Microcontent News: Weblogs, email digests, Webzines, personal publishing, content strategy, Microads. Corante. But Google didn't stop there. Its insatiable appetite for fresh content spilled over to any frequently updated websites, including Weblogs. If Google noticed a page updating frequently, it started visiting that page much more frequently so it could suck the latest content into its database of over 3 billion documents. As they put it in their latest press release, "Google refreshes millions of web pages every day to ensure that Google users have access to the most current information."
Putting it Together: Google loves Weblogs

Reading list

Steve Krug's Don't Make Me Think brought all the best lessons from usability down to a readable text that began a discussion, and explained the give and take that usability and design sometimes have to work against. It was refreshing to read after hearing only decrees from on high, delivered in the full style of academics telling everyone how Things Should Be Done. If I had to pick one web-specific book as my all time favorite, this would be it.

Your Thumb Here: Newest ID of Choice at Store and on Job Businesses and government agencies defend the practice as a reasonable response to the widespread traffic in false identifications. But civil rights advocates worry that fingerprinting is being used to intimidate people who patronize businesses that serve lower-income people. Some wonder if fingerprint databases can be protected from abuse.
Wayne Crews, director of technology studies at the conservative Cato Institute in Washington, said the technology can protect privacy, making it harder for a thief to use a stolen charge card encoded with a thumbprint. But Mr. Crews said that big, compulsory databases, like those for driver's licenses and other ID's that store people's finger or facial images, can be abused by officials, identity thieves or others who find a way into them. "You create a honey pot for hackers," he said.

Absolute Powerpoint
Can a software package edit our thoughts
by Ian Parker
Before there were presentations, there were conversations, which were a little like presentations but used fewer bullet points, and no one had to dim the lights. A woman we can call Sarah Wyndham, a defense-industry consultant living in Alexandria, Virginia, recently began to feel that her two daughters weren't listening when she asked them to clean their bedrooms and do their chores. So, one morning, she sat down at her computer, opened Microsoft's PowerPoint program, and typed:

• Family Matters
  
• An approach for positive change to the
  
• Wyndham family team
  

I'm sure I blogged this before, but it's still great.

The Adventures of AccordionGuy in the 21st Century Yet something more important may be afoot. At a time when many dot coms have failed, blogging is on the rise. We’re in a lull between waves of commercialization in digital media, and bloggers are seizing the moment, potentially increasing cultural diversity and lowering barriers to cultural participation.

The Adventures of AccordionGuy in the 21st Century

Usability is not everything. If usability engineers designed a nightclub, it would be clean, quiet, brightly lit, with lots of places to sit down, plenty of bartenders, menus written in 18-point sans-serif, and easy-to-find bathrooms. But nobody would be there. They would all be down the street at Coyote Ugly pouring beer on each other.

Consuming Rituals of the Suburban Tribe Housecalls does not describe what it does as anthropology; it prefers to say that its researchers generate ''reality-based product differentiation.'' But the language of Margaret Mead and her followers constantly creeps into the company's official literature.

Consuming Rituals of the Suburban Tribe Consuming Rituals of the Suburban Tribe

By LAWRENCE OSBORNE

Angela Macri crouches beneath the shower nozzle and blinks into the blazing lights of a one-person film crew. The shower curtain has been drawn back so that her movements are exposed to the camera; Macri seems a little nervous as she adjusts the faucets.

''Look up a moment,'' says Terri Marlowe, the camerawoman, as she checks the light reading.

Field Studies Done Right: Fast and Observational (Alertbox Jan. 2002) Last week, The New York Times ran a long article about companies using anthropological techniques to study their customers. It's always great to see articles that promote field studies, but the information in the Times article perpetuated two common mistakes that not only produce bad data, but squander a company's research budget:

portfolio

Find out what is expected for your career path. Positions in fund-raising and what is called "Institutional Advancement" require leather and top-quality portfolio because your contacts will be persons with money.

