bored of education

Warner Brothers shuts down Harry Potter fan site

If you visit mugglenet.com, you will find this page saying that a New York Court has ordered mugglenet (my favorite Harry Potter site) to close down because of copyright infringment. I was very upset until I realized that in Europe it is already 4/1/2005...

First Post at Blog Critics

For my first post at blogcritics, I decided to write a short review of Who Let the Blogs Out. Here it is:

Since reading it in January, Biz Stone's book has inspired me to start three blogs and I have plans for about three more. (My public blog is at boredofeducation.typepad.com. The others are internal blogs at my work. Sorry.)

If you are new to blogging you need to read Who Let the Blogs Out, by Biz Stone. If you're a veteran blogger, just check out his blog.

This will be a really short review since I really should be grading papers, but I think Biz Stone's book should be mandatory reading. (Don't buy his other one, there are better sources for the same information.)

Blog Critics

I just joined blogcritics.org. Its a place where bloggers can post reviews of books, movies, etc. So whenever I review a book or something, I will also post a copy there.

But you, my faithful readers, don't need to go through blogcritics to buy the book. Feel free to go directly to amazon.

As soon as I can I am also going to put a link to blogcritics and amazon in my sidebar. (My grades are due this week and I really should be working.)

One Billion Links

I wish.

That's the number of links being tracked by technorati as of March 31 at 24 minutes after midnight (or 1224 am) in San Francisco.

This strange post is my guess at the time they will hit one billion links. They are sponsoring a contest with the grand prize of an IPod.

Since I just bought my new PowerBook I thought an IPod would make a nice addition. So I've spent hours and hours researching the trends to calculate my best guess. (Just kidding. I think I spent about 10 minutes. Its taken longer to type up my post.)

I discovered this contest by reading David Sifry's weblog. He is, apparently, the founder and CEO of technorati.

You can find a list of other guesses here.

Worldwide Glacier Retreat

At realclimate they have an article on Worldwide glacier retreat. There is a really cool graph showing how dramatically most glaciers have shrunk in the past century. (If I can figure out how, I will post a copy here.) There is also a link to photos of a shrinking glacier.

This is a very visual example of climate change and Global Warming. Does it prove mankind's involvement? Not definitively. Does it help us know what to do about it? Not really. Does this mean we should all move into the mountains and live on berries? Probably not, I think that would be worse for the environment.

The more scientific part of the article describes how the glacial measurements support other "proxy" measurements of historical temperatures. Since we don't have real temperature data going back more than a few hundred years scientists have found substitute methods. These methods involve things such as measuring tree rings. (Don't ask. I have no idea.) The only problem is that these methods are less exact and it is helpful to find other proxy measurements that support previous ones.

In other words the glacier data makes the graphs of temperature reconstructions more believable. (If I can I'll post a copy here.)

Anyway, I thought it was interesting and nobody in the blogosphere seems to have noticed.

Edit: The graphs are present but fuzzy. I don't know what causes that or how to fix it. Click on the graphs for large unfuzzy copies.

Happy Easter

I would like to wish a Happy Easter to my many readers (I know of two regulars.)

Easter is a special time for Christians when we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus with the Pagan symbols of the rabbit and the egg.

Don't get me wrong. I have nothing against Pagans and I do feel that spirituality is important. I also understand that all religions use their symbols and their stories to understand larger truths.

However, It bothers me when one religion appropriates the symbols and/or mythology of another and claims them as their own (without even citing their source.)

Anyway, Happy Easter

New Powerbook

I just got a new G4 macintosh powerbook and it is wonderful. I had forgotten just how superior Macs are.

I've used OmniOutliner to start planning my lessons for next year. I'm using stickies to start future blog entries. (I've started about 20 entries about my thoughts on various topics.) My thoughts and plans are more organized than they've ever been.

It is true that you can do all of that with a PC. But the file management is easier on a Mac, the interface is more elegant. etcetera.

Another way to think of it is:

I drive a Geo Prizm to school. It does get me there, but I would much rather drive a Lexus.

NCTM Conference

Last weekend I received my materials for the NCTM conference. (For the uninitiated that stands for the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics--or something like that.) It should be a wild party. You know how math teachers are when they get together. But remember, what happens in Anaheim, stays in Anaheim...

I am looking forward to the networking opportunities. There are only 4 math teachers at my site and it will be good to meet additional people and see what they do in their classroom. (Who knows, I might also learn about available jobs... If my principal is reading this, I'm only kidding.)

I'm also looking forward to the seminars. We approach Math Education in terms of problem solving. The idea is that we give students real world problems and coach them through finding the solution. They develop their own strategies for solving the problem as well as their own understanding and appreciation of the math concepts. I think its called inquiry based learning.

Anyway, I'm still trying to figure out the best way to use this method. After all, I learned the old fashioned way with lectures followed by examples of applications when there was time. There are about 20 seminars related (in some way) to this approach. I wish I could attend all of them but I'll have to settle for a few.

If I have time I'll post the highlights here.

First Comment, First Link?

Bob Whitson at Howling at a Waning Moon posted a comment thanking me for my link and offering to return the favor... So I was exploring his site and discovered his really cool links page.

He has well over a hundred environmentally friendly sites organized into 17 different categories. (I keep discovering more sites about global warming...This is going to take me forever...) The following sites caught my interest:

The People’s Ratification
of the Kyoto Global Warming Treaty

Scientists and Engineers for Change

M O B J E C T I V I S T

http://www.worldviewofglobalwarming.org/

As I have time I'll visit these sights and post my humble opinions here.

(Anyway, I enjoyed getting my first comment... Now I need to figure out how the trackbacks thing works...)