i202 Fall 2009 School of Information, UC Berkeley

 "One of the challenges of info pros has been to use the structured information-retrieving and -filtering tools, which really do require sequential, left-brained thinking, while simultaneously thinking creatively and intuitively about the entire spectrum of information sources and features, which requires right-brained analysis. It sort of feels like I'm trying to solve a quadratic equation while playing the piano."

When reading this article I had a hard time with the author's assumption that search-engine users should be engaging in "deliberative debate" by default. Many searches are conducted with the simple goal of answering a question, or getting very general information on a topic. If I search for "flowers," I'm asking about a very, very big topic. We've previously learned that users rarely pass the first page of results. In the ten hits my search engine returns, should several of them be devoted to fringe controversies involving flowers? I think not.

Tobacco companies are avoiding hundreds of millions of dollars a year in taxes by altering categories. Please refer to following link for further information:

Link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/17/tobacco-companies-using-l_n_360...

Doesn't it look similar to "potato chips" case? (reading for L2)

- Dhawal

The Oxford New American Dictionary officials, in an armchair moment, captures some of our popular words in 2009.  "Twitterisms," unsurprisingly is a 'notable word cluster' but fails to win the top word.  Sure, language isn't static, but who should be the authority to rank 'tweeting' above 'unfriend'?  *grumble*

Top Word of 2009: Unfriend, But Twitterisms Abound

-joan

A recent article from the BBC, "Great Writers 'Fail' Online Test" notes how famous literary pieces by the likes of Winston Churchill and Ernest Hemingway scored poorly when they were graded by computers. The article doesn't get into the complexities of analyzing the computer's grading system, but it does mention that the automatic grading system cannot pick up on human emotion and language subtleties.&#16

Thanks to thatwhichmatter, I came across the term "hapax legomenon". (In a quick search, I found that this is also the name of a character in the MMORPG City of Heroes.)

Last month, news (http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/10/19/pif.flu/) broke that pigs in Minnesota had tested positive for H1N1 (aka "Swine Flu").  The story mentions what has been reported numerous times before: H1N1 is not foodborne.  Two days later, the National Pork Producers Council (NPPC) turned to Congress for financial support.  The NPPC (http://www.nppc.org) reports that the U.S.

My second favorite linguistic eponym (the first would be the McGurk effect) has popped up in a number of domains other than natural language, like city infrastructure and physiological metabolism: http://judson.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/19/math-and-the-city/

 Here's an interesting article in the New York Times about a situation being debated in the British Supreme Court right now. There are public religious schools in England that are allowed to admit students based on their religion but not on their race or ethnicity.

This is in no way an attempt at online participation...
I tried to send out an email last week, but for one reason or another they didn't distribute.  Here's the email:

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To the ischool ... just wanted to let you all know that we have had a great big baby boy!

Henri Daniel Louis Hull (pictures below)
November 2, 2009 4:37am
He weighed in at an obnoxiously healthy 10lb. 6oz. (yes, really) and measured 22in. in length.

Thanks all for the kind notes!

See you next week.

Jackson