This just struck me as funny.

http://www.alistapart.com/stories/writebetter/

Boing Boing: A Directory of Wonderful Things

With so many writers apparently uneasy about the state of the world, I would expect plenty of mordant commentary on our entanglement in the wheels of the runaway technological locomotive. But almost none of the stories in these 13 Asimov’s issues--not even those set in a "real future"--offer a genuine critique of technology, of its use by and its impact upon humanity. David Marusek’s biting "VTV," about new extremes of media manipulation, is a standout exception (3/00). Critique requires that its author gaze unflinchingly at present and future, ugly and perverse as those might appear. What we have instead here is a pervasive techno-anxiety that for the most part looks away from the source of its fears.

Web 'turns people into goldfish'

A US EXPERT RECKONS obsessive web browsing can cause attention spans to drop to as little as nine seconds - equivalent to a goldfish.

"Our attention span gets affected by the way we do things," says Ted Selker, a professor at MIT. "If we spend our time flitting from one thing to another on the web, we can get into a habit of not concentrating," he told the BBC.

A US expert reckons obsessive web browsing can cause attention spans to drop to as little as nine seconds - equivalent to a goldfish.

"Our attention span gets affected by the way we do things," says Ted Selker, a professor at MIT. "If we spend our time flitting from one thing to another on the web, we can get into a habit of not concentrating," he told the BBC.

Online Journalism Review, Gary Baum: On Publishing Scoops and Canards

In fact, it seems to have become the gospel at the trail-blazing news Web site, which has gained fame in recent months for its eye-catching, jaw-dropping reports on the current war on terrorism in the region. However, Debkafile has received a mixed reaction from the media it so confidently challenges; critics have questioned the publication's accuracy and objectivity, giving its overall coverage comments ranging from "just plain scary" to "complete bunkum."

PostNuke.com :: Rogue Content Management

How do I do a fresh install of Post-Nuke

nothing, and lots of it

A related lesson, learned from several client meetings:
I didn't use "Lorem Ipsum" latin filler text in mockups or prototypes shown to customers until a few meetings went like this:

Me: So, here's what the proposed home page will look like, and you just simply click on the discussion ar...

Client: What's that paragraph say about healthcare funding getting slashed?

Me: What? Oh, that. I just copy and pasted the first story on Yahoo News' medical news page, I thought it'd fit as filler text since this was a medical site. Now about the functionality of the featur...

Client: Well, can we change that? I mean, I don't want to look at bad news when visitors see the site.

Me: I just put that in for this photoshop mockup, it won't ever be seen by anyone. Now about the new proposed sub-sectio...

Client: Ok, but if you could change all the mockups, that'd be great, I don't want to show these around the office with that bad news on there.

I've used Lorem Ipsum as filler text from then on.

HotScripts.com : PHP-Nuke

PHP-Nuke is a Web Portal System, storytelling software, news system, online community or whatever you want to call it. The goal of PHP-Nuke is to have an automated web site to distribute news and articles with user system. Each user can submit comments to discuss the articles, similar to Slashdot and many others. Features: web based admin, polls/surveys with comment option, statistics, user customizable box, themes manager, friendly admin GUI with graphic topic manager, moderation system, Referers page, sections manager, an integrated banners ads system, backend/headlines generation (RSS/RDF format), Yahoo like search engine, Ephemerids manager, file manager, download manager, faq manager, advanced blocks system, reviews system, newsletter, multilanguage content management, encyclopedia generator, md5 password encryption, support for 25 languages, 100% modular and very easy to use and configure. PHP-Nuke is written 100% in PHP and requires Apache, PHP and a SQL Database Server. Supports MySQL, PostgreSQL, Adabas, mSQL and many others.

