal opportunity as Conant conceived it will not be realized.

Salon: "[W]hen we recognize how relatively easy it is for ordinary people to become involved in [genocide], that just takes the discussion to a different place," says (Correction) Whitworth College's James Waller. "Susannah Heschel from Dartmouth College...[tells] us two things. One is there were a lot more female perpetrators in the camp systems in Nazi Germany than we ever thought before. Thousands more. The second thing is that these female perpetrators had the capacity to be just as brutal, just as sadistic, as any of the male perpetrators that we have records of."

Full post and comments below the fold.

Posted by Andrew Grossman at 9:34 PM (0 comments)

Sevi Responds on "Inter-group Dating" (and some of us are above calling names)

Michael Sevi responds to Alison Jeffe's take on the "Inter-group dating" discussion (Alison had reported on the event for the Review):
Ms. Jeffe - I thank you for so precisely summarizing the complexity of our conversation: "How can someone be on principle open to all races and religions [and yet] make an arbitrary choice to date only people within their race or religion? It just doesn't make sense."

Exactly! This is the very contradiction with which our conversation dealt. But the truth is that this contradiction does exist - take ten of the most "open-minded" people at Dartmouth and, as our discussion proved, nine of them would feel at least a little uncomfortable about bringing home a person of a different race. Simply pointing out that this is a contradiction does not negate its existence, especially in this case when no one questioned the fact that it is a contradiction, and the entire point of the discussion (at least as I saw it) was to explore this inconsistency and try to come to some kind of resolution about it. Thus, there is no need to point out the "contradiction of the discussion's apparent 'premise'" when investigating this contradiction was in fact the premise itself. Finally, I apologize for misspelling your name.
For what it's worth, I disagree with Sevi (well, not on the misspelling thing); if nine of ten felt "at least a little uncomfortable" about inter-racial or inter-religious dating, one could hardly call the group among "the most 'open-minded'...at Dartmouth" - they haven't even make it over the lowest hurdle. The "inter-group dating" discussion is a great example of the narrow and unreflective agendas that drive many of the seemingly-progressive efforts on campus. That's why we ran the story in the Review and why I am disappointed to this day that it didn't spark more discussion than it did.

Maybe some of last week's reactionary idiots will have something to say about this...unless, of course, they're already onto the next cause, like winning equal benefits for transgendered partners in the Vatican City or fighting the systematic discrimination against pedophiles.

Full post and comments below the fold.

Posted by Andrew Grossman at 3:43 PM (0 comments)

Two great and free aggregators (and BlitzMail on your cellphone)

Several weeks ago, I wrote about news aggregators and recommended two, Radio and AmphetaDesk. A number of readers who responded to that post were interested in the technology but dissatisfied with these options. Radio, probably the best aggregator for Mac or Windows, costs $40 per year and includes a number of features (like content management, blogging, etc.) that many don't need. AmphetaDesk, despite its (unexplainable) popularity, is somewhat unpolished--many basic features (like knowing when a news item has been read) are unimplemented and the program is a bit too utilitarian in its design. Further, the two aggregators use the web browser for all user-interface, and thus sacrifice much interactivity.

So, with a bit of work and some asking around, I have found the two best free aggregators for Mac OS X and Windows:

- If you're using Mac OS X, you should definitely try NetNewsWire. The program is fast and simple to use and boasts a well-constructed Macintosh interface. Of note are its color highlighting options, configurable toolbar, and informative dock-icon (it shows how many new items are unread). Also, if you have Jaguar (that is, OS X 10.2, released on Friday), try this...pretty cool, eh?

- If you're running Windows (98, ME, 2000, or XP), then you should use Aggie. It is lightweight, fast, and surprisingly full-featured (given that it is a < 100 kB download). Aggie requires the Microsoft .NET framework, which can be gotten here for free (note that this is a 20 MB download) if you don't already have it. Like NetNewsWire, Aggie uses its system's native interface to its best advantage; this is to say that Aggie works well for a Windows application but lacks the sublime usability of NetNewsWire. Also: Aggie was written by Joe Gregorio, a Dartmouth alumnus.

A quick reminder of how news aggregators could be useful to Dartmouth students and alumni:

- You can read your BlitzMail in an aggregator.
- DartLog and Dartreview.com both have RSS feeds (i.e., they can be read in an aggregator).
- Several hundred thousand (that's right) public news feeds are available on the Internet. If you want to stay up to date with the NY Times, CNN, the BBC, and Fark, an aggregator is the easiest and fastest way to do it. A few thousand of the most popular feeds are in a directory here. You can create your own news feeds (e.g., all stories containing the word "Dartmouth" in major publications) here.

Also: In a few days or a week, WAPBlitz should be ready for testing. WAPBlitz (WAP being "Wireless Application Protocol") will let you check your BlitzMail on most any cellphone, with most any service. If you are interested in testing WAPBlitz before it is released, email me. Be sure to note your cellphone's make and model and your service provider. Up to a point, the more people who test it, the sooner it will be released.

Full post and comments below the fold.

Posted by Andrew Grossman at 5:11 AM (0 comments)

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