flash mobs

i had never heard of smart mobs but i have heard of flash mobs. there was one on campus a few weeks ago where people gathered and bowed down to the UT tower. this site is pretty good in giving info on the latest flashmobs http://flashmob.com

here's a good one..


the brits do it way bigger...

the death of print

i had a fantastic conversation last night. two were MBA students, one was a physics professor, another was a statistics professor, and me. the statistics and physics professors are married, and nick and i were at their house for dinner. surrounded by so many great books, i asked them who liked to read those books. the physics professor said those books were hers, but she said that she reads much less these days. one of the MBA students said he used to read voraciously but now said he doesn't read much. you know, people say that a lot. that they don't read much. but they DO! and from our readings, people are reading in such different ways these days. he says he emails, he games, and he surfs the internet. all very legitimate ways of accessing literacy, i say. but the statistics professor disagrees. he says we're taking the definition of literacy too far. the physics professor agrees somewhat. she thinks books will soon become a hybrid of digital technology in the form of print. she fantasizes about a time when she'll order a book online, go to the nearest ATM to print it out, and have a hard copy in her hand. but when she's 90 or so, she'll probably be transitioning to all digitized text and she'll pull out a foldable computer screen from her pocket to read her 'book'. but, she'll still keep printed books as art around the house.
so she imagines these fantasies because she's a bookophile. one day when students have to go to a museum to see what a book is, a day when their teachers will say, "kids, these are what WE had to read out of," they will wonder how people ever read text that way and can't imagine reading books in any other way but through some digitized medium.

mormon undergarments

can i say that wikipedia has taken over my life? the hypertexting is endless. last week, someone told me that mormons wear secret undergarments under their clothes, even during sex. in my mind, i'm picturing it looks like some kind of chastity suit or something. and i'm really curious to know more! so there i am on wikipedia, my source for all pop culture knowledge, to learn more about the secret life of mormon undergarments. so i read about mormonism, about their garments, about how they engage in a special ceremony to wear them, about how they're burned when thrown away, about how they have crotch holes, and more and more. but, in exploring the world of mormon undergarments, i also ended up reading about the amish, the scientologists, and cults. while reading about cults, i was thus reminded of my home in FW, home to many cultish colonies. home to the infamous david koresh, robert tilton, the trinity network, kenneth copeland. what a crazy place to grow up!
hypertexting creates unbelievably long chains of thought, sometimes leaving me to wonder what i looked up in the first place. how in the world did i get from mormon undergarmets to david koresh in one thought? it's like playing six degrees of separation in your mind.
1. mormon undergarments
2. amish
3. scientology
4. cults
5. david koresh

soon i shall like to learn how to hypertext, add images and video to my blog, to connect it all together in the way i experienced it.

techie this week

here's a short of the computery things i've done so far this week:
IMed with some friends and family
typed up many, many documents on word for work and school
listened to a 3 hour lecture on powerpoint
emailed a lot!
texted to my honey
participated in an asynchronous discussion for psycholinguisitics class
downloaded materials off of blackboard
downloaded several journal articles online from online databases and online magazines
watched several clips of the ROOTS TV series in class on my laptop DVD player
used the library card catalog

more to come...

love/hate relationship

i have a love/hate relationship with TV. i used to say that i would never have a TV in my house, but i do. but what i don't have is cable. i think TV contributes to laziness, allowing the viewer to take, take, take, and give nothing in return. it's easier to sit on the couch and turn on the TV and let it feed you entertainment or information. it's harder to pick up a book and read or get the things done around the house. hours can go by sitting on the couch watching TV. does Johnson make some good claims about the value of television? yes, he does. watching certain TV programs require viewers to reach into their cognitive toolbox and make predictions, recollections, connections, and characterizations. these are the same qualities that we attribute to book reading. the quality of TV has gotten better because viewers demand more stimulating and challenging plots. while we don't physically want to move, we want our minds to be pursued and moved. there are few shows that i keep up with, but i do enjoy watching LOST. in the past season, the plot has become so predictable that many religious LOST viewers are blogging and writing that LOST has lost its way. the characters are quickly losing depth, the plot seems to be going nowhere or is feeling redunant. i am losing patience with the show, and i don't look forward to wednesday nights like i used to. and do i love watching shows without depth? sure i do. but in this regard, i take an oppositional stance and stand on viligant guard against shows that will probably not add something positive to my well-being. and i take an oppositional stance to shows that might have depth but again, don't add something positive to my well-being. shows like deperate housewives. like the "Dallas" example in our reading, someone who loves that show will definitely need to write me and explain your obsession. do you love it because it takes you into a fantasy world? do you hate it but watch it anyway to poke fun at it?

