August 2004 Archives

Getting closer. Dr. Oschmann responded to an email query with a lead to The Institute of HeartMath. He recommended this article, The Electricity of Touch (available as a PDF download). Their main accomplishment? "This study represents one of the first successful attempts to directly measure an energy exchange between people."

I also found this press release, which states: "The Institute of HeartMath (IHM) in Boulder Creek, California is a nonprofit research organization that has been studying emotions and the electromagnetic energy generated by emotions and the bodyóspecifically the heartófor over a decade. A recent study conducted by IHM represents one of the first successful attempts to directly measure an energy exchange between people, and provides a testable theory to help explain why we can sense what other people are feeling and why we tend to know when someone is behind us without hearing or seeing them."

Ruth detected that I "sound better" even via pager this morning. :-) You know - I got that paper done and submitted, just got plane tickets to DC for both upcoming trips - NAMI/Breakout and Conference of Interpreter Trainers.

My roomies have arrived, are settling in, and all is "go" for us to hang tonight and start sorting out details. My room's still a bit of a disaster, but it is taking shape. I need to get the small dresser and bedside table from VT, then I should be set.

Now I'm getting excited! This SQUID technology proves energy can flow in two directions (to/fro) at the same time! Talk about FLOW! :-)

This exchange between Bodavor, Jonathan, and Dan is not contexted, but - besides its reference to Schroedinger's SQUID - it is fascinating in its speculation about leaps of intelligence (I'd say "in subjectivity") being induced (?) by language, and its implications for human evolution.

Everyone keeps referencing a Scientific American article but it keeps coming up "page missing." :-( Here's something from Complexity Digest (which I'd like to add to my rss feed). These folk are also onto Self-Organization.

When I really want to get serious, here's a dissertation, The Nine Lives of Schroedinger's Cat, that "surveys nine different interpretations of non-relativistic quantum mechanics." One of the nine is "the idea that the mind causes collapse", which I was just writing about recently. :-)

I had an informal homework assignment from that first conversation with Enoch, to try and find the source of the info I learned at an event at Norwich University in VT....it was in a casual conversation, but one of the faculty there said there was some scientific measurement of the energy (electrical?) that bodies emanate when feeling different emotions. He said the "negative" ones, like anger, put out more force to a greater distance than the "positive" ones, like love.

Here's what I'm finding:

The Human Energy Field: "Scientific instruments are able to measure some aspects of the energy field, and some effects of the energy field on other systems; however, some aspects elude measurement with current technology. The field shares many common aspects with electricity and magnetism (see Oschman for discussion) but it is not yet clear whether biomagnetism is exactly the same force as the human biofield, or just a closely related phenomenon."

It's time to chase down Enoch. Hope he even remembers me! Kennaria's had some contact with him; that's cool. I found this library listing of resources for his class, Anthropology of Consciousness, Anthro 697b.

I just read, however, that he'll take sabbatical in the spring. :-( I won't record my outburst here, but talk about bummed with the timing...........

Well. I actually finished the paper to submit to the proceedings for Critical Link 4, held in Stockholm last spring, a whole day EARLY! Gee! Somehow, the universe smiled on me with the blessing of time. Time-wise, I'd spent 3-4 half days on it earlier this summer, and three 5-6 hour days on it as the deadline neared. Scheduling the time to write, amidst and among everything else, has to be the single toughest thing for an aspiring academic/researcher to figure out.

The grand thing is, though, that the work I'd done earlier percolated long enough that I actually generated a few brand new connections (!), and these are what will now drive my proposal to present at RID's conference next summer. Deadline upcoming.

Maybe I picked up the vibrations of the recent ST convention, because it's been on my mind - sharing all those videotapes with Catalin and Raz en route to Shemaya. ;-)

The NY Times had a story today, Fans Hope Suns Can Rise Again on Star Trek.

Full text of the article is in the extended entry. Why do I love Star Trek? Besides the fact that the crew from the original series were my best friends while I was growing up (!), the vision now embodied in I.D.I.C. - "infinite diveristy in infinite combinations" and the way they deliberately try to forecast current events into the future has always inspired me.

A sweet series by Monica Furlong, given to me as "homework" by someone who knew how much I'd love these wonderful stories about learning how to live with and use magical powers. I'm almost done with Wise Child, which - while written first, is best "read second" (according to the expert) - follows the now-grown Juniper as she nurtures a child much like she herself was nurtured herself. There's one book left in the Doran Trilogy: Colman. He's a small, brave friend of Wise Child's - courageous because he acts even when he feels fear.

A review of this trilogy is combined here with a review of Lois Lowry, author of The Giver.

if folks don't answer?! I'm one to talk, since phone is NOT my thing. Mine is always on vibrate, not ring, and most of the time I don't even notice that it's ringing. Not to mention I'm out of range half the time. But those two boys with their new toys! You'd think ONE of them could have answered!

We'll see how long I'm lugging that microwave and toaster around for 'em now...

Well. I was entertained by the couple and the anti-couple last night. ;-) After Raz rounded up the cavalry to welcome his best friend to Amherst, we went out to dinner and had some spirited discussion and teasing about the history of their friendship, gender/sexual orientation, and the merits of religion vs. spirituality. Although there were differences of opinion regarding the usefulness of organized religion, all my buds owned up to being spiritual beings. :-)

I think they probably didn't watch Star Trek tapes after I bid them goodnight, however, it's nice to know another trekker's orbit will overlap with mine for the next few years.

"Freedom of information is at the root of American democracy, and yet every day we see that freedom being compromised, controlled and limited. The Grokster decision is a ruling in favor of keeping our bets open about which technologies will turn out to serve our freedoms best."

The Supreme Court rules (finally!) against corporate control of copyright!

Grokster and the Information Exchange

From another story in the NYTimes this morning: "While people are spending less time listening to radio over all, public radio's share of radio listenership is up, from roughly 1 percent 20 years ago to more than 5 percent of all listeners today, according to the Station Resource Group, a public radio strategy and analysis organization."

I would guess this increase represents a demographic of those folks with enough education, savvy, and resources to want to engage in the knowledge/power struggle of the species. While clearly many of these lean conservatively, they are likely not so fundamentalist as to resist all change. Perhaps this is a way of measuring the vanguard of social change, even social evolution. :-)

None of my friends with disabilities will be surprised at this story in the NYTimes: School Achievement Reports Often Exclude the Disabled.

