Accept no substitutes

Author: Paul (Page 20 of 146)

Jef the Mime at the Ocrafolk Fundraiser

I met Jef back in the very late 70s when he was with Touch the Mime Group. He got me to collect old green bar computer printer paper to use in some of their skits. Jef told me that the skit was about the dehumanizing effect of computers. Only after I saw Touch play the skit did I realize that Jef thought that being dehumanized by computers was a bad thing!

Here’s a sample of Jef the Mime warming up the crowd as they come into the Ocrafolk fundraiser this past Friday night.

ContextMiner moves to the next level

ContextMiner
Our Knight News Challenge proposal for ContextMiner has been moved up to the next level. That means we get to refine and expand the proposal and answer additional questions like:

What will you have changed by the end of your project? (no more than 1800 characters please)

And this must be done by Thanksgiving!

Wish us luck, give ContextMiner try if you’d like and vote us up on the Knight News Challenge site!

Earlier ContextMiner post here.

Reading rather than bookmarking

I’m actually reading these articles more deeply than the ones I scan and bookmark on Delicious for later:

“Maelstrom Over Metadata” in Inside Higher Ed

“A debate is carrying on in the undercurrents of the academic Web, pitting those who defend libraries’ core mission of open access against the membership organization that collects and operates a massive online catalog on which many of them rely.” OCLC acquiring copyright on all catalog records created by its members puts WorldCat at odds with Open Library, Zotero and LibraryThing say many including Aaron Swatrz on his blog which I’m also reading.

“Jeff Shear’s History of “Cynthia,” the World War II Spy” at History News Network.

“This is the true story of how a spy known as Cynthia, Madame Elizabeth Brousse, was used by the desperate British and their American friends in the three-day old Office of Strategic Services to nudge the course of history.” The story promises to be steamy and historic and to correct past historical mistakes including but not limited to: she wasn’t even blonde. Her hair was auburn or “perioxided,”

News of the Future – New York Times corrected

The latest from the New York Times Special Edition folks just hit my mail box. They now have video and a PDF of the print edition.

New York Times Special Edition Video News Release – Nov. 12, 2008 from H Schweppes on Vimeo.

Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2008 18:06:10 -0500 (EST)
From: New York Times Special Edition
To: pjones
Subject: HUNDREDS CLAIM CREDIT FOR NEW YORK TIMES SPOOF

November 12, 2008
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT:
writers@nytimes-se.com
917-202-5479
718-208-0684 415-533-3961

“SPECIAL” NEW YORK TIMES BLANKETS CITIES WITH MESSAGE OF HOPE AND CHANGE
Thousands of volunteers behind elaborate operation

* PDF: http://www.nytimes-se.com/pdf
* Ongoing video releases: http://www.nytimes-se.com/video
* The New York Times responds: http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/12/pranksters-spoof-the-times/

Hundreds of independent writers, artists, and activists are claiming credit for an elaborate project, 6 months in the making, in which 1.2 million copies of a “special edition” of the New York Times were distributed in cities across the U.S. by thousands of volunteers.

The papers, dated July 4th of next year, were headlined withlong-awaited news: “IRAQ WAR ENDS”. The edition, which bears the same look and feel as the real deal, includes stories describing what the future could hold: national health care, the abolition of corporate lobbying, a maximum wage for CEOs, etc. There was also a spoof site, at http://www.nytimes-se.com/.

“Is this true? I wish it were true!” said one reader. “It can be true, if we demand it.”

“We wanted to experience what it would look like, and feel like, to read headlines we really want to read. It’s about what’s possible, if we think big and act collectively,” said Steve Lambert, one of the project’s organizers and an editor of the paper.

“This election was a massive referendum on change. There’s a lot of hope in the air, but there’s a lot of uncertainty too. It’s up to all of us now to make these headlines come true,” said Beka Economopoulos, one of the project’s organizers.

“It doesn’t stop here. We gave Obama a mandate, but he’ll need mandate after mandate after mandate to do what we elected him to do. He’ll need a lot of support, and yes, a lot of pressure,” said Andy Bichlbaum, another project organizer and editor of the paper.

The people behind the project are involved in a diverse range of groups, including The Yes Men, the Anti-Advertising Agency, CODEPINK, United for Peace and Justice, Not An Alternative, May First/People Link, Improv Everywhere, Evil Twin, and Cultures of Resistance.

