This is the interior of what has to be one of the nuttiest vehicles I’ve ever seen. We used it to get back to the Venetian from Roy’s last night.
The exterior was equally silly.
technorati tags:Las Vegas, Limo, Absurd, newcommforum, flickr
I thought I’d get caught up on things over this past week of vacation; but that didn’t turn out to be the case. Between writing up a summary of the MIT Communication Forum on Remixing Shakespeare, visiting friends, family and museums and facing slow or non-existent Internet connections I really didn’t do a whole lot of anything.
Vacation is over now though and it’s time to get back to work. Slowly but surely I’ll be picking up the pace and responding to everyone.
There is so much great stuff going on out there that I’m falling behind in my posting. Just from yesterday I have three things I need to write about.
The first was a really good meeting with Shawn Broderick of TrustPlus. We met in Natick yesterday morning and had a good conversation about trust, reputation, identity and eBay. I have to get my thoughts together on that one.
The second is Justin Kirkby’s survey on connected marketing. John Cass mentioned it in a post the other day and I went to check it out. Basically Justin wrote the book on connected marketing and he wanted people to provide feedback on the predictions he made on the topic way back in 2005. Some of them were on target while others either haven’t come to pass. One of his predictions was that marketers would hyper-localize (not his term) their search for - and targeting of - influencers geographically. I think that what’s happening in virtual communities - and understanding and reaching the influencers there - has become much more important.
The last this is last night’s MIT Communication Forum on Remixing Shakespeare. This was a really interesting event on the ways the Bard has been used, abused, modified and repurposed from his own day through today and beyond. Summarizing it will be no small task as much of the content was video-based.
Of course on top of all of this there is that little thing called work . . .
It will take me a few days, but thankfully I am on vacation next week and should be able to give these topics some attention.
Technorati Tags: TrustPlus, Justin Kirkby, Connected Marketing, John Cass, MIT Communications Forum, Remixing Shakespeare
I chose the name “Over the River” for this blog because the view from my window is out over the Charles River. I also end up going “over the river” regularly for meetings or to see friends. I’ve noticed an uptick in people coming to the site looking for the lyrics to the song, “Over the River,” and because I’m a pretty good guy, I’ve posted a few different versions below. Happy Holidays.
Over the River and Through the Woods
Over the river and through the woods
To Grandmother’s house we go.
The horse knows the way to carry the sleigh
Through white and drifted snow.
Over the river and through the woods,
Oh, how the wind does blow.
It stings the toes and bites the nose
As over the ground we go.
Over the river and through the woods
To have a full day of play.
Oh, hear the bells ringing ting-a-ling-ling,
For it is Christmas Day.
Over the river and through the woods,
Trot fast my dapple gray;
Spring o’er the ground just iike a hound,
For this is Christmas Day.
Over the river and through the woods
And straight through the barnyard gate.
It seems that we go so dreadfully slow;
It is so hard to wait.Over the river and through the woods,
Now Grandma’s cap I spy.
Hurrah for fun; the pudding’s done;
Hurrah for the pumpkin pie.
Over the River and Through the Woods
Over the river and thru the wood,
To grandfather’s house we go;
The horse knows the way
To carry the sleigh,
Thru the white and drifted snow, oh!
Over the river and thru the wood,
Oh, how the wind does blow!
It stings the toes,
And bites the nose,
As over the ground we go.
Over the river and thru the wood,
To have a first-rate play;
Oh, hear the bell ring,
“Ting-a-ling-ling!”
Hurrah for Thanksgiving Day-ay!
Over the river and thru the wood,
Trot fast my dapple gray!
Spring over the ground,
Like a hunting hound!
For this is Thanksgiving Day.
Over the River (or Thanksgiving Day) Written By: Lydia Maria Child; Music By: Unknown
Over the river and thru the wood,
To grandfather’s house we go;
The horse knows the way to carry the sleigh,
Thru the white and drifted snow, oh!
Over the river and thru the wood,
Oh, how the wind does blow!
It stings the toes and bites the nose,
As over the ground we go.
Over the river and thru the wood,
To have a first-rate play;
Oh, hear the bell ring, “Ting-a-ling-ling!”
Hurrah for Thanksgiving Day-ay!
Over the river and thru the wood,
Trot fast my dapple gray!
Spring over the ground,
Like a hunting hound!
For this is Thanksgiving Day.
Over the river and through the wood,
And straight through the barnyard gate.
We seem to go extremely slow
It is so hard to wait!