"Federal officials have acknowledged permitting a growing number of states to exclude many special education students from reports on school progress, on the grounds that they account for only a small portion of enrollment."

Kinda makes one wonder what other "small portions" of people are excluded from consideration, acknowledgement, and other features of basic human regard.

I'm having trouble adding blogs to the rss feed. Yesterday I tried to add Media Log by Dan Kennedy and just now I tried to add george.h.williams: literature, technology, culture, education, academia, also to no avail. Poo!

Jose recommended this dialogue between Bourdieu and Loic Wacquant as a source of definitions for the uninitiated. :-)

There's a follow-up online colloquim with Wacquant in which, in part, he discusses Bourdieu, the later Wittgenstein, Searles, and Austin. I can easily see why Jose made the connection between my proceedings paper for Critical Link IV and Bourdieu's work on structure, agency, and habitus. :-)

A book to read, which they wrote together: An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology.

Austin's performative

How to Do things with Words, originally published 1961.

From Dan Kennedy's Media Log (Dan is an award-winning media critic and investigative reporter).

www.dankennedy.net

PLYING THE MEDIA WITH LIES.

"The media have not necessarily done a horrible job of covering the claims of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Indeed, if it weren't for news orgs such as the New York Times and the Washington Post, it might not be as clear as it already is that the vets' claims consist of nothing but ugly lies.

Still, editors and news directors should consider that the way they practice journalism allowed the lies to circulate and propagate..."

~ from Donna

"Fifteen percent of Arabs and Chaldeans in the Detroit area say they personally have had a "bad experience" after the Sept. 11 attacks because of their ethnicity, according to preliminary results from a University of Michigan study."

Encouragingly, "a greater proportion (one-third) have received expressions of support from non-Arabs."

Includes info on religious affiliation, perceptions of safety for the families, support of U.S. presence in the Middle East, thoughts on surveillance and security, degree of bilingualism, activism, and other interesting results.

~ from Ximena to the social justice listserv.

Visited with Sam for an hour yesterday. His black eye is healing although there's a visible rim of bruising along the bottom edge, following his cheekbone. He was in good spirits even though he'd just woken up from his afternoon nap. We couldn't decide if his speech was a bit slurry because he'd just woken up or because he'd had a beer (!) with lunch. (He didn't want his sister to know that he still had access to alcohol, even though he doesn't drink that much - anymore! - and even tried to change the subject on me when I asked him about including it in the blog. :-) He finally decided Edith would probably tolerate his indiscretion - not like its "news" or anything!)

Speaking of which, Edith,

Donna sends this:

Even former conservative allies now find this president really scary:

The FBI's Pre-Emptive Interrogations Of "Possible" Demonstrators:
Chilling Political Speech
By BOB BARR
----
Wednesday, Aug. 25, 2004

Excerpt: "The Administration and campaign of George W. Bush is squelching any possible hint of disagreement or protest at every political rally or gathering.

For example, people with T-shirts that hint at disagreement are not allowed anywhere near the events, nor even on the route traveled by the presidential motorcade. Think what they'd do to you if you showed up in a - shudder -- mask.

But it's gotten even worse than that.

The FBI's Preemptive Interrogation Memorandum

As the New York Times has reported, in an October 2003 memorandum to law enforcement agencies, the FBI expressed great concern over the possibility that marches and rallies in Washington, D.C. and San Francisco might become "violent, destructive, or disruptive."

The memo went on to urge law enforcement to monitor the Internet, because "protesters often use the Internet to . . . coordinate their activities prior to demonstrations." It also urged law enforcement to watch out for protesters who use cell phones to "coordinate . . . or update colleagues."

In the memo, law enforcement agencies at all levels of government are warned to be aware of "possible indicators of protest activity."

A cryptic email from Todd:

"watch the will ferrell commercial on whitehousewest.com"

???

I think everyone should keep a sharp eye out for Korean drivers and especially HUNJU! Oh my gosh, she is LEGAL. :-) Definitely time for a celebration, don't you think? (Maybe a sleepover at Carolyn's, so no one has to worry about driving home afterwards?)

Oops ~ I'm not supposed to tease her in public. :-( Do you think she will try to run me over? :-) Respect, where IS it?!!! (In steph-speak teasing = affection, grin.)

If anyone wants to participate in a survey about how people manage their online identities I'm sure the researchers would be thrilled. :-) Here's their frame:

"We are studying various ways people manage (or negotiate) their identities and present themselves as who they are in the cyberspace."

~ posted to the Air-l listserv by Meng Ma

Congressman Charles Rangel has been calling for Rumsfeld's resignation for awhile, and is making a new effort based on a new report about his negligence contributing to the Abu Ghraib scandel. To join the effort, sign the petition. This will assist Rangel's efforts when he introduces his legislation (link above) on September 22nd.

~ via Becky Townsend

Kayla became the first of Hannah's friends to reach double digits! Last night Hannah hosted a special private birthday sleepover for Kayla, complete with an elaborate dinner (custard for dessert) and many gifts.

After dinner we lay on the deck watching stars. I punched Kayla in the cheek and tried to poke out her eye. Then we played Elvis monopoly and Kayla had the least money but the most property. Do you think she won?

Hannah was the consummate host. She even protected Kayla from me by trying to roll me off the back deck. :-(

An internet ad from the Kerry campaign: http://www.johnkerry.com/petition/oldtricks.php.

Stephen is already out of the starting gate! Not only did he send the proposed syllabus today for Democracy, Rhetoric, and Performance, he also got in the first joke, enticing Scott the Snakemeister to return for an encore performance. :-)

Of course, there is reading DUE for the first class....welcome to grad school!

The Alaska folk posted some pics and workshop descriptions from the conference last spring.

Meanwhile, I worked with someone recently who busted my chops for voicing and "walking all over" a hearing person who was already speaking. Actually, my team was very kind and indirect with the feedback (I could do better in this regard!), but I caught myself at least three times, twice with the same interlocutors (a definite "dynamic") and know that it happens other times too. I need to do a better job taking in the visual message and finding the proper auditory moment to convey it.

