A sense that the world has shifted –again– via a Seb posting and some other nearby bits. Jon Udell’s weblog contributes Technorati Trackbacks and this example of Lucas Gonze’s cleverness shows the use… So what we have here is the means to track conversations, to distribute pointers to mp3s… the implications are just starting to line up for interpretation.
And there’s stuff out there like Iraqi Maqaam… This really changes the playing field for teaching a World Music course.

A speech ascribed to the “first Scot in recorded history”, Calgacus:
30. “Whenever I consider the origin of this war and the necessities of our position, I have a sure confidence that this day, and this union of yours, will be the beginning of freedom to the whole of Britain. To all of us slavery is a thing unknown; there are no lands beyond us, and even the sea is not safe, menaced as we are by a Roman fleet. And thus in war and battle, in which the brave find glory, even the coward will find safety. Former contests, in which, with varying fortune, the Romans were resisted, still left in us a last hope of succour, inasmuch as being the most renowned nation of Britain, dwelling in the very heart of the country, and out of sight of the shores of the conquered, we could keep even our eyes unpolluted by the contagion of slavery. To us who dwell on the uttermost confines of the earth and of freedom, this remote sanctuary of Britain’s glory has up to this time been a defence. Now, however, the furthest limits of Britain are thrown open, and the unknown always passes for the marvellous. But there are no tribes beyond us, nothing indeed but waves and rocks, and the yet more terrible Romans, from whose oppression escape is vainly sought by obedience and submission. Robbers of the world, having by their universal plunder exhausted the land, they rifle the deep. If the enemy be rich, they are rapacious; if he be poor, they lust for dominion; neither the east nor the west has been able to satisfy them. Alone among men they covet with equal eagerness poverty and riches. To robbery, slaughter, plunder, they give the lying name of empire; they make a solitude and call it peace.
(Ancient History Sourcebook: Tacitus: Life of Cnaeus Julius Agricola, c.98 CE, Translated by Alfred John Church and William Jackson Brodribb)
from http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/ancient/tacitus-agricola.html

One day-hike at a time, Betsy’s article in Appalachian Trailways News, is now available!

A remarkable implementation of treemapping to visualize Google’s news, surely just the tip of an iceberg of renderings (via a slashdot posting):

Treemaps are traditionally space-constrained visualizations of information. Newsmap’s objective takes that goal a step further and provides a tool to divide information into quickly recognizable bands which, when presented together, reveal underlying patterns in news reporting across cultures and within news segments in constant change around the globe.

It occurs to me (in thinking about what I want to do, preparatory to a talk with the Provost) that it’s mostly concerned with waking students up to the excitement of taking responsibility for their own wetware.
My aims as a teacher are aimed at General Education and interdisciplinarity, and not at disciplinary materials or agendas. I want to emphasize curiosity and creativity, and complex linkages –using the tools of information discovery and management to build communications and enhance the distribution and sharing of knowledge.
Anthropology is really good basic perspective for this, based as it is in the variety of humanity, and equipped as it is with highly-developed poaching and borrowing skills.

This keeps happening. I serendipitously [i.e., by a surprising/unsought/unanticipated route or conjunction] discover a term or concept that efficiently labels something I’ve been doing or saying for a long time. Such nexus events connect me to a discourse I hadn’t recognized or heeded, and allow me to recognize what I do as “a kind of a…” I’m pretty sure this happens to everybody, but I at least haven’t paid much heed to it before now. For example…

Continue reading →

Quite a while ago I began a page of favorite online dictionaries and word lists, but I haven’t tended it for far too long –many dead links, and it needs an overall scheme. I’m going to prune and reorganize and then relocate it over the next few weeks, and surely will augment as well, as things present themselves. It’s a good candidate for transplantation to oook.info, seems to me.

I’ve started a (now 3-way) blog to support the Contemporary Global Issues course at oook.info/mt/132. I expect that we’ll carry out explorations of the pedagogical uses of the medium there.

Unpleasantly high numbers in a cholesterol test make it clear that I have to take action. I’ve started a log file to track my thoughts and discoveries. The bit that now seems the most difficult is giving up coffee, but at least in the early stages it seems like something I need to do as part of the Discipline.
It’s very hard to figure out the many contradictory versions, though exercise and moderation seem to be the universally agreed necessities. Ron cautions moderation in moderation too.

Just how and why this cluster found its way here is too long a story. They surely belong with favorite quotations.
One day in 1755 the celebrated actor Charles Macklin boasted to Samuel Foote that he could repeat virtually any speech after a single hearing. Thus tempted, Foote challenged Macklin to repeat the following passage:

So she went into the garden to cut a cabbage leaf to make an apple pie; and at the same time a great she-bear, coming up the street pops its head into the shop. “What! no soap?” So he died, and she very imprudently married the barber; and there were present the Picninnies, and the Grand Panjandrum himself, with the little round button at top, and they all fell to playing the game of catch as catch can, till the gunpowder ran out at the heels of their boots.
(http://www.anecdotage.com/index.php?aid=6870)

‘Son,’ the old guy says, ‘no matter how far you travel, or how smart you get, always remember this: someday, somewhere,’ he says, ‘a guy is going to come to you, and show you a nice brand-new set of cards on which the seal is never broken, and this guy is going to offer to bet you that a jack of spades will jump out of the deck and squirt cider in your ear. But son,’ the old guy says, ‘do not bet him, for as sure as you do you are going to get an earful of cider.’
Damon Runyon (The Idyll of Miss Sarah Brown)
(http://www.amsta.leeds.ac.uk/~pmt6jrp/personal/oldquotes.html)
After all, one can’t complain. I have my friends. Somebody spoke to me only yesterday. And was it last week or the week before that Rabbit bumped into me and said ‘Bother !’ The Social Round. Always something going on.
A.A.Milne (Winnie-the-Pooh, Eeyore speaking)