Online Pedagogy with Discussion Management Software

Feenberg's Textweaver project

But here is the rub: interactive text based applications lack the
pizzazz of video alternatives and cannot promise automation, nor
can they be packaged and sold. They do not conform to the fantasy
of total central control over a flexible, disseminated system
defying spatial and temporal boundaries. On the contrary, they are
labor intensive and will probably not cut costs very much. Hence
the lack of interest from corporations and administrators, and the
gradual eclipse of these technological options in public discussion
(if not on campus) by far more expensive ones. But unlike the fancy
alternatives, interactive text based systems actually accomplish
legitimate pedagogical objectives faculty and students recognize and
respect.

To resist the automating trend in education is not simply to wallow in
an old-fashioned Mr. Chips sentimentality. Rather, it is a question
of different civilizational projects with different institutional
bases. The traditional conception of education must be preserved
not out of uncritical worship of the past but for the sake of the
future. I have tried to show here that the educational technology
of an advanced society might be shaped by educational dialogue rather
than the production oriented logic of automation. Should a dialogic
approach to online education prevail on a large enough scale, it could
be a factor making for fundamental social change. This prospect is
explored in all its utopian impl

Red Rock Eater Digest - Critical Theory of Technology

The Factory or the City: Which Model for Online Education? [1]

Technology and Modernity

Much recent discussion of the Internet emphasizes its promise
of epoch making changes in our lives. In no domain are these
anticipated changes more radical than in education. We are told that
the substantive content of instruction can now be delivered better
by computers than by teachers. Are we on the verge of a fundamental
transformation of all our assumptions about education as we enter
a postindustrial information age, or are we instead witnessing
significant but more modest changes in education as we know it?
As a participant in the early development of online education,
I hope to be able to bring a touch of realism to the debate.

news.telegraph.co.uk - Pink hair girl sees red as school photo is altered

"We have been trying to resolve the issue of Ashley's pink hair since before Christmas," he said. "Initially, we were assured that she would return it to the natural colour over the holiday but since Christmas her hair has remained pink.

Literacy.org

A nice site with literacy resources.Duh.

In Praise of Sloppy HTML - The Web Developer's Journal My point is that there are many cases where it should be spent on something else, that perfecting HTML is often not the best use of resources. To be fair, there are also many cases where perfect HTML is worthwhile, and for mature businesses that's probably most of the time, but for young businesses it's worth considering the sloppy HTML option. It may be the only way to get through those lean, early years and get to a stable position where you can start contemplating perfection. A two percent budget shift from perfection to promotion in those early days may mean the difference between success and failure.

With the World Redesigned, What Role for Designers? As Ms. Kare wrote in a follow-up note, "When times are confusing, it's more important than ever to produce images of clarity and simplicity."

Salon.com Life | Don't say "cheese" I treasure the photos I have of my boys, their doe-eyed looks, their fat baby bottoms, their naked boy bodies rollicking in the tub. I want to hold them forever in those moments; preserve them, keep them alive. I'd love to always hear their baby boy voices, their made-up words, the songs they sing. I'd love to always watch them dance their little boy dances. I want to keep my boys forever. But I can't, any more than those Victorian mothers in those silvery tinted Daguerreotypes could hold onto their stillborn babies by having them photographed cradled in their arms as if alive.

Winter 2002: Weblogs, part II: A Swiss Army website?

Because weblogs handle text, images, and other media, they are by definition a kind of information management system for "capturing, organizing, manipulating, and accessing information" [5]. Many groups and individuals, including the IU, are looking at ways to use and improve how weblogs can be used for this. The ability of weblog software to provide automatic and consistent date-based archiving, persistently assigned URLs, and interoperable workspaces, has sparked much recent discussion about ways that weblogs can be used as content management systems (CMS) "to manage the content of a web site" [6], and for knowledge management (KM) to "consciously and comprehensively" gather, organize, share, and analyze "knowledge in terms of resources, documents, and people skills" [7].

little.yellow.different [remix] And apparently, my other option is to drive out to Pier 3 in San Francisco, where NBC is showing the opening cermony on a giant boat with free food and giveaway prizes. While the offer is tempting, am I really going to jump in my car and drive out to a pier to watch singing and dancing Mormons?

