Pool Cleaners - Colour

Pool Cleaners - Colour
Originally uploaded by pmorgan.

Active FTP, Blogger and Technical Details

I finally figured that my domain host doesn't support passive FTP anymore and that blogger doesn't support active FTP. Drag, but minor mystery solved. Time to change domain hosts and perhaps blogging tools ....

Authors: Susan Orlean

Wonderful story about surfer girls on Maui. The story begat the movie Blue Crush.

"When I left Maui that afternoon, my plane circled over Ho'okipa, and I wanted to believe I could still see them down there and always would see them down there, snapping back and forth across the waves." Source: Susan Orlean - Adaptation

Technology: Charting the Gap

Useful Usability Guidelines Bibliography by Pauline Genise. Charting the space between humans and computers.

Technology: Home Automation

"Not everyone in your household will be as enthusiastic about home automation as you are." Source: Home Hacks section of Kevin Kelly's Cool Tools site. Kelly had an early had in Wired Magazine and the Whole Earth Catalogues

Ideas, Books, Anthropology: Jared Diamond - Collapse

"In Collapse, Jared Diamond shows how societies destroy themselves."

Source: The New Yorker

(Since first posted the review has been moved by the New Yorker. One can now purchase everything written in the New Yorker before 2005 on cd. The New Yorker overcame copyright concerns by scanning the pages so they can't be searched.)

Ideas: Power and Population in Asia

"Few would contest the general proposition that the population factor bears directly on the course of the friendly — and sometimes unfriendly — competition between states in the world arena today. Problems arise, however, when we try to move from the general to the specific. How, exactly, do human numbers (population size, composition, and trends of change) affect the ability of governments to influence events beyond their borders — or affect the disposition of a country’s interactions with outside actors? And this is no less important for the would-be strategist: How can we use population indicators to anticipate, with some reasonable hope of accuracy, the impact of yet-unfolding demographic forces on the balance of international power? This essay explores these questions for the world’s largest strategic arena: the great Asian/Eurasian expanse."

Source: Power and Population in Asia by Nicholas Eberstadt - Policy Review, No. 123

Ideas: Lakoff

A critical concept:

'Frames', according to Lakoff, are the key to understanding how political ideas are received. Human beings don't absorb information as raw material; we sift input through frames of meaning carried in the language we use.

Ideas: aperspective space

Without or not yet having developed a perspective ... a useful state, me thinks.

"Hans-Ulrich Obrist: Jean Gebser tried in his texts about the development of the history of perspective, which he conceived in 1932 and wrote in the 1940's, to work towards an aperspective perception of space which succeeds the unperspective and perspective world. He was not yet able to realize the connection between this development and the speed of media and the resulting tyranny of real time, but already he predicted a new age of perspective."

Source: Jean Gebser

Management: Corporate Consulting Types - Possibly Relevent Article for your Practises

"The demise of the corporate pecking order is a myth, says Stanford professor Harold J. Leavitt. Middle managers are the ones who bear the brunt when an organization pretends that everyone is equal." Source: HBS Working Knowledge: Leadership: The Plight of Middle Managers

A related thesis was really well presented in Who Really Matters: The Core Group Theory of Power, Privilege, and Success by Art Kleiner.

Movies: Kubrick on the power of film

"The screen is a magic medium. It has such power that it can retain interest as it conveys emotions and moods that no other art form can hope to tackle."

Source: Kubrick Multimedia Film Guide

Management: 3M Meeting Network

"Dozens of articles & tips on how to run effective meetings"

Site: 3M Meeting Network

Technology, Design: XPLANE | The visual thinking company

Design, Art: Milton Glaser Posters

Poetry, Travel: Sacred Poetry

"A chaikhana is a teahouse along the legendary Silk Road pilgrimage and trading route linking China to the Middle East and Europe. It is a place of rest along the journey, a place to shake off the dust of the road, to sip tea, and to gather together to sing songs of the Divine..."

Source: Poetry Chaikhana - Sacred Poetry from Around the World: Sufi, Zen, Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, amd Yoga Poetry

Technology, Anthropology: Clay Shirky on the Design of Social Software

"Rating, karma, meta-moderation -- each of these systems is relatively simple in technological terms. The effect of the whole, though, has been to allow Slashdot to support an enormous user base, while rewarding posters who produce broadly valuable material and quarantining offensive or off-topic posts."

Source: Shirky: Group as User: Flaming and the Design of Social Software

Edward Burtynsky Photographic Works

"Nature transformed through industry is a predominate theme in my work."