maybe i'm a marxist

i don't know that much about marx, but some of the pieces that shannon pulled from marx, i believe. such as: "Marx calls this alientation--the subordination of the worker to the reified product of his labor." yes, i once was the subordinated worker who labored over making sure her students manufactured good quality products--passing TAKS test scores. perhaps shannon refers to students as the products of labor, but these days, tests are the products we strive to manufacture with perfection. children are just the tools we use to create those great products. with great products comes money, fame, and the coveted "exemplary" status. i was compelled to read (from wiki, only) about marx and his other beliefs. he was an enemy of capitalism for sure. the goal of his historical project was to claim the "universal right to be freely active, to affirm ourselves, to be spontaneous in our activity, and to pursue the free development of our physical and mental. YES! dewey would say YES! too. the mantra of capitalism might also sound very similar, though. the pursuit of happiness through the almighty dollar. can't it be read that way?? obviously, it comes down to philosophical differences in the goals of education. and i stand on the side of marx.

technofied thoughts

i have moments when i'm in the middle of a tech moment where i marvel at the speed at which i can gather information or complete a transaction thanks to the tech age we live in. yesterday i had to explain to my elderly neighbors how we write research papers these days, browsing through thousands of online journal articles, reading at least 50 of them, and writing at least a 30 page paper. my neighbor told me that back in the 1930s, when she was in school at UT, she remembers having to write a "term theme" by hand and slaving hours over it at home wishing "she could be out on dates with willie (now her husband)." times have really changed.

on that very same day, i had a flashback moment when my mom was trying to teach me how to cook a favorite chinese dish of mine. chinese turnip cakes. while she probably could have sent me a recipe (or i could have found one online), i needed to have her demonstrate, face-to-face, and orally, how it was to be done. "first you cut up the turnips and grate it in the food processor. then you add this much water if you had this much turnip." i don't think the tools of technology could have captured the depth of this learning moment. how does one define "this much water with this much turnip" through written remarks without something going awry with my recipe? i needed that oral coaching and proximity to fully understand just how to make a recipe that probably was passed down to my mom from her mom.

so i guess im trying to say that we're walking in between different worlds these days. sometimes we slip back into the roots of oral tradition, but for the most part, we are walking the path of technology. i feel fortunate to be living in this awkward age of in-betweens. i can't imagine not having my mom teach me how to make my favorite chinese dish any other way. i can't imagine writing a term theme by hand. and i sure can't imagine writing a paper without online journals.

Theory of Mind

"The theory of mind is nothing other than the set of mental concepts which correspond to the expression of the illocutionary force of utterances" (Olson, pg. 270). since this course started, I have been thinking about the idea of 'theory of mind' and what it is. to me, theory of mind sounds a like the ideas of cognition. or it is the recognition of cognition, similar to metacognition? quoting a definition on wikipedia, "the phrase 'theory of mind' has more commonly been used to refer to a specific cognitive capacity: the ability to understand that others have beliefs, desires and intentions that are different from one's own." okay, so it's a part of cognition. so in this definition, theory of mind sounds more like empathy/sympathy, especially when many say today that autistics lack theory of mind--the inability to process the beliefs and feelings of others. olson relates theory of mind to illocutionary force--that illocutionary force is the manifestitation of theory of mind. i don't see the connection--can someone out there help??

another interesting part of the reading this week was the chapter on interpretation. i think it's safe to say that many of our world conflicts stem from misinterpretation. studying the philosophy of interpretation should be everyone's work, as we are all engaged in interpretation. this becomes an especially important task for those that make and execute laws, those involved in religion, and even in our profession as teachers. the repercussions of misinterpretation could mean life or death to a criminal, heaven or hell to the religious, or promotion or retention to a child.

I'm published on the web!

this is amazing. in my vanity, i have googled myself many times to see if i have a place on the internet. and it looks like i finally do. i have not realized, until today, that i AM published on the web with this blog. there are actually people out there that want to read what i have to say. can i just say how powerful and more meaningful this blog is to me now??

in my last blog, i mentioned that i would like to learn hebrew. and i got a response back from some guy IN israel, referring me to some websites where i could. it truly amazed me that people all over the world have access to my blog. can you imagine the influece this could have with our students? in my psycholinguistics class, we are learning about using language as a cultural tool (see Wertsch) and i believe that the knowledge and use of blogs can create a cultural tool for students to use and see that they DO have power with words in this world.

i wish i could learn hebrew

in class on monday, emily gave us a mini-lesson on the hebrew language. on page 83, /k/, /t/, and /b/ is explained as being the root word 'write' but when vowels are added in between those consonant forms, it can morph into 'he writes', 'they wrote', 'writing', etc., similar to how affixes are added to words in English. She said that the Torah is written only with consonant sounds and therefore requires a mediator to assist one who might want to read it on their own. If looking at the Torah for the first time, you wouldn't know how to pronounce /k//t//b/ beacause you wouldn't know which vowels went in between. Once given the pronounciation, it is expected that you memorize it.I thought this was so interesting, because it doesn't quite made the Torah a literal text until the oral is matched to it. It's one of the few examples of language we've read about that sits on the continnum between orality and literacy.
There were other examples of semi-literate cultures that used knots and tally marks as mneumonic devices. With the history of writing as a mneumonic device and serving a pramatic purpose, I am awed by how language today has evolved as it has into more.

recounting an IFC movie isn't always easy

we rented an IFC film yesterday called "unknown" starring some recognizable faces, like greg kinnear and one of the matrix characters. as many IFC movies can be, "unknown" was a slow starter and a slow finisher. no fast hollywood gun scenes or car chases. it was an ideal fall asleep and tell me about it later kind of movie. and the perfect setting for a retelling!

the movie is a little confusing already, so while nick was retelling it, i had several points of confusion. even the characters in the movie are unknown to themselves (everyone succumbs to inhaling a chemical that results in temporary memory loss). so as nick was retelling the story to me, i felt more compelled to pay attention to him--more than usual. i can usually surf the net while he's telling me a story, but i had to pay attention to this one. when listening to the retelling, i was either saying, "ok" or asking a clarification question. if i had seen the whole movie like nick, i would have been a more active participant, but then i guess i wouldn't need a retelling. i think it would be interesting to see nick tell someone else about the movie with me present. the dynamics of the retelling would be different and even newly interpreted.

retelling a movie that's become, in a sense, static because it's been recorded on film, as opposed to a retelling of an event between two active parties not recorded, poses some good questions about the nature of stories and their evolution with successive interpretations. movies can be retold or reinvented, but then there's always that hard copy of the material to revert back to. on the other hand, retelling an event that might have happened to me stands the test of memory and language. with no literate recording, it becomes a fleeting and changing product. it's amazing that cultures that used to (and still do) rely on oral history were able to pass down their stories with precision. not to say that they weren't reinvented each time themselves but that there was almost a reverence for the story and its details that changing them might of been seen as a defilement. oral cultures take great care in the details. while recalling the movie, instead of recalling some of the minute details, nick would insert, "and whatever" or "you know" in places that he felt weren't important. in oral cultures, these "and whatever" or "you know" places hold a place of importance that we don't recognize.

i am learning how to add sound bytes to my page and want you all to be able to listen to them, so as soon as i can get a little more tech savvy, i'll do that. in the meantime, i added links of everyone's pages to mine.

afterthoughts

a girlfriend and her boyfriend eating lunch at home.

i have transcribed a conversation once before with my students during a novel discussion, and it was so tedious that i never did it again. this conversation was while eating lunch, so chewing and swallowing gave us each time between exchanges. the problem i had while transcribing class discussion was the constant overlap between 3 or more students vyying for the floor, and the sometimes fuzzy outpour or confused thoughts that children often exhibit. so between two adults, it was more orderly, with the rules of conversation, argument, disagreements, etc. in place. also, our familiarity with one another (a mixture of the rapport function and continuing state of incipient talk) gave way to less interruption or fast talking that one might find with a conversation between two people not as familiar with one another. but in general, we are not fast talkers or habitual interrupters.

the biggest difference between oral conversation and written language was the body language and humor that i was not able to convey on paper. between two intimate people, i think there is probably more said through body language than through oral language, a tacit understanding without words that we have gathered throughout our time together. secondly, timing is everything. as much as i tried to convey a sense of delay by noting the pauses, there were certainly times when one of us would reply faster than other times or pause between two words in one thought. i was only able to capture the large gaps in time, which i would attribute to our eating more than think time. though there were moments of thought time. those nuances i am conjecturing at from actually partaking in the coversation, though an outsider listening to the same conversation might call some silences 'think time'.

the silent moments were interesting to me. had this been a conversation with a less intimate individual, the 14 second silence that i documented might have been uncomfortable, but i don't recall feeling awkward or noticing the silences until i replayed the conversation. in our case, silence is accepted.

if i did this again, i'd try two new things. first, i would video the conversation. and second, i would take the transcript and try to reenact it with nick to see how far or how close we might get to the original.

3 minutes of lunch

here's a 3 minute piece of lunch conversation yesterday.


A: Baby, I think having a sit….like for you to sit down at a table, to have..just eating and conversation bothers you. You’re just not used to it. This is how I grew up. (Laughing) you’re so diplomatic, you gave me half the tofu.
N: It’s a bento..
A: How kind of you to give me half
A: No, seriously, I think the way you grew up, it’s, I mean, the way that you’re used to, it’s not like just sitting down, you need like the
N: ambiance
A: insufficient. Like talking, just talking at a table is not sufficient for you unless you’re at a restaurant
(2 sec)
N: mmm…
(3 sec)
A: this is how I grew up
(14 sec)
A: did you microwave all this?
N: no
A: oh
(3 sec)
N: these beans are good
(2 sec)
A: these are soybeans?
(6 sec)
A: I’ve never had soybeans like this
(2 sec)
A: you can have mine, I don’t really like em
(2 sec)
A: They taste like pork n beans
N: yeah, they taste like baked beans right?
A: uh-huh
(4 sec)
A: are you sure these are soybeans? For sure? I thought soybeans were round, more round like circular
N: uh-uh. Soybeans are shaped like this
A: I’ve had the kind that are different looking
(8 sec)
A: sitting around a table like this (3 sec) when you’re at home..I don’t think you’re used to
(3 sec)
A: When your mom cooks for you all, like when you were younger
N: yeah
A: what did you all do? What was the routine?
N: it wasn’t a routine. We didn’t always sit at the table or always (1 sec) but usually it was us three
A: uh-huh uh-huh
N: the kids eat together and the parents…because we…sometimes we’d go like watch TV while we eat
A: and your parents would sit together at the table?
N: yeah like they didn’t..they just like
A: OK
N: sitting at a table
A: always?
A: and then sometimes all three of you would sit with your parents?
N: umhmm
A: but it was never like
N: there was no standard
(2 sec)
A: odd. I told you how in my family we always sit at the same seat
N: (laughs)
A: we always
N: we definitely don’t have that. There’s no assigned seats
A: that’s not how…it was never assigned but it was just like the given..just made it easier because like my parents would put rice on our plates but they would..some of us wanted more rice so my parents would know like whose plate was which
(2 sec)
A: even now, when my brothers come home or when it’s like holiday time and my brothers come home we still sit in the same seats
(2 sec)
A: (laughs)