Over the river and through the wood –
Now Grandmother’s cap I spy!
Hurrah for fun! Is the pudding done?
Hurrah for the pumpkin pie!
I always thought of this as being a Thanksgiving song so it’s interesting that the first version has adapted it for Christmas. I’ve also always heard it as, “to Grandmother’s house we go,” but except for the first version the other two both say “Grandfather’s house.” The last of the three versions, from the Department of Health and Human Services, seems the most complete and genuine since it includes the name of the woman who wrote the lyrics at least. I’ll probably just sing the first verse, over and over, the way I remember it:
Over the river and through the woods
To grandmother’s house we’ll go
The horse knows the way, to carry the sleigh
Through bright and drifting snow-o
Over the river and through the woods
To granmother’s house we’ll go
The horse knows the way, to carry the sleigh
Through bright and drifting snow
Technorati Tags: Over the River, lyrics, holiday music
Last night’s Communication Forum was different than the ones I’ve attended in the past. Where those had had a number of panelists talking about a specific topic, this one featured only one person talking about a very broad theme.
Joe Haldeman is a professor of writing at MIT and is a four-time Nebula winner. His novels include The Forever War, Old Twentieth and Camouflage. The evening was moderated by Henry Jenkins, head of the MIT Comparative Media Studies Program.
Haldeman started by reading several selections from his upcoming novel, “The Accidental Time Machine,” a story set in and around MIT over the course of shifting time. Based on what he read last night it should be great.
Jenkins asked about the story’s representation of MIT and Haldeman said that he enjoyed the opportunity to think about and research the history of the school. Even at the start, he found it was very forward-looking – yet cautions it the way it watched out for the conservative sensibilities of the time. Toward the end of “The Accidental Time Machine”, the protagonist finds himself on the early campus of MIT - a man with no history but a man who knows (but won’t reveal) the future. Haldeman enjoyed the opportunity to explore the issues presented by this scenario.
The conversation turned next to an interesting feature of speculative fiction: not only are the stories about science, they are also about scientists. Haldeman, who has been around scientists since he was an undergrad, says they are misrepresented in fiction – and he has tried to make his scientists realistic and bases them on people that he has known. “A great thing about being a novelist,” he said, “is that anybody who’s ever done anything bad to you, you can get back at them sooner or later.”
The work of doing science, he continued, required tremendous intellectual discipline – without the ability to explain or share what you do with anyone not involved with your specific field. If you want to write a realistic science fiction story, you need to recognize that science is extremely compartmentalized.
In the early days on science fiction, Jenkins noted, the scientist was often portrayed as a lone tinker or inventor. Now the scientist is represented in a corporate environment or research institution. He wondered how this changed the types of stories the science fiction tells. Haldeman suggested that one needs to rethink the satisfaction of science. One of the reasons he left science was the realization that he wouldn’t ever be that lone hero of astrophysics and that his attraction to science was “aesthetic rather than intellectual.”
One of the ideas behind hard science fiction – beginning with Hugo Gernsback – is that it be used to popularize science and be a means to educate people. Gernsback’s idea was that there should be a literary form to make scientific ideas accessible to ordinary people. He went so far as to consider printing all of the scientific facts in a story in italics but he realized that there was a value in the speculative aspect of science fiction.
Gernsback was an interesting figure, according to Haldeman, because he believed that the only value of science fiction was in turning young people into scientists or engineers. Unfortunately, Gernsback couldn’t tell good writing from bad - demonstrating the paradox that something can be good science fiction but terrible writing. “The thing about science fiction,” said Haldeman, “is that it’s a form of writing; but it’s also a way of looking at things, it’s a mode of thought.”
Jenkins asked Haldeman to share some of his memories of some of the pioneer of science fiction. He talked about Jack Williamson (who died only a few days before the Forum) and Edmund Hamilton; and about Williamson and Hamilton traveling down the Mississippi together in the 1920s and the conversations they must have had, and about Hamilton’s huge imagination and about Williamson being just one of a kind. Haldeman told of visiting Williamson at his home in New Mexico and of a conversation they had about gravitational lensing in globular clusters and its implications for planetary formation. “Jack knew exactly what I was talking about,” he said, “We’d read the same articles – he was a science fiction writer. There are a lot of people writing science fiction now, that wouldn’t know a carbonaceous chondrite asteroid from their ass.”
This led into a discussion of the science fiction writer as a consumer of scientific research.