Jarrett House North : Confessions of a referral junkie I would have written my scripts anyway, and Manila Envelope. But I think unconsciously I was adjusting my web writing to the stuff that had gotten me attention in the first place. And I'm not super happy about that.

ACM: Ubiquity - Need "Therapy" for Your "Information Pain"? LOUIS ROSENFELD: Information architecture the thing is the structure of an information system and the ways it's organized and labeled. Every information system, be it book or Web site, has an architecture. For a book, it's the stuff we all know and count on-chapter and section headings, tables of contents, back of the book indices, sequential pagination, consistent information on the cover and spine, and so on. But for a Web site, your guess is as good as mine-the architecture might consist of many different kinds of hierarchies for navigating, sets of terms used for labeling content, search interfaces, site maps, indices, data models . . . . Unlike books, sites have no conventional information architecture, but that's another story.

Boing Boing: A Directory of Wonderful Things

Percy Schmeiser is a farmer from Bruno, Saskatchewan, Canada whose canola fields were contaminated with Monsanto's Round-Up Ready Canola. Although Schmeiser never planted any Monsanto seed, Monsanto took him to court for using their intellectual property without permission -- and they won.
Roundup-Ready canola was found among Schmeiser's canola crops along a major haulage roadside. Monsanto's position is that it doesn't matter whether Schmeiser knew or not that his canola field was contaminated with the Roundup Ready gene, and that he must pay their Technology Fee. Since Monsanto won this suit it has lodged similar suits against farmers in North Dakota, South Dakota, Indiana, and Louisiana.
The case is on appeal. And apparently Schmeiser's fields continue to be contaminated. Schmeiser has been growing his own canola seed for 40 years, but he had to purchase brand new seed because his old stock was contaminated by Roundup-Ready canola volunteer plants.

Foam Props: All About Foam: The History of Foam: Mount Rushmore In brief, the truth of the matter is that Mount Rushmore was carved out of foam. And why not? Foam was lightweight and durable, and far faster to work than granite. In fact, with the addition of a special granite-like coating the four presidents appeared to be seamlessly carved into that mountain

Hot-Synching With a Heavenly Presence

A growing number of people are finding that pocket-size computers are useful for religious purposes, from saying a virtual rosary to relaxing with a virtual Zen garden while using the palmtop's stylus to rake images of digital sand.

kottke.org comments

Joshua makes a great point about emergence. and that's also where Aaronland's point is related. one strategy is to establish a default structure --based on a limited number of nodes and edges-- and then allow the taxonomy to "emerge", based on your own feedback and/or other user feedback. the results can actually take an implicit form, where the most common groupings rise to the top. you can then set a cutoff point so it returns a smaller result set. hey, maybe you can write a simple sorting application, a-la christina's suggestion, where each post-it is actually a SQL insert. you insert or post-it all the items and then start ranking them in categories. the problem though, is that whenever you add more categories, you will need to re-rank all the previously inserted items to see how where they fall in the updated "bigger picture".

Really cool thread on developing a personal taxonomy

Web journals by professionals

Fortune.com - The Readers' Corner

Good Indie MP3s

AlterSlash ~ the unofficial SlashDot digest

1. Let me know when there is a problem - early on so I can get help and resolve it. If a spec isn’t clear, let me know so I can get an answer.

2. Remember, better is the enemy of good enough - at some point, it’s time to let the working code go and not try to wring even more performance out of it - as long as it does what is needed.

3. Sure, writing documentation and help screens suck - but everyone has to take their turn in the barrel.

4. Don’t keep trying to get your pet hardware/software through based on a project “need” or “solution.” Yea, I know you want a bigger, faster box running Linux, but once it’s clear that it ain’t happening, constantly bringing it up as the “solution” to every problem is counter-productive. ( A real situation I ran into - one of our programers kept pushing a Linux server becasue he needed one for another project (that was on hold but that he wanted to revive))

4. Have a life - if your getting burned out, say so. Everyone needs a break, and let me run interference for you. As a follow-on, when the rules get bent to help the team, don’t brag about it.

