"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
28.11.04
6.11.04
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
30.10.04
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
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:
"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:
6.9.04
4.9.04
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)."
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)."
27.8.04
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."
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.
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.
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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
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. "
21.8.04
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)
"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)
19.8.04
17.8.04
Good Work
"It is of course not possible to summarize the results from so wide ranging a study and one, moreover, that is still very much in progress. We can say that professionals in most domains do have a clear vision of what constitutes good work and how it might be achieved, even as they recognize the challenges to carrying out such good work in the current milieu. Good Work is most readily carried out when the various interest groups are well-aligned - that is, when the long term professional mission, the individual practitioner, the current institutions and gatekeepers, the shareholders - in the case of for-profit enterprises- and the society's stakeholders all want the same thing from current work.
"In contrast, when there are wide disparities within and across these interest groups, good work is elusive. Nonetheless, even under less favorable conditions, some individuals and institutions succeed in carrying out good work and these exemplars serve to inspire others. Moreover, some individuals are actually stimulated by misalignment and proceed to 'right' the institutions in which they work or to devise new ones that realize their ideals.
"On a less positive note, many young workers feel that they cannot afford at present to be ethical as well as excellent. They believe that others around them are cutting corners all the time, and if they are to be successful, they must also sacrifice the means to achieve the desired ends. One day, they are confident, when they are in a position of power, they will be able to achieve and exemplify good work. This discouraging finding underscores the need for educational experiences that foreground goodwork as well as for periodic booster shots, should the image of good work become blurred. "
~From: About the GoodWork Project
"In contrast, when there are wide disparities within and across these interest groups, good work is elusive. Nonetheless, even under less favorable conditions, some individuals and institutions succeed in carrying out good work and these exemplars serve to inspire others. Moreover, some individuals are actually stimulated by misalignment and proceed to 'right' the institutions in which they work or to devise new ones that realize their ideals.
"On a less positive note, many young workers feel that they cannot afford at present to be ethical as well as excellent. They believe that others around them are cutting corners all the time, and if they are to be successful, they must also sacrifice the means to achieve the desired ends. One day, they are confident, when they are in a position of power, they will be able to achieve and exemplify good work. This discouraging finding underscores the need for educational experiences that foreground goodwork as well as for periodic booster shots, should the image of good work become blurred. "
~From: About the GoodWork Project
16.8.04
15.8.04
iPlan - Community engagement techniques and tools
"... clusters of techniques that best suit each phase of plan making and development assessment processes."
iPlan - Community engagement techniques and tools
iPlan - Community engagement techniques and tools
Collaboration Tiers
Many-to-Many: Collaboration Cases and Spaces
"The broadest tier is a guest space, available to all.
The second tier is a knowledgebase, accessible to all employees and contractors.
The third tier is product development, for employees and contractors bound by a confidentiality agreement.
The fourth tier is for the core management team to share confidential financial and HR information."
"The broadest tier is a guest space, available to all.
The second tier is a knowledgebase, accessible to all employees and contractors.
The third tier is product development, for employees and contractors bound by a confidentiality agreement.
The fourth tier is for the core management team to share confidential financial and HR information."
14.8.04
Happiness in Everyday Life
Happiness in Everyday Life: The Uses of Experience Sampling
"The strongest predictor of trait happiness was how Excited (vs. Bored) a person felt, followed by the variables Feeling Good about Self, Proud (vs. Ashamed), Sociable (vs. Lonely), feeling Active and Strong (vs. Weak). The correlation coefficients of these variables with Happiness (and controlling for age), were .58, .59, .47, and .53, respectively (with N= 799, all p?s<.0001)."
"The strongest predictor of trait happiness was how Excited (vs. Bored) a person felt, followed by the variables Feeling Good about Self, Proud (vs. Ashamed), Sociable (vs. Lonely), feeling Active and Strong (vs. Weak). The correlation coefficients of these variables with Happiness (and controlling for age), were .58, .59, .47, and .53, respectively (with N= 799, all p?s<.0001)."
More Flow ...
Eudaomonia, The Good Life
"Central to Seligman's positive psychology is 'eudaemonia, the good life, which is what Thomas Jefferson and Aristotle meant by the pursuit of happiness. They did not mean smiling a lot and giggling. Aristotle talks about the pleasures of contemplation and the pleasures of good conversation. Aristotle is not talking about raw feeling, about thrills, about orgasms. Aristotle is talking about what Mike Csikszentmihalyi works on, and that is, when one has a good conversation, when one contemplates well. When one is in eudaemonia, time stops. You feel completely at home. Self-consciousness is blocked. You're one with the music.'