Haldeman felt that it isn’t so much reading the research as it is observation. He reads New Scientist and Scientific American and related a story. A few days ago, returning home on the T from teaching, he was reading the latest New Scientist. There was an article about Wendy Mao and her team of researchers who’d compressed water under thousands of atmospheres of pressure for six hours and then bombarded it with x rays. The result was an alloy of metallic hydrogen and oxygen. “Oh,” he remembered thinking, “we never came up with that.”
“Can you believe this shit?,” he said. “Because this is the way I did chemistry in junior high school. I can imagine them now: ‘well, we’ve got this thing, why don’t we put water in it and crush it down with diamond pressure, and then, while we’ve got it that way, lets just put x rays on it for six hours and see what the fuck happens’.”
Jenkins wanted to know what type of responses this article triggered for Haldeman as a writer. His immediate response, he said, to the article was social – just imagining her and her gang thinking about and conducting this experiment. He described his efforts at imagining a new kind of alien and how he was inspired by plastination exhibit at the Boston Museum of Science to consider a life form that exists on a radically different timescale than our own. [Haldeman requested that the details not be shared as it may be included in an upcoming novel.]
Haldeman recently wrote a piece for the Comparative Media Studies newsletter about the mission of science fiction at a time when science itself is under attack and Jenkins asked that he share that vision. “Religion is out of hand on a lot of different levels and science fiction is a tool against religion. Science fiction is a tool for rationalism,” he said. “Things like faith-based initiatives work really well – 9/11 was a faith-based initiative and that changed all of American life.”
The discussion had been focused on the scientific part of science fiction, but now things turned to the literary issues. Jenkins brought up the complaint that science fiction often lacks strong characterization and other literary niceties. Herdeman pointed out that most of his fiction is character based because he writes things that he would like to read. He believes that the best science fiction needs to do a good job on both the science and the fiction.
Jenkins asked Herdeman to talk about what he has learned from other writers - and particularly Hemingway, of whom is is a big fan. Hemingway, Herdeman explained, hated science fiction. He’s read all of the legitimate Hemingway and listen to and presented papers on him as well. He believes that all writer should be fascinated with another writer to help them develop a filter.
“It’s like in optics,” Herdeman explained, “you can have limited band pass filters, it can tell you a lot about something that you’re looking at. You get a hydrogen three filter and look at a cloud of gas out in the middle of the constellation Cygnus and you see a thing that nobody could see without the filter. And then you take the filter away and see what everybody else is seeing.” When he reads something like Faulkner, Herdeman is able to apply his Hemingway limited band pass filter to imagine how Hemingway would have written the passage. “The thing that makes reading and writing infinitely fascinating is this idea that everybody brings his own set of filters to every situation.”
Herdeman went on to relate an experience he’d had that helped him to understand filters and point of view. When he was in the fifth grade, someone published a 3D comic book. The entire story took place in a saloon and featured an outlaw causing trouble who was eventually killed by the sheriff. The story was first told from the sheriff’s point of view, and then from the outlaw’s and then from people simply in the bar. When he finished the comic he suddenly understood that there were billions of ways to tell a story.
Given his role as teacher of writing at MIT, Jenkins wondered about the challenges of getting scientists to write science fiction. The first issue he raised was their timidity – the fact that fledgling scientists tend to be cautious. Another issue is that at MIT, the people taking the course don’t want to be writers and so sometimes they are not terribly concerned with things like style or the quality of their writing.
The conversation next moved to the theme of war, how it is portrayed in fiction and how Herdeman as both a writer and a veteran has approached the topic. “If you’ve been a soldier, writing about war is the first natural thing to do.” Like most vets, his first novel was a war novel. He’s written some since, considered others and may well write more in the future. “I was a soldier for one year – exactly 365 days – 40 years ago – and much of it is still right there all the time.”
Herdeman’s war writing has led to comparisons to Robert Heinlein and some have pointed to “The Forever War” as an answer to “Starship Troopers.” The two were of different generations, different wars (Heinlein fought in WWII) and different points of view – but they had a begrudging respect for one another.
Asked about “Enders Game,” Herdeman agreed that it was the logical for it to be grouped with the other two. “I’d love to see a 3D mapping of the various ideas in the three books. If anyone wants an easy Masters thesis there you go.” Herdeman sees Orson Scott Card as as far from a soldier as you could get but here he’s written a novel with war on a massive scale. “He’s a fine guy but he’s got his limited band pass and I’ve got my limited band pass and never the two shall meet.”
