Literature and Technology Together At Last
The PowerPoint Anthology of Literature
I particularly like the one with Hamlet's soliloquy as a Powerpoint table.
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The PowerPoint Anthology of Literature
I particularly like the one with Hamlet's soliloquy as a Powerpoint table.
From They Thought They Were Free via Seeing the Forest
"You see," my colleague went on, "one doesn't see exactly where or how to move. Believe me, this is true. Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for the one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You don't want to act, or even to talk, alone; you don't want to "go out of your way to make trouble." Why not? - Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty."Uncertainty is a very important factor, and, instead of decreasing as time goes on, it grows. Outside, in the streets, in the general community, "everyone is happy. One hears no protest, and certainly sees none. You know, in France or Italy there will be slogans against the government painted on walls and fences; in Germany, outside the great cities, perhaps, there is not even this. In the university community, in your own community, you speak privately to you colleagues, some of whom certainly feel as you do; but what do they say? They say, "It's not so bad" or "You're seeing things" or "You're an alarmist."
...speaking of how Germany became what it was in the 1930s and 40s.
This article in New Scientist talks about face transplant technology, which should be ready to hit the 'real world' in six to nine months.
Surgeons are working on face transplants (which I have to admit is something I never thought of) to help people who are badly disfigured.
But [Peter Butler of the Royal Free Hospital's] own survey of 120 people including nurses and doctors revealed that while some would be willing to receive a face transplant, none would be prepared to donate their own face. Butler hopes that if full details of the procedure and its medical need are made clear, potential donors might be able to overcome their initial revulsion.
It would be kind of creepy, someone walking around with your face, though they also say that it wouldn't look like you (underlying bone structure, etc.)
First they came for the Muslims, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Muslim.Then they came to detain immigrants indefinitely solely upon the certification of the Attorney General, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't an immigrant.
From Stephen Rohde, a constitutional lawyer and President of the ACLU of Southern California, with acknowledgements to Rev. Martin Niemoller (1937)
Some people will say--and do say, loudly and often--well, that's just silly, that's not going to happen. But it can happen, it has happened, and it will happen if we don't remember that it's our country and our government. The slow whittling away of things we take for granted is what's dangerous, the things we didn't see at the time. If we lose the heart and soul of this country in our pursuit of terrorists and designated evil, then we lose.
via TalkLeft
A Ghost Town Gallery....
William Burton has an interesting entry on what the Democratic party should be doing.
I don't totally agree with his characterization of the recent historical Republican party. My parents, my aunt and uncle and a huge number of other people I grew up around in the 60s were what they call 'rock-ribbed' Republicans. They were not businessmen or industrialists or... They were regular small town and rural 'folks' who thought that the Republican party represented them and their interests. Watergate made them Democrats. And they have not looked back.
But I do agree with him very much that economic citizenship (my interpretation) is hugely important and something the Democratic party would do well to pay attention to.
I don't, by the way, think, as many articles and weblogs have advised, that the Democratic party should find issues on which they can be 'winners.' I think they should figure out what they believe in and fight for it passionately. We're seeing way too much calculating and figuring the odds and checking the polls. I care about this: the Constitution of the United States of America, individual liberty, full citizenship, both economic and social, for every citizen, the US as a strong member of an international community, universal health care, the public good, and other things, many of them closely related to these.
This is cool
This week we introduced corners. In order to reliably track corners a dog needs to learn to lose the scent and refind it. At this stage, three weeks into tracking, they don't really have a sense of how to do that or even that it will ever be necessary. What we've been teaching so far is put your nose down, follow the scent and win big prizes.
At this point, then, I don't care that they lose the track and refind it at a corner. I care that they find the corner. The way I teach corners is this: I walk a straight leg (a leg being each length of track between turns). At the 45 yard mark, I leave a treat. At the 50 yard mark, I turn. The turn I want at this point is greater than 90 degrees. Five yards after the turn, I leave another treat. The first treat slows down fast dogs. The second treat tells them they've done things right.
When you introduce corners, things get harder for the tracklayer. To track a straight leg, you have to line up two distant objects and walk so that they stay lined up. At a corner, you have to note where you are in the field (so you know where the corner is)--you can leave a marker, but eventually, you'll want to lay completely blind tracks--then, you have to turn, find two new objects to line up with, and proceed. If you lay many tracks in a row, or if you're putting in more than one turn, you'll probably want to draw a map.
