I don't know. But there is a good chance all of you do. I have been messing around on Facebook lately. One of their diversions is the 'never-ending movie quiz'. There are hundreds, if not thousands of questions, and you just keep answering them. I've answered 201 (hey, it's Thanksgiving weekend), and I've noticed something interesting. After you answer the question, it shows you the correct

No, I'm not talking about presidential candidates. I'm talking about the real deal. The flightless bird that was almost our country's national bird. Every year I prepare our turkey the way my parents did while I was growing up. And every year I tell myself I'm never going to do it again. Because it's a great deal of work. Then I eat it on Thanksgiving afternoon, and I admit that I can never

While in England, we stopped by Bletchley park to see, among other things, one of the first modern digital computers, the Colossus. I snagged a picture of it. So imagine my surprise when I see a bit in the news this morning about this very computer. It's up and running again, doing what it was originally built for, cracking German codes. Here is a picture from the article: See that? See

I came across this today, a site that allows people to post screenplays, novels, short films, and short stories. The idea is that you get "feedback, exposure, and opportunity". I think I'm going to look through what I have and submit something...

Scientists do research. Who funds them? The government. Who funds the government? You and me. When scientists publish the results of their findings (the findings we paid for) in journals, those journals must be bought. In a sense, we are paying for the information twice. If you or I want access to that information we have to shell out the cost of the journal. How much? Not $12 or 24 a

I have argued in the past that current models used in the the publishing and music industry are out of date. Laws, contracts and the 'way things work' favor publishers and recording industries at the expense of artists and authors--to an incredible degree. So I watched with interest when Radiohead announced that they would release their latest album without a label. They gave it away on the

I was in Wal-Mart yesterday filling a prescription for my sick infant. I noticed a sign that I assumed was a joke. Then I saw similar sign today, and discovered that in fact it is no joke. It's a Utah Law. Has been since 1935, apparently. To what am I referring? Apparently you can not purchase alcohol on election day. It's forbidden. No drinks for you! I guess I can see the rational. I

Well, I’ve experienced the effects of the ‘weak dollar' first hand over in Merry England. If my memory serves me correctly, the dollar to pound conversion rate used to be around $1.30 to $1.50 per pound. That means if you by a bottle of pop for 50p, you’re really paying roughly $.75. On this recent trip to England, the dollar stood at roughly $2 per pound. Now that same 50p bottle of pop

I've always preferred the back row. Maybe it's a leftover primitive defensive reaction, to keep potential threats in front of me. Maybe it's because I'm shy, and don't want people looking at the back of my head. I've often been to meetings and taken a seat near the back, only to have the speaker demand that everybody move to the front. It drives me nuts. I sat back here because I wanted to.

I don't remember if I've blogged about the Whitney Awards yet. If you haven't heard about them, you can go to their site at http://www.whitneyawards.com. You can read the rules, but the Whitney awards are basically trying to become THE award to get in the LDS publishing world. I think they've got a good shot, since Robison Wells is at the helm. Oh, and because they just announced a cash award

I congratulate those of you who read that horrible pun in the title, but still decided to read the article. That pun was just awful. My brother sent me an article from the New York Times that talks about Google's work in scanning books and making them available to search. I've long been a fan of Google's work, even after publishers tried to bring a halt to the work by America's favorite

I get to meet and work with a lot of cool people at my job (in real life, their faces aren't that dark). They do cool stuff at work, and then go home and do cool stuff there too. One person I have had the great pleasure to work with is Lady Corrine of England. Lady Corrine is a graphic designer, and a dang good one. All of COSL's stuff is done by her. Half of the shirts in my closet are

My number two son is very creative when it comes to Halloween costumes. He makes up his mind early, decides how to do it, and then does it. This is the son who two years ago decided he wanted to go as a mountain. He then convinced his brother to go as a mountain too, so they could be the Wasatch Range. This year, for whatever reason, he picked his costume early. He found a big cardboard box

The good folks over at the Open University in the UK wrote a post this morning about the hesitancy of people remixing their materials. From the post: "In the last year we’ve seen around 900,000 people using OpenLearn materials in teaching and learning around the world. What we’ve seen much less of is people reworking our materials - as they are free to do under the Creative Commons license -

I was looking online to see what time our library closed. I found the hours, and then noticed a link to a list of the 100 most banned books. I should note that our library called them banned books, the site I link to says 'challenged books'. I think what they mean by challenged books are books that people try, and maybe sometimes succeed, to get out of the public school. I personally think

My undergrad was in Political Science, and my heart will always be there. I love studying politics. I like the history aspect, I like the psychology aspect, I like how deep down it's all about the understanding of human nature. So, it was a happy day for me when I stopped by The McLaughlin Group home page only to discover you can download video or audio files of their episode. You can't find

I believe we had three newspapers, and an NPR radio station at our Utah OpenCourseWare Alliance launch on Thursday. It looks like the Deseret News did their writeup this morning. You can read it here.

I've attended several of Brian Lamb's presentations, and I'm never disappointed. Brian's keynote today was no exception. I didn't take notes because I wanted to just sit back and enjoy. However, you will be able to watch/listen to it here shortly. Most presentations have been up within 24 hours. I highly recommend it. Just one of the more memorable quotes: "When somebody puts the Creative

The Utah OCW Alliance got a bit of press today! insidehighered.com did a writeup about the Utah Alliance, in conjunction with our public launch this morning. You can read the article here...

I don't think I've blogged about how much I love my job, lately. I mean, I haven't just loved it lately, I've loved it for a long time. I just haven't mentioned it in the past little bit. I am the director of Utah State's OpenCourseWare project, and we've got 70 courses online. They are more than just 'free', they are 'open', which is even better. It means you can take the content, modify it

Looks like the Heinlein Archives are now online. You can access any of the manuscripts, look at his early drafts, the finished products, etc. When I first saw the article, I thought they were making them freely available. But alas, you have to pay. I can't help but wonder if the better model wouldn't be to make all of his stories available online, and then put up google ads. I wonder how