Well, for two years I've been trying to write a science fiction novel about "ubiquitous computation." However, I'm now so close to my material that, when I went to lecture about it, I got asked to join the faculty of a design school.

It's not like I get tenure, mind you. I'm merely guest-artist for a year, or, as they like to put it at my new alma mater, Art Center College of Design, I'm "Provocateur-in-Residence." But I get a salary, and, more to the point, I get to play in the prototype lab.

I could have said, "No, I've got to finish sci-fi novel number umpteen here," but, gee whiz, if they're asking, why not go? ACCD is one of the world's most-famed design schools, and justly so. I was flattered.

I was in residence for a couple of weeks at Cranbrook School of Design back in the early 90s, and I wrote the outline and proposal for my novel HOLY FIRE there. That turned out to be one of my better books. So, y'know, I'll do it. What the hey.

Now Clay Shirky -- himself an academic -- has written a wonderful and comprehensive rebuttal of the piece, explaining why complaints of "anti-elitism" are misplaced.

Of course librarians, teachers, and academics don't like the Wikipedia. It works without privelege, which is inimical to the way those professions operate.

This is not some easily fixed cosmetic flaw, it is the Wikipedia's driving force. You can see the reactionary core of the academy playing out in the horror around Google digitizing books held at Harvard and the Library of Congress -- the NY Times published a number of letters by people insisting that real scholarship would still only be possible when done in real libraries. The physical book, the hushed tones, the monastic dedication, and (unspoken) the barriers to use, these are all essential characteristics of the academy today.

It's not that it doesn't matter what academics think of the Wikipedia -- it would obviously be better to have as many smart people using it as possible. The problem is that the only thing that would make the academics happy would be to shoehorn it into the kind of filter, then publish model that is broken, and would make the Wikipedia broken as well.

Futurismic's publishing some amazing science fiction and this story doesn't disappoint. It's a great 10 minute read, perfect for the Web.

As always, she examined herself in the mirror, searching for vulnerability. She was rewarded by the usual view: an attractively fit, Slavic cheek-boned thirty-something who could still pass for twenty-something.

"I could lose some weight," she thought. But no, she hadn't really thought that. It was a chip idea. She consciously interfaced with the AI to avoid further confusion. "What the fuck are you talking about? I look great."

"You could lose a few pounds." The voice was a more clinical version of her own. "And your skin could do with some work, too. I can assist."

"No, thank you. Resume normal." She concentrated on getting ready for work, but the ritual had been tainted. Despite herself, she felt larger, flabbier, distinctly less attractive. To compensate, she deliberately dressed sexier than her usual businesslike attire, with shorter skirt and flashier blouse, and forced her hair to have a good day. She refused to submit to moods as a matter of policy.

Another thought tugged at her mind. "You could really use a new outfit." The tone was that of an enthused continental fashion designer.

Q: I hear one of the balls will be reserved for troops who have served in Iraq or Afghanistan.

A: Yes, the Commander-in-Chief Ball. That is new. It will be about 2,000 servicemen and their guests. And that should be a really fun event for them.

Q: As an alternative way of honoring them, did you or the president ever discuss canceling the nine balls and using the $40 million inaugural budget to purchase better equipment for the troops?

A: I think we felt like we would have a traditional set of events and we would focus on honoring the people who are serving our country right now -- not just the people in the armed forces, but also the community volunteers, the firemen, the policemen, the teachers, the people who serve at, you know, the -- well, it's called the StewPot in Dallas, people who work with the homeless.

Q: How do any of them benefit from the inaugural balls?

A: I'm not sure that they do benefit from them.

Q: Then how, exactly, are you honoring them?

A: Honoring service is what our theme is about.

Rita Carlisle, 53, from Knaphill, Surrey, suffers from a condition called essential tremor.

The stolen remote control gadget sends out pulses to calm the condition and can be switched off so she can rest.

She said: "I'm extremely tired, I'm getting three to four hours' sleep a night, I can't turn the machine off."

Though they admire the tradition of modern wildlife taxidermy, the Rogue Taxidermists are particularly drawn to the early history. "Prior to zoos, prior to museums, prior to galleries, we had these cabinets of wonder, these collections of art, trinkets, oddities," (member Robert) Marbury said. Then, with the rise of natural history museums, "they all sort of broke apart."

Now, the Minnesota Association of Rogue Taxidermists is hoping to honor that early tradition and celebrate the "showmanship of oddities," as the group's Web site puts it.

Problem -- No effective system of mass, international alert existed in South Asia to quickly warn those in harm's way of the tsunami's approach.

One approach to a solution, created in the span of about 24 hours by an impromtu volunteer geek corps -- A tech system called Alert Retrieval Cache (ARC) which collects, sorts, and routes SMS messages for the puposes of alerts and relay communication. An early warning system based on SMS, short message service.

Rohit Gupta in Mumbai (one of the folks behind DesiMediaBitch, excellent tsunami coverage in recent days) says,

When you need a genius, invent one. We are a genius. Last 24 hours we spent in creating a system of sending and receiving SMS messages through a network of relief people. Here is the page in progress -- Link. These messages you see are SMSes, sent directly from Sri Lanka onto a webpage. ARC was created by Neha Vishwanathan, Rohit Gupta, Taran Rampersad, and Dan Lane.

Here's a snip from the ARC project workspace:

How can a single SMS can save people's lives? If all the people relevant to that message can receive it, instantaneously. In the following system, the SMS message also contains a way of deciding which recipients are relevant to the message.

Why do we need ARC? The failure of state-owned and hierarchical warning systems to alert us about the South Asia earthquake & tsunami, despite prior information has put into focus issues of forums for information exchange. What we need is to get credible, real time information from the grassroots to save lives.

