Saw this blurb in today’s Express (WaPo Lite for those of you not in the DC-metro area):

Hell on Wheels
Smack the snooze button so often the alarm is pointless? Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab has just the thing. “Clocky” is an alarm on wheels that lets you snooze once, then rolls off the table and zips away to another part of the room, the New Scientist reported. If you want to go back to sleep the next time it goes off, you’ll have to find it first. And every day it finds a new place to escape to.

Oh, what fun that little toy would be! Personally, I’m not a snooze-button addict, but it would be great fun to see the gadget torment someone else.

Zoom! Zoom!

After railing against the use of intelligent design in classrooms, I felt it only fair to offer up an opinion that shows maybe, just maybe, it’s not such a horrible thing after all. In today’s Washington Post, metro columnist Jay Mathews argues that presenting the concept would actually enhance learning. He makes a compelling argument:

Drop in on an average biology class and you will find the same slow, deadening march of memorization that I endured at 15. Why not enliven this with a student debate on contrasting theories? Why not have an intelligent design advocate stop by to be interrogated? Many students, like me, find it hard to understand evolutionary theory, and the scientific method itself, until they are illuminated by contrasting points of view.

When you put it like that, it makes it hard to disagree with, whether you believe the theory is being pushed through by the religious right.