what say ye to a game of sorts? let's have an info-race to see who can
find out the most the first about the mystery ship the "high aim,"
found off the coast of australia last month. first person to report
the mystery solved is shipped one package of extra-special turkish
delight courtesy of me.

--

barry
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

mike brannon sends me this article -- woww! i want that CD!



----------------------
Researchers translate DNA code into music
Tuesday, January 21, 2003 Posted: 10:21 AM EST (1521 GMT)


Composer Richard Krull, left, joined researchers Aurora Sanchez Sousa
and
Fernando Baquero in an interpretation of DNA code into easy listening
music.


MADRID, Spain (AP) -- Imagine the human genome as music. Unravel DNA's
double
helix, picture its components lined up like piano keys and assign a
note to
each. Run your finger along the keys.

Spanish scientists did that just for fun and recorded what they call
an audio
version of the blueprint for life.

The team at Madrid's Ramon y Cajal Hospital was intrigued by music's
lure --
how it can make toddlers dance and adults cry -- and looked for hints
in the
genetic material that makes us what we are. They also had some
microbial
genes wax melodic.

The end product is "Genoma Music," a 10-tune CD due out in February.
"It's a
way to bring science and music closer together," said Dr. Aurora
Sanchez
Sousa, a piano-playing microbiologist who specializes in fungi.

DNA, or deoxyribonucleic acid, is composed of long strings of
molecules
called nucleotides, which are distinguished by which of four
nitrogen-containing bases they contain: adenine, guanine, thymine or
cytosine, represented as A, G, T and C. These became the musical
notes.

French-born composer Richard Krull turned DNA sequences -- a snippet
of a
gene might look like AGCGTATACGAGT -- into sheet music. He arbitrarily
assigned tones of the eight-note, do-re-mi scale to each letter.
Thymine
became re, for instance. Guanine is so, adenine la and cytosine do.

It's all in the genes
Played solo on percussion, classical guitar or the other instruments
used on
the CD, the sequences would sound cute but rudimentary, the musical
equivalent of PacMan in an era of Microsoft Xbox.

So the alphabet soup of bases served as just that, base lines to
accompany
melodies composed by Krull and his scientific colleague. They say the
melodies were influenced, even dictated, by the mood and rhythm of the
underlying genetic code.





In general, the genome music is an easy-listening sound that is
vaguely New
Age. One of the prettiest songs is based on Connexin 26, a human gene
that
causes deafness when it mutates.

Another song draws on a yeast gene known as SLT2. Sanchez Sousa, the
main
author of the project, is fond of the sequence because it features a
stretch
in which one triplet of nitrogen bases appears several times in rapid
succession -- a repetitive phenomenon that has a musical equivalent
called
ostinato.

She declined to discuss marketing plans for the CD. She said she's
circulated
it only among academics so far, and psychologists in particular find
it
relaxing.

Her team's plans for future music include having the hospital choir
sing a
vocal piece based on DNA from a bacteria.

Seeking music in nature goes way back. In the 6th century B.C., the
Greek
philosopher and mathematician Pythagoras argued that celestial bodies
in
rotation gave off pitched sounds that blended into a beautiful harmony
he
called "the music of the spheres."

The idea is that matter and its behavior -- wheat fields shimmering
and
tongues of fire dancing -- may hold something intrinsic that can be
transformed into music, said Dr. Fernando Baquero, head of
microbiology at
Ramon y Cajal Hospital.

Maybe that's why people like music: It's already inside them anyway,
so
hearing it touches a piece of them, Baquero said.

"When we like something, it is because we recognize it," he said.
"It's
funny, but to like is to recognize."

In a message dated 1/1/03 4:55:50 PM, stingray1@... writes:

<< re both Tim and Barry's comments:

Yeah, it's funny how the Greeks didn't get it right, and seems like it would
have been easy for them to inquire more thoroughly (at least, as we look
back with today's knowledge and values). But what else is interesting is how
ideas stay in the collective understanding well beyond their veracity
(assumed or proven...). For example, though we know full well exactly where
the heart and brain are and what they do, we still refer to many deeply
emotional things as "affairs of the heart" (or other phrases involving the
heart as the seat of emotions and motivation; "my heart wasn't in it,"
"heart and soul," "I love you with all my heart," etc). I guess referring to
brain structures or neurotransmitters just wouldn't cut it...

