Mark Twain Project

If you're interested in Mark Twain, this website is a must-visit.  I stumbled upon the link on the California Digital Library page.  This could mean amazing things for the future of literary studies.

Here is the description from their main page:

Mark Twain Project Online applies innovative technology to more than four decades' worth of archival research by expert editors at the Mark Twain Project. It offers unfettered, intuitive access to reliable texts, accurate and exhaustive notes, and the most recently discovered letters and documents.

Its ultimate purpose is to produce a digital critical edition, fully annotated, of everything Mark Twain wrote. MTPO is a collaboration between the Mark Twain Papers and Project of The Bancroft Library, the California Digital Library, and the University of California Press.

This is your brain on Google.

Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the gifted young men who founded Google while pursuing doctoral degrees in computer science at Stanford, speak frequently of their desire to turn their search engine into an artificial intelligence, a HAL-like machine that might be connected directly to our brains. “The ultimate search engine is something as smart as people—or smarter,” Page said in a speech a few years back. “For us, working on search is a way to work on artificial intelligence.” In a 2004 interview with Newsweek, Brin said, “Certainly if you had all the world’s information directly attached to your brain, or an artificial brain that was smarter than your brain, you’d be better off.”

Is Google Making Us Stupid? (Atlantic Monthly)

Is it just me, or is there something wrong with this?

Haven't these people read M.T. Anderson's Feed?

I don't want to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but I'm beginning to think that Google is, in fact, evil (and I'm only partially being tongue-in-cheek).

Murphy's Law

Of course now that it's finals week, my internet is down at home. It's been down for four days. I am crossing my fingers that the technician coming on Friday some time between noon and five will be able to fix it.

The upside is that I was able to print my final at work, the questions look doable, and I only really need the internet for two out of the ten. On top of that, I have until next Tuesday to finish it.

And then, no more school until next January--I'm taking summer and fall off for wedding planning and . . . you guessed it . . . wedding. :)

Faux Websites

Our systems librarian linked to this page on our college's website. She uses it in her courses to show students that you can't always tell what is legitimate information and what isn't on the internet. Some of the stuff is hilarious--be sure to check out "Facts about Beluga Whales" and the links under "Current Headlines."

And if you haven't had enough after that, learn about the dangerous chemical dihydrogen monoxide, and help contribute to saving the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus.