Khon Kaen leads world in rare cancer Residents of three districts of Khon Kaen province have the highest rate of cholangiocarcinoma in the world, according to a Khon Kaen University study. read more:
Pokemon World Championship and Snoopy Game Previews We have the 411 on the Pokemon World Championships and preview pics of the Snoopy vs. the Red Baron game! read more:
ILLUSTRATED ODE TO THE 2004 WORLD CHAMPION BOSTON RED SOX ARRIVES IN STORES AND ON THE WEB OCTOBER 5TH. Book Sales to benefit the Red Sox Foundation. As the Boston Red Sox begin defense of their first world title in 86 years, Curse to Verse: the Boston Red Sox Miracle Season From A to Z hits the marketplace to help generations of Sox fans re-live the team highs and lows that led up to last year's magical championship. read more:
IBM sets world record with 32-processor, single-core performance for two-tier SAP SD Standard Application Benchmark with Microsoft SQL Server IBM® has published a world record with 32 processors/32 cores/32 threads for the two-tier SAP® Sales and Distribution (SD) Standard Application Benchmark, running the mySAPTM ERP 2004 solution. read more:
Celebrate! ADHD Urges Parents to Adopt-A-Teacher Tragically, most teachers try to change their brightest, most curious students-children with ADHD and Attention Deficit Disorder-with Ritalin rather than changing their teaching styles. Celebrate!ADHD is urging parents to 'Adopt-A-Teacher' to improve self-confidence and school performance. read more:
The Ophelia Project to host national conference: Girls 2005! Changing the Culture for Girls Imagine the Possibilities! If your life touches the life of a girl in your community, family, or school, join us for the 1st National Ophelia Conference. This conference is for adults who want to create lasting community change while developing the full potential of all girls. read more:
You are My Family (Reg Req'd) Sorry. That may have been misleading. Not YOU, the internet world. Let me esplain. read more:
Book Review - The People of Sparks The Emberites have emerged from underground, but can they learn to get along with the outside world before it's too late? read more:
Israel - Struggle for Peace in the Middle East Israel is a tiny country on the other side of the world but it's making big news all over the globe. Find out why! read more:
Best Individual Sports Rivalries - Part 2 From the tennis court to the dinner table, check out some of the best rivalries from the world of sports. read more:
New hope for infertile men as lab produces artificial sperm THOUSANDS of infertile men might benefit from a world first in which scientists artificially created sperm in a test tube. read more:
HUMAN RIGHTS IS A FAMILY AFFAIR While violence and war are tearing families apart across the world, three siblings from La Crescenta, California are taking a stand for human rights. read more:
Finally, a good news story gets global press If you read the above story about Staff Sgt. Mink, then you know about the kind of good works our troops do every day, in all different corners of the world. read more:
World News tonight gets a new anchor Charles Gibson Named Sole Anchor for ABC News - Los Angeles Times I wonder why this is such huge news? Is it because the hub-ub over Katie Couric has finally started to die down? So Charlie will be staying... read more:
The World Of Water Skiing Water skiing is packed with lots of wet thrills and big spills. Find out more about this water sport right here. read more:
American is world's oldest mother of twins at 59 A 59-YEAR-OLD American is believed to have become the oldest woman in the world to give birth to twins. read more:
The Devil Witch - The one book our kids will be reading this year. In my new book, when young Sam Taylor plans to steal his teacher's walking stick, he unwillingly finds himself in a fantastic new world of gnomes, trolls, Kings, ghostly Knights, and of course the infamous Devil-Witch. read more:
Project Drumheller to Send Josiah Schultz to Hunt for Dinosaurs This July, six-year-old Josiah Schultz--a budding young paleontologist--will be traveling to Drumheller, Alberta, the 'Dinosaur Capital of the World', thanks to the efforts and collaboration of many people involved with Project Drumheller. read more:
Robbie's career dilemma - pop star or social worker It's a tough dilemma for any teenager - become a social worker or opt for a career as a world famous pop star worth 85million. read more:
Wild Heart Ranch Books and Toys Teach a Generation of Children About Endangered Wildlife and the Environment Wild Heart Ranch Inc., a children's toy and publishing company that has created its brands around original stories about nature, the environment and endangered species, encourages young readers and parents to become informed and make a difference in the world read more:
IBM xSeries x460 delivers a World Record 16-processor performance on TPC-C benchmark November 22, 2005 - IBM® published the highest TPC-C performance result to date for an Intel® Xeon® processor-based server using 16 processors. IBM and Network Appliance, Inc., conducted the TPC BenchmarkTM C on the IBM® eServerTM xSeries® 460 configured as a client/server system with attached NetApp® FAS3050 Fibre Channel storage systems. read more:
CHURCHES OF SCIENTOLOGY AND YOUTH FOR HUMAN RIGHTS TEAM UP FOR HUMAN RIGHTS The Human Rights Department of the Church of Scientology International and the non-profit organization Youth for Human Rights International (YHRI) have teamed up to educate the population about human rights by holding 'International Human Rights Sign-a-thon Weekends,' across the world. read more:
Changing times Hmmm...it suddenly dawned on me today that in ten years (or so) from now there will be a conversation between myself and my two children along these lines:
'You know, when I was a child we didn't have computers' 'Really? So how did you send emails?' 'We didn't send emails. We wrote letters' 'What, by hand?' 'Yes, and we send them by mail' 'Wow, that must have taken ages' 'It did. And we didn't have mobile (cell) phones either' 'So how would you contact anyone if you were out of the house?' 'We couldn't...Unless there was a payphone nearby. But for them you needed the right change or a prepaid phonecard' 'What a pain' 'Yes it was actually' 'And our music was bought on vinyl and later on CD's. Those damn things always got scratched up. It used to really annoy me' 'Thank God I wasn't born yet. Things are so much better now' 'Well...I guess some things are. Still, overall I believe that things were better back then. At least people used to have time to chat with each other.....and not just online!'
So I suddenly realized that, to our children, Andy and I are going to seem like creatures of another era. I remember my mum telling me about her childhood, when most people didn't have a car, washing was done by hand, etc. It all sounded like a different century to me.
I guess that time just seems like this enormously long-stretched thing when you're a kid. And once you get older, you realize how quickly it actually passes.
So, it seems that I am getting old. Soon my children will become embarrassed by my dancing too. Now that would really kill me. I better dance through the house now whilst they are small and I am still allowed to do so.
I'm going to try to blog at regular intervals this week while I'm at CHI in Montreal. They have the student volunteers organized to do this too, so it should be an interesting collection of entries on the official CHI blog site by the end of the conference.
The opening plenary this morning, by Scott Cook of Intuit, was great. Scott is a very genial, affable guy who quickly builds a cnnection with the audience. The official topic for his talk, which he generally stuck to, was 'Creating game-changing innovation.'
He had many interesting insights into the business of innovation, many cribbed from Peter Drucker (in a good way, with appropriate credit given). Of particular note was his list of five 'models of innovation inside a company:
1. the lone genius 2. the boss is the genius 3. copy competitors' innovations 4. cloister the geniuses in a lab 5. make the people the geniuses
and of course he subscribes to the last one.
The heart of his talk, though was about five principles of innovation and invention. His principles:
1. Invention comes from mindset change. 2. Mindset change comes from seeing differently. 3. Savor surprises -- as learning. (and 3a. celebrate your failures for the learning you derive from them) 4. Focus managers on a customer metric 5. Nurture and protect teams that are doing innovative work.
Cook talked a lot about how Intuit has a culture of always starting with the customer need. He gave several examples of how Intuit products were created directly out of customer studies that gave them key insights about how they weren't solving the needs of their customers.
It was a fun and inspiring talk. If you get an opportunity to hear Cook talk, I would strongly encourage you to do so.
The Heart of Christian Ethics: Over at Resurgence, there's a great post on legalism versus grace and the power of the true Gospel to bring about obedience.