Happy New Year all,
-Rich >>

Rich:
Great thoughts to start the New Year! You're right. Saying, I love you with
all my brain, just doesn't cut it.
Best,
Your Cousin

re both Tim and Barry's comments:

Yeah, it's funny how the Greeks didn't get it right, and seems like it would
have been easy for them to inquire more thoroughly (at least, as we look
back with today's knowledge and values). But what else is interesting is how
ideas stay in the collective understanding well beyond their veracity
(assumed or proven...). For example, though we know full well exactly where
the heart and brain are and what they do, we still refer to many deeply
emotional things as "affairs of the heart" (or other phrases involving the
heart as the seat of emotions and motivation; "my heart wasn't in it,"
"heart and soul," "I love you with all my heart," etc). I guess referring to
brain structures or neurotransmitters just wouldn't cut it...

Happy New Year all,
-Rich

In a message dated 12/31/02 3:54:43 PM, barry@... writes:

<< I always thought it was funny that the ancient Greeks were so unempirical.
Aristotle would nonchalantly say that men have more teeth than women, based on
nothing more than speculation, without ever bothering to go in and ask his
wife to open her mouth.

Of course, if you *did* count his wife's teeth, he'd just say that all that
tells you is how many teeth his wife has, and tell you nothing about women in
general; thus did 'reason' outweight actual fact-gathering. Strange, in our
empirical era!
  >>

Barry:
Happy New Year! I hope 2doublenil3 brings much prosperity and love (not that
they necessarily go hand in hand). I loved your comments on Aristotle. This
is why philosphy has always driven me crazy.
Your Cousin

Tim Writes:

> The idea that the mind, and thus understanding, is found in the
> chest originated with the Greeks who failed to see that the brain was
> actually in the the head.

I always thought it was funny that the ancient Greeks were so unempirical.
Aristotle would nonchalantly say that men have more teeth than women, based on
nothing more than speculation, without ever bothering to go in and ask his
wife to open her mouth.

Of course, if you *did* count his wife's teeth, he'd just say that all that
tells you is how many teeth his wife has, and tell you nothing about women in
general; thus did 'reason' outweight actual fact-gathering. Strange, in our
empirical era!

--

barry
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

In a message dated 12/30/02 10:27:11 PM, stingray1@... writes:

<< The heart is the seat of understanding; thus the Scripture speaks of men
"wise in heart;" and "slow of heart" means dull of understanding. To learn
by heart is to learn and understand; to learn by rote is to learn so as to
be able to repeat; to learn by memory is to commit to memory without
reference to understanding what is so learnt. However, we employ the phrase
commonly as a synonym for committing to memory."

-Rich >>

Rich:
Good work. The idea that the mind, and thus understanding, is found in the
chest originated with the Greeks who failed to see that the brain was
actually in the the head.
Tim

Interesting article. I had one class at Baylor in which we memorized more
poetry than we did in all of high school ( "whan that april with its showres
sote...")

I, too, got intrigued by the phrase "to learn by heart." Here's what a
search of Bartleby.com turned up:

"E. Cobham Brewer 1810-1897. Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. 1898.

Learn by Heart (To).

The heart is the seat of understanding; thus the Scripture speaks of men
"wise in heart;" and "slow of heart" means dull of understanding. To learn
by heart is to learn and understand; to learn by rote is to learn so as to
be able to repeat; to learn by memory is to commit to memory without
reference to understanding what is so learnt. However, we employ the phrase
commonly as a synonym for committing to memory."

-Rich

In a message dated 12/30/02 1:36:08 AM, barry@... writes:

<< Oh, alright. Just for the sake of good holiday cheer, I'll capitalize this
capital blessing:

Happy New Year to you and your family (extended and otherwise)! >>

Barry:
2shay! Happy New Year to yours.
Cousin Tim

tim writes

> Barry:
> Learning by heart comes from the Greek theory that our brain was in the
> chest. Now, would you stop with the non-capitalization business!
> Your Cuz

heheeeeee!

professor weaver:
how bout if i stop when you stop misspelling "cousin" and begin putting
question marks at the end of your questions?

Oh, alright. Just for the sake of good holiday cheer, I'll capitalize this
capital blessing:

Happy New Year to you and your family (extended and otherwise)!


