If you teach them, they will learn. Also, my representational state-transfer future.

Today's cool link comes from Billings Middle School in Seattle, Washington. Their Digital Arts students came to San Francisco for a class trip focused around Maker Faire, with side trips to the Exploratorium, the operations booth at Giants Stadium, and my old home away from home, Noisebridge.

Their beta school website is quite well-produced (if sized a bit large -- I have to side-scroll on my EeePC), and there are touches that make me wonder if the kids are the ones designing and maintaining it. If so, that owns. I wonder if there will soon come a day when "markup" replaces "writing" in the Three R's. I'd really like to see that -- not so much the notion of presentation (which is how it would mostly likely be taught, sigh), but the notion of encapsulating levels of detail in a hierarchial schema. The notion of being able to "zoom in" and "zoom out" on how much information you want about a particular topic.

This is what English teachers were trying to teach, rudimentarily, as the "five-paragraph essay" when I was in high school, but the notion generalises -- to an academic paper, to a book, to a series of volumes, to interconnected documents. I want uniquely addressable resources at any level of detail, I want to live in Roy Fielding's future. I want to be reading a paper in a PLoS journal, and when I see a citation, not have to jump to the endnotes to see what the citation is about -- I want to be able to jump to the exact table, the exact paragraph, the exact equation that makes the context clear for me. With a minimum of hassle: if you have pop-up balloons that show me a preview, I want to be able to turn them off easily (I'm looking at you, Snap.com) and I want to be able to open the resource in another tab easily (I'm still looking at you, Snap.com).

Oh, hey, and let's make it so I don't have to use my hands, that would be pretty cool too.

Crossover tag!

Pitch your life as a movie -- Series/Concept X crossed with Series/Concept Y. Then tag five friends to do the same thing!

Lately, my life's been a Global Frequency/Trenchcoat Brigade crossover.

I tag barbarienne, jrtom, bunnykitteh, lwood and cassandrasimplx. If you add your answers in the comments, tag yourself.

"Are you the keeper of the sacred beer tree?"

This may be the game that gets me to break down and get a PS3. And, uh, a television.

I note that the lead developer worked on Secret of Monkey Island and Psychonauts, the latter of which I have not played, but which apparently did a lot for bringing storytelling back into video games. Are we heading for an age of LucasArts-style storytelling with modern artwork and motion-capture? /m\

(no subject)

By way of P.Z. Myers: Roald Dahl wanted you to immunize your children.

tl;dr: Roald Dahl's daughter Olivia died from measles encephalitis 20 years before a measles vaccine was developed. He compares the risks and the benefits, and says "vaccinate your kids already."

should this go to bash.org?

maradydd: yeah, she is an ongoing fountain of crazy
maradydd: but in that slow-burn way where things aren't exploding *all* the time
palecur: pennsylvania coal mine fire of crazy
palecur: no explosions, just long ongoing problem
palecur: and occasionally you have to evacuate a town

Mistakes I will not make again

Prosciutto is not bacon.