Will the real Dr. Burks please stand up

Dr. Burks, president of Harding University, decided he needed to clarify something in chapel this morning. Apparently lots of people were befriending the wrong Dr. Burks on Facebook.

There are multiple Facebook accounts claiming to be Dr. Burks, and he showed a few screen shots of the impostors (the photo below is one of them). This is a problem because some students have been receiving messages from the fake Burks; one message asked someone to speak in chapel this week. (Sure is annoying when people create fake Facebook profiles.)



Dr. Burks showed everyone his correct profile and said he'd love to be everyone's friend. I have a feeling that he'll be receiving hundreds of friend requests today... that is if anyone can find the correct Dr. Burks. I did a search for "David Burks", "David B. Burks", and president@harding.edu (Dr. Burk's email address), and the only profile that looked legit was the one pictured above. I even looked through one of his son's list of friends on Facebook, and he wasn't listed there.

It looks like the fake Dr. Burks will continue racking up friends for a while.

How do my students really feel about me?

Sometimes students tell you right to your face what they think about you or your class. Sometimes they let you know anonymously through teacher evaluations. And sometimes they think of more creative means.



This was from an assignment in my Mobile Computing class where I had my students develop a tic-tac-toe game for Android. My wife said she was going to have nightmares tonight after seeing this.

Fav5

My pick of the week's top 5 items of interest:

1. Neil McAllister asks, Should computer programming be mandatory for U.S. students? A related article discusses how math skills are suffering in the US, mainly because US culture does not value mathematics and discourages females from pursuing it.
   
   


2. Do you know what Web Science is? Read Nigel Shadbolt and Tim Berners-Lee's article Web Science: Studying the Internet to Protect Our Future.
   

   This new discipline will model the Web’s structure, articulate the architectural principles that have fueled its phenomenal growth, and discover how online human interactions are driven by and can change social conventions. It will elucidate the principles that can ensure that the network continues to grow productively and settle complex issues such as privacy protection and intellectual-property rights.




3. New visualization techniques are being developed at the University of Utah to understand polling data. What struck me was the similarity between their donuts with the ones I developed to summarize reconstructed websites.



4. Leave it to the Japanese to develop a robotic girl that looks like something straight out of a horror movie.
   
   
   Uncanny valley?
   
   


5. This is hilarious. I've never seen more moronic comments than those on YouTube.
   
   
   

Rare sighting

I was playing with Ethan in the backyard yesterday when we spotted a very rare event. It only happens twice, maybe three times a year... our next door neighbor was mowing his yard!

Luckily I had my camera on hand to document this rare occurrence. If you look very closely at the photo below, you'll see the rare neighboritis lawnmoritis in action.

List of banished words for 2007

Lake Superior State University has once again posted it’s list of banished words for the new year. Last year they banned my nickname Dawg McCown, and now my friends can’t call me i-Frank or refer to me and my wife as Frecky… how disappointing.

Here are the words and phrases to be banished from the Queen’s English in 2007 for mis-use, over-use and general uselessness:

• Gitmo
• Combined celebrity names
• Awesome
• Gone/went missing
• Pwn or pwned
• Now playing in theaters
• We're pregnant
• Undocumented alien
• Armed robbery/drug deal gone bad
• Truthiness
• Ask your doctor
• Chipotle
• i-anything
• Search
• Healthy food
• Boasts

Happy new year, everyone!

Favorites of 2006

Here are some of my favorite things from 2006.

On-line laughs:

1. The most-viewed YouTube video of 2006: The Evolution of Dance by Judson Laipply
2. Possibly the worst recording of O Holy Night, ever
3. David Brent's Microsoft training video
4. The Iraq Report with subtitles
5. Two sons try to take a Mother’s Day photo (these guys must know my brother and me)

TV commercials:

1. Liberty Mutual "pay-it-forward" commercial
2. LA County Fair - "Duh, Ashley, all wool comes from a cow..."
3. “That should kill him…” Ameriquest doctor commercial
4. Peyton Manning supporting his team

Movies I saw:

1. The Prestige - It had me on the edge of my seat the entire time
2. X-Men: The Last Stand - I hope this won’t be the last of the series
3. Facing the Giants - Created by a church with no professional actors, it's a very moving and inspirational film
4. Invincible - Almost makes me want to be a Phily fan
   
5. Casino Royale - A little on the violent side, but probably the best Bond yet
6. Flags of Our Fathers - War is tragic
   

Books I read:

1. The Language of God by Francis Collins - Collins does a great job of distilling the myth that evolution = atheism
2. Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner - Some interesting things to think about
3. Sacred Marriage by Gary Thomas - Rather than make us "happy", marriage is designed by God to make us more holy
   
4. Finding God at Harvard by Kelly Monroe - A series of encouraging stories from various Harvard alums about their path to faith

Websites I love to visit:

1. Wikipedia.org – Sometimes you have to sort through a lot of “truthiness”, but it’s an extremely useful tool for answering the question “What is X?”
2. YouTube.com – It feeds my addiction for funny commercials
3. Google Scholar – OK, I don’t love to visit this site, but it's probably the #1 reason why getting my Ph.D. will take less than 4 years. It’s much larger and faster than Citeseer and far easier to use than Windows Live Academic