--

barry
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

In a message dated 12/29/02 5:43:47 PM, barry@... writes:

Barry:
Learning by heart comes from the Greek theory that our brain was in the
chest. Now, would you stop with the non-capitalization business!
Your Cuz

by the way, notice that her first phrase was "these fragments," which
brings to mind ts eliot's poem that describes modern life as 'the
waste land.'

the entire phrase, referring to the literary works that sustain him
through a dark age, is, "these fragments i have shored against my
ruin."

--

barry
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

this article got me thinking about that phrase, 'knowing something by
heart.' that's more apt than we recognize, because, as she points out,
having these things inside causes a change in oneself. at a time when
even the most educated people have an unexamined coziness with the
worst that is thought and said, what a revelation it would be to
exchange the TAAS, and, more damagingly, the wall-to-wall preparation
for it, with 'rime of the ancient mariner' and 'paradise lost.'

this is one of the few things-ain't-what-they-used-to-be articles that
i'd agree with. for one short blip of history -- a generation or two,
common american children were treated like greek aristocracy. one
day....

--

barry
  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

A Lost Eloquence

December 29, 2002
By CAROL MUSKE-DUKES

  LOS ANGELES - The poem in my head goes something like this: Sunset
and evening star/And one clear call for me!/O Captain my
Captain!/Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers/I'm nobody!Who
are you?

These fragments were put there by my mother, who can recite, by heart,
pages and pages of verse by Tennyson, Milton, Wordsworth, Longfellow
and Dickinson. On occasion, I can manage to recite the poems that
contribute to my voice-over poem in their entirety. My mother -- whose
voice (like the sound of waves, a kind of sea of words) is one of my
earliest memories, my first sense of consciousness and language --
gave me this gift.

She is 85, a member of perhaps the last generation of Americans who
learned poems and orations by rote in classes dedicated to the art of
elocution. This long-ago discredited pedagogical tradition generated a
commonplace eloquence among ordinary Americans who knew how to (as
they put it) "quote." Poems are still memorized in some classrooms but
not "put to heart" in a way that would prompt this more quotidian
public expression.

Thus my mother, who grew up on the prairie of North Dakota during the
Great Depression, spent time in high school memorizing the great
thoughts and music of the ages. She never forgot these poems and
managed to regale all who would listen (mostly her husband and
children), and by virtue of this word-hoard was able to effortlessly
(almost eerily) produce a precise appropriate quote for any occasion.
Often social or familial failings inspired her. For example (to me,
frowning at my spinach): "How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is/To
have a thankless child." Or an aside to a sibling whining in line at
the bank: "They also serve who only stand and wait."

For those who love poetry, the recent announcement that Ruth Lilly had
donated about $100 million to Poetry magazine was a welcome boost. But
to me the most illuminating aspect of this extraordinary news was not
the size of the gift, but rather a subsequent revelation that the
journal gets roughly 90,000 submissions a year -- yet its circulation
peaks at just 10,000. Literary magazine editors have pondered this
kind of awkward imbalance for some time. It seems there are a lot of
would-be poets out there. But it seems that many are writers who write
without reading. And the power of reciting in order to share a poem or
to comfort oneself with its words, seems almost unknown.

  Years ago, when I taught in the graduate program in writing at
Columbia, the late Russian poet Joseph Brodsky was also on the
faculty. Brodsky famously infuriated the students in his workshop on
the first day of class, when he would announce that each student would
be expected to memorize several poems (some lengthy) and recite them
aloud. The students - even if they had known that Brodsky had learned
English in dissenter's exile in Russia by putting to heart the poems
of Auden, among others - were outraged at first.

There was talk among students of refusing to comply with this
requirement. Then they began to recite the poems learned by heart in
class -- and out of class. By the end of the term, students were
"speaking" the poems of Auden and Bishop and Keats and Wyatt with
dramatic authority and real enjoyment. Something had happened to
change their minds. The poems they'd learned were now in their blood,
beating with their hearts.

In the workshops I teach I continue to ask students to choose poems to
memorize. Recently, a young woman loudly resisted what she called a
boring exercise. But after memorizing Emily Dickinson, Countee Cullen,
Sylvia Plath and several haiku by Issa, she was still going strong -
delighted with how the words rolled trippingly off her tongue. "I own
these poems now," she said. (When I ask students early in the semester
if they know a poem by heart, I usually hear the names Shel
Silverstein and Dr. Seuss and occasionally Robert Frost. They often
say that they can't memorize long poems, but then I ask them if they
know the lyrics of "Gilligan's Island" or "The Brady Bunch," and my
point is made.)

