Category Archives: Media Space

Fun and Games

The Libby trial isn’t fun and games. So what to make of this New York Times article, For Liberal Bloggers, Libby Trial Is Fun and Fodder. Yup, professional journalists takes things like corruption and outright lying with the soberness they deserve. NYT can’t even determine whether the title of the weblog should or should not be hyphenated.

We’ve been watching the Firedoglake coverage of the Libby trial and find it smart and much more devoted and detailed than any network or cable reportage, which, of course, would rather drag dead women around the screen than worry about real investigating and avoid pissing off those to whom it now shares dinner, parties, and jokes.

For the Times “Liberal Bloggers” are fun and fodder. Can you hear me laughing?

Design Tests Complete

For students or anyone else coming to this weblog you should not that a few things have changes. Lots of trimming going on around here.

First off, there is a new weblog in operation over at Courses. This weblog will act as a loci for the courses that I teach. I wont be posting a lot to this weblog. In addition, the Courses weblog has a forum linked to it called Course Forums powered by the latest version of bbPress. Courses is feeding forum posts back into the sidebar from the forum area, which makes the Courses weblog a one-click design concept, which is what I was after and thus serves to replace reliance on WebCT Vista as a course manager. Both the weblog and the forum are up as opportunities for people to engage material outside the square-box classroom, and in an ongoing, depressurized way, given that the engagement is unevaluated for legal and technical reasons, that is until the operations are moved to my college’s own servers.

Over time, I shall be adding links to the course weblog on general material, so that it sort of behaves like the old courseweblog2 that has saved a few students already but no longer can because it has been wiped from the digital sphere.

Conversations

Chats
Had a nice chat with Spazeboy about weblogging, the recent elections in CT, and new media and look forward to his participation in the Perspectives course in the spring. He’s a nice guy and will add interesting perspective to the business of things. Tonight we discussed the future of new media, which is a major issue in the course, and we had lots of uninhibited interaction and analysis about reading machines, music, information, and research groups.

Vs
V for Vendetta is proving to be an excellent springboard for character, choice, and context in Contemporary Fiction. Evey is proving a profound lesson in bargains, parallels, rabbit reading, choice, and boundary in story.

Test Goes Public

This weblog, dedicated to course material and conveyance (at least thus far), is now in the workable stage with feeds entering the sidebar and information content continually being added. I’m finding the theme somewhat confusing with staggered subject clusters, hindering contrasts between link and headings, and just odd dynamics between paragraphs. It’s not what I like in terms of presentation, but for now it must do till more design time can be put into the complete package.

Machines, Environment, and Learning

Ruairi Glynn writes of Michael Fox

Michael Fox shows how interactive architecture doesn’t require a degree in computing, electronics, and architecture just to get things going. The combination of simple practical skills from these disciplines within a conceptual framework is capable of creating something much more exciting than the individual disciplines would appear to offer.

Disorder

From Carianne Mack and Malinda Theisman about their installation at the Art Museum of the University of Memphis:

The images we have created on the wall originated from each of our
apartments and represent piles of disorder in our everyday lives; a disheveled bed and an overflowing laundry basket. Our materials – shredded office paper, cardboard boxes and other ephemera – represent the accumulation of innocuous things in our daily lives that often cloud our ability to feel in control of our surroundings. We then looked to the color and organization of maps for the wall drawing, in effect mapping the geography of our lives.

Disorder, geographical space, and the mundane. I wish I could see this up close.

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.