Nate Kushner’s blog reports an amusing story of how he received an instant message from a college student looking to commission a term-paper on Hinduism (via Boing Boing). Kushner ended up writing a “silly” paper, riddled with intentional errors and poor sources, and sold the paper to the student for $75. Additionally, Kushner blogged the entire incident, and sent the story to the College’s president after the paper was assumed to be handed-in.

I am not sure if Kushner’s handling of the incident was particularly honorable, but it certainly makes for an interesting story. It’ll be interesting to see what happens next.

I’ve noticed a couple of neat visual searches emerge recently.

Spell with Flickr:
Type in a word, and the engine searches Flickr for a data-base of ‘letter-tagged’ images, and puts them together. Great fun!

amaztype:
This search targets the Amazon database and pulls out a visual record of your query. Neat stuff.

Sometimes when I get a little drained from reading so many blog posts, articles, etc., I pull out my old friend The Dialectizer, and take a fresh approach to my readings.

Here’s this very blog with a touch of Elmer Fudd (just press the Dialectize button).

I’ve previously done presentations on the rise and influence of hate sites on the Internet, and certainly, this recent CNN story caught my attention.

Of course, the story tracks the recent tragedy in Red Lake, Minnesota where 16-year-old Jeff Weise killed 9 people before killing himself. What I find interesting is the shooter’s alleged fascination with Naziism, and his participation on hate-based sites.

The Libertarian National Socialist Green Party, owner of Nazi dot org (which I would rather not link to), issued a statement that Jeff Weise had posted to their site.

Here is one of his posts from March 2004:

“I stumbled across the site in my study of the Third Reich as well as Nazism … I guess I’ve always carried a natural admiration for Hitler and his ideals, and his courage to take on larger nations.”

While I am sure there were many factors contributing to this massacre, hate sites can be a powerful influence on young, impressionable minds, and should not be discounted in tragic events such as this.

New Scientist reports “a new search engine focused on people”. ZoomInfo.com takes publicly available information on individuals from various sites and attempts to weave it into detailed summaries. I searched my own name, and the information was accurate, but certainly not nearly comprehensive. However, I also unveiled a rich conspiracy as I found out that George W. Bush is not only the President of the United States, but is ALSO currently employed as the British Prime Minister.

I guess that helps to explain Iraq.

There is an interesting article in the Washington Post titled “Creative Commons is Rewriting Rules of Copyright“. While most of the content shouldn’t be anything new to the majority of readers, if it IS new, it’s an accessible piece that gives a decent overview of the work of the Creative Commons. If you don’t have an account for the Washington Post, I suggest using BugMeNot to get around the compulsory web registration.

Pay note the following passages:
“… art has always been about stealing, recycling and mixing: Vincent Van Gogh and Paul Gauguin were said to borrow from each other’s brushwork. The 1990s hit “Clueless” with Alicia Silverstone was a modern-day adaptation of Jane Austen’s ‘Emma.'”

“Technology has given the world an unprecedented ability to digitize works, copy them, take them apart and put them back together again. But Lessig said he worries that the extension of copyright laws is keeping many works out of the public domain, hampering creativity.”

“Lessig‘s goal with Creative Commons was to create a body of digital work, which he calls “artifacts of culture,” for the public domain, accessible to all.”

Like I said, not much new here. But for those that are just getting to know the Creative Commons (like many of my ECMP students), these are important, basic ideas.