Lately I've been dropping in at a local preschool and have been
reminded how much even little children love to memorize poems. They
absorbed rather effortlessly Robert Louis Stevenson's "The Swing" (How
do you like to go up in a swing?/Up in the air so blue?), accompanied
by gliding hand and body movements. They loved the repetition, the
chiming of the words and images.

My mother taught me this poem as she pushed me on a swing in our
backyard in St. Paul, Minn. when I was about their age. She would push
me out and away from her on the "question" line (How do you like);
then I would fly back on the "comment" line (Up in the air so blue).
Like my young students, I was swinging within the shape of the words;
I was learning words with my body as well as my brain; I was swinging,
like them, within what would last forever -- within the body of the
poem itself.



  Carol Muske-Dukes, who teaches creative writing at the University of
Southern California, is the author, most recently, of ``Married to the
Icepick Killer: A Poet in Hollywood.''

<http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/29/opinion/29DUKE.html?ex=1042191744&ei=1&en=93c\
fcac9eb44e175>

In a message dated 11/2/02 5:43:23 PM, barry@... writes:

<< in the sept 16th issue of the new yorker -- one year after the trade
center attacks -- (and by the way the cover alone, once again, is
worth the price of the magazine) the novelist cathleen schine has a
fascinating article on the history of the world trade center site. >>

Barry:
Thanks for the summary. We subscribe to the New Yorker and I will read the
article. Now, more importantly, will you immediately cease and desist the
email culture of not capitalizing proper nouns! Perhaps, you have already
lost the use of your pinky and the shift key. A little practice should have
you back in business in no time.
Your Cuz, Tim

in the sept 16th issue of the new yorker -- one year after the trade
center attacks -- (and by the way the cover alone, once again, is
worth the price of the magazine) the novelist cathleen schine has a
fascinating article on the history of the world trade center site.

she decided to research the 16-acre site from the earliest days we
have record of it, from farm to churchland, red-light district,
revolutionary epicenter, mob site, and business district, and it
paints an amazing picture. a must read.

<http://newyorker.com/fact/content/?020916fa_fact1>

some quotes:

In 1614, the Tijger, a Dutch trading ship, burned at anchor and sank
in the North River. Three centuries later, in 1916, workers were
digging a tunnel for the I.R.T. subway line. At the intersection of
Greenwich and Dey, twenty feet below ground, their shovels hit wood:
the charred keel and three charred ribs of a ship. The style of the
ship was early Dutch, and radiocarbon dating of the wood indicated
that the vessel was built some time between 1450 and 1610. .... the
Tijger, a trading vessel a world away from home, burned and sank
beneath the water where almost four hundred years later two towering
buildings devoted to world trade burned and sank to the ground.


---
On September 21, 1776, just a few weeks after the disastrous Battle of
Brooklyn, when the British took back Manhattan and George Washington
and his troops barely escaped obliteration, a fire started at the
Fighting Cocks, a tavern near Whitehall Slip, and swept uptown. ....
the confusion and the shouting ... "joined to the roaring of the
flames, the crash of falling houses and the widespread ruin . . .
formed a scene of horror great beyond description." The fire destroyed
one-quarter of the city's buildings, including five hundred houses and
everything on the site of the future World Trade Center.


---
After more than a decade of frenzied growth, and in the midst of high
inflation (the cost of living went up sixty-six per cent in the first
two months of 1836 alone) and a burgeoning labor movement, a notice
appeared in the local papers: "Bread, Meat, Rent, Fuel! Their Prices
Must Come Down. The Voice of the people Shall Be heard, and Will
Prevail!" A meeting in City Hall Park was announced for "All Friends
of Humanity, determined to resist Monopolists and Extortioners." When
the huge rally adjourned, a mob, several hundred strong, stormed off
to the warehouse of Eli Hart & Co., at 175 Washington Street. The
protesters, according to the next day's Evening Post, "commenced
violent proceedings upon it and those who were in it," smashing doors
and windows, and throwing two hundred barrels of flour onto the
street, along with a thousand bushels of wheat. One month later, the
Wall Street panic of 1837 hit New York.


and there's more. again, a must read.
--

barry
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

here's an article by david brown, author of "bobos in paradise," about going
back and forth from 'red' america to 'blue' america -- that is, conservative,
middle-class, churchgoing, smalltown america vs liberal, middle/upper-class,
nonchurchgoing, urban america.

his portraits are quite revealing, especially his surprises about 'red' america.
he
knows 'blue' america well, coming from the washington dc area, but his
preconceptions about 'red' america are way off from what it's actually like.