Bob Kauflin provides four guidelines in helping parents facing the question of whether they should allow their children to listen to Christian rap, or for that matter, any type of musical genre.
Trapped with abusive parent in airplane for five hours!
Alright, it's maybe not the worst situation in the world, but we just got back from two weeks in Hawaii on holiday and I experienced a distressing situation on the five hour flight back from the Big Island to San Francisco (where we overnighted): an abusive parent and her child in my row of the plane.
As is common with airlines, we booked months in advance but couldn't get our five seats together, so we had three seats in one row, one seat immediately ahead of it, and one seat two rows ahead of that. Not so good when we're traveling with the kids, needless to say, but since K-'s now two, we have to buy her a seat too.
We decided that we'd arrange it so that Linda and all three kids were squished into the three-seat row (with the baby on her lap to hopefully sleep) and I'd be in the row immediately ahead.
But when we were all trying to settle into our seats, I was joined by a heavyset native Hawaiian woman and her five year old (I'm guessing) daughter. Her daughter promptly stood on the chair to look over and meet our kids and the Mom...
I'm listening to a panel on how to manage international user research -- whether you're trying to build a product directed at a far-away market, or trying to design for a worldwide audience.
There's fair consensus that international research is budget constrained more than anything else -- in fact, Microsoft keeps coming up as an example of a company with the 'luxury' of having user researchers in many parts of the world and the money to send them to others (as if making those investments weren't a difficult budget decision just like at every other company).
Susan Dray made the good point, though, that deciding to do international research is usually a strategic decision, not a tactical one. That usually puts it in a separate decision-making process for investment.
Lots of discussion about the cultural issues -- both in terms of the 'content,' i.e. discovering cultural issues that affect your design; and in terms of the user research process and how certain practices (and certain questions) are not culturally appropriate in some countries.
I don't know why Google news is still in beta, probably they are worried about the legals of scraping so many news sites.
But, they've added a customisation section, I've deleted sport, since this isn't news in my book and added a blog section. That is, I can now do searches in news papers the world over for references to the word 'blog.'
This reminds me of Netscapes RSS news page back in '98 or was that '99? Where you could add feeds from those who had RSS feeds, which wasn't many then. It's also like my searches with PubSub in my aggregators.
[Update:] I've added some more panels, some of which I use in PubSub and other aggregator searches, like Blogdigger. As Google news is only searching newspapers, these aren't bringing in much that's current. Now, if they add in blogs to their reach, this will be a killer. Really!
Disney Mobile: The first innovation out of Disney in a long time
I admit it, I'm a closet Disney fan and am delighted that I have an excuse this summer to visit Disneyworld (I'm speaking at a conference in Orlando). Having said that, though, I also have found Disney to be going through a real dry spell with innovations and truly family-friendly products and services. Sure they've expanded the theme parks, but just about all the expansion has been thrill rides like Kilimanjaro that are aimed much more squarely at teens and younger adults than at families with wee ones.
But still, there's Mickey Mouse and the many additional cultural icons that Walt Disney and his team have given us over the years, however much crass capitalists like Michael Eisner later tightened the thumbscrews and changed things (to, I admit, be more profitable and a better run business, but somehow the fun, the heart, the caring seems to have been lost along the way).
Anyway, I'm really delighted to see that Disney is jumping into the world of cell phones and mobile telephony with its upcoming launch of Disney Mobile, and the more I read about it, the more it seems like just what families need to let their children have the connectivity of cellphones while also having limits and controls.
Vivid imagination You often hear about children having imaginary friends, but have you ever heard of a 3-year-old with an imaginary castle?
Apparently, Lucas owns his own castle in Guatemala. He lives there, so he says, with 2 babies (including a baby girl who can already walk and has teeth), 4 little dogs and lots of chickens. He looks after the babies and the animals himself and does all his own cooking (he mainly cooks eggs). Seeing as his castle is far away, you'd have to fly to get there. But he can sort you out tickets if you like.
Now, the funny thing is that he hasn't just mentioned this castle once or twice, but that he has started to talk about it on qan almost daily basis.
Whenever he is not allowed to have something (a sweet, or whatever) he tells me that next time in his castle, he won't give me any sweets either. He also talks about life in his castle whenever we drive the car and there are no other distractions.
I quite like this imaginary world of his. A place where he is the boss and there are no grown-ups telling him what to do.
So you want to go green? Just read an interesting article on the ever brilliant BBC news website. If you're interested in preserving energy and the world, there may be more you can do than just driving a Hybrid. It's very simple (and something I had never really thought about): Switch off your TV, laptop, PC, etc. when you're finished with it. It's shocking to see how much energy is wasted by keeping everything 'on stand-by'. read more:
Warnie Headlines and What Has Happened to del.icio.us?
CHI Session: Managing Deviant Behavior in Online Communities
I'm in the CHI panel session on 'Managing Deviant Behavior in Online Communities.'
The first panelist, from IBM Research, studies intranet online communities and made the point that managers should just 'chill out' about extreme behavior on corporate online presences -- there isn't that much downside, there are social corrective measures, and efforts to prevent the use of these systems within a company would be a far greater negative than trying to manage their use well.
The second speaker is an administrator for slashdot and everything2.com. His big issues:
not all misbehavior is the same
not all misbehavior is intentional
not all misbehavior is bad/harmful
deviance is all relative to your perspective. Deviants something think that their critics are the deviants. And sometimes there are good reasons to be a deviant from a society.
The third speaker argues that managing deviant behavior online and offline are essentially the same.
The fourth speaker works with online games, and deals with issues around cheating in games. One difficulty there is how to keep the game open and emergent, encoraging exploration, without encouraging testing boundaries and exploiting rules.
The discussion is cetered around some interesting scenarios. The first was from World of Warcraft, wher ethe member of a guild dies (in real life) and the other members of the guild organize an online memorial service. a rival guild notices the public notice of this, show up in force and slaughter everyone -- to add insult to injury, they videorecord the entire massacre and post it online to flaunt their actions. What should the WoW people do?
The second one: a large mailing list where one person keeps sending irrelevant posts. Talking to the person only casues very short-term relief. What should one do?
The third one: the recurring troll on an online bulletin board system who explicityl tries to get the community stirred up. Is this any different from the second case above?
The fourth example is more of an explicit (online) dscussion of who in a community had the privilege/right to define deviancy.
Globaled has had a make over. Initially, Emma and I organized globaled for a small workshop for a dozen teachers and educators at Branksome Hall in August of 2005. Our intent was to demonstrate how internet communication technologies are transforming education. We also believed that for educators involved in global education, ICT is bringing new methods for reaching students, creating learning experiences and enabling learners to network with other learners across the globe. The global education workshop at Branksome Hall has given us a better idea how to organize our globaled blog and we will continue to re-organize globaled as our experience and understanding of ICT and global education grows.
We hope that globaled will serve as a gathering and networking point for educators, students and youth interested in global education. By reviewing & posting resources, articles, blogs and sites from the web and organizing them on globaled we and contributors from around the world can contribute to global education.
We are inviting reader/writers to recommend any global education resources, links or articles that they are familiar with on the Resource Portal page. The sub categories are broken down into the primary, junior and senior and all ages levels.
For those not familiar with blogging, using globaled may give readers/writers an immediate feel for applying a blog and possibly other internet communication technologies in your global education curriculuum.
You sneak out of bed at 5.30 in the morning, just to be able to have a cup of coffee in silence
You haven't been able to have dinner at the same time as your husband for weeks (a crying baby has had you eating in shifts)
You pick up things with your toes as your hands are always taken up by carrying children
You cut your finger and have to wear a 'Dora the explorer' bandaid, which is all you have in the house
The theme tune to 'SpongeBob Squarepants' is stuck in a loop inside your head (Wo lives in a pineapple under the sea? SpongeBob Squarepants!)
