Links for 2011-08-15

"Bill Kirchen and whole collection of talent at SoHo in Santa Barbara, CA doing a delicate combination of Folsom Prison Blues and Pinball Wizard."

This would be so much cooler to have on tv than baseball or preseason NFL games, it isn’t even funny.

"There is arguably information about the real world that is not (yet?) to be found in any published sources. Think of something trivial like good places in your neighborhood to find blackberries (the fruit)1. More interesting, Prabhala offered the example of a children’s game played in some parts of India, and its Wikipedia article in the local language, Malayalam. Though the game is known by about 40 millions of people, there is no peer reviewed publication on it. So what would have constituted a valid reference for the English version of the website? What counts as a trusted source? Do videos count? Do the authors of the Wikipedia article have to random sample and analyze sources with the same care as a scientific publication would require? It seems then, the information age requires some rethinking of what constitutes a trusted source other than published works."

"We don’t envy public school teachers and administrators. They have trying jobs, and nobody seems to give them enough credit. Maybe it’s no wonder that schools sometimes go a little crazy and traumatize students.
But sometimes, the craziest things schools do are done in the name of keeping kids safe, all logic be damned. Things like …"