(what does a conservative church in 'red' america do with a gay guy with aids?
where does the local newspaper stand on abortion? how deep is the
resentment of the wealthy upper-class? who did gore's "people vs the powerful"
play best with? thou mayest be surprised.)

meanwhile, my best guess is that texas can be described as 'purple'.

<http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2001/12/brooks.htm>

interesting is his conclusion that we as a country are not, as some have
claimed, a battleground with two very different camps at war for the soul of
america, but rather we're more like a high-school cafeteria, with the jocks over
here, the nerds over there, the d'n'd crowd over there, coexisting but almost
mutually exclusive.

definitely worth a read if you're interested in the taboo subject of class in
america.

Selected favorite quotes from the article:

> But the fact that works we now regard as classics were once regarded as
> obscene should give us pause, and we might at least be willing to think twice
> before rejecting contemporary popular culture without a fair hearing.

> He shows that the highest flights of the human imagination may be strangely
> linked to the lowest impulses of the soul. Thus, any culture offers a truly
> problematic whole, a strange circulation of artistic energies, in which what
> we sometimes simplistically try to separate as the classic and the popular
> elements mix and interpenetrate in surprising ways.

> The lasting cultural accomplishments of our age may not always be conveniently
> where we expect to find them, based on past experience and our ingrained
> assumptions about what constitutes true art.

And to a large extent, the full measure of "art" that will be applied to our
times can only be applied from a distance. There are composers and artists
who are popular today who, I believe, will be forgotten in 100 years, and
some obscure ones who will become part of the pantheon. Of course, you have
to wonder if Mozart will ever go out of style. Is Art really universal and
eternal? Erin and I had a very long conversation about this one day.

> ...we cannot dismiss a work simply because an audience reacts to it in
> emotional and irrational ways

Good stuff. Thanks for the link.

Jason

on 9/10/02 6:46 AM, barry brake at barry@... hath scrawled:

> "As a
> philosopher, Socrates regards all
> opinion, no matter how
> conventional and confused, as
> potentially partial knowledge."
>
> That's Paul Cantor, author of "Gilligan Unbound," in this article
> about why we can apply the techniques of high-culture criticism to
> popular culture. It's persuasive. Check it out.
>
> <http://wwics.si.edu/OUTREACH/WQ/WQSELECT/CANTOR.HTM>
>
>
> a poll for you profs in our midst: how often do you refer to popular
> culture in your teaching? is there a reason why you do or don't?
>
>
> --
>
> barry
> . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
>
>

"As a
                  philosopher, Socrates regards all
                  opinion, no matter how
                  conventional and confused, as
                  potentially partial knowledge."

That's Paul Cantor, author of "Gilligan Unbound," in this article
about why we can apply the techniques of high-culture criticism to
popular culture. It's persuasive. Check it out.

<http://wwics.si.edu/OUTREACH/WQ/WQSELECT/CANTOR.HTM>


a poll for you profs in our midst: how often do you refer to popular
culture in your teaching? is there a reason why you do or don't?


--

barry
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

i read that article with great interest, until it became clear that
this was another superstitious worry-piece that i thought had died out
in 97.


some responses:

<<So Davis is a procrastinator. So what? Professors are used to that.
But six hours? That's a whole new kind of extreme.>>

since when?? i regularly used to *begin* work on a paper 6 hours
before it was due... and that was in grad school! minor papers -- 1000
words or so -- took an hour (maybe i shouldn't admit that.) but maybe
davis's patterns tell us less about the internet than about this
fellow's glib gift.


<<But they also value information-gathering over deliberation, breadth
over depth, and other people's arguments over their own. >>

... does anybody on this list remember a time when that was different
-- for *most* students? naturally, most people on this list are
thoughtful and literate. but think about the people on your dorm hall
your freshman year. did they really value deliberation over
info-gathering, depth over how-many-pages-double-spaced-is-this, and
original argumentation?

if those are the problems that are caused by the internet's existence,
the news is that there's no news at all. professors have a tendency to
compare their students, average students, with their own experiences
as far above average students -- they were the sort of students who
became professors, after all.

instead of comparing today's students with shawn floyd and mark cole
and barry brake (all scholarly sorts who are on this list), it's more
profitable to compare today's students with jack roundtree,
next-door-arthur, and john dement (friends of same at baylor).
different results, eh? fill in your own examples.