We had a vigorous debate throughout the assignment on a variety of issues - quite exhilerating, actually. :-) One of the things I'm trying to explore the limits of is how much accommodating and adjusting the interpreter must, should, ought (?) to do to make the communication appear seamless, when the "reality" is that there's a hearing norm/timeframe and a deaf norm/timeframe that are not in sync. I've a feeling that the more we (interpreters) adjust for this, the less likely the group-as-a-whole is to develop actual bicultural norms and connected relationships across the language divide. But how to leave the juxtapositions unmasked without feeding misperceptions and stereotypes is the precise point I think my team was trying to make.

John and I pulled a 10 hour day yesterday to finish the wall. It looks great. Changes the character of the house....will take some getting used to. My friends have been great. Several people visited while I was here: Ingrid, Sarbjeet, Denise, Leda and her husband John. Most reminded me (gently) that my efforts wouldn't change anything. I know. I tried to strike a balance between everyone's priorities for the house. I've acted on my values - I want a peaceful, beautiful home full of a demonstrative loving family. The "peaceful" part is where my mind has been. I realize it wasn't....and...that we produced that together: co-construction. I'm changing, and welcoming it, painful as it has been and no doubt will continue to be. If nothing else, how I've spent the last ten days here matters to me.

I'm particularly proud of the stairs, but there are several other features that emerged spontaneously: the future water pool, a heart stone, a triangular niche for (possibly) a worship icon, a quartz portion that gleams in the sun. :-)

John is a rock. He's just steady and keeps on going and doesn't get stressed (or at least doesn't show it) when I fiddle with this or that way of putting the dang thing together. We cranked on the wall today, not withstanding Sarbjeet's "lostness" and Denise's general disparagement. :-) She didn't miss a moment to tell me what a pathological, delusional mess I am, and Sarbjeet was (apparently) less motivated cuz Lynn wasn't here to impress - last year you should have seen how hard he worked! :-) I, of course, have no such excuse. I'm simply leaving my mark.

On top (!) of it all there was Frankie and Bardsley. Oh my. A horny boy and a timid girl. Yikes! Both these pups need to get fixed!

Well.

Denise especially gave me a raft of shit for thinking that doing stuff around the house might make a difference. I still go back and forth. Part of me thinks, maybe, it's still possible that pathology can be recognized for what it is (especially, has been), and changed. Part of me accepts that all my efforts are simply that, MY efforts, and essentially meaningless to the family I chose.

I'm also aware of feeling particularly vulnerable online these days. Although I haven't "told all", I've certainly told a lot more than most would. I'm feeling exposed. I'm a low-context, pseudo middle-class girl (as in really working class?) I don't even know. I do know that emotions have had a heck of a lot to do with how I've chosen to live my life. Not very rational - although I can do rationalization out the wazoo. Subjectively, how I *feel* has driven much, if not most, of what I've done. I think one skill I'm learning these days is to put the emotions themselves into a larger context.

One of the delusions I'm actively entertaining this week while I'm at the house in VT is that Frankie and Mei Mei can become friends. Jamie told me that dogs enter their most trainable years at 2 -2 1/2, so that'd be Frankie. Mei Mei? Who knows. Such a chicken! But I did have 'em both looking at each other for a long time last night (me in the middle, on the stairs). Tonite it was shorter. Mei Mei got a treat first and Frankie barked. End of activity.

I've not been reading the air-l list for awhile, one of those things I had to just cut out, hopefully only temporarily. Then they switched the server and there's been a rash of folk reacting to the change - online group dynamics. I responded to two different emails. One I tried to make individual (not to the whole list) but it got bounced back. Which makes me wonder if the person is using an alias (!), which was the subject of the second response I posted. :-) Hilarious if so, and ironic if not?

I've been at the house here in VT for three nights so far. B&H are vacationing in Cape Breton. Things have generally been ok; I've been productive and had good spirits (most of the time). Some confluences have caught my attention. Or maybe they are synchronies? I think of a confluence as plural, and a syncrony as dualistic only (between two rather than among many).

Being here alone (no other people) feels good. I do the animals and connect better with the setting, the environment (birds, pond, turtles, frogs, grasses, flowers, trees, sky). Last night an owl was close to the house, and a bat was in the house! Flapped over me a couple of times in the sunroom. Mei Mei hasn't ventured near me at night; Frankie is too vigilant and jealous. The birds alternate between chatter and relative quiet. Overall, things have progressed smoothly (except for me avoiding cleaning/organizing tasks by being online!)

Went to see Uncle Sam today, and does he have a shiner! He fell last week, right into one of the tables, but says, "You should see the other guy!" He doesn't seem too much the worse for wear, but he isn't looking forward to another round in that boxing ring. I told him I had five (count 'em, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5!) head injuries as a child and it was too late for him to join the competition. Just give up now!

His speech was really clear today, maybe cuz I'd just caught him after nap? (Actually, I woke him up, he was in his "nun gear".) Betty helped get him up, and did she ever talk a mile a minute! I haven't seen in her...about a year , and she was jazzed. Sam says she's always like that, but I don't remember quite that level of effusiveness. Anyway, she told us about her son taking her up to Maine for a week. She had a blast. :-)

After she left, Sam said he'd lost his touch at small talk. I said, nah, you've just decided to put your energy towards other things. He had a medical report from his hospital trip a while ago to check out his swallowing. Neither of us understood the medical terminology - bolus, valliculae - but he knew "aspiration". He said it had to do with drawing breathe into his stomach when he swallows. The dictionary definition isn't so clear, but maybe I should check a medical definition. At any rate, he wants everyone to know that the results were "very good!" - he doesn't need a food thickener.

Pat - he's loving that CD by Josh Groban. He says Josh has a "particularly well-suited voice for singing Spanish." From my quick glance at the cover, it looks like about half n half, half the songs in English, half in Spanish. ('Am I right?) ;-)

I told him about my mom's partner, John, who died last week. Sam told me he doesn't think about dying (this is a BIG change from his first year in the nursing home). He listens to the tv a lot. He can't read - blurry vision - so the tv is really it. When he's bored, he sleeps. And he sleeps well. Doesn't remember his dreams. Says he sleeps a lot. But he was also "disturbed about John." I guess I have some mixed feelings too, and I know my mom does, but they made the decision together to send him to the nursing home because of the level of care he needed. What we need is a world in which people don't feel they have to send their loved ones off to die alone because the economic system doesn't tolerate human feeling.