How does this ARC work? Here's a scenario - Morquendi is a relief worker in Middle Earth, and he runs short of medical supplies, specifically antibiotics. The supplies are needed immediately. He needs to inform someone from his location. He sends out an SMS to ARC ... The Sorter program looks for similar keywords in the cache, as in Morquendi's message. After the program is done sorting, it links this message to all those numbers that are attached to similar attributes as in Morquendi's original message. Then it flashes this message to all these numbers. Real-time, instantaneous. People in the vicinity, and anyone across the world who is awake, or knows Morquendi, receives this message.

"If you fudge or lie on a blog, you are biting the karmic weenie," says Steve Hayden, vice chairman of advertising giant Ogilvy & Mather, which creates blogs for clients. "The negative reaction will be so great that, whatever your intention was, it will be overwhelmed and crushed like a bug. You're fighting with very powerful forces because it's real people's opinions."

Words to live by. Must. Respect. Karmic. Weenie. Snarks aside, David Kirkpatrick and Daniel Roth produced a really solid, thoughtful piece here, and it's well worth a read. Link to full text of article, for which (as Joi and others have pointed out) Fortune let go of their "paid registration only" policy.

The license for AmmanNet doesn't include news reporting, but the stations founder and owner feels that it has enough municipal issues, cultural, social, and economical and sports programming to satisfy the culturally hungry Jordanian public. "Since the new Audio Visual Law was enacted, all the stations that have been licensed have broadcast only music. We are sure that the public is interested in a more holistic approach to broadcasting in the form of a community radio rather than just entertainment radio."

Kuttab expects the new FM station to be operating by the spring. Established in October 2000 under the auspices of UNESCO and the Greater Amman Municipality, AmmanNet has since grown to become a leading liberal voice, exercising a wider degree of freedom than most Jordanian media operations. Among its programs on the Net is a unique monitoring program of the Parliament and the Municipality, eye on the media, school radio, sportsnet, IT in Arabic, book reviews, legal awareness programs (HAQI) and various cultural and artistic programs.

Shortly after the shock, a great wave was seen from the distance of three or four miles, approaching in the middle of the bay with a smooth outline; but along the shore it tore up cottages and trees, as it swept onwards with irresistible force. At the head of the bay it broke in a fearful line of white breakers, which rushed up to a height of 23 vertical feet above the highest spring-tides. Their force must have been prodigious; for at the Fort a cannon with its carriage, estimated at four tons in weight, was moved 15 feet inwards.

A schooner was left in the midst of the ruins, 200 yards from the beach. The first wave was followed by two others, which in their retreat carried away a vast wreck of floating objects. In one part of the bay, a ship was pitched high and dry on shore, was carried off, again driven on shore, and again carried off. In another part two large vessels anchored near together were whirled about, and their cables were thrice wound round each other: though anchored at a depth of 36 feet, they were for some minutes aground.

The great wave must have travelled slowly, for the inhabitants of Talcahuano had time to run up the hills behind the town; and some sailors pulled out seaward, trusting successfully to their boat riding securely over the swell, if they could reach it before it broke. One old woman with a little boy, four or five years old, ran into a boat, but there was nobody to row it out: the boat was consequently dashed against an anchor and cut in twain; the old woman was drowned, but the child was picked up some hours afterwards clinging to the wreck. Pools of salt-water were still standing amidst the ruins of the houses, and children, making boats with old tables and chairs, appeared as happy as their parents were miserable.

Fan Web sites, from Adam-Brody.com to Absolutely Zooey Deschanel, share certain traits: gushy tributes, copyright-infringing use of paparazzi shots, a whiff of stalker enthusiasm. A new site, cremasterfanatic.com, is unusual for the subject it obsesses over - the Conceptual Art star Matthew Barney - but otherwise it hews to the norm. It borrows pictures of Mr. Barney with his wife, the pop singer Bjork. It summarizes each of his five "Cremaster" films. It even posts tribute poetry:

Pearl filled baths
The pigeons flap
His cremaster relaxes

But Cremaster Fanatic is a fake. Or to put it more kindly, it's a parallel work of art. "I'm pretending to be a fan," said its creator, the New York artist Eric Doeringer, who wrote that haiku himself (as "David Kramer," one of many pseudonyms deployed on the site).

Coca-Cola just released a great Bollywood-inspired ad in Spain, Portugal and Italy (thanks, GG). The ad retraces The Party, The Guru and Russell Peters’ wisecrack that the only thing a desi accent is good for is cutting tension.

In the ad, a desi waiter livens up a dreary Spanish party by bursting into a Bollywood song. Here’s the really cool part: it pays homage to Absolut Vodka’s unforgettable Mulit parody — pink shirt, shiny belt buckle and all. Watch the clip.

• Low-bandwidth version
• More great Bollywood-inspired ads
  

BB reader Fabio Fichera says, "The ad in question isn't that new, a somewhat shorter version has been around for months here in Italy." And reader JJ Merelo writes,

Just a few points about this newsitem. First, it was released last summer and become an instant sensation: the theme has been even featured in the new year's eve TV shows, replayed over and over as a ringtone, and so forth. The party does not really look like a Spanish party, it rather looks like a british party. Believe me, I've been in Spanish parties. And a bit of trivia: it's actually a girl who sings it, it's a kind of 'bollywood aserejé', since it's not really in hindi (or telugu, for that matter), but in mock-indian language, and it was originally done in Argentina. There's also a pointer to the spanish Coca Cola site: Link, and a story by a popular hispano-argentinian blogger: Link.