<<[cooperman:] "The Web is designed for the masses," he says.>>

ahem- the web was designed specifically for academics, by academics.
tim berners-lee may have foreseen the p0rn sites and åmazon .com, but
what he *really* had in mind was cooperman and co.    just a factual
note.


<<If students cannot come up with their own ideas, cut-and-paste
technology allows them to lift someone else's sentences or phrases
with ease.>>

which is so very different from what i did with the encyclopedia
brittanica in 7th grade.


<<History teacher Davis, at Washington-Lee High School, recalls
sitting down at the computer with a student who was researching
Christopher Columbus's effect on the Americas. The student had found a
convincing essay by an author taking Columbus to task for his
treatment of Native Americans.  "Then we found another essay
contradicting that," Davis says. "I asked the student, 'Who is right?'
He couldn't tell, and neither could I." >>

and whose problem is that? actually, that situation sounds like
exactly the sort of dialogic process that would have thrilled john
ruskin.


<<Teachers like Davis spend class time teaching their Net thinkers how
to read and think more critically. "I tell them, 'Don't take any Web
site for granted. Who was the author? What authority does he or she
have? Does the author have an agenda?' ">>

how is that different from how they should treat books? should they
have just been accepting wagner's thoughts on jews and politics just
because they were in a book?


<<Students ...often don't realize how much information is not on the
Internet. ...only about 15 percent of all information -- books,
periodicals, government documents -- is found there. The full texts of
articles from most academic journals, for example, are not online nor
are most current books. Because of copyright laws, a lot of
information may never make it to the Net, Block says, which is why she
and other librarians worry about lawmakers who slash library budgets
or propose eliminating libraries altogether, saying, "Why do we need
them? Everything's on the Internet." >>

now i'll say amen to that. and furthermore, as nicholson baker points
out, there are physical aspects of certain documents such as the new
york times, which carefully places columns and sizes headlines
according to their importance in the editors' estimation, that can't
easily be replicated.


<<"Sitting in the library is a lot better than sitting on the
Internet," he says, even though he's not exactly a frequent visitor to
the main campus library. "If you go into the library, you have to take
apart a topic and you become sort of an expert. Sitting on the
Internet you don't actually learn anything." >>

and are we to just uncritically take his word for it? (heyyy.... i'm
reading this article on the INTERNET!!!)  anyway, he's mistaken, as
one trip to aldaily.com will show.


<<But do school systems really want students using the same tools to
question current proprieties and conventional wisdom? Teach kids to be
critical thinkers and they'll be sending it right back at the teacher
in the classroom. There is much to worry about.>>

honestly, i don't know what her tone is here. is she being sarcastic?


<<"There's something in a library that makes you feel like an
intellectual," said Amy Newman. "You can wear glasses, look like Dr.
Cooperman. When you read, the books have such nice writing.">>

and that's the journalist's concluding note.

wow! i'll go get a book right now!! and some smart-looking glasses.
chicks dig that.


the bottom line: school in america has always been a place in which we
prepare the young to be productive citizens, and it's always been a
core belief that literacy and the management of ideas are essential to
greater productivity. the article here implicitly acknowledges that it
is the guidance of educators that matters most in how the web is used
as a tool. we know that, all too often, educators do not do a great
job of preparing students for the actual situations we'll face -- the
actual information-gathering we'll be doing, the actual writing we'll
be engaging in, the actual math skills we'll need. the best ones will,
of course, do just that, as they always have.


thoughts?

--

barry
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .





NTMail K12 - the Mail Server for Education

here's an article in by ryan lizza that talks about the federal funds
that florida is getting these days -- huge amounts of special deals
and favors designed to keep the state loving its governor, the
president's brother.

whether or not you think the level of scrutiny applied to clinton's
financial dealings was appropriate, it does seem fair to ask why that
same level hasn't been applied by the press to bush.

<http://tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020729&s=lizza072902>

jason y writes:

>here's a link to an article that might be good
>fodder for an InPeople discussion.
>Unfortunately, I lost the ability to post to
>the group. Could you forward it there for me?
>I think you'll enjoy this article...