I, Cringely | The Pulpit

Dan's idea was to use a high gain rooftop antenna to offer wireless Internet service. What if I found a place that already had wireless Internet service, and used a high gain antenna to take advantage of that service from a great distance? It would be just like sitting in Starbucks with a notebook computer and a latte, except that I'd be at home where the coffee is considerably cheaper.

McSweeney's Internet Tendency: Being the Janitor, An Interview with Dan O'Donnell, about Cleaning Up Q: How did you end up being a janitor?

O'Donnell: I was in school during the day so I needed a job that I could work at night. So, I got a job as a janitor at an insurance company and I did that for a little while. My wife Carrie worked as a janitor for another company, and one day she told me that they had just fired someone and needed to hire someone to take his place. So I moved over to that company because I would be working with Carrie cleaning these doctors' offices. Later on I found out the guy whose place I took got fired because he was stealing drug samples.

Clay Spinuzzi: Curriculum Vitae Spinuzzi, C. (2002). Toward integrating our research scope: A sociocultural field methodology. Journal of Business and Technical Communication 16.1, pp. 3-32.

Corporate Mofo Goes to The World Economic Forum

"Where is your jacket, young protestor?" called out a petite policewoman, who asked us to refer to her as "Officer Smith."

"I'm not cold," I said through chattering teeth. "And I'm not a protestor, either. I do a Web site, and I'm writing about the demonstration. Have any thoughts?"

"Yeah, let them move to Afghanistan and see how they like it there," Officer Smith said.

I had to admit she had a point.

great article.

Trooping off to find their corner of a foreign field, in much the same spirit as an earlier generation went to Spain with the International Brigade, the volunteers were Web designers, engineers, students, delivery drivers. They came across as cool, wired types, as comfortable in their modernity as any of their fellow-surfers in the Internet cafés. So did Mohamed Atta, Hani Hanjour, Ziad Jarrah, and the other hijack suspects, who left a forensic spoor of brand names across the length and breadth of the United States. We know them best as efficient modern consumers—of Parrot-Ice, Tommy Hilfiger, Econo Lodge, AAA discounts, Starbucks, Cyber Zone, Golden Tee '97 golf at Shuckum's Raw Bar and Grill, Salem cigarettes, Heineken and Budweiser, Chinese takeout from Wo Hop III, lap-dancing at Nardone's Sports Go-Go Bar and the Olympic Garden Topless Cabaret.

http://www.newyorker.com/FACT/?020204fa_FACT

The experience of ministering to this impossible parish radicalized my father. A lifelong reflex Conservative voter, he joined the Labour Party. His High Church theology became ever more attenuated and symbolic. He climbed his way through the tower blocks less as a priest than as a psychiatric social worker. He grew a beard that made him look like Karl Marx, left his dog collar in the drawer, and went about in an open-necked plaid flannel shirt. Although his church congregations were now tiny, he worked around the clock, negotiating with the authorities on behalf of his parishioners, succoring the needy, counselling the desperate, befriending the friendless.

http://www.newyorker.com/FACT/?020204fa_FACT

Robert Brooke "Underlife and Writing Instruction," College Composition and Communication, 1988. Braddock Award.

http://www.twinturboz.net/freaky.gif



stare at the rear left corner for 60 seconds.

ToyIdeas

Mechanical Toys Page

I must have passed seven sleeping students while walking over to my library carrel. Let's just end the charade, shall we, and install cots?

prison survival guide

The most senseless use of time in prison has to be constant television watching. There are adult men in prison who watch cartoons and soap operas for hours each day. They know all the soaps' characters, plots, and can figure all the possible scenarios of upcoming episodes. They live through the tube. They call television the "Boob Tube" because it will make you dumb if you aren't already. Its shameless, naked images will poison your mind and spirit. Its fantasy will rob you of all original creative thinking abilities. Constant television watching develops the dangerous habit of always wanting to be entertained, which causes laziness.

