Round up

From various sources:

• Computer Science Today -- good CS news site (EEVL)
  
• Chronicle feature on academic libraries -- bound to be controversial (Kept Up)
  
• Lack of interest in Computer Science (Kept Up)
  
• Information Wants to be Free - Bullcookies
  
• Rice Pudding
  
• What are Open Source and Flickr
  
• OECD on Scientific Pubishing -- great report, well worth a careful read (Lessig)
  
• 100 Interesting Mathematical Problems, Exercises, Puzzles, and Diversions (Neat New Stuff)
  
• Is It Time to Shut Down Engineering Colleges? -- massively controversial, lively commentary at the end for what I think is a rather overly provocative article. The idea is that engineers need more soft skills and interdisciplinary knowledge to be effective problem solvers in the more internationally competitive environment we live in today. A better balance is needed between traditional engineering subjects matter and greater humanities and social sciences content -- economics, history, philosophy, the arts. A good idea, one that is widely recognized in engineering circles but the author more or less paints it like he's the only one to ever think about these problems, as if he's never been to an ASEE or IEEE conference on education or read Prism or any other engineering education journal. I think it's a bit sloppy both on the author's part and especially on InsideHigherEd's part for presenting this issue as "wow, look at this new idea" rather than a long standing conversation within engineering education. Slapdash, like the article on academic librarian blogs.