via Adam Curry's Weblog - The Soul of the Ultimate Machine

To Dr. Smarr, the idea of a thinking machine that might emerge spontaneously from billions of interconnected large and small computers isn't harebrained at all. He said he was simply extrapolating a series of significant trends that, to him, are remarkably obvious. And when it comes to extrapolating trends and forecasting technological revolutions, Dr. Smarr is worth listening to.

via Joel - Urbanev.com presents SimpleDJ. What a gallus app! And brought to you by the same site the rather cruel Driving Over Jakob Nielsen! I have a feeling that some of my students would wish to s/Jakob Nielsen/Duncan Smeed/g in the game ;-) If not now then certainly after the exams!!

I've long had an interest in Escher's work. So I was delighted to find the Totally Tessellated: Escher's Tessellations link via Andrea's Weblog.

David [SiT] jokes that I only attended the Networked Learning Environment Project workshop yesterday to ... get hold of some more acronyms. I replied to this acronymonious suggestion with news of one that provoked some reaction at the workshop ;-)

Sir Ernest Rutherford, President of the Royal Academy, and recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics, related the following story:

Some time ago I received a call from a colleague. He was about to give a student a zero for his answer to a physics question, while the student claimed a perfect score. The instructor and the student agreed to an impartial arbiter, and I was selected.

I read the examination question: "Show how it is possible to determine the height of a tall building with the aid of a barometer." The student had answered: More...

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