play on and on and on

Brain science has never been so fun!

Stuart Brown on the importance of play in its many forms.



Absolutely fascinating stuff. Stay, at least, for the segment on the polar bear.

:-(

not your momma's go ask alice

While reviewing some of my considerably smarter and probably more interesting predecessor's resource guides for the new website, I happened upon this extremely potent link to Columbia University's medical-reference Q&A service Go Ask Alice!. (Not in any way affiliated to the 1971 'non-fiction' publication of the same name.)

It's a great service, manned by a tireless crew that includes medical information professionals from Columbia University, their affiliates, and interdimensional cosmic entites from a universe where compassion reigns supreme. But what elevates it from great to awesome is this particular Q&A exchange:

Dear Alice,

Know any good pick-up lines?

To which came Alice's profound response:

Dear Reader,

How 'bout we call them conversation starters? This more general term may take away negative associations that some have with being "picked up," i.e., the only reason you're saying hello to them is so that you can say goodbye an hour or two later after you've had an orgasm. If starting a conversation is your goal, you might enter into a chat, hoping simply to make a new friend or contact who could take off some of the pressure. And, since conversation starters can be used in both social and professional situations, your question and this answer can apply to more like you who've come to a site like this...

Thanks, Alice. You've made me feel bad about myself for thinking that, if I were to have received a similar question on Askaway, I would've thrown out this script:



Here's the link to the question and Alice's response in its entirety. Here's my favorite part:

It might help to watch or imagine how Brad Pitt might do it with Julia Roberts, but acting like a sex symbol could win you laughs and disdain, and no Academy Awards.

#24 is a good number

Wow. I think I finished. Or did I? Man, counting is hard. And that's why I went into library school.

What were your favorite discoveries or exercises on this learning journey?
The image generators were a lot of fun. Overdrive was neat too, I don't think it gets nearly enough press.

How has this program assisted or affected your lifelong learning goals?
Wow. That sounds like a question SLAIS would ask. Um. It's definitely broadened my knowledge of a lot of Web 2.0 resources I might never have given a second glance at. And it was extremely rewarding to be able to tell my friends, "I get to watch YouTube at work", which is more often than not suffixed with expressive, gloating hand gestures that may or may not have been 'ghetto' in origin.

Were there any take-aways or unexpected outcomes from this program that surprised you?
Librarians are funny people. But then, I sort of knew that already, coming in. Oh, also, they love this parchment background. I do too. I would eat my lunch off of my computer screen if they'd let me. Also, Librarians on Facebook? I need to send away to NASA to calculate the awesome of that.

What could we do differently to improve upon this program’s format or concept?
Hrm. I thought the audio components on the various steps were a little redundant. Plus, when it gets outdated (maybe some of it already is?), I bet it's going to be a pain to replace. I wound up skipping a lot of them; the textual information and hyperlinks were more than enough to get me up to speed.

If we offered another discovery program like this in the future, would you again chose to participate?
I would do many things for a free mp3 player. Watching YouTube videos at work is one of those things.

#22 revisited

I've added Penny Arcade's RSS feed to my Google Reader thingy.

They continue to dress and impress.

#23 - overdrive

Books in audio are cool. Downloadable audio books are great too. This is Digital Rights Management that makes sense. Sort of. Judging from how many requests I get some days for Playaway batteries, I'd say they're pretty darn popular! (Or come packed with really cruddy batteries.)

Lacking any real portable audio device other than the songs in my head, I've never listened to one. But I remember the day when a fellow SLAIS-er brought in a Playaway for a show and tell. It looked like the sweetest thing since overpriced Nintendo DS decals.

I've downloaded Sabriel from Overdrive, but I didn't really want to bother the Systems folks for something so trivial as requesting permission to install something as trivial as the Overdrive player. So ironically I would've had more time to read the book (see lacking portable audio device above).

And yes, I am gunning for that mp3 player. Gimmeh!