Television is a no-no. Cut out television for one month and you will be surprised at what you can get accomplished in that time. Knowing how to manage time properly is important in everyday life. When we learn how to get the most out of our days, we will come to know a real sense of satisfaction and accomplishment. There are only twenty-four hours in a day. The more you begin to actually do the clearer it becomes that there never is enough time to get things done. Then you will understand the value of time.

ANDREW S. FASTOW - ENRON CORP. - CFO.com

Ethics Schmethics--an early article praising Enron for its innovative finance strategies.

Numbers Tell the Story

Despite the traditional rules of financing, Fastow reduced the balance-sheet debt, maintained the credit rating, and reduced the cost of capital while simultaneously growing the balance sheet. In just the last two years, Enron has nearly doubled its total assets from $16 billion to $30 billion--without shareholder dilution and without a drop in the company's credit rating. "He has successfully financed billions of dollars in a manner that has held credit quality," says S&P's Barone. "And that is not an easy thing to do. It is a testament to Andy's focus on cash flow and his ability to think outside the box."

Protect your PDA screen with our D.I.Y. guide - Product Reviews - CNETAsia

Making your own screen protector is actually pretty simple. All you need are:

A sheet of clear plastic wrapper, the kind you use to wrap your books. A single sheet you buy from the stationary shop for about S$1 can make you enough protectors to last a long time. Also note that plastic wrappers have different thickness. If it's too thick, your screen will not be too responsive. If too thin, it may not provide enough protection.

A pair of scissors or penknife.

Monitor cleaner, the kind you use to spray on your PC monitor to clean your screen.

Lint-free cloth or camera lens cleaning wipes.

A plastic card, e.g. a credit or ATM card.

Epinions.com - Cheap Screen Protector

Cheap Screen Protector

by gsearle | Aug 06 '01 (Updated Jan 09 '02)



The Bottom Line Don't shell out $25 for a PDA screen protector when a cheap (often free) sheet of vinyl will do.





I was appalled to see PDA screen protectors being sold for $25.00. All I wanted was a piece of plastic to cover my PDA's screen, and these companies wanted me to shell out this kind of money! Well, I found a really cheap alternative that works really well - vinyl sheets! This is the same stuff that manufacturers use to create those temporary, easy-to-remove labels that you find stuck to new electronic equipment

Adondo's Cheap to make, last forever PDA screen stylus

Smithsonian Benefactor Cancels $38 Million Gift (washingtonpost.com)

"Apparently, the basic philosophy for the exhibit -- 'the power of the individual to make a difference' -- is the antithesis of that espoused by many within the Smithsonian bureaucracy, which is 'only movements and institutions make a difference, not individuals.' After much contemplation, I see no way to reconcile these diametrically opposed philosophical viewpoints," she said.

Small could not be reached for comment last night. Smithsonian officials had maintained throughout the eight months of increasingly strident debate that they would maintain final say over the nature of the exhibit. That sentiment was repeated yesterday in a statement by Marc Pachter, acting director of the American History Museum.

TIME.com: Pssst. Wanna See My Blog?

I believe this is the first time in my life I've had something in common with RuPaul. The cross-dressing superstar and I have both started blogging, which is almost as much fun as it sounds. A blog, short for weblog, is a kind of spontaneous online public journal. Users typically add to a scrolling list of entries a couple of times a day with whatever ramblings come to mind--what they had for dinner, how their grandparents are getting along, their 10 favorite songs of the year--all sprinkled with links to cool Web pages they have discovered. Blogs are so easy to put together that new ones pop up every day.

(Use if you're redeeming a promotional certificate or coupon.)

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The Oregon Experiment
by Christopher Alexander

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Hardcover - 202 pages (July 1988)
Oxford Univ Pr (Trade); ISBN: 0195018249 ; Dimensions (in inches): 0.69 x 8.03 x 5.52

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Last Days of the Corporate Technophobe

Executives who are computer challenged often need a compelling reason to catch up. It could be an embarrassing episode, a new job that comes with expectations of proficiency, a realization that their children know more about computers than they do or not-so-subtle nudging from secretaries and others.

