Author Archives: Steve

Battlestar Galactica and Misinterpretation

I waited with anticipation for the second season of Battlestar Galactica. The arc was tense, the approach new, and the characters were, I thought, dead on. The second season doesn’t seem to remember any of this. It’s difficult to explain what the problem is because the characters had reasons that took time to establish, but this establishment can disappear when you see entire episodes devoted to misdirection.

Let’s say that a relationship pulls the story along, a pursuit narrative involving a connection between a man and a woman. An energy has developed between them that forms one chamber of the story’s heart. The writers strip them of this energy and put them in the wrong beds. “What’s he doing with her?” “Why is she with him?” “There’s no tension there.” “What does this have to do with where they are going along with everyone else?”

In addition to losing its characters, the writers have written the dramatic arc behind a cloud of mashy, predictable action. Battlestar should be a story about a journey home. The Cylons, lots of space (the sense of a hard exodus ahead has been forgotten), human missteps (disappeared), and an interesting myth (mislayed somewhere) are all in the way. Part of this story has to do with what the survivors are creating and destroying along the way. None of this is being told. Opportunities are being lost.

Poor sweat Billy is killed, but inconsequentially to any story. The confused genius spins a thousand miles away from himself, and he’s now being zippered into the costume of a cliche. Edward James Olmos has all but stepped aside as a force. It’s almost to the point where the story can’t be helped because so much time has been wasted standing in the same place, confused, wondering what to do next (see paragraph above).

Libraries and HS

So, a couple of HS officers enter a library and warn the patrons (reg req) about the danger of porn to the liver

Two uniformed men strolled into the main room of the Little Falls library in Bethesda one day last week and demanded the attention of all patrons using the computers. Then they made their announcement: The viewing of Internet pornography was forbidden.

The men looked stern and wore baseball caps emblazoned with the words “Homeland Security.” The bizarre scene unfolded Feb. 9, leaving some residents confused and forcing county officials to explain how employees assigned to protect county buildings against terrorists came to see it as their job to police the viewing of pornography.

How does this happen, say in the context of fiction. Two offers just decide they’ll walk into a library and make declarations? Just like that?

Good Models

Good models are a requirement in the development of habitable space. Jeremy Heibert is doing just this at his weblog in regards to learning spaces. He’s definitely delivering in larger ways than I am in my own efforts at a “flexible center” using wordpress as a tool that pulls information into a complex hypertext node with links out and links in. The content management system is influencing my thinking here, but my model doesn’t give the student lots of freedom to mold the space. WebCT Vista is my anti-model, because a “course manager,” while striving to be a learning space, can easily become a rigid tyrant.

I guess the weblog model could indeed evolve into a flexible development space for work, play, demonstration, and thought, but at the moment I’m more worried about the code-side of the machine (maybe I shouldn’t be worrying about this). Additionally, I worry about a concept of accumulation of tools, which is beyond my control. Realistically, someone else is going to make the decision about which eportfolio system will become the standard. My gut tells me I’d rather the student decide how they want to deliver and organize the goods. I go back to the flash or storyspace model. The stage area wants you to think about what to put into it. Flash is a thinking space, as is Storyspace, like boxfuls of Legos.

Embarrassed by the News

It’s been a long time since I took the time to work in front of a news channel, looking up to observe, periodically. I tend, throughout semesters, to weave in and out of interest. I’d have to interpret what I’ve seen as embarrassing in terms of broadcast journalism. Anchors persistently editorialize and judge their reporting.

One big example of this is the common use of the imprecise “War on Terror” with dorky, dippy assurance. “Today in the War on Terror . . .” Another is the use of such entrances as “Vice President Dick Cheney was obviously relieved . . . .” In addition, such closers as “he seemed choked up” demand a little more precision.

None of it makes any sense. Maybe it’s not supposed to.

Speechless

Experiencing the Abu Ghraib revealment is a heartbreak. Some are arguing that the photos reveal nothing new, that they’re unnecessary redundancies. But that’s just more rationalization. The extent of abuse is just astounding. This is the reality of chaos, the consequence of children running things from the white house.

The Hypertext Habit

In a few Years Sixnut will be pretty heavy into software that tracks and maintains custom general education, course, and program outcomes (i.e., what people can actually do after completing a course of study, like “build a house”). We’re going to be hearing a lot of about outcomes assessment at a national scale in the news with the feds now turning to the charms of national tests. At Sixnut, we’re not thinking about this (well, I’m not at least, I shouldn’t speak for everyone), we’re thinking about hypertext and the need to connect one thing with other things.

eLumen is essentially a metonymic system that depends on physical connections between digital ideas. The genuine link is a relation or association between the data, say a course that links to a specific outcome or skill concept or grouping of learning issues. Understanding the physical relations isn’t all that easy. A nice hypertext habit is good for this, thinking not in terms of a linear sequence, but in terms of the spatial qualities of ideas, data, images, whatever. Moreover, eLumen allows for the visualization of connections across disciplines in such a way that faculty who want their students to demonstrate learning in writing can provide their students institutional credibility in this regard.

Afterlife

Susan Gibb asks about how much depends on belief in an afterlife. It is an important question. But I don’t know if it changes the logic Philosophy proposes to Boethius concerning Fortune.

Tests

The New York Times reports on this initiative

A higher education commission named by the Bush administration is examining whether standardized testing should be expanded into universities and colleges to prove that students are learning and to allow easier comparisons on quality.

Prove to whom?

We don’t need more tests. We need to open the space and let teachers teach. How about a standardized test for commissioners. Now there’s an idea.