Edward Burtynsky Photographic Works

Frans Lanting Photography

"A collection of images that highlight the precious web of life that the World Wildlife Fund's Living Planet campaign seeks to help save."

Frans Lanting Photography :: Portfolios

Buddhist Pictures

"These exercises and assignments formed the basis for this contemplative approach, which shows us how to synchronize our eye and mind, so that perception is free from pre-conceived ideas, therefore direct and unfabricated."

"Since the beginning of this journey of looking and seeing, there has been a quote by Chogyam Trungpa, the meditation master, scholar and artist that has guided me:

"There is such a thing
as unconditional expression
that does not come from self or other.

It manifests out of nowhere
like mushrooms in a meadow,
like hailstones, like thundershowers"

Chogyam Trungpa, Rinpoche
The Art of Calligraphy

~Source: Miksang.net: About Michael Wood:

Beijing Subway

"Subway construction started in China's capital in 1965."

BEIJING (Peking) Subway

Blog Comments and Moderation

[This whole post may not transcend the I-thought-it-was-funny-at-the-time standard]

This academic guy, Philip Greensan, created a massive photo site called photo.net (it’s a good site) and became rich and now an affiliation with Harvard. He maintains a blog which attracts a collection of comments like:

"P.S. Your blog's comments section continues to amaze. It's like some kind of zoo, but with idiots instead of exotic animals." http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2004/08/27#a5783

This reminds me of the quote "The problem with the global village is the global village idiots."

In one comment, the author of Envisaging Information and some other great books about visual design chimed in: "'My first experience with forum moderation and, indeed, my first contact with Philip, took place when he deleted a contribution of my at his photo.net!' EdwardTufte • 8/29/04; 6:09:40 PM #"

And then there is this stream, where Phil tries to sell a TV on ebay, and plug his cousin's new movie.

"Sounds like your cousins interpersonal skills are as refined as his movie productions. Seena Hyena • 9/3/04; 9:53:52 AM #"

"Seena: My cousin made more than $100 million with his last movie, About Schmidt, which was nominated for at least two Academy Awards. If he had better interpersonal skills maybe he could be a Java programmer sitting in a cubicle quietly taking orders from a University of Massachusetts MBA. Maybe instead of going to Knicks games with Jack Nicholson he should be seeing a therapist to become a kinder, gentler, more caring human being. Philip Greenspun • 9/3/04; 12:00:47 PM #"

But there is more!

Philip's eclectic writings include materialism, about which he says: "Not being a materialist in the U.S. is kind of like not appreciating opera if you live in Milan or art if you live in Paris. We support materialism better than any other culture. Because retailing and distribution are so efficient here, stuff is cheaper than anywhere else in the world. And then we have huge houses in which to archive our stuff."

And ...

"So lemme get this straight. The creator of photo.net doesn't have any photos on his e-bay auctions. Ahh, savor the irony. Wayne Menzie • 9/2/04; 2:29:26 PM"

"Photo nerds: You guys sure were right about eBay. I've gotten a whole bunch of questions from people wanting to see photos of the TV. They aren't satisfied with the "check the Sony Web site" or "it is big and grey" answer. They believe that a photo will enable them to evaluate its "condition" (maybe there are a bunch of folks who let their dogs walk all over their TV, thus marring the grey finish)."

Linguistics Prof. George Lakoff - Part I

"You've said that progressives should never use the phrase 'war on terror'. Why?

There are two reasons for that. Let's start with 'terror.' Terror is a general state, and it's internal to a person. Terror is not the person we're fighting, the 'terrorist.' The word terror activates your fear, and fear activates the strict father model, which is what conservatives want. The 'war on terror' is not about stopping you from being afraid, it's about making you afraid.

Next, 'war.' How many terrorists are there hundreds? Sure. Thousands? Maybe. Tens of thousands? Probably not. The point is, terrorists are actual people, and relatively small numbers of individuals, considering the size of our country and other countries. It's not a nation-state problem. War is a nation-state problem."

Enlivening Presentations ...

Question: Any hints on an application like powerpoint, but that lets you interact more during the presentation, e.g., typing in notes on the screen? Am looking for something for presentations in class, where ppt makes for nice image presentation but sucks all interaction and spontenaiety from class...

The quick answer is to turn off the powerpoint periodically - ie it guides to a certain point and then, pause (or block the projection).

Edward Tufte makes the same point, perhaps with more diatribe and authority than I might. What he is saying is 'form follows function' and we often use powerpoint when we really want to present a detailed argument better served by text ... I'd figure out what I was trying to do - show images, present an outline, make a coherent argument etc

So ... Not sure what you want to do ... Presumably brainstorm ideas with students about a particular point ...

Writing down the points, using the students own words on a flipchart, is very good (much better than just letting them hang in the air) - you could do this in ppt or another application, assuming you can type fast enough. (I find different parts of the brain are involved and so its hard to reflectively question the students and quickly write down their ideas.)

But maybe you have something else in mind for them? I keep in mind the adult learning cycle - experience (which could, at least some of the time, be a lecture), reflect (thinking about, ideally in conjunction with others - aka the small group discussion), generalization (connection to previous work, life experiences, etc.), application (opportunity to use - a formula in math class applied to a problem) - application to other, new situations which now fit the expanded or moulded paradigm. Etc. Ideally this cycle is created for each learning point.

You could browse both Course 1 and 2 at SCI Training quite a bit of material available therein.

Science experiments ...

Wedding day ...

Links ...

Camille Paglia: http://www.desires.com/1.2/sex/docs/paglia2.html

Steven King on Writing: http://www.msu.edu/~jdowell/King_Everything.html

Social Bookmarks: http://del.icio.us/

The number of Americans living in poverty rose by 1.3 million last year, to 35.9 million, while those without health insurance climbed by 1.4 million, to 45 million, the Census Bureau reported today. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/26/national/26cnd-cens.html?hp

Charles Bukowski on writing poetry:

CB: I write right off the typer. I call it my "machinegun." I hit it hard, usually late at night while drinking wine and listening to classical music on the radio and smoking mangalore ganesh beedies. I revise but not much. The next day I retype the poem and automatically make a change or two, drop out a line, or make two lines into one or one line into two, that sort of thing—to make the poem have more balls, more balance. Yes, the poems come "off the top of my head," I seldom know what I’m going to write when I sit down. There isn’t much agony and sweat of the human spirit involved in doing it. The writing’s easy, it’s the living that is sometimes difficult.

CB: There’s too much bad poetry being written today. People just don’t know how to write down a simple easy line. It’s difficult for them; it’s like trying to keep a hard-on while drowning—not many can do it. Bad poetry is caused by people who sit down and think, Now I am going to write a Poem. And it comes out the way they think a poem should be. Take a cat. He doesn’t think, well, now I’m cat and I’m going to kill this bird. He just does it.

I have written with children running about the room having at me with squirt guns. That often helps rather than hinders the writing: some of the laughter enters.

CB: A dry period for me means perhaps going two or three nights without writing. I probably have dry periods but I’m not aware of them and I go on writing, only the writing probably isn’t much good. But sometimes I do get aware that it isn’t going too well. Then I go to the racetrack and bet more money than usual and scream at and abuse my woman. And it’s best that I lose at the track without trying to. I can almost always write a damn near immortal poem if I have lost somewhere between 150 and 200 dollars.

~From: artdamage

deSoto, Titling, WorldBank policy ...

id21: "Land titles have been promoted by liberal economists such as Hernando de Soto on the assumption that they account for the affluence of the West and that if the poor had clear titles and rights enforceable in law over the land and property they live in they would be able to obtain credit and lever themselves out of poverty and into capitalist affluence. The evidence, even in Peru where de Soto's ideas have been most widely applied through government led titling programmes, is that increased access to credit for those granted titles is minimal. To date, the link between the provision of titles and poverty reduction remains unproven. "

Steven King: Everything You Need to Know....

Primer on Public Key Encryption

"The article below is an outline of the principles of the most common variant of public-key cryptography, which is known as RSA, after the initials of its three inventors - a mathematically detailed explanation of RSA by the programmer Brian Raiter, understandable to anyone willing to spend a little time with paper and pencil. Primer on Public Key Encryption

Adventures in Poetry

"Then came a time when I started to think about quality, and about what makes good things good. It would lengthen this essay too much to cover those ideas here. The basic summation is that something is good if you find it to be good. That is, does it please you?

"This turned out to be revolutionary in terms of my writing, because it undoes the need for a standard entirely. Instead of writing verses that longed for something outside myself, I begin to pen whatever it made me happy to write. This in turn made the experience of writing enjoyable, and I learned my first genuine lesson about poetry, that it satisfies the soul in its own way.

"Here is the first poem I ever wrote ... Adventures in Poetry" (via Martin)