They often feel more comfortable receiving instruction in private, in part because they can openly acknowledge their deficiencies. One executive attending computer classes offered as part of the Wharton advanced-management program told classmates that she had lost her "Internet virginity" at the school, recalled Robert Mittelstaedt, vice dean for executive education. Another Wharton executive program offers tutoring by M.B.A. students.

Last Days of the Corporate Technophobe

"I thought I was very organized," said Mr. D'Addario, president and chief executive of D'Addario Industries of Bridgeport, Conn., and chairman of Wise Alloys of Muscle Shoals, Ala. "I thought I had it down pat. It was pretty foolish. Not being able to use a computer in the year 2002 is like not being able to read in the 1950's."
Many senior executives — pressed for time, aided by secretaries and reared in the typewriter age — have been slow to adopt technology. But now, sometimes reluctantly, the final holdouts are surrendering to the inevitable. Even the thinning ranks of the computer-illiterate are feeling pressure to log on and catch up.

Borg Like Me?

What I've learned from all this is that the subjective process of becoming a cyborg, in the hardwired sense, greatly suppresses one's appetite for objective theorizing about it. Where "wounds are openings to possibilities," as the French technocultural critic Jean Baudrillard once suggested, they are equally openings to infection. There's nothing like having a stinging, aching, seven-inch scar running down your thigh and a large foreign object lodged inside of it, slugging it out with your body's defense mechanisms, to make you appreciate the complicated trade-offs and mixed emotions involved in real-life bio-mechanical bonding. It is as much a world of wound management, site infection, tissue mutation, implant extraction and rejection, and reams of HMO paperwork, as it is a world of life-restoring body repair and trendy cyberpunk mythology. All rhapsodic cyborg theorists should book a date with a bone saw (or at least heed the words of those of us who have) to remind themselves that, in our cyborgian future present, and in the end: it's all about the meat, stupid.

John Blandford is reading this blog.

This is my new "blog this" bookmarklet that automatically italicizes and blockquotes selections, Phil on blogger showed me how to do this. It is soooo coool.

ext = external.menuArguments

doc = external.menuArguments.document

strSelection = "
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escape(doc.selection.createRange().text) + "
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strURL = escape(ext.location.href);

strTitle = escape(doc.title);

winBlogger = 



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Markzilla

SM: I don’t think the 100-plus architecture schools across the country realize how alike each program is, how interchangeable their curricula and faculty are. I’ve spoken at most of them. The faculty are usually all dressed in black. They all seem to say the same things. It’s all become redundant and very stale, unimaginative. What’s ironic is that you hear professors talk about how out of the box we need to be, how risk-taking is part of being an architect, yet the faculty is often guilty of sitting on their hands. If architecture is going to nudge, cajole, and inspire a community or to challenge the status quo into making responsible environmental and social-structural changes now and in the future, it will take the “subversive leadership” of academics and practitioners to keep reminding the students of architecture that theory and practice are not only interwoven with one’s culture but have a responsibility for shaping the environment, breaking up social complacency, and challenging the power of the status quo.

Architectural Record | Interview - Sam Mockbee

SM: I don’t think the 100-plus architecture schools across the country realize how alike each program is, how interchangeable their curricula and faculty are. I’ve spoken at most of them. The faculty are usually all dressed in black. They all seem to say the same things. It’s all become redundant and very stale, unimaginative. What’s ironic is that you hear professors talk about how out of the box we need to be, how risk-taking is part of being an architect, yet the faculty is often guilty of sitting on their hands. If architecture is going to nudge, cajole, and inspire a community or to challenge the status quo into making responsible environmental and social-structural changes now and in the future, it will take the “subversive leadership” of academics and practitioners to keep reminding the students of architecture that theory and practice are not only interwoven with one’s culture but have a responsibility for shaping the environment, breaking up social complacency, and challenging the power of the status quo.