Dogs did awesome. Next week we add length and time.
From an LATimes article (registration required, but free):
In a feather-brained brief, the administration argued that conservationists should consider the upside of bird deaths at a remote Navy live-fire range. "Bird-watchers get more enjoyment spotting a rare bird than they do spotting a common one." Besides, the government added, Navy bombardment keeps away people who might otherwise disturb the birds.
I am rendered speechless....
via See the Forest
...is back.
It's all shiny. :-)
And, presumably, all paid for by Other People.
Via TalkLeft:
One People's Project- contains links, timelines, and summaries on the Central Park jogger case.
...provide a living, protect and care for the land, enrich the community and a whole host of other things that we keep pretending aren't important.
Here are the results of a study conducted by Drs. Rick Welsh and Thomas Lyson:
The results of the analysis indicate that, in general, agriculture dependent counties in states with anti-corporate farming laws fared better (less families in poverty, lower unemployment and higher percentages of farms realizing cash gains) than agriculture dependent counties in states without such laws...We conclude that diversity in agricultural structural forms at the county level appears to have positive impacts on rural communities as measured by poverty, unemployment and farm cash returns. Counties appear to require some agricultural industrialization to prosper but suffer when this type of agriculture crowds out less industrialized forms.
Diversity is better. Better than 200,000 hogs a year. Better than compacted soil. Better than biotech for everyone. Other studies show that medium-sized farms are more profitable and that small dairy farms generally benefit not only the farmer who runs them, but the local environment and community as well.
Nathan Newman tells us why single payer is better health care:
...read this Economist article that cover's France's health care system, one that still spends less than the US but is more comparable. (See the graph to the left comparing spending between countries. The comparable number for Canada is 9.3%)"By any measure, France's health service is among the best in the world. Life expectancy for women (despite a collective reluctance to stop smoking) is second only to Japan, and the men are not far behind (despite, or because of, a continuing love of wine). There are no waiting lists for hospital treatment; general practitioners are prepared to make home visits, even at night and during the weekend; and the poor get their treatment free.
Little irritates me more than to be told that because I am a liberal, I must be anti-American and elitist and against everything. Let me say this very clearly:
I love this country.
It is not anti-American to criticize this country or the president or the election process or the dog catching policy of East Wazoo. It is the essence of these United States. It is one of the founding pillars--the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights.
And that saying? My country right or wrong?
This is how the whole thing goes--
My country right or wrong, when right to keep her right, when wrong to put her right.
It's what we sign on for, criticism and suggestions and opinions. Its why we educate ourselves, why we continue to learn, why we stay here. It's an obligation of every elected official that they serve all the people, that all people have a voice, that that voice--not the voice of business, not the voice of George W. Bush, not the voice of lobbyists--must be considered in every decision that's made.
Lots of people disagree with me. I don't consider them less than human, lesser citizens, or anti-American. I do consider some of them loud and obnoxious and incapable of getting a clue. As someone once said, that's what makes a horse race.
And, BTW, elitist? It is to laugh...
From Yes!:
Americans want action taken on climate change, contrary to Bush administration policies. Ninety-seven percent believe the US should increase the use of new technologies that improve fuel efficiency and conserve energy. Sixty-seven percent of us think the federal government should guarantee health coverage for every American. Seventy percent think corporations have too much power, and 79 percent of us say it should be illegal to sell genetically modified fruits and vegetables without labeling.--Sarah Ruth Van Gelder
We have elected officials. Perhaps it's time they did their jobs and actually represented us--the people.
...is the title of a short story by Jerry Oltion and Adam-Troy Castro. It also pretty well describes this site.
I love abandoned buildings. I love the echo and the quiet and the sense of something not-quite-right. Abandoned places carry with them all the stories of the things that happened there. Occupied buildings conceal their stories with fresh paint and remodeling and file cabinets and doors. What we abandon retains scraps of what was, things we didn't care enough to take along, hints of who we were and, by comparison, where we've gone.
Cool stuff.
Where I work there are upper level people who chafe constantly at purchasing and hiring rules. It restricts us, they say. And sometimes the rules do. Sometimes we don't get to hire perfectly good people because they don't have the right piece of paper. Sometimes we spend extra money buying from a more expensive source when a cheaper one's available. But sometimes, more often than we like to admit, the rules keep some, particularly ambitious, high-level 'somes,' from giving contracts to their friends, from setting up projects that can't be completed because the people brought in for the project are friends and favor-payoffs, and cronies, from giving this contract in return for that contract or adding this 'sweet' deal into the pot. Rules exist because people forget what they've signed on for and particularly because they forget that the world isn't All About Them.