Technorati Tags: Joe Herdeman, science fiction, MIT, Communications Forum, Henry Jenkins, Hugo Gernsback, Jack Williamson, Edmund Hamilton, Robert Heinlein, Orson Scott Card, The Forever Wars, Starship Troopers, Enders Game, Wendy Mao
I met Dave Evans from Online Dating Insider and The Progress Bar on Friday to talk about ways we could collaborate on social media and whatnot here in Boston. Three hours and three dozen oysters later we had a few good ideas and had had a pretty good time. Staggering back over the river, I took the opportunity to take a few photos along the way. My faves are one of the inside of the handrail on the Longfellow Bridge:
and of the controls of a boat docked on the Charles:
We’ll see what comes of the ideas and plans Dave and I discussed; but if nothing else I had fun.
Technorati Tags: Dave Evans, Online Dating Review, The Progress Bar, Boston, Oysters, Longfellow Bridge, Charles River, Handrail, Dock, Boat, Controls
It is the middle of November and here in New England, even though it is mild today, Fall is here and Winter is on its way. This morning I saw the first cardinal of the season and there’s no mistaking what that means. I’m at an event today on kids and behavioral issues and the rain is just pelting down outside. It’s lunchtime and everyone has braved the elements to get food. Everyone except me. I’m sitting along in the empty hall and listening to warm and languid sounds from Texas in the 1940s. The Cantu Sisters are serenading me with words I don’t understand but which take me away from where I am to a place I’ll never be able to go. I feel pretty lucky.
Technorati Tags: New England, music, Fall, Winter, Cantu Sisters, Texas, Spanish
I remember once, when I was a kid in the sixth grade, my teacher asked in anyone wanted to participate in a pen-pal program. Being naturally curious my hand shot up. A few weeks later I received a letter and a small address label with the name and address of a girl my age in Nybro, Sweden.
Her name was Carina Karlsson and for a few years we exchanged letters and small gifts. Our notes to each other we filled with the mundane (yet terribly fascinating) details of our lives. She sent me a small painted horse, a wooden flagpole with a Swedish flag, a leather coin purse and a photograph.
I can’t recall what gifts I sent to her (although I do remember shopping for at least one) but I still have all three that she sent to me almost 30 years later. Our letters were special to me. First because I got so little mail, and second because this was a connection that without effort on both of our parts would never have happened.
I was reminded of Carina yesterday while reading John Schwartz’s story on “Friendbombing” in the New York Times.
But Facebook’s use of the word “friend” is a little troubling in a world where true friendship is hard to find and even harder to sustain. The idea of getting friends wholesale seems to be part of that element of the Internet that can render life virtual and a little pallid. In many ways, the Internet strengthens relationships by allowing easy communication over a distance. But without a human touch, it’s hard to keep the conversation going beyond niceties. Facebook seems to be saying: “Sure, we might be seeing less of our real friends face to face. But we’ll make it up with volume.”
A Son’s Revenge: ‘Friendbombing’ - Facebook.com - New York Times
Technology allows “friendships” to be made so easily and effortlessly that I wondered if pen-pals even exist anymore. My search for “pen pal” online returned things very different from what Sister Marie Roberta had trotted out when I was a kid.
Maybe it is the nature of the communication, or maybe it is the fact that I’m not 12, but few of my emails or IM exchanges carry the same weight those letters did when they arrived at my home from half a world away.
Technorati Tags: pen pals, Carina Karlsson, Nybro, Sweden, Facebook, Friendbombing, John Schwartz, New York Times
Like it or not, I have to mow my lawn every week. I really don’t like it. Yesterday I got up and decided to get it out of the way early. I was out there mowing away when I came to the kid’s swingset. They have a two-person swing and I drive right into it assuming it would go f to one side or the other. It didn’t. Instead, it got caught on the front of the mower and before I knew what was happening I was at a 45 degree angle. I stopped the blades and the engine and hopped off. The mower was just hanging there, the front three or four feet off the ground - suspended by a one inch dowel and two pieces of nylon rope.
It took a while to figure out how to get it down. The front of the thing has the engine so it’s pretty heavy and I didn’t want it to drop. The tension on the swing was pretty good and I didn’t want that to come swinging back and hitting me in the face. In the end, with the help of my nephew and his dad, I wedged a ladder under the mower and held it in place with a set of portable steps. They were able to life it while I unhooked the swing and then rested it on the ladder so I could back it down. It was one of the stupidest things I’ve seen.
There are more pictures in my Flickr account.