In response to the spoof, the New York Times said only, “We are looking into it.” Alex S. Jones, former Times reporter who is an authority on the history of the paper, says: “I would say if you?ve got one, hold on to it. It will probably be a collector’s item.”

-30-

Folkstreams.net wins Dorothy Howard Folklore and Education Prize

Congratulations to all the folks who have worked with us on Folkstreams.net especially for this award, Paddy Bowman and Tom Davenport for their work on Educators and Generations Portals for Folkstreams.

Dorothy Howard Folklore and Education Prize

Dorothy Howard (1902-1996) grew up in the Progressive Era, receiving a teaching degree from the North Texas Normal College (now the University of North Texas ) in 1923. During her career as a teacher and principal in Texas, New York, and New Jersey, Howard integrated folklore into her curriculum by having students collect and study playground chants and jingles as a way of introducing them to poetry; research their names and their meanings to study spelling; and write about such traditions as ravioli making to develop their writing skills. Howard’s interest in children’s folklore and education enabled her to bridge a gap between the Victorian “armchair” study of children’s culture with the field-based studies we conduct today. In 1938 she received her doctorate in education with a study of games that combined these two styles of study. Her pioneering work shows us that folklore can be used in the curriculum in a way that is rich and meaningful. The Dorothy Howard Prize honors both Howard and those who have followed her lead in folklore and education.

The prize competition is open to all individuals and organizations whose work effectively encourages K-12 educators or students to use or study folklore and folkloristic approaches in all educational environments. Such works include but are not limited to curriculum materials, publications, audio and video recordings, multimedia publications, and exhibits. Work produced in the two calendar years prior to the annual AFS meeting is eligible for consideration.

Nominations should identify the author(s) or creator(s), publisher, date of publication, and describe why the nomination deserves consideration. Statements should not exceed three double-spaced pages. Entries must have been published within the past two years. Anyone may nominate work by submitting three copies of materials, or in the case of non-print work, three copies of detailed descriptions and any relevant supporting materials to the address below. In the case of particularly extensive or expensive materials (e.g., multimedia kits), a single copy may be submitted, but please still include three copies of the nominating statement/description.

Submissions will be evaluated on the basis of the following criteria:

• Does the product add significantly to the body of folklore and education literature or resources?
• Is the material appropriate for intended age groups and subject focus?
• Do the materials have the potential to engage their intended audience fully?

Please send submissions to Luc D. Guglielmi, Department of Foreign Languages, Kennesaw State University, 142 Pilcher, 1000 Chastain Road, Kennesaw GA 30144-5591. The prize amount is $100, and the next deadline for submissions is August 1, 2009. The recipient of the Dorothy Howard Prize will be announced during the annual Folklore and Education section meeting during the American Folklore Society conference each October.

2008 Recipient

The 2008 committee is pleased to announce this year’s award recipient is the website Folkstreams. This site is a powerful resource with national and international appeal and potential for use. This easy to navigate site currently provides 106 documentary films which represent a wide slice of the American experience and provides a valuable learning tool for educators, students, folklorists, cultural studies specialists, film studies students, and the general public. Folkstreams.net provides information on filmmakers, blog opportunities, ways to access links, copyright information, links by subject and region and a guide to best practices in film digitization. There are both educator and generations portals which have links to excellent discussion questions, a range of related activities that incorporate several learning styles and suggested activities which promote critical inquiry, student application of the ideas and techniques for students’ own community research.

Twitter nuggets of the week

will.i.am’s new song “It’s A New Day” http://is.gd/6YTP A little post-election euphoria

Retweeting @aarahkahak: Johnny’s in Carrboro in McSweeney’s “My Son James’s Favorite Snacks From the Local Tienda” http://twurl.nl/0dqwo2

Vandana Shiva at UNC tomorrow (11/11) at 5:30 in the Global Education Center. I met her in Delhi; very impressive. Go hear http://is.gd/6T4b

Seen in Carrboro Citizen: School lunch for this Monday= nachos with beer & cheese & salsa

“Programming is a conversation with information in the same way science is a conversation with nature.” Michael Tiemann

Little Stevie Wonder doing “Fingertips (parts 1 & 2)” http://is.gd/6syM Jazz harmonica and bongos at their best! Live in 1963

Flip Mino and the Drive across the USA

I picked up the Flip Mino that the J-School ordered from Amazon for me this morning. I took one very short clip and it looked pretty nice. Then I went by the Art Building where I saw a guy sitting the the gallery with a computer and a very large printer. He was, and prolly still is, Joel Slayton of zero1.org; he explains what he was up to for the past week. Hint: see title for this post.

