Day: October 13, 2008

Categories
People

A truly deserving prize

Throughout the current economic crises, and well before, there’s one person I’ve returned to again and again for both thoughtful commentary on matters economical and political, and reassurance in difficult times and that’s Paul Krugman. I’m absolutely delighted to read he’s won the Nobel Prize in Economics. I cannot think of anyone who has a better grasp of the state of world economics than Mr. Krugman.

I gather that he also has critics among the other economists because of his liberal views. Considering that the conservatives just issued in a $700 billion bail out, I think I’ll stick with the liberals.

Categories
Diversity Semantics

How Not to write about the semantic web

How not to attract new semantic web readers, especially among the women. Write the following:

I just thought that this is a smart strategy to make video tutorials about the Semantic Web more appealing to female* or otherwise not so super-tech-savvy* audiences: Just put a Lolcat in it!

Though the author wrote that she matches the “stereotype”, which I guess means women who aren’t tech and like LOLcats, by the time I followed the asterisks, I’d already passed from astonishment to loathing. FYI, I wrote the first book on RDF, babes.

A reference to females was unnecessary. Surprising, too, from the same company featuring an interview with Corinna Bath, author of the thesis, “Towards a De-Gendered Design of Information Technologies”.