We talked about the blog; he's especially interested to know if people are posting comments. I told him most of the responses were via email, but a few people had posted direct comments. I explained that I've been summarizing the emails and posting them as comments so folks in Sam's circle can also get news about each other. We talked about ways to widen the reach of this blog, so that Sam's still in touch with more people. You know that being social was the mission of his life! We thought about putting some kind of announcement in the World Learning newsletter (formerly, The Experiment, am I right?), and also at his old church. We know he has good friends who have organized the guest list for the last couple of parties - he had two living memorial ceremonies. They were a hoot! Anyway, we're definitely in the market for more email addresses to anyone who knows Sam.

Nora, Sam did get Cory's thank you (and said he would also be pleased to receive a check in the mail as a gift!), and hopes that Cody is ok, wherever he is. Sam wondered what George Young's wife was doing in Colorado? Or did you travel somewhere to attend her funeral? Sam was already aware that Kelly is going to school to become an RN and wishes her the best of luck.

I read a letter from Sam's sister Edith to him. It included a couple of jokes: Bush's 9/11 Commission and their task to develop a Cliff's Notes version, and 30 reasons men should prefer dogs to wives. If you didn't know already (!), Sam has a w-i-d-e breadth of apprecation for humor. He particularly likes them the more insolent and outrageous they become. (His mail has been censored by the nursing home. He hasn't decided to sue them yet for infringing on his civil right of access to free speech...but if they give him too much of a hard time....well, YOU know Sam!)

One thing I wanted to check was this "diagnosis" that Sam and I thought we figured out a couple years ago. (I have some posts about Sam that aren't yet catalogued in the "Sam" thread. Sorry - hope to get to it soon.) We always figured it was aphasia - similar to Ram Dass's experience. But the swallowing report today listed his history as "dysphasia. basal ganglia." The basal ganglia (I typed banal the first time!!!) is, I'm guessing, the cerebellum. That's the part of his brain that is deteriorating. We were trying to decide today if that deterioration counts as "brain damage" or not. That's part of the (apparent) conditions for aphasia.

Well, it turns out dysphasia is a milder form and probably more accurate a description of what's going on for Sam. The thing that bothers me about these definitions is their highlighting of [lack of] comprehension, because Sam has lost NONE of his, and I think it's the same kind of prejudice that hearing ("normal", non-deaf) people have about the Deaf. That they somehow don't understand. But Sam understands perfectly, there's just this damn motor coordination thing with his mouth. The trick is, Sam understands through his ears (no need to increase volume, at least, I haven't noticed this yet. Today he asked me a couple of times to repeat myself, but I think my voice may have been quieter than usual.) Deaf people understand with - via - their eyes. The channel of communication has little bearing upon the capacity of the mind.

We haven't had an incident of Sam coming up with the wrong word in ages. Not that I noticed, anyway. There have been a few times when it was clear there was No Way I was going to understand what he was trying to say. %-) I suspect there's a combination of the less-than-perfect motor control of speech with some emotional and intellectual frustration. Emotional, cuz haven't you had the experience of trying to get something that seems simple and basic to you across without the other person getting it? And intellectual because in Sam logic whatever he's trying to say Makes Perfect Sense! It's logical, and why can't we follow his logic?

I notice I'm generalizing. I am assuming that it's not just me who doesn't get it sometimes. Maybe you miss something different than I do, which means you catch some things that I don't, but it's awful dang possible that I catch some things that you miss too! That's why I'm advocating a team approach.

Some of you I miss a lot! And I know Sam does too. You've got to admire his spirit.

Some folks are groups are trying to organize nationwide democracy meetings at public libraries this September 11th.

~ notification by David Silver via email to the air-l listserv in Espanol.

Just got my first online volunteer campaign letter from John Kerry.

50,000 people went to see and hear him in Portland, 20,000 in Grand Rapids, 17,000 in Bowling Green....good numbers, eh? He says what people are telling him is

"This is the most important election of our lifetime..

Briefly, as it's weed-whacking day and I have to get out before we get hit with Hurricane rains.

A nudge about empathy last week probably helped me make the connection to the other party's point-of-view in a visceral (felt) way as opposed to just an intellectual way.

For me, it's all about attention. Doesn't have to be constant, periodic is fine as long as there is some regularity (I can trust it will happen) and there is significant room for spontaneity (not always planned).

When I need to find a number while traveling...http://corp.sover.net/docs/exchanges.html.

While Americans discover text messaging, the Deaf have been paging each other for years. DeafWay II was so crowded with pages the transmission networks could barely keep up!

Are you part of "the thumb generation" - the oyayubi sedai - as text message aficionados are called in Japan? ;-)

The NYTimes reports on Vermont's lawsuit against the federal government for preventing the purchase of prescription medications from Canada.

Go Vermont, Go!

An arbitrator ruled in support of GEO's grievance against the international student fee! Looks like UMass administration might try to get the ruling reversed legally, but at this point they ought to "cease and desist from charging the ISF to graduate student employees" and refund the fee to anyone who paid it.

Way to go GEO!

~ from an email from Yasser Munif

I went swimming with a polar bear yesterday in the artic waters of the West River. I *tried* to convince this bear that it was exciting and fun for me to just stand halfway in and watch, but the bear wouldn't have it. At one point, the bear told me to swim some laps to warm up, which I did - and it worked, temporarily. My goosebumps never went away, and after an hour, even the bear's lips were blue. We did find a golf ball and an old sock, so I guess that made it all worthwhile. :-)

Interesting stuff at The International Network for Life Studies. The author (?), Morioka Masahiro, is interested in consciousness, communication, disability, death (and dying process?), philosophy, desire, bioethics, feminism, religion...hmmm!

I like that he thinks beyond the surface of things, as evidenced in this debate about succession within the Japanese Imperial Family. This is what I'm trying to do in the Critical Link article on professionalization.

Might be worth reading this article about the people relocated from the towns where the atomic bomb was built in concert with viewing the documentary...

Someone spent some time googling on the computer with me yesterday and we found The Scoop on Poop and Facts on Farts.

According to these copyrighted sites (!), the average person farts 14 times a day, expelling a half-liter of intestinal gas. You can also learn whether one can make a living off of flatulence, if there are gender and/or ethnic differences in farting and pooping practice and effects, and about the causes of various colorations of poop.