<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9729-2002Jul15.html>






NTMail K12 - the Mail Server for Education

a friend just wrote, in the slack grammar that characterizes informal
internet communication, "that is just apart of how i think."

that got me to thinking: how interesting it is that <apart> and <a
part> are opposites. especially since the difference in meanings is
formed by doing the opposite thing with the words, so to get <apart>,
you move the two parts together, and to make it mean
"integral" you move them apart.

yes.

--

barry
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

NTMail K12 - the Mail Server for Education

tim - my bad, there; i didn't represent his thesis entirely
accurately. he's not claiming that there's a *cause* -- only a
*correlation*.

so, he says that the reason a given person chooses to live in a city
is often stated in terms of that city's "energy" -- a hazy concept
that you can't really pin down. but there are certain things that go
along with those claims, including (but not limited to) the presence
of the "creative classes." the presence of these classes is important,
because, in his claim, we've moved from the industrial economy to the
information economy to, now, the 'creative' economy (which i put in
quotes because he has a special, broad definition of the word).

In fact, he points out that New Orleans and Miami are perfect
counterexamples -- a large "creative class" -- artists, gays,
scientists -- but not the dynamism that marks san francisco, austin,
boston, and san diego, his top four lively cities, because there's not
a large technical base in NO or Miami.

so, you're absolutely right: there's not a causal relationship here.
but nevertheless, there's often a correlation, according to his study.
a better metaphor he uses is when he refers to gays as the "canaries"
of the creative economy -- where they are, there's a good chance that
a community has 'the underlying preconditions that attract the
creative class.'

AND! I note that i neglected to include the address for this article!
ack.

it's definitely worth a read...

<http://salon.com/books/int/2002/06/06/florida/print.html>

--

barry
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

In a message dated 6/10/02 8:52:06 AM, barry@... writes:

<< it got me thinking about san antonio (a place many of us on this list
are connected to), and the fact that it remains a great town *in
spite* of the best efforts of its leaders, who keep doing the things
-- costly sports complexes, subsidized giant warehouse malls,
drudge-big-business, the PGA village -- that are precisely what this
fellow says kill the energy of a big city. >>

Bar:
Ex post facto analysis is one of the seven deadly sins of research. Looking
at Detroit after the collapse and Austin after the rise and concluding that
the cause is the creative class gets the author a C- in my classroom. The
creative class did not build Detroit and did not destroy it. A better
comparison might be Ann Arbor and Austin. It would seem that universities
have begun to play a critical role in SOME metro areas. Ann Arbor is thriving
as Detroit sinks. And, yet, Syracuse, NY has continued to collapse despite
having a first rate university. Boston, on the other hand, with its 65
colleges and universities is a great example of the city-university
mulitplicative effect. San Antonio is the best evidence that your author is
wrong. Given that your leaders are doing precisely what the author says will
kill the city, and yet it thrives, should tell you that his conlcusion must
be wrong.
your cuz, the old professor

a fascinating interview with an author who looks at the 'creative
class' as an index of the energy of a city, and explains why austin
took off and detroit sank: there was something about the culture of
each place, as capitalized on by its leaders, that either drove out
the creative classes (scientists, authors, gays) or welcomed them.

it got me thinking about san antonio (a place many of us on this list
are connected to), and the fact that it remains a great town *in
spite* of the best efforts of its leaders, who keep doing the things
-- costly sports complexes, subsidized giant warehouse malls,
drudge-big-business, the PGA village -- that are precisely what this
fellow says kill the energy of a big city. In spite of these trends,
SA remains cool because of a lively arts scene, fun places to go
(including the riverwalk and excluding fiesta texas), and an
acceptance of eccentric lifestyles and people.

those city leaders who are bent on paving over the edwards aquifer in
order to make us more like New York need to realize they're on the way
to making us more like Pittsburgh.

--

barry
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Excellent article, Barry. Thanks for sending it. I have been aware of this
debate for several years, at a very surface level. But this is the most
in-depth and wide-ranging discussion I've seen.
One of my favorite parts was this, about the Indians' impressions of
Europeans:
"A Jesuit reported that the "Savages" were disgusted by handkerchiefs: "They
say, we place what is unclean in a fine white piece of linen, and put it
away in our pockets as something very precious, while they throw it upon the
ground." "

This expresses the sentiment I've always held, and is the reason why I don't
use handkerchiefs!