'The good life consists of the roots that lead to flow. It consists of first knowing what your signature strengths are and then recrafting your life to use them more - recrafting your work, your romance, your friendships, your leisure, and your parenting to deploy the things you're best at. What you get out of that is not the propensity to giggle a lot; what you get is flow, and the more you deploy your highest strengths the more flow you get in life.'"
"Central to Seligman's positive psychology is 'eudaemonia, the good life, which is what Thomas Jefferson and Aristotle meant by the pursuit of happiness. They did not mean smiling a lot and giggling. Aristotle talks about the pleasures of contemplation and the pleasures of good conversation. Aristotle is not talking about raw feeling, about thrills, about orgasms. Aristotle is talking about what Mike Csikszentmihalyi works on, and that is, when one has a good conversation, when one contemplates well. When one is in eudaemonia, time stops. You feel completely at home. Self-consciousness is blocked. You're one with the music.'
'The good life consists of the roots that lead to flow. It consists of first knowing what your signature strengths are and then recrafting your life to use them more - recrafting your work, your romance, your friendships, your leisure, and your parenting to deploy the things you're best at. What you get out of that is not the propensity to giggle a lot; what you get is flow, and the more you deploy your highest strengths the more flow you get in life.'"
Thinking about Africa
Virtual Communities: Africa Rising
"About a decade ago, I migrated directly from a frontier Wyoming cattle ranch to the frontier of cyberspace. I began to focus on concepts rather than cows. It was a surprisingly easy transformation.
But there is a surface tension on this new world that some folks find difficult to penetrate. It appears to me that common perceptions of the potential of virtual commerce, digital society, and intangible work are limited by the habits of mind one develops in an industrial society.
I believe that my background of working in agriculture, avoiding television, and living in a small town rather than a 'burb spared me some crippling assumptions about this emerging world. And it therefore seemed likely that others in the so-called developing world - Africans, for instance - might have been spared these illusions as well. "
"About a decade ago, I migrated directly from a frontier Wyoming cattle ranch to the frontier of cyberspace. I began to focus on concepts rather than cows. It was a surprisingly easy transformation.
But there is a surface tension on this new world that some folks find difficult to penetrate. It appears to me that common perceptions of the potential of virtual commerce, digital society, and intangible work are limited by the habits of mind one develops in an industrial society.
I believe that my background of working in agriculture, avoiding television, and living in a small town rather than a 'burb spared me some crippling assumptions about this emerging world. And it therefore seemed likely that others in the so-called developing world - Africans, for instance - might have been spared these illusions as well. "
Keith Hart?s Memory Bank - Biography
Keith Hart?s Memory Bank - Biography: "KEITH HART is an anthropologist who lives in Paris and commutes to London, where he teaches part-time at Goldsmith?s College. He started out studying classical languages and literature and went on to explore Atlantic society from the point of view of Africans in North America, West Africa, the Caribbean, Britain, France and South Africa. He has taught in ten universities on both sides of the Atlantic, for the longest time in Cambridge, where he was Director of the African Studies Centre. He has worked as a consultant, journalist, publisher and gambler. He contributed the concept of the informal economy to development studies, and has published widely on economic anthropology, especially about money. The abiding theme of his work is the relationship between movement and identity in the transition from national to world society. His life is now defined by the poles of solitary writing and world travel. He is sustained by his family and the virtual intellectual network in his laptop. He is currently writing a novel and several other works of non-fiction. His greatest ambition is to be a movie critic. "
Keith Hart?s Memory Bank - Welcome!
Keith Hart?s Memory Bank - Welcome!: "Money and language are the main means of communication available to us and both serve as a store of individual and collective memory. The idea of a ?Memory Bank? refers to the convergence of the two as information ? especially now that the exchange of objects through money and the exchange of meanings through language are coming together in a single network of communication, the Internet.The various sections of this portal give access to my published and unpublished work on people, machines and money? as well as to other forms of creative writing and information about me. The site grew out of the publication of my book, The Memory Bank (Profile Books, London, 2000), which was later published in the U.S.A. as Money in an Unequal World (Texere, New York, 2001). "
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