I would love to blog the defence but for natural reasons I will be unable to participate in this way. My focus will be on listening, interpretating and meeting my opponents questions.
If anyone (maybe you Kalle?) wants to bring a laptop I can arrange a guest account to the wireless and a password to this blog too… Otherwise you shall all have to be patient.
Not really too nervous yet. I think I am in deep denial…
Concerned that some issues continue not to receive sustained media attention or slip off the radar screen, the United Nations Department of Public Information (DPI) has unveiled a new list of “Ten Stories the World Should Hear More About.”
2006 is the third year that the “top” ten unreported stories have been presented. If you are like me then you have probably never heard of this list or many of the stories. Read them and help publish them. So how can this happen? Well if the mainstream media doesn’t cover it then it should be blogged…
Liberia: Development challenges top agenda as the nation recovers from years of civil strife
Lost in migration: Asylum seekers face challenges amid efforts to stem flows of illegal migrants
Nepal’s hidden tragedy: Children caught in the conflict
Somalia: Security vacuum compounding effects of drought
Protracted refugee situations: Millions caught in limbo, with no solutions in sight
South Asian earthquake: Relief effort saves lives, stems losses, but reconstruction tasks loom large
Behind bars, beyond justice: An untold story of children in conflict with the law
From water wars to bridges of cooperation: Exploring the peace-building potential of a shared resource
Côte d’Ivoire: A strike away from igniting violence amidst a faltering peace process
I have been interested in engraving my Powerbook since I saw this it has taken a while but now I am on the way. In much the same way as choosing a tattoo should be done with careful consideration the choice of image was not a simple one. Where to begin?
My search began online â?? where else. After looking at tons of Chinese and Japanese woodcuts I even picked up a couple of Dover image books but I still could not find anything I wanted. So it was back online for more Chinese and Japanese woodcuts, on to medieval artworks and a long digression into the history of anatomy and in particular the works of Galen and Vesalius.
The question was (and is) one of symbolism and technology. Symbolism: Do I want a skeleton, samurai, tidal wave or dragon engraved on my computer? Technology: The image has to be good and clear so as not to mess up when engraved. This last part is what got me stuck on the monochrome illustrations but I could not find the right motif.
So then I began scouring the pictures I have collected over my computer user years and I came across a wonderful drawing of Don Quixote called â??Reflectionsâ?? by Gene Colan from 1998.
Since I want to accentuate the Don Quixote and Sancho Panza I removed the background and their reflections in the water. What is left is the two riders.
The next step was permission. I realise that this is not a question of copyright law but I still would like to have permission from the artist. So an email later permission arrived. No problem. On Monday morning I am going to the engravers…
The revolution will not be televised (Gil Scott-Heron), but it will be blogged…
So which cover do you prefer? To vote just add a comment.
Background: When I came close to the end of writing my PhD thesis I began to think about the cover design for the book. Realising I needed help I blogged this on 12/4. In addition I mailed a few people. The information appeared (amongst other places) on Boing Boing, Lessig, Foreword, Patrik’s sprawl, Perfekta Tomrummet, Free the Mind and Cyberlaw.
Here are the results
Entry 1
Entry 2
Entry 3
Entry 4
Entry 5
Entry 6
Entry 7
Entry 8
Entry 9
Entry 10
Entry 11
Entry 12
Entry 13
Entry 14
Entry 15
Entry 16
Part of blogging is attempting to figure out why we blog? Not all blogs pose this question but it appears often enough* to be recognised as being a common question. This question becomes even more relevant when the blogger takes active risks by blogging.
In an earlier post (blogging revisited 21/1105) I reported about an article concerned with the risks being taken by job-seeking academics who blog. The author of the article wrote that their blogs prevented the potential employer from hiring since they revealed a different side to the applicant than that presented at the formal interview.
A temporary prosecutor in San Francisco blogged about a case he was prosecuting:
Karnow didn’t find the postings prejudicial enough to throw out the entire case, as the defense wanted. But in turning down that motion to dismiss this week, the judge still came down hard on ex-prosecutor Jay Kuo, calling his conduct “juvenile, obnoxious and unprofessional.” … (via Lunda Wright)
Other bloggers take greater risks as whistleblowers or reporting on corrupt and/or repressive governments. While some bloggers and blogs are well protected using different means many are open and tracing the authors is a (relatively) easy task.
Organisations such as the EFF have created documents to help those who need to blog anonymously â??How to Blog Safely (About Work or Anything Else)â?? but these are either not widely known or widely used.
There seems to be something special about the blog and its place in the private/public divide. The blog is a private diary and yet it is open to the world. The privacy promotes the sharing of secrets while the public the desire to communicate.
Why take the risks? Are they really risks or is blogging perceived to be a private act? Even though most bloggers are aware of their publicâ?¦
*Some examples from Google on the search â??why I blogâ??
Watermark – Jacobsen – Under the sun – Media Metamorphosis –
Once again odd spam puzzles me. I recently blogged spam about Gouranga. Today it seems to be meaningless inspirational (?) quotes. My question is obvious – why bother spamming people with this. However the answer can only be why not? why blog? why do anything? Anyway here it is:
Subject: The ultimate security is your understanding of reality
If winning isn’t everything, why do they keep score?
When you have an efficient government, you have a dictatorship.
A child is a curly, dimpled lunatic.
And here is the meaning? Well not really a meaning – more an identification of the sources:
The subject is a quote from H. Stanley Judd
The first line is a quote from Vince Lombardi (American Football Coach)
The second line is a quote from Harry Truman (American President)
The third line is a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Poet)
What nothing more exotic?
This belongs to the things I should have blogged about ages ago but keep forgetting. The idea for BookCrossing is to take a book and “release” it into the wild. The book is marked with the label below and the idea is that the book will travel around and if the original releaser is lucky then he/she will get email reports on were the book is.
Never heard of bookcrossing? It has even made the Concise Oxford English Dictionary as a new word.
A similar project is Phototag which periodically releases a series of disposable cameras into the wild. The cameras are labeled and have instructions for unwary PhotoTaggers to take one picture and pass the camera on. Postage and a return address are included on the camera so that it may simply be dropped into the mail to get back home when all the film is used up.
In a previous entry I reported reasons why a blogger (especially academic) should blog. Naturally these views are not unanimous. Here is an anonymous submission to the Chronicle of Higher Education signed by the pseudonym Ivan Tribble. Remember the Tribbles from original star trek fame? Small furry, soft, gentle animals whose cute appearance and soothing purring endears them to every sentient race which encounters themâ??with one notable exception: Klingons.
Anyway Ivan Tribble writes about blogs:
â??The pertinent question for bloggers is simply, Why? What is the purpose of broadcasting one’s unfiltered thoughts to the whole wired world? It’s not hard to imagine legitimate, constructive applications for such a forum. But it’s also not hard to find examples of the worst kinds of uses.
A blog easily becomes a therapeutic outlet, a place to vent petty gripes and frustrations stemming from congested traffic, rude sales clerks, or unpleasant national news. It becomes an open diary or confessional booth, where inward thoughts are publicly aired.
Worst of all, for professional academics, it’s a publishing medium with no vetting process, no review board, and no editor. The author is the sole judge of what constitutes publishable material, and the medium allows for instantaneous distribution. After wrapping up a juicy rant at 3 a.m., it only takes a few clicks to put it into global circulation.â??
The more positive approach to blogging mentioned above (Alex Soojung-Kim Pangâ??s If you’ve got a day job…) focused on four reasons to blog: Practice of the skill of writing, gain readers fame & credibility, participate in a discourse and finally market yourself. All these four are important to the academic (and to the blogger).
Tribbleâ??s argument against the blog concern the situation where you are a job applicant and the stuff which you have written online can be used against you. Both when the committee looked at the applicants online appearance â??…it turned out to be every bit as eye-opening as a train wreck.â?? Another aspect which causes blogging concern is the very existence of the blog… â??Several committee members expressed concern that a blogger who joined our staff might air departmental dirty laundry (real or imagined) on the cyber clothesline for the world to see. Past good behavior is no guarantee against future lapses of professional decorum.â??
So basically the blog is like the Tribble – cute, furry and soothing to all (except the Klingons) but remember the problem with Tribbles? The crew of the Starship Enterprise spent so much time cuddling with, and being cuddled by, the Tribbles that they no longer functioned as a crew. In a sense the blog can become like Tribbles. Surrounded by both our own and others we exist in a quasi world of our own creation which is not a bad thing unless we replace the â??realâ?? world with the blogged one.
