jrtom

A recent "oops" in an announcement of a lecture to be held at work (the announcer accidentally used the wrong title) gave me the idea for organizing a lecture series for 1 April: invite N people, get the topics for each, and then the day before (or perhaps a week, depending on the effect you want), ask lecturer ‘k’ to give a talk on the topic proposed by lecturer ‘k+1 (mod N)’.

Clearly, choosing one's lecturers carefully (for sense of humor, a generally relaxed attitude, and perhaps a fondness for perverse challenges) is paramount here. But in all seriousness, with the right speakers you could get some fascinating (and hilarious) lectures.

(danyelf_moop tells me that he used to be in the perverse habit of putting up radically wrong title screens for his talks ("3D rendering of natural light in closets", "Photorealistic ray-tracing on the Palm Pilot" [which was a lot funnier for a 160x160 monochrome display--you probably _can_ do photorealistic ray tracing on today's PDAs]) until the talk actually started. Could be a fun alternative until I get enough pull to be able to schedule an entire lecture series. ;) )

Two Wired articles on technology and the response to 9/11:

Reinventing 911: describes various technologies that have been developed for handling distributed disaster response. Portland, OR residents take note. Interesting stuff.

Fear, Inc.: describes those cashing in on the post-9/11 panic.