Found via TalkLeft, Sydney Schaumberg has an excellent article in the Village Voice about the Central Park Jogger case, how it came about and where it stands now.
Every now and again, we get a look, usually no more than a glimpse, at how the justice system really works. What we see--before the sanitizing curtain is drawn abruptly down--is a process full of human fallibility and error, sometimes noble, more often unfair, rarely evil but frequently unequal, and through it all inevitably influenced by issues of race and class and economic status. In short, it's a lot like other big, unwieldy institutions. Such a moment of clear sight emerges from the mess we know as the case of the Central Park jogger.
I hope this doesn't turn into a 'blame this on a scapegoat and then it goes away' incident. Because it isn't about one person who 'did wrong,' although it is partly about the specific and individual wrongs that people who were involved in the case may have done.
But it is also very much about who we are and what we value and how we pay attention. There's alot going on right now that requires this kind of attention from all of us. It's a time for reading the Constitution and remembering that it even applies to people we don't like, consider insignificant, and wish were invisible.
Week two of tracking class and it was coldish (25 degrees or so) and foggy. The ground was somewhat damp which is good and it was a little windy.
Last week to start the dogs, we laid three very short tracks in a row--all in the same row, all at the same time--10 yards/20 yards/20 yards. There's a flag at the start and a glove at the end of each track and a distance of about 10 yards between each of the three tracks. Treats are left about every footstep or every other footstep along the track with additional treats in the glove. The purpose is to get the dog's nose down and to begin to show them what the point is. Typically, it takes the first track for the dog to realize there are treats, the second track to realize he can use his nose to find the treats, and the third track to really begin to track.
This week we did longer tracks--two tracks of 50 yards each. With longer tracks, you start to get an idea of what the dog's style will be. Some dogs quarter (move back and forth across the track). Some dogs are very visual and stop and look around a lot or are easily distracted by events along the way. Some dogs airscent a lot or stop and investigate a lot of other scents. You can start to see who'll be fast, who'll be methodical, what they'll do with their tail and shoulders and nose. It's easier, by the way, to see this stuff about other people's dogs, especially for handlers who are just starting out. With your own dog, you're trying to hang onto the line and listen to the tracklayer and not get tangled up and trying to think of all the other things we've talked about.
Next week: corners
From BoingBoing comes the news that if you search for the string 'http' on Google, you get a list of all pages ordered by their Google rank. The top ten are:
The web, it seems, is more about searching for things that it is about the things themselves. I think this is cool.
PubScience has been shut down.
I am so furious about this I have trouble finding the words. FOS however, says it pretty well:
SIIA [who led the lobbying campaign to shut down PubScience] spokesman David LeDuc said...as paraphrased by Matthews, "it is fairer to charge researchers for the articles they use than to charge taxpayers for the cost of running a Web site that makes them available for free." (PS: Let's get this breathtaking assertion straight. When the research is funded by the government and the articles donated by authors, then taxpaying readers should have to pay a second levy to read them, and pay it to a third party with no role in the research? The cost of a running a government web site is a greater burden on taxpayers than the cost of paying profiteers standing between authors and readers?)
Does everyone have it straight now? Write ups of public research done with public funds are not available to you and me--the public--because someone stole them from the public domain. They stole it right out from under us and then had the unmitigated gall to say, 'well, the government shouldn't pay for that.' That's exactly what the government should pay for! That's one of the important reasons why it's here! To make knowledge available to all, equally. To promote the spread of knowledge and wisdom. To provide for the public good. Not for private profit. Private profit has to take care of itself. The public good is why we have a country at all.
Public good. Public good. Public good. Say it three times and it's yours. We have a right to say that some things are held in common for all of us. We. The People. It's why we're here.
This afternoon, I toured a virtual reality lab. The VR space itself had four sides (three walls and a floor) capable of holding images and wireless 3-D specs and controllers. It's used for developing simulations and testing experimental setups, though I think it's most often used to give tours because there's another lab nearby with six imagable sides.
