College students tell how well they learn

Among the findings were:

• Fewer than 15% of students come close to studying two hours for every hour they spend in class, an established measure of proper class preparation.
  
  
• Almost one in five freshmen said they "never" made a class presentation during their first year, and 46% never discussed readings or ideas with a professor outside of class.

eCompany Now - Magazine Article - Essay Question: The Web is Transforming the University. How and Why? (Please Use Examples.)

This man runs the largest private university in the United States. You may never have heard of the University of Phoenix, but it's using the power of the Internet to lay siege to the ivory tower. To its students, UOP is a godsend. To critics, it's sacrilege. And to prestigious institutions from Columbia to Stanford, it's a new business plan.

The following was forwarded by e-mail to me by a colleague. I thought some of the readers of this site would like it ;-). And a warm welcome to any new readers that come by way of the link on Dave's http://www.scripting.com/ site:

NOTICE OF REVOCATION OF INDEPENDENCE

To the citizens of the United States of America,

In the light of your failure to elect a President of the USA and thus to govern yourselves, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence, effective today.

Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will resume monarchial duties over all states, commonwealths and other territories. Except Utah, which she does not fancy.

Your new prime minister (The Rt. Hon. Tony Blair, MP for the 97.85% of you who have until now been unaware that there is a world outside your borders) will appoint a minister for America without the need for further elections.

Congress and the Senate will be disbanded; A questionnaire will be circulated next year to determine whether any of you noticed.

To aid in the transition to a British Crown Dependency, the following rules are introduced with immediate effect:

1. You should look up "revocation" in the Oxford English Dictionary. Then look up "aluminium". Check the pronunciation guide. You will be amazed at just how wrongly you have been pronouncing it.

Generally, you should raise your vocabulary to acceptable levels. Look up "vocabulary". Using the same twenty seven words interspersed with filler noises such as "like" and "you know" is an unacceptable and inefficient form of communication; Look up "interspersed".

2. There is no such thing as "US English". We will let Microsoft know on your behalf.

3. You should learn to distinguish the English and Australian accents. It really isn't that hard.

4. Hollywood will be required, occasionally, to cast English actors as the good guys.

5. You should relearn your original national anthem, "God Save The Queen", but only after fully carrying out task 1.

We would not want you to get confused and give up half way through.

6. You should stop playing American "football". There is only one kind of football. What you refer to as American "football" is not a very good game.

The 2.15% of you who are aware that there is a world outside your borders may have noticed that no one else plays "American" football. You will no longer be allowed to play it, and should instead play proper football. Initially, it would be best if you played with the girls.

It is a difficult game. Those of you brave enough will, in time, be allowed to play rugby (which is similar to American "football", but does not involve stopping for a rest every twenty seconds or wearing full kevlar body armour like nancies). We are hoping to get together at least one US rugby sevens side by 2005.

7. You should declare war on Quebec and France, using nuclear weapons if they give you any merde. The 98.85% of you who were not aware that there is a world outside your borders should count yourselves lucky. The Russians have never been the bad guys. "Merde" is French for "****".

8. July 4th is no longer a public holiday. November 8th will be a new national holiday, but only in England. It will be called "Indecisive Day".

9. All American cars are hereby banned. They are crap and it is for your own good. When we show you German cars, you will understand what we mean.

10. Please tell us who killed JFK. It's been driving us crazy.

Thank you for your cooperation.

The above letter is, of course, satire and should not be take seriously ;-). I'm pretty sure that Keith Calder's response is in the same spirit. It starts:

We welcome your concern about our electoral process. It must be exciting for you to see a real Republic in action, even if from a distance. As always we're amused by your quaint belief that you're actually a world power. The sun never sets on the British Empire! Right-o chum!

But as George Bernard Shaw said:

"England and America are two countries divided by a common language."

which I would paraphrase now as "England and America are two countries divided by a different sense of humour (not to mention spelling!)." ;-)

NetGeo - The Internet Geographic Database

NetGeo is a database and collection of Perl scripts used to map IP addresses, domain names and AS numbers to geographical locations. CAIDA is developing this system for use in network visualization tools.

The Register: Intel 'Going for AMD's balls'

Pentium 4 yields are 'excellent', Intel sources told The Register today and the chip will hit 2GHz in January - up to three months earlier than planned.
...
"Expect to see P4 much earlier than on the roadmap - we're aggressively going for AMD's balls on the speed front. DirectX 8 is ready and lots of apps and games have been optimised, many more than for the PIII launch, which was a real cockup."

Good to see that the Intel source has such a good grasp of the nuances of the English language ;-)

Jeffrey Zeldman Presents: My Glamorous Life - but in this case s/Glamorous/Depressed/ and beautifully written and so poignant.