Thanks again - that was worth reading.
-Rich



----- Original Message -----
From: <inpeople@yahoogroups.com>
To: <inpeople@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Wednesday, June 05, 2002 8:31 PM
Subject: [inpeople] Digest Number 71


>
> There is 1 message in this issue.
>
> Topics in this digest:
>
>       1. astounding
>            From: barry brake <barry@...>
>
>
> ________________________________________________________________________
> ________________________________________________________________________
>
> Message: 1
>    Date: Wed, 05 Jun 2002 05:19:45 -0500
>    From: barry brake <barry@...>
> Subject: astounding
>
> where would ordinary educated nonspecialists be without our twin
> towers of long-form journalism, the new yorker and the atlantic?
>
> here's an atlantic article that knocked me over -- it describes an
> academic debate that's been going on for 4 decades, and i simply have
> had no awareness of it at all. Anthropologists have been putting forth
> that the New World wasn't a pristine wilderness that had a few native
> tribes who created little ecological impact; instead, before 1492
> there were 10 million/20 million/90 million people in the Americas.
> the invasion of europeans with their foreign cooties, and their
> domesticated animals with *their* cooties, caused a series of
> epidemics that ravaged the place, causing not only an ecological upset
> but a far blanker place for the new folks to inhabit. furthermore,
> they had quite a bit of ecological impact -- vast swaths of north and
> south america were basically giant gardens, cultivated by humans on
> purpose... including the amazon rain forest!
>
> startling theories, to say the least, and not without controversy. but
> what's interesting is that these have been attacked from both the left
> and the right, and embraced by both the left and right, in every
> possible combination.
>
> <http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2002/03/mann.htm>
>
> --
>
> barry
> . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
>
>
>
>
> ________________________________________________________________________
> ________________________________________________________________________
>
>
>
> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
>
>

where would ordinary educated nonspecialists be without our twin
towers of long-form journalism, the new yorker and the atlantic?

here's an atlantic article that knocked me over -- it describes an
academic debate that's been going on for 4 decades, and i simply have
had no awareness of it at all. Anthropologists have been putting forth
that the New World wasn't a pristine wilderness that had a few native
tribes who created little ecological impact; instead, before 1492
there were 10 million/20 million/90 million people in the Americas.
the invasion of europeans with their foreign cooties, and their
domesticated animals with *their* cooties, caused a series of
epidemics that ravaged the place, causing not only an ecological upset
but a far blanker place for the new folks to inhabit. furthermore,
they had quite a bit of ecological impact -- vast swaths of north and
south america were basically giant gardens, cultivated by humans on
purpose... including the amazon rain forest!

startling theories, to say the least, and not without controversy. but
what's interesting is that these have been attacked from both the left
and the right, and embraced by both the left and right, in every
possible combination.

<http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2002/03/mann.htm>

--

barry
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

check out the work of a
truly off-brand genius.

<http://salon.com/people/feature/2002/05/30/krafft_profile/portfolio.h
tml>

are you a james surowiecki fan? he writes the financial page for the
new yorker, and gosh darnit every single thing he writes is really
interesting and sensible.

here's a deal he wrote for wired, about standardization... but not
windows or PCs or even QWERTY: it's about screws.

yep, screws.

great stuff....

<http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/10.01/standards_pr.html>

--

barry
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

hey all -

take a look at these strongly expressed thoughts, and ask yourself if
you can guess who wrote it....

--------
In our age, the idea of intellectual liberty is under attack from two
directions. On the one side are its theoretical enemies, the
apologists of totalitarianism, and on the other its immediate,
practical enemies, monopoly and bureaucracy.

Any writer or journalist who wants to retain his integrity finds
himself thwarted by the general drift of society rather than by active
persecution. The sort of things that are working against him are the
concentration of the press in the hands of a few rich men, the grip of
monopoly on radio and the films, the unwillingness of the public to
spend money on books....

In the past, at any rate throughout the Protestant centuries, the idea
of rebellion and the idea of intellectual integrity were mixed up. A
heretic -- political, moral, religious, or aesthetic -- was one who
refused to outrage his own conscience. His outlook was summed up in
the words of the Revivalist hymn:

       Dare to be a Daniel
       Dare to stand alone
       Dare to have a purpose firm
       Dare to make it known

To bring this hymn up to date one would have to add a "Don't" at the
beginning of each line.

-----------



hoho! nice one.


the author? george orwell, 1946, in 'the prevention of literature.'

--

barry
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .