Replacing Slashdot?

Posted on July 29, 2010 by maitri

How does a pirate scientist stay informed out here on the lonely high seas, I ask ye.

From ReadWriteWeb:

Why is Slashdot [now] almost irrelevant to the social media community? It used to be the biggest driver of traffic to tech web sites, but now it hardly delivers any traffic at all to them. We explore some of the reasons, including input from our own community.

One obvious answer is that most folks who use the web now, especially in a social media capacity, are not primarily tech-oriented and rising usage stats for StumbleUpon and Digg may reflect a changing readership, not necessarily quality of information. RWW picks up on this almost immediately:

Slashdot is targeted to engineers and programmers – and makes no apologies for it. However this relatively narrow focus means that Slashdot has not grown to have broader appeal, like StumbleUpon and Digg. However, why then is Hacker News – which is also targeted to programmers – doing so well in Woopra’s statistics?

I’ve never used StumbleUpon, Digg, Reddit or any of these sites mainly because I don’t like a) creating more and more user accounts to get to the damned news and b) news by democracy. Information validation and promotion/demotion by Like and Dislike buttons? No thanks. The format of Slashdot appeals to me because the news is just there and the comments, albeit increasingly insular and snarky, offer immediate evidence, opposing viewpoints and/or bullshit filters for the topic at hand. But, I have to agree with Adena Schutzberg of All Points Blog on this one:

Now I find the things I read on Slashdot (at noon EST) I heard on NPR that morning while lying in bed! … And I have even more eyes looking at technology. So, bye-bye Slashdot. I’ll probably keep a feed for you for a while, just in case.

She’s right. Folks IM me links to tech stories all day long and my response is “Yeah, already caught that. Thanks.” My eyes looking at technology are colleagues, Google Reader (which has Slashdot in it, but I don’t get to it until later) and the omniscient, omnipresent Twitter feed.

The comments to Adena’s post recommend Techmeme, which I’ve added to my Google feedreader. The experiment over the next few weeks is as follows: How much more timely and informative is Techmeme over Slashdot et al.?

What is your experience with tech news aggregators? What are your favorites and why? How would you increase the quality and timeliness of tech news dissemination?

Update: Slashdot also provides the latest in Science, Privacy, Gaming, etc. In other words, it’s News For Nerds, not just Technologists. I also like their overall attitude towards the world, apparent in the icons they use to tag news items. Slashdot is a great news supplement then, eh?

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Early Childhood Values

Posted on July 29, 2010 by maitri

NYTimes | The Case for $320,000 Kindergarten Teachers

Students who had learned much more in kindergarten were more likely to go to college than students with otherwise similar backgrounds. Students who learned more were also less likely to become single parents. As adults, they were more likely to be saving for retirement. Perhaps most striking, they were earning more.

Kindergarten students who learn more don’t necessarily come from more teachers. They emerge from the classrooms of good teachers, who treat kindergarten in as respectful a manner as they would teaching at the high school or college level. Too often have I witnessed the (unfortunately female) rejects of college degree programs relegated by their advisors to the given university’s school of education. “Cs and Ds in science. You can’t continue here, how about science education or just education in general?” How horrible.

I am also reminded of elementary school music and art programs that are invariably dropped at the first whiff of budget cuts. What does a school board do with the sudden teacher surplus? Send them to teach reading comprehension at the kindergarten and pre-K levels, of course.

What can parents do at home to overcome the government-mandated babysitting that is the average kindergarten program? How do they impart the success factors mentioned here, i.e. “patience, discipline, manners, perseverance” while working three jobs to keep food on the plate and in the absence of a supportive kindergarten atmosphere? Can these values and attendant lessons be imparted at home in the absence of social peers?

***

Side note: It’s interesting what society uses as indicators of success (versus true achievement and happiness). I know several successful, self-disciplined people who never attended college, have kids out of wedlock and live paycheck to substantial paycheck. Not that college, married parents and making enough money to save for retirement are bad things; they do indicate a sense of self-assuredness and stability. And this was research conducted by economists, after all.

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Avast!

Posted on July 28, 2010 by maitri

Just this morn I sat on the poop deck and wondered, “It was my interest in geology, which requires laboratory facilities and access to field education, that motivated and propelled me through university, i.e. what is otherwise a factory conveyor belt. I’m really interested in science access being made open further through the creation of co-learning spaces (like co-working and co-tech spaces) and, in this day and age of the Maker Faire, public maker laboratories with teachers. Or is this where universities with these facilities can re-establish their relevance and open their doors to learners wanting shorter-term contracts?”

Along came Science 3.0 with its promise of “combin[ing] the hypothesis based inquiry of laboratory science with the methods of social science research to understand and improve the use of new human networks made possible by today’s digital connectivity.” Yarrr!

So I mentioned my thoughts to Mark The Admin along with, ”Matey! This place has great potential for increasing interdisciplinary sharing and intradisciplinary depth. Hope this can grow from an online portal into live, physical spaces! A band of roving scientists!”

And thus Pirate Scientist was born.

Hello, I am Maitri. I am a geologist, technologist, blogger, world traveler (well, what sort of pirate isn’t?) and a lot of other things. Read more aboot me here.

Basically, I love reading, science and sharing knowledge. The more we know, the better the quality of our public discourse, the more rational our policy creation process and the less I want to jacktar a hornswaggler and threaten to throw him into Davy Jones’s locker. In coming posts, I hope to discuss topics that range all the way from the value of higher education, the history of science, socio-cultural norms and educational policy to science reporting (during, oh for instance, the ongoing Gulf of Mexico oil spill), news of the geek and chasing the Kraken.

But, most of all, my aim here is to encourage DIY science and open access to results. I’m not kidding when I say I want to establish Maker Science Labs or “Tinker Zones” all over the country, especially in small towns that don’t have access to universities and all that comes with urban areas such as multiple libraries, bookstores, museums and sci-tech firms. I’d love to hear from you if you have similar interests and ideas. Chemistry sets, rock hammers and a bottle of rum for all!

Welcome aboard.

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