Reunions – dB (yes), Kinks (maybe)

I was lucky enough to catch the dBs reunion on Saturday at a get out the vote rally at the Johnson Center for Undergrad Excellence. Chris Stamey and Peter Hosapple backed by Mitch Easter on bass and Will Rigby on drums. I first saw the frontmen and perhaps Mitch as the Sneakers then the H-Bombs then the dBs.

Listening to the reformed dBs reminded me that I need to digitize my vinyl of “Re-precussions” and “Stands for Decibels”.

In the meantime, Boston Globe writer Geoff Edgers writes to tell us of his mid-life quest to reunite the Kinks. To that end, Geoff sends a link to this trailer for a documentary of his efforts. He gets help, so far, from Sting, Robin Hitchcock, Paul Weller, Zooey Deschanel and others.

I love Geoff’s banjo/guitar duet with Weller and his vocal Duet with Sting. Hope to hear the Kinks together soon.

ContextMiner: Explore globally, aggregate locally.

ContextMiner logo
Chirag Shah created a great tool for archivists called ContextMiner which helps the archivist set up an automated set of directed web crawls across various media repositories, like YouTube. It’s already working pretty well in the pre-beta phase and has a nice set of users. But we thought that ContextMiner could do more for more people.

Chirag and I showed ContextMiner to John Conway at WRAL.com and Kirk Ross of the Carrboro Citizen and we all agreed that exploring the web globally could make the communty building job of local and regional news sites much more effective. How effective? We asked Dr. Sri Kalyanaraman, whose conceptual and empirical publications have identified a sense of community as one of the critical aspects in online information environments, to give us a hand in measure the effect on community building and ContextMiner.

We want to make sure we do a good job of community building ourselves so we asked Michael Tiemann president of the Open Source Initiative and vice president of Open Source Affairs at Red Hat to help us out with that part and to make sure we have the licensing and IP clear for community use and reuse and modification.

Now we had a great team that could help guide ContextMiner from pre-beta to a robust product for media aggregation and community building for news sites of all kinds but with special attention to local and hyperlocal sites.

Next step is to seek funding. With the help of Jennifer Gallina of the J-School, we put together a proposal for the Knight Foundation’s News Challenge.

We submitted the proposal today and will hear later in the month.

In the meantime, if you’d like to read the proposal, it’s here AND if you create an ID you can help rate the proposal at the same place.

Note: Our proposal does a better job of describing ContextMiner that I did above, but this picture will help some too.

How ContextMiner works

iPhone. Now with free AT&T Wi-Fi. In a very inconvenient way.

“iPhone. Now with free AT&T Wi-Fi.” So read text messages and email from ATT today.

AT&T is now offering free AT&T Wi-Fi access to our iPhone™ customers. That means free AT&T Wi-Fi access at thousands of hotspots nationwide, including Starbucks®.* Hotspots are available in cafes, bookstores, airports, hotels and universities nationwide.

While this is really nice and all, it’s as much a deal for AT&T as it is for those of us with iPhones. We already have unlimited data over the Edge network so we do have access at all those places for free already. Slower but free all the same. It never would have occured to me to buy wifi access at a Starbucks for my iPhone. Let the Edge lead (for free)!

But using the Edge is in the end slightly more expensive for AT&T than wifi. Here they are providing both in Starbuck or the airport and they say “pay for the one that cost us the least or have the one that cost us the most.” In the airport, they push a web page at you to sign on to wifi. Fair enough, but if you let your phone go to sleep, you have to logon all over again. It’s so annoying that I usually give up and just use Edge anyhow.

Now we all win. No log in web pages. Faster and better battery savings with wifi. Cheaper for AT&T and for me too!

Or so I thought.