They took us through the 'fire cave,' which involved diving off cliffs, sliding down rock faces, flying, and getting hit with a great stone pendulum. It was incredibly vertigo-inducing, swooping around corners, dropping off a sheer rock face, winding rapidly down narrow twisty corridors. There were no railings to grab or chairs to sit in, nothing to ground one to the 'real' reality. I had to keep reminding myself I was standing on solid ground and even then, I almost fell over twice and had to reach out and grab the arm of the person next to me.
The thing that fills me with wonder, though, is the guy who gives the tour, who stood right with us and ran the controller. He's been taking people through, one group every fifteen minutes, for at least the last two hours, swooping and plunging and flying, and he doesn't fall over or close his eyes or say, 'whoa.' How many times, I wonder, did he go through this before he could do it so easily? How many times would I have to do it before I didn't have to close my eyes.
And the thing is, I want to know. I want to do it so many times that it's a cool, regular thing, like an everyday walk in the park. I have no idea why. But I do.
Get your Movie In A Minute.
The Blair Witch Project
Actors
A twig! I'm scared!
Audience
Get me some dramamine.
Actors
Thump.
THE END
Gareth (whose last name I don't know and am too lazy to look very far for) gives us his best tips for making your writing suck less at StreetTech.
Among his suggestions:
A friend of mine who came to tracking class last Sunday, sent me an email yesterday that said: "...I totally identified with Pete [her dog]--it is like me thinking all those thoughts and training myself to just follow the thought patterns on just one thought....have you ever thought of using the same techique to teach writers to write?"
This would probably be a lot more insightful comment if I knew what she was talking about.
What I think she's referring to is a comment I made when I was describing the process of tracking and I said, dogs already know how to track, they do it all the time and everyday. What you have to show them is that now there's one particular scent that you want them to pick out and follow.
I suppose this could apply to writing. We all know how to tell stories. We do it all the time. To write a publishable story, especially a short story, you have to learn to focus on one story and follow that one thread all the way through. All the other compelling threads are irrelevant. This time, it's not that story.
In The Future of Ideas, Lawrence Lessig states very clearly something important in our society that isn't talked about much these days:
We don't sell the right to vote because the currency--cash--is not the only or most important dimension of value in our society. There are people who devote themselves to careers that don't make them wealthy--schoolteachers and civil servants. We don't think they, by virtue of that choice, should have less power to control how their government is run. They've made choices that result in their having less power in the marketplace; but the marketplace is not a proxy for every domain of social power. As the philosopher Michael Walzer properly observes, there are many spheres of siocial influence in our lives. And we permit power in one sphere to dominate power in another in very few contexts...when the resource becomes foundational to participation in a society, then we assure that it remains in the commons....
I have said this, or something like it, myself before, but I'm sure more people hear it when Lawrence Lessig says it.
I'm currently reading Emergence by Steven Johnson (I'm also reading The Future of Ideas by Lawrence Lessig at the same time, which is an interestingly weird experience), so I thought it was kind of neat to find out that Steven Johnson has a brand new blog.
...via BoingBoing
Here's a cool web page on the centuries-long effort that led to our modern understandings of paleontology and biology. The Goof Gallery (intpretations and theories that didn't prove out in the long run) is fascinating.
The Waypath Project will take any URL, for an article, say, or a weblog entry and tell you other entries that are related to it.
If I enter Sometimes I Just Don't Get It..., an entry I made on October 29th, it finds 92 possibly related things.
This would be even cooler if I could figure out how they were related, exactly....
I'm teaching a tracking class starting tomorrow morning. You in the home audience can play along.
What is tracking?
Tracking is teaching your dog to follow the scent left by a person. It's a sport, not prep work for search and rescue. Several groups sponsor tracking 'tests.' Most notably the AKC and Schutzhund groups. Schutzhund tracking is much more about style and points than AKC tracking, which is judged pass/fail. The AKC sponsors three tracking tests: TD, TDX, and VST. I won't go into the details of each one here, but you can look it up.
Tracking training is almost always positive (not counting things like, 'stop eating that dead thing,' 'quit pouncing on mice,' 'don't eat the harness.'). The handler doesn't know what the dog smells so can't say absolutely that it's 'wrong.' And while you could, conceivably, force a dog to track I can't see the fun in that. People who do more disciplined tracking training often talk about their dogs 'lying' to them, for example, coming to a corner and just continuing on as if they'd found the corner when they hadnt. I can't say what these dogs are doing, since I haven't seen them, but it's very likely they don't know what they're supposed to be doing and so are just doing the best they can.
Tracking requires equipment:
As the tracks get longer you will also want water for your dog and a notebook to draw maps, note conditions, set goals and specific things to work on. If you're really committed to this whole tracking thing, you can get a notebook made of waterproof paper.
While your dog is learning tracking (which it basically already knows--lucky dog!) you will be learning:
You could also profitably learn to identify trees and shrubs, but I can testify that it's not really necessary.
If you wondered about the waterproof paper comment, well, tracking takes place in all weather--rain and sleet and snow (not lightning, though. We don't track when there's lightning). You should learn (if you don't know how already) to dress in layers and you should learn about waterproof jackets and hats and boots. You can, actually, do all your tracking in city parks, but most people don't and part of tracking is climbing over things and crawling under things and figuring out how to get out of wherever you ended up without crossing the track.
Since this has already passed firmly into 'More Than You Wanted To Know' camp, I will save 'How I start dogs tracking' until tomorrow...
Okay, first of all, the elections.
But before that, someone ran a red light and smashed in the whole side of my car. Good news abounds--no one was hurt, all the damage can be repaired, there were only two cars involved (and it is traditionally a busy intersection). But...
someone smashed in the whole side of my car :-(
And, of course, let's not forget the elections :-( :-( :-(
Finished
The Cluetrain Manifesto by Rick Levine, Doc Searls, David Weinberger, Chris Locke
Roshomon Gate by I. J. Parker
The Art of Possibility by Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander
Understanding Arabs: A guide for Westerners by Margaret K. (Omar) Nydell
Started
The Future of Ideas by Lawrence Lessig
Emergence by Steven Johnson
A Killing Sky by Andy Straka
Red lights mean STOP.
"I used to have dragonflies in my house. But I don't anymore."
Slowly, ever so slowly, over the last year or so, I've seen the dialogue on copyright changing from one that's all about protection and how we can protect our 'stuff' ever more tightly (with little thought given to the effect on fair use and first sale and other traditional liberties) to one where balance of rights, the public good, and who should control speech and creativity are finally also on the table. It has changed too from one where all opponents of copyright extension were characterized as 'information wants to be free' fanatics, where the only choice was between greater and greater copyright protection and no copyright at all. Fair use and first sale and using things you owned in ways that worked well for you were barely even on the table.
A year or more ago I 'listened' to an online conversation where the only person talking about the balance of rights between creators and citizens was shouted off the table. This year--last month, in fact--people stood in line all night to hear Eldred v Ashcroft argued before the Supreme Court. It was a dry, non-sexy subject--no blood, no guns, no gore--and people are talking about it and caring about it and insisting that the complex pieces of a fundamental issue be included in the conversation
My vague sense of the world, the thing in the back of my head that reads articles and listens to people and notes the direction of the wind, tells me that the same thing is starting to happen with democracy. People are starting to talk about what democracy really means, what our place in it is, how we can be active citizens and not just consumers and people who vote once in awhile. I believe (and this is just beginning) that we're getting into the nitty-gritty, past the notion of 'majority rules' and into basic freedoms and Constitutional rights and the need for citizens to speak and to be heard.
Kevin Rayboud at Lean Left says (talking about the 2000 presidential election and why people keep talking about it):
It is not a feeling one lets go of, and it is not a feeling one gets over. Elections aren't a game, regardless of how the press covers them. They are the central feature of a democracy, they are how we decide our collective fates. To have one perverted, and perverted in such a blatant fashion, is not something easily forgotten.
At a meeting at work this week a colleague of mine said in response to a question about the future of our organization that we ought to be about increasing civic capacity and social capital.
It's a small thing, talking about democracy as if we're entitled to it. But I believe that it will grow.
I am totally appalled by this article in the Washington Post, though it makes it perfectly clear (if it wasn't already) why arresting a few CEOs and staging show trials won't 'fix' what's wrong with American business.
Let me give you the quick and simple facts:
Ethics go with you wherever you go, whatever you do.
You don't get a free pass because you're in business. My god, when did share holders outweigh all other human beings? This stuff isn't rocket science, equivocating professors not withstanding.
It's dead simple--
Making money for yourself (because this is really what we're talking about) and for the shareholders cannot be the most important thing. Being a complete human being is what we're here for. If the business can't survive honest business men and women, then what the heck's it in business for...