Well, Li decided he needed to get on the action. :-) My intended quick half-hour visit to hold the baby (!) evolved into six hours as I became the beneficiary of his informal counseling. We spent some time on the whole introversion/extroversion question and my joy at being a member of groups....how much easier I feel in groups (such as a class) where the role is clear (being a learner, what fun!) than in a social setting where other norms are at play. I had to confess that I want to be more of an extrovert, and in certain circumstances accomplish this (although still too rarely to satisfy my desire). ;-)

I lobbied hard to become the case study of Li's current paper on desire, tragedy, and satisfaction of desire. (To no avail, sigh!) :-) This came up as Li engaged me around my attention-seeking behaviors...

Unesco has posted the text with a brief historical account.

"On Nov. 5, Massachusetts voters overwhelmingly supported ballot Question 2, the measure to replace bilingual education in public schools with a sheltered English immersion program, but many experts and students still question whether it will work."

Campus reacts to bilingual ed. vote

By Bryan Mattei

The Heights, the independent student newspaper of boston college
11/12/02

James Crawford has posted some basic info about copyright protections, rights, and waivers. He emphasizes that these are his interpretations (I like them) and provides a link to a more official source.

Another embarrassing confession - what is the difference? Oh, I get the 1's and 0's coding thing....but...I need a better grasp of the big picture.

"Success in digital processors and memory chips boils down to recognizing accurately and rapidly whether a circuit is on or off. That simplicity makes measuring performance and cost relatively straightforward and has even allowed the industry to predict fairly accurately how fast digital technology will improve. But the more variable world of analog data defies the emergence of a blockbuster analog design that fits many products." From: A digital world with analog as it's workhorse".

South Africa dissolves party that was architect of apartheid from the NYTimes: "It is of huge symbolic significance," said Robert B. Mattes, a political analyst at the University of Cape Town, "that the party which for a long time was the champion of Afrikaner nationalism and later of white nationalism is now bound for the dustbin of history."

While the article downplays any political impact (the party has received virtually no substantial voter support for years), I think it is indicative of the depth of social change that there is not even minimal support for the ideology of the old regime. This is Good News!

Raz is gonna love this documentary. Wish he was here to watch it with us tonight, but maybe we can see it together once he's back in the country.

The line that struck me the most was Hassan, talking about how the American people will defeat the American empire. Not only are we, perhaps, the only ones who can, we are certainly the ones most closely positioned to do it sooner rather than later.

Prem said he thought this movie was more powerful than Fahrenheit 9/11. I'm not sure, but the two together certainly pack one heck of a whallop. Control Room adds no editorializing, one simply sees what folks are thinking in the moment, as opposed to the narrative storyline that ties the incidents of F 9/11 together. Each movie reveals facts. F 9/11 makes its case explicit, essentially telling you what you ought to think, what the evidence means. Control Room is more subtle, it assumes the audience can piece the evidence together without guidance.

I found it both disheartening and encouraging. It is encouraging to see the commitment and integrity to a journalism that struggles with itself as it seeks to represent events in the world that we all must grapple with and are affected by. At the same time, it is discouraging to be reminded, once again, of the formidable barriers in the way to peaceful co-existence and collaborative modes of problem-solving. Lt. Rushing states the contradiction most clearly when he says that he doesn't like war but he doesn't believe we're ready to live in a world without war. I would suggest that most of us ARE ready to live in a world without war, but we must convince our political leaders that this is what they need to pursue, and that whatever costs or fears they have about peace's uncertain (?) outcomes need to be faced squarely and openly, without compromise or rationalization.

Swati and Ingrid took turns tonight telling me about myself. ;-) First, Swati commented on the fact that I tend to say something self-deprecating when I talk about what I do. She said, "education people do that", and I wondered, if it's transparent, what good does it do me? ;-)

Then Ingrid got started. (I'm supposed to be nice but you should hear her after a few glasses of wine!) ;-) She's been on the trip of telling me how stubborn I am. Denise is on the same theme. Ingrid says, "how many times are you going to hit your head against the same wall?" Denise says, "you tend to put yourself in the line of fire a bit too often."

I tried to debate the difference between stubbornness (I doubt Ingrid would agree with the disagnosis of Character Deficiency Syndrome but the piece is too hilarious to ignore) and conviction (which is most commonly used in reference to criminals, not beliefs!) with her tonight, but she wasn't buying into it. Kept going off on tangents about my attention-seeking behaviors. At least until she realized I really wasn't being loud to attract others' attention, I was just being clueless! :-)

This obituary for the Bilingual Education Act was written by James Crawford, author of At War with Diversity: U.S. Language Policy in an Age of Anxiety.

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban is scary-feeling, all the way through. The mood (lighting, music) is almost all dark and invokes uncertainty and threat. They've taken the bones of the story and reproduced it....it all seems to happen very fast...all the transitions and character and relationship development in the book is rendered in short-hand: you know it's there but you don't really see it happen. The new Dumbledore is (how could it be otherwise?) disappointing. The all-pervasive wisdom and sense-of-humor is weakened by a casual disregard for the immediate (Dumbledore would never, ever inflict pain through carelessness, as occurs in the hospital scene when he slaps Ron's wounded leg). :-(

Otherwise, as the turning point in the series, when the forces of evil start to gain ascendancy and the battle starts to seem unending, I think it serves its purpose well.

"...what the [current spate of Olympic] mascots have in common: the aggressive, predatory and rapacious traits of the creatures they represent have been eliminated."

Said traits have been transferred to capitalism - the game of the age.

"Ancient Games had their origins as somber celebrations of death....Part of the reason the ancient Games were so uncompromising and often violent has to do with what was at stake. The Greeks, for the most part, had no heaven; with some notable exceptions, good and bad all went to the same gray, characterless, drizzly underworld after death, and that was that. In the absence of a post-mortem reward for moral goodness, the one thing you could strive for was immortal fame -- doing something so glorious that men would talk of you in years, centuries, millenniums to come. "

"And so, whereas today's Olympic committee prefers to ''celebrate humanity'' (an official slogan of contemporary Olympiads), the Greek athlete wanted only to be celebrated himself; it was his one ticket to immortality."

This reminds me of my conversation with Ingrid last night when I got so passionate about

"Now I am beginning to wonder if well-built architecture occurs only at a very fragile economic moment," says an architecture professor, commenting on differences between overall sloppy American architecture and the more skillful and precise artifacts produced in Asia and Europe.

Building a Bad Reputation: Sloppy American Construction.

Check out The New School.

It looks cool. ;-)

I'm confused - didn't I post something a few days ago? I read her blog, wanted to add it to the rss - bibliophile - and even posted a comment there! I think I did the trackback thing too (sigh)....

It has to get past "screening" - we shall see, we shall see...

Maybe I'll assign punkhermit's blog to my interpersonal communication class this fall...?

She posted a link to QuarterLife Crisis.

Preview of Art Speigelman's upcoming comic (!) book about 9/11 and it's aftermath:

"I saw heroism in being able to live in the present and a lightness of touch." I gotta be working on that "lightness of touch" part. But maybe our muses know each other: "I wish I could do comics about "My Year in Provence," or something. But so far it has been the painful realities that I can barely grasp that force me to the drawing table. I'm kind of hoping my next work will be a humorous bedroom farce about the amusing foibles of the upper middle class, intercut with succulent dessert recipes. Unfortunately, I seem to have a rather grotesque muse."

An excerpt: The New Normal

Technology has done a lot for opening up new experiences for people with disabilities. Here's a great resource for producing visually accessible materials for people with vision impairments, the Lighthouse, such as contrasting color combinations for print materials and other useful tips.

Epson C84

http://www.epson.com/cgi-bin/Store/consumer/consDetail.jsp?BV_UseBVCookie=yes&oid=36033903

Fahrenheit 9/11 will be shown with open captioning on August 29 and 30 at the Crown Palace 17 in Hartford. For more info, check out Insight Cinema.

~ Vermont Interpreter Referral Service virs@sover.net; www.virs.org

Are you alive? How do you know? Can you distinguish body from thought? Iím talking about sensing your muscles, your joints, the way your knee cocks, whether your shoulders are raised or not, lungs expanding ribsÖ

Or, are you mainly alive through body: mind jumping this urge that discomfort another merely imagined, stimuli crowding thought?

[The BM] came with me to visit Sam today. They haven't seen each other for a long time. I was surprised ~ and happy ~ when she said, "Let's go there first!" She's seemed more eager and willing to see me lately; we had a cozy time.

Sam's speech is getting a lot harder to understand, but after awhile [the BM] could understand what he was saying without needing me to translate. She's been afraid to go see him for a long while now. I think its been too hard to see what's happening to Sam's body at the same time that her dad was sick. The nursing home isn't the greatest place in the world...one of those social services we can't seem to fully fund...anyway, today Hannah commented, "I don't know if I'd want to work here." I said, "It's a really hard job."

A lot of the staff is great. Larry helped us today (we walked in, no Sam! he was actually in the restroom. shh!) but there are others too - Sam is great about always making introductions(!). Many of the nurses and aides are really friendly.

Leona and Sam held hands this evening, after spending the day taking turns sleeping and engaging in tandem crying. ;-) Leona was quite frightened by her potential future mother-in-law (they were starting to connect by the time we left). Sam spent most of his awake time just checking everybody out, generally unperturbable. :-) At 10 weeks, he's got that alert gaze now, really seeing and noticing things.

Told told us (for the 47th time) that Salem recently made the top 20 list of best places to live. We did make it in to the Peabody-Essex Museum (oldest museum in the US), and saw Yin Yu Tang - the reconstructed 19th century house from China. Another museum-goer attached herself to Li once she heard him translating and explaining things for us - we had a hard time shaking her, even though she had clarified that he wasn't working for the museum. Li was his usual kind and generous self, answering her questions and interacting politely. Todd vanished at the first whiff of intrusion, Carolyn and I hung in for quite a while. Finally, though, being unable to rescue Li without being rude, we, too, left him to extricate himself from her greedy clutches. (Not that WE had an selfish reasons for wanting to keep him to ourselves!) :-) We learned a lot of neat stuff that I'm sure wasn't in the official "audio tour". Including tidbits about what seemed somehow "out of place" - such as placement of furniture and other items in certain rooms. Li seemed to have a bit of cognitive dissonance - felt like he'd been "home" and couldn't quite place himself in Salem MA when we departed. (His navigation skills once we were in the car were alright though, better than someone else we know...!)

I got separated from the group for about an hour - went to the restroom and was seduced by retail therapy. Found something for my mother's upcoming birthday, and a little something for a little someone I know and was missing. :-( While I was lost, Li, Todd, and Carolyn checked out Havana, architectural photography by Robert Polidori.

Cheri and Qun finally showed up with the babies and I got to babysit for a whole half-hour! Leona and I checked out the plants and gift shop. She really wanted to eat one of the ferns.

After the museum, we walked out toward the lighthouse, then past the House of Seven Gables before heading out to the Boardwalk in Willows Park for dinner. The only casualty of the day was me stubbing my toe on the concrete picnic table.

"Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience," is aimed at preserving stories from the battlegrounds of Iraq and Afghanistan."

"War stories, after all, occupy one of literature's longest, weightiest shelves, and American fighting men, from Ulysses S. Grant to Anthony Swofford, have set down their battle-forged memoirs, but these days the military and literary worlds barely overlap.

"These are two parts of society that don't ordinarily talk to each other," said Dana Gioia, the endowment chairman. "And we thought, what would happen if we got them in a conversation?"

~NYTimes

"These are two parts of society that don't ordinarily talk to each other," said Dana Gioia, the endowment chairman. "And we thought, what would happen if we got them in a conversation?"

~ NYTimes Trying to Make the Pen as Mighty as the Sword

Not personally guilty (?) but oh so close to those who are....

Halliburton Settles S.E.C. Accusations

"The Halliburton Company secretly changed its accounting practices when Vice President Dick Cheney was its chief executive, the Securities and Exchange Commission said yesterday as it fined the company $7.5 million and brought actions against two former financial officials.

The commission said the accounting change enabled Halliburton, one of the nation's largest energy services companies, to report annual earnings in 1998 that were 46 percent higher than they would have been had the change not been made. It also allowed the company to report a substantially higher profit in 1999, the commission said."

from the NYTimes, By FLOYD NORRIS

Published: August 4, 2004

Tom Atlee's recent work on polarization is applicable to interpersonal relationships too. The following are excerpts from POLARIZATION AND INTELLIGENCE by Tom Atlee - August 2004.

Intelligence involves understanding what is real -- matching our mental models with what is really out there. That is what learning from experience is all about: Something happens that we didn't expect, so we change our expectations to include it, becoming more aligned with reality in the process. This is what science is all about: Making hypotheses (mental models) about reality and then testing them to find their validity, including their limitations.

The more fully we apply intelligence to any circumstance, the more we become able to align our efforts with the actual realities of the situation and thereby succeed.

In their efforts to understand reality, intelligent people seek to understand similarities and differences. Of course, those similarities and differences should be real and relevant. Getting hung up on imaginary, irrelevant differences and similarities -- thinking a handsome candidate is better than a conscientious one, for example, or that everyone who looks like an Arab is a potential enemy -- can lead to make stupid mistakes.

Sometimes someone -- perhaps an advertiser raving about an expensive product -- will insist that we pay attention to fine distinctions, when similarities may be far more obvious and important. Other times people will insist that certain things -- such as "all politicians" -- are similar despite glaring differences. At such times, we need to dig deeper into what's going on. Intelligence involves questioning anything that interferes with our ability to seriously consider actual, relevant similarities and differences.

In most cases, polarization undermines intelligence by misleading us in exactly this way. It reduces vast human diversity into categories like Left and Right that are often ambiguous, distracting and even downright irrelevant (see ). Polarized partisans reject any notion that there may be important similarities between people on the Left and Right, or important differences within the ranks of their enemies or allies. Polarization is usually antithetical to intelligence. It is especially antithetical to co-intelligence, the intelligence of the Whole, because it impedes our ability to connect with diverse other people to discover a bigger picture that integrates all our views.

...

All [criticisms] said, we must acknowledge the powerfully positive role that polarization -- and its close cousins, violence and nonviolent confrontation -- often play in breaking through denial and life-degrading social arrangements. Although polarization cannot resolve issues well, it contains energy that can force those issues onto the table when most people refuse to attend to them or when people or institutions with undue social power prevent vital issues from being considered.
People whose views and interests are suppressed or oppressed often experience, though that oppression, a sense that they are different from and opposed to the people or systems that are holding them down or threatening what they value. Asserting this difference and opposition is often a necessary part of breaking out of victimhood.

Becky passed along: Deliberative Democracy Consortium and Wisdom of Crowds. I think sociologists might distinguish between "crowds" and "collectives" - smile - but why be picky? :-)

Critt's passion is stopping the genocide in Sudan. I don't have explicit ideas, but the media - mass communication - has got to be part of the solution. People in general have to be hooked into caring. I think Fahrenheit 9/11 (still in the top ten!) might be one kind of model...

Becoming.

~Devi to the socjus-teach listserv.

One can only hope that the explicit link between corporate greed and government misbehavior shown here makes it a bit easier for folks (independents, especially, and moderate Republicans) to see what seems so plain to so many of us about Bush, Cheney, Halliburton, United Defense, Saudi Arabia, oil...Michael Moore may have used some cinematic techniques to enhance W's "doe in the headlights" look (as my dad described him), but the facts are still the facts, and no alternative explanation has so far been forthcoming...

Anyway, me and Andrea enjoyed it! ;-)

might have to check this out too, along with the rss stuff when Ben gets back from kayaking...

radio.userland.com

Just read in Critt's blog an interesting post about the four flows - people, energy, FDI (foreign direct investment) and security - posited as crucial to globalization processes closing the gap between core and peripheral nations.

He's summarized a piece advocating for "true globalization - whatever that means? It seems predicated on an assumption that integration between what the author calls "the Core" and the "Non-Integrating Gap" is desirable and/or inevitable. That presumption notwithstanding, the article is quite interesting in its analysis of recent international events:

"The perturbations of the global system triggered by Sept. 11 have done much to highlight both the limits and risks of globalization, as well as this country's current and future role as "system administrator" to this historical process. For example, the vast majority (almost 95 percent) of U.S. military interventions over the past two decades have occurred within the Non-Integrating Gap. That is, we tend to "export" security to precisely those parts of the world that have a hard time coping with globalization or are otherwise not benefiting from it."

Looks like Bardsley will be looking for new owners. Denise says he's turned her home into a cat vs dog war zone and it's "not peaceful!" So it goes. I walked him yesterday and found him a lot of fun and quite smart but definitely loaded with unrestrained puppy energy. I think I learned a few things from our relative disaster with Frankie (the spoiled queen). Was kinda looking forward to another chance in occasional surrogate dog-dom, but that's obviously no reason for the dog-mom to endure the stress of continual combat. Ah well!

Tom Atlee emails links to some resources on citizen deliberation:

1. Thanks to Critt Jarvis, the chapters from my book THE TAO OF DEMOCRACY that specifically talk about citizen deliberative councils are available to you free on the Web.

Chapter 12 The Canadian Experiment (the MACLEAN'S magazine 1991 "People's Verdict" forum.

Chapter 13 Citizens deliberate about public issues (stories about citizen juries and consensus conferences).

Chapter 14 Citizen deliberative councils (citizen deliberation as a source of wisdom and political effectiveness).

2. Thanks to Dr. Lyn Carson in Australia (and a lot of students she worked with), we now have a manual to help youth -- from mid-high school through college age -- to create their own citizen juries.

Shiny Glass Beads may be another blog for the rss.

The Interpreter, directed by Sydney Pollack, will be filmed on location at the United Nations (article from NYTimes posted in the extended entry). Might be a fine opportunity for some media analysis of representations of interpreters. Useful for training purposes, I bet.

And I never watched the West Wing, but James and Vangie recently started plowing through all the episodes, and have been amused by the interpreter's antics conveying romantic exchanges between Marlee Matlin's character and a non-deaf co-worker who wants to be beau. (If I understood James' summary of the situation correctly.)

I wrote this yesterday afternoon while I was waiting at Mt. Tom for SOMEBODY to show up. :-) We walked the wheelchair accessible path, then hiked about a half-hour up one lovely trail. Definitely a place to return too!

Iíve been proactive in (trying to!) organize groups of folks to do things together. All the events that have occurred have been successful (near as I can tell, anyway) for those who participated. I think Iíve probably always preferred group things to 1:1 socializing (unless itís a date, smile) but not really thought about it much ñ perhaps assuming everyone does, its just that itís hard to organize around everyoneís busy schedules, personalities and whatever other barriers are perceived to get in the way. Being part of groups this summer has inoculated me some from the loss of my family, but I think in general I prefer groups because ñ despite being an external processor ñ I am more of an introvert than an extrovert. If more people are present than the energy expenditure is dispersed. Selfishly, I can enjoy people without having to be constantly ìon.î (Not that Iím ever ìoffî ñ grin.)

It strikes me there are some contradictions lurking around/in/through these thoughtsÖsomething about the balance between performance/self-representation and reflection/enactment of subjectivity.

Julie comes up with an innovative new interior-decorating idea for those living in small spaces.

Trackback to "fat lip" comments....

Reinforcement of identity from amazon:

"[Book] reviewers who use their own names will have a Real Name badge posted next to their reviews. (Pen Names are permitted, but they're less acceptable.) According to its Web site, Amazon believes that "a community in which people use their Real Names will ultimately have higher-quality content."

What interests me is a condoned shift from anonymity to ... what, some kind of transparency re identification? This at the same time that Wired magazine says anonymous blogs are the new hot thing, "wired," while paid blogs are "tired" and popular blogs "expired."

And here's another blog for the rss: Beyond the Beyond, Bruce Sterling's, for/from Wired.

In The Truth is Still Out There, the argument between general relativists and quantum theorists about whether or not information can escape or survive the collapse of a black hole is spelled out in terms even I can understand. :-)

NYTimes Op-Ed author, physicist, and social-cyber-scientist (?!!), Paul Ginsparg, challenges the absence of calculations supporting Stephen Hawking's change of mind, suggesting that historical trends show brilliant scientists becoming more speculative as they age, casting doubt on this new theory as the final answer. But what Hawking says is interesting and seems to shift the grounds of debate from either/or to some kind of mutually-compatible middle ground. I think there are potential parallels to group dynamics/discourses. To wit:

"If you jump into a black hole, your mass energy will be returned to our universe, but in a mangled form, which contains the information about what you were like, but in an unrecognizable state.

"The black hole only appears to form but later opens up and releases information about what fell in, so we can be sure of the past and we can predict the future."

Of course, Hawking is talking about the past and future in cosmic terms, as macro as one can get. But, as the BBC reports, "Whether information is or is not lost has practical and philosophical consequences."

A quantum concept I hadn't come across before is unitarity. This may (in my imagination, at least!) have some parallel (?) to the maintenance of some kind of stable discursive foundation....such that shifts in discourse (from one to another) must occur along a kind of continuum in which the transition points (PMs) don't alter the underlying stable state of, shall we call it, "groupness"...?

In the last couple of days, a few different people have asked me about the blog - why do it? What's my goal? How can I share so much? With strangers? Or, perhaps most importantly, with those I know?

I have all kinds of reasons - it's an archive for me of my own academic thoughts-in-progress, a central place for random thoughts on areas of professional interest (interpreting, social change, social justice), and a place to represent myself wholistically, as I see/understand my own experience in the moment. A way to buck the intense culture of insularity in our department (and perhaps all of academia) which I think functions to bifurcate our professional and personal selves and foster the illusion that they're not related.

As synchronicity would have it (!), last night I finished reading the May/June Utne Reader which had a section on fear. They included some excerpts from You Have the Power: Choosing Courage in a Culture of Fear by Frances Moore Lappe (of the Small Planet Institute and Jeffrey Perkins.

The issue closes with a feature on Celia Perez, who authors a zine, I Dreamed I Was Assertive. She describes how they function as "...my preferred method of therapy, my inconsistent journals, and an amazing way to connect with people across the world".

punkhermit found a basis for more commonalities than me. :-) Her blog, Kicking Against the Pricks: A Music Journal of Sorts is one for the rss.

The U.S. Women's national soccer team outplayed China 3:1 yesterday. I, the foreigner lurking within a group of 17 Chinese, tried to be generous to the young team that shows signs of promise, but the soccer aficionado's were (according to interpretations) having NONE of it. They cheered mightily though, and sang their national anthem vigorously (unlike the U.S. fans, of whom not a whisper of the anthem could be heard). More neutral observers also credited the Chinese with maintaining a "fast physical pace... to the end in a game played from side to side and end to end of the pitch by two equally matched teams almost at the top of their game...and having the courage and ability to take on the United States in open field attacking play" (Women's Soccer World.)

An obnoxious group of Americans right behind us tried to drown out the Chinese chants everytime they got started, and the folks running the replay cameras managed NOT to repeat the good plays made by the Chinese team (yes, they actually made several, especially on defense). No nationalistic bias there.

When we first met up with the whole group to get our tickets, a woman asked me, "Are you with us?" Later, after the 2nd or 3rd time I criticized a U.S. player for bad sportsmanship, another woman asked, "Where are you from?" :-) I enjoyed good plays on both sides, and deplored the bad equally. I suppose it was easy to relax, though, because there was a clearcut advantage in speed, skill and teamwork. And, as Qianqing pointed out in the face of a bit of male chauvinism (sexism, she called it), the Chinese women's team has competed better overall than the men's team, even if the men demonstrate more individual prowess.

Gu Li saw the exciting match on Thursday when the Chinese national team came from a 3-1 deficit to defeat the New England regional team 4-3. Too bad the coverage of this game doesn't expand more on the comeback. (Wanna bet there are some sites in Mandarin that extol upon the team's success?) Must have been thrilling!

AFTER the game, we went to "the largest Asian food market" in the area, then to what folks have described as the most authentic Szechuan-style restaurant near here (both in Hartford). Lu Li flunked as a navigator! We decided we'd still go places with him, but trust him for directions? UNlikely. ;-) The market was interesting - John Kerry's salute at the Democractic National Convention graced the cover of a Mandarin newspaper still on sale, and there were more whole dead fish than I've seen in one location before. Many people looked oddly at me - was I out of place because I'm not Asian-appearing or was it my mullet? :-)

Ingrid owns the heaviest TV I have ever encountered! Not to mention the 20 steps down (old apt) and 30 steps up (new apt). But we pulled it off on the muggiest day of summer in about 3 hours. Cole and I bonded around the experience, even though he slammed the sofa into my lip when we got jammed in a door (it's not that swollen but I can tell - and it still hurts!)

We rocked with five cars and lots of helpers - Ingrid's got a great clutch of friends. Lucky gal! I think we should start a betting pool on how she's gonna get all her stuff arranged in this much smaller apartment (it will be cozy, to say the least). ;-)

Had a good talk with my brother yesterday afternoon. He's doing well and making me proud. Had a request for me, which I will do.

Dad seems better too. He navigated a door while we were talking without any audible grunts and groans. :-)