Then I read this:

Accessing AT&T Wi-Fi hotspots is easy

Activate Wi-Fi from the settings icon on your iPhone.
Select “attwifi” from the list of available networks.
Enter your 10-digit mobile number and check the box to agree to the Acceptable Use Policy.
[doesn’t AT&T know my 10-digit moble number already?]
Tap “continue.”
[why can’t it act like other open or openish networks? AT&T knows if it’s an iPhone or not]
You will receive a text message from AT&T with a secure link to the AT&T Wi-Fi hotspot.
[almost as annoying as before]
You will not be charged for the text message. [Thanks, Paul]
Open the text message and tap on the link for 24-hour access to the AT&T Wi-Fi hotspot.
[will I have to do this every time I connect? Yikes, it’s worse than before! when my phone goes to sleep, do I have to start all over again?]

Social Datavisualization for Journos and the rest of us

Among the many things that Phil Meyer has gotten right is the need for journos to understand data and how to tell stories from that data. Lately you many have noticed that the NYTimes has been doing a lot of graphics to do just that.

The graphs looked familiar to me in some way and now I know why. IBM and NYTimes are partnering using IBM’s Many Eyes, a social datavisualization site/product, to allow not only NYTimes journos to visualize large datasets, but also you and your classes.

At the NYTimes Visualization Lab site, you have access to the same datasets that the journos have and you can visualize that data in several other ways with customized presentations.

You may have noticed some Wordle (aka word cloud) visualizations in the Daily Tar Heel recently. Chancellor Thorp’s installation speech was Wordled and shown behind him on the front page.

Holden Thorp and his Wordled speech

If you’d like to upload your own datasets or find more than the NYTimes has to offer, you can visit the IBM Many Eyes site, and go from there. Of course, you and your students and co-researchers can comment on the visualizations and datasets as you would expect on a social media site.

The media here are the datasets and the visualizations that is the interesting shift. You’ll be interested to know that the NYTimes began first with campaign finance API released earlier this month, but there is much more there now.

For those who are less than happy with IBM’s solution or who would like to try another variation on this same approach Swivel (thanks Andrew Dunn for pointing this out) offers many of the same features including the social components.

Another great site for visualization is Hans Rosling’s Gapminder which includes a great video of his 2007 TED talk. Gapminder uses animation to show the passage of time (for example).

Parts of Gapminder were acquired by Google and have been showing up on http://www.google.com/ig/directory?url=www.google.com/ig/modules/motionchart.xml
in a quiet and very beta way.

Microsoft has been even quieter about their version of motion visualization, but I can tell you that something along the same line has been being demoed since April of this year. Expect something like Gapminder from MSFT this spring if not sooner.

Returning you to your regular programming…

Twitter ate my blog!

I feared this when I began using Twitter back in 2006, but I was able to hold out until recently. I’ve finally given in. Twitter has eaten my blogging energy; it’s taken on a lot of the function that the blog should, could and occasionally has had.

I thought, at first, that Twitter would be mostly me communicating with a few friends, like say group IM. But it wasn’t too long before Twitter became more of a timely way to share snips of news and information. A place to ask questions and give answers. One blog function done right there.

I found myself live-Tweeting at talks and events where I once would have live blogged. My idea was that these would be my notes from which I would write the real post on the blog. It was and is so convenient to just type a sentence or two. Then type one more. Especially when my tweeple were egging me on as I tweeted the more interesting events and speaker. My tweeple would snipe, make jokes and send questions that in a few cases, I ended up asking the speaker or panel. Twitter was doing a better job than my blog at reaching out and interacting with my friends. I switched from live blogging to live tweeting entirely.

My iPhone. Need I say more? My iPhone with Twittterific was almost the perfect tweeting platform. If it only had ReTweet, it would be perfect. That and browser integration and of course Cut and Paste. But the iPhone ended up better for live tweeting. It’s much less intrusive than the laptop and always with me. Small, easy to carry, easy to hide err less obvious and about right for the 140 character messaging of Twitter.

When blogging, I needed my laptop. With Twitter, I only need my phone. Great little ideas and news, the kind of things that I read Ed Cone’s blog for, ended up on Twitter from my phone and never on this blog.

When I began this blog, I promised myself an entry per day, then an entry per week day, then a pass on vacation and travel. I made good on those continually modified promises for several years. But recently I stalled on the blog. What has ended up here recently has been recipes that my tweeple have asked for. Too long for 140 character messages. And some events.

True, I’ve also been involved in a lot of other writing–grants, proposals, class notes, and the like–that draw the blogging energy out of me. Still, I blame Twitter. It does a great job of highly interactive social communication.

And my Tweets and my Twitter page is public, even posted on this blog. My Tweets are carried over to Facebook as my status messages and kept there. Very nice integration.

So I’m not gone; I’m merely tweeting.

Back to the roots – savory fall veggies

After making up some Gumbo z’Herbs, you’ll have some root veggies left — unless you only buy greens. If you add some local sweet taters and some rosemary and some roasted peppers – jalapeno and sweet green. You can have a nice seasonal main dish. I like it all a little crunchy so I make it up this way:

3 beets – medium sized
2 sweet potatoes
turnips and/or carrots (we skipped these this time out)
1/2 onion
garlic
rosemary from our abundant bush
roasted peppers to your taste
olive oil

Dice the root veggie into small cubes. Do the same to the onion. Chop up those peppers after removing the seeds. Keep chopping on the rosemary.

Saute the garlic, onion and some rosemary until the onions are transparent.

Lower the heat a bit and add the hardest roots first. In my case this was the sweet potato, how long you cook depends on how crunchy or show you prefer. Add the beets and the roasted peppers. Add the rest of the rosemary.

Yummm. Crunchy savory local and healthy.

We served this with pineapple chunks that Sally had just picked on fresh from the store.

Local Gumbo z’Herbs

Gumbo z’Herbs isn’t Gumbo as you might know it. First off, there’s not okra called for. You use file or nada. Nada being easier to come by ;-> Gumbo z’herbs is a bunch greens of different kinds all cooked up with the Trinity and roue and spices. Just like that. If not during Lent, you can add sausage or ham and seafood like oysters, but really it’s all about eating those greens in the fall or early spring.

I went down to the Carrboro Farmer’s Market and filled up on everything I needed on Saturday morning. Even though I slept in a bit, I had not trouble getting everything I needed. Proportions change according to taste and availability but here’s what I did:

1/2 head of cabbage – I used red which will mean the broth will be purple, most recipes call for green/white cabbage

1 bunch of collards

1 bunch of beet greens

1 bunch of turnip greens

1 bunch of kale (I left this one out)

whatever other greens you like say spinach, carrot tops, etc

Trinity: 1 Onion, 2 – 3 Green Pepper, buncha Celery (I used bok choy instead, tearing off the greens which I used with the greens above and chopping the stems).

Garlic – I use a lot

Oil, flour for roux (I admit I skip this part most time – kill me later Cajuns)

Thyme, allspice, file (I use this as the thickener), hot pepper (fresh, dried, roasted or powered as suits)

1/2 to 1 pound of Chorizo – crumbly kind as opposed to the hard Spanish variety (remember I was getting this all local).

Method:

Wash the greens. Wash them again. One more time. These are right off the farm and are gona be gritty if you don’t.

Stem greens as appropriate. Roll em and slice into 1/2 – 1 inch pieces then chope into sorta squares.

Boil them greens. Put the cabbage and collards in first as they take longer to cook. Later add the beet greens and finally the spinach or carrot greens. use enough water to cover. about 30 minutes of boiling all together.

In another pot, heat the oil. Then add the garlic and the trinity and the hot peppers. Stir until the onions are transparent.

Add the chorizo and brown.

Add the cooked greens dipped from the water, reserving the water.

Stir the greens in good then add the spices.

Now add enough of the reserved water to cover and keep on cooking. Bring to a boil then simmer so that the flavors blend nicely.

Serve alone or over rice.

Ed and Paul in G’boro, ConvergeSouth, ASS update, Jones at Duke

Ed Cone and I will be speaking at the Greensboro Central (Public) Library on Wednesday October 15 at 7 pm. The Greensboro Webloggers Meetup will be there too. It’ll be great to talk with the folks there who will be celebrating ConvergeSouth 2008 the next few nights (sign up now!).

Grady alerts us in comments that Ocracoke Island’s institution, Albert Styron’s Store, is again open! They also have an online store.

I spent the better part of yesterday at Duke talking with the good folks who do communications (the bad ones musta stayed home) over there. My slides which I may use with different words in Greensboro are here http://tinyurl.com/MediaGap

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