You lie awake at night wondering how on earth you're going to be able to pack sensibly for an upcoming trip (is it possible to bring the baby swing, car seat and the stroller? Will we be exceeding the luggage allowance on the flight? And how many presents and treats do we need to keep Lucas entertained for the duration of the trip?)
You start to gravitate towards blogs written by other mums. Their words resonate with you like nothing else can
And you could totally relate to Felicity Huffman's character Lynette in 'Desperate housewives' when she started to take her childrens' ADD medication just to keep up with her pace of life
Yep, being a mum is a crazy thing. It's wonderful and annoying. A blessing and a curse. You wouldn't change it for the world, yet you fantasize about life without children. You are jealous of your former self, of how all she had to think about was herself & at the same time you cringe at how selfish she really was. Being a mum is the ultimate paradox, a black hole of love, that sucks you in and forces you to lose yourself, yet helps you to find your truer self, there where you lost you (does this still make any sense?)
Anyhow, some of the parenting websites and blogs that I have come across and liked:
Parent center. They send me weekly updates on baby's developments. It tells us what we can expect at each stage, which is great as we don't have many other babies around us to measure Aidan's development against
The mommy blog. Made me laugh out loud. Especially the part about traveling with young children (she deals with the same pre-travel anxiety as me)
[Surfnetkids Newsletter] Italy ================================= Surfing the Net with Kids Newsletter (via RSS)
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction 2. Sponsor's Spot 3. Weekly Topic: Italy 4. What Did We Miss? Submit Site or Link To Us 5. Note from a Reader 6. Related Games 7. Quote of the Week 8. Classified Ads 9. Subscription Management
Italy Printable (** for premium members only) http://www.surfnetkids.com/printables/italy.pdf
In celebration of their World Cup victory (and my recent vacation there) this week's topic is Italy. Italy is a republic in southern Europe known for its rich history, good food, natural beauty andexcellent soccer team.
BBC: Romans http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/romans/ Rome, Italy's capital, got its name from the legend of Romulus and Remus, two orphaned twinsraised by a wolf. The Roman god Mars told the boys to build a city, but the two ended up at warwith each other. Romulus won, so the city was named after him. Highlights of this wonderfulBBC site include seven printable activity sheets, a quiz about Roman technology such asaqueducts and arches, a Roman timeline, and a glossary of Roman terms from 'amphitheater' to'wreath.'
Enchanted Learning: Italy http://www.enchantedlearning.com/europe/italy/ A terrific introduction to Italy for elementary and middle-schoolers, including an overview ofimportant country stats, along with lots of maps and flags to print and color. Other interestingclicks are the coloring pictures of Italian art masterpieces by Michelangelo, da Vinci andRaphael, and an overview of Italian inventions such as the battery, eyeglasses, parachute andradio. Don't leave without looking at the printable story books with simple Italian vocabularywords.
European Photo Album: Italy http://www.europeanphotoalbum.com/italy.html In July, 2000, Elaine M. Doolittle took a twenty-two day tour of Europe with her husband anddaughter. This section of her annotated photo album covers Italy. Her adventure starts in thenorth ('We crossed the Alps into Italy and passed some lovely villages.') and heads south ('Aferry took us to Venice, known for its canals in place of streets.') all the way to Rome ('Romehas many beautiful fountains.') Follow Elaine to the Vatican City by clicking on its flag at thebottom of any page.
'Thank you for all the stuff that you have sent me.' Brooke Kostak
**Printables Club members get 6 to 9 recommended sites (instead of the 3 included in this freenewsletter) and oodles of additional educational content with the Surfnetkids Premium Newsletter. Get your ten-day trial: http://www.surfnetkids.com/printables-club.htm
'Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance; they make thelatitudes and longitudes.' ~~ Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) American author, poet andphilosopher.
Daily Education Quote via Email http://www.surfnetkids.com/quotations/
#8. Surfnetkids Classified Ads
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Link Troll Catapults Original Pyro to World-Wide Fame.
I admit it, I'm a closet Disney fan and am delighted that I have an excuse this summer to visit 
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