The other day it occurred to me that in academe, we think, talk, and conjecture quite regularly about intellectual property concerns.  These chats usually seem to flow from uneasy feelings over some contemplated transmission or use of information authored by someone else, such as a book chapter or journal article.  In those moments we...
Read more »

Two important updates from Google caught my attention this week, well actually three: the auto caption for youtube videos, real-time translation in Google Translate and Google Chrome OS. As for auto captioning, from an English language teacher’s perspective this is a really promising step from Google, let alone all the benefits of this for...
Read more »

A personal anecdote So, how one can get this much involved in a make belief world, even to the point of neglecting the real one. I guess the answer lies within the analysis of the very human existence. We are social animals, and when you start interacting with people in an environment suddenly the...
Read more »

I looked high, low and everywhere in between on the Internet to find something to write about.  I found some interesting stuff like this and this and well, this…but none of it really fit with what I wanted. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I didn’t know what I...
Read more »

One of my favorite romantic comedies is My Big, Fat Greek Wedding.  Yes, the main love story is super-cheesy, but what I love most about it is the hilarious juxtaposition of two seemingly opposite cultural backgrounds.  If you haven’t seen the movie, here’s a funny sample.  In this country, a movie like My Big,...
Read more »

Last week I ran across a story (and here, here, here, and here) via Slashdot about the fact that the WhiteHouse.gov has moved its online content management system (CMS) entirely to Drupal — an open-source CMS.   On the surface, the site appears very much the same as it did, but a peak under...
Read more »