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I recently purchased a super-sweet Xootr MG scooter to use as my primary mode of transportation to work. And I love it. It is a "kick" or "push" scooter, not one of those sissy motorized ones. This is all man-power, baby. Although the Xootr was a bit expensive, it is easily one of the most worthwhile purchases I've made in recent years. Here are 10 reasons why:

1) It gets me to work twice as fast as walking.

The most direct route from my apartment to my work is about 1.7 miles, but that includes many of San Francisco's (in)famous hills. The more manageable, level route I usually take is 2.5 miles (5 miles round trip). Walking, this takes me 40-45 minutes each way. Xootr scootering, it takes me about 20 minutes. Over the course of a week, that's an extra 3+ hours added to my life for cold chillin' maxin' and relaxin'.

2) It's a nice workout.
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These facebook quizzes are getting out of hand. My facebook newsfeed recently informed me of the following: "Stefanie took the What Does Jesus Think of You? quiz and the result is Jesus thinks you're a Jew."  What the hell does that mean?

As someone who is very likely one-quarter Jewish and married to a Jewish woman, I must say that I am thoroughly...confused. Maybe offended? Nah, probably just constipated. But, seriously, wtf? Jesus was a Jew. Do these quiz results mean that Jesus thinks you're cool and one of his homies? Or is he gettin' all up in yo grill Mel Gibson-style and pissed that you killed him? I never understood religion. Or those inane facebook quizzes.

I was rather alarmed to see this vehicle parked across the street from my apartment the other day. "Come see the collection of Barbies I have in this big, windowless van, my child!" Creepy.

Although Wikipedia is often considered a woefully inaccurate, no-good, downright evil source by many academics, there has actually been a great deal of interesting discussion on how Wikipedia (and other open content projects) can be incorporated into course writing assignments. For me, the bottom line is this: Yes, Wikipedia and other online sources have their limitations and problems. However, we all know that students rely heavily on such sources (heck, many educators rely heavily on such sources, too), so rather than simply ignoring them or forbidding their use in a course, educators should be teaching students to critically examine all sources of information and helping them to understand the variety of ways in which knowledge is constructed in the digital age.
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Due to some required software upgrades on my web servers, my Relational Frame Theory (RFT) tutorial was no longer functioning correctly. To correct these problems, and to make several additional improvements to the content of the tutorial, I am working on a brand new version of the tutorial. Unfortunately, its development is taking longer than I had planned (what else is new?). It will definitely be ready by Summer 2009 (and probably before), but I cannot provide an exact date. I will send an email to the RFT and ACT mailing lists, and to anyone who has ever registered a user account for the tutorial, when the new version is available. In the meanwhile, I am providing the no-frills version of the tutorial below. This version has the same content as the version you know and loathe, but it has no database connectivity. This means it cannot record student answers or scores on quizzes or track which people have completed. But, it is available now and anyone is free to use it.
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