Graph Theory and Links

Mark Bernstein in this post asks

I’m assembling a Fagerjordian (link in original) site — a Web site that has lots of topical pages that are linked together, from topic to topic. There’s no Big Scheme and no apparatus — the site is organic and complex, so there’s not a simple site map or table of contents or grand ontology into which everything fits.

We’re adding new pages every day, and I expect this to continue for some time.

Now, if you’re managing a project like this, you want to be sure that every page has links from other pages, so people can find it. One heuristic for management is simply to insist on lots of links: if every page has a bunch of links to different places, then it’s likely that readers will be able to move around freely.

But, how many links is ‘a lot of links’? I think the answer is between 3 and 4, but I’m not certain.

I’m wondering if there’s a comprehensive relevancy standard that applies here rather than a digraph model. Or to put it another way: one answer is to break the digraph with links.

Redundant aesthetics

Welcome easywriter.

But now to this comment by Mark A on my post on Sin City the film. Mark writes

This films’ ability to capture the look of Millers’ books makes it a valid cinematic effort. It is a series of comic panels set in motion. Perhaps it’s greatest reason for being a film is to build a larger audience for graphic novels. This film made people question thier notion of what a comic book is. The world needs to know it’s not all spandex and heroism in these pages. There’s bullets, decapitations and caniabism too.

Comic book pages are the last battlefields of true freedom of speech, it’s nice to see one of them presented to the masses uncensored, without being “adapted” to protect the innocent.

My response is why, if the “look” of the comic is expressed in the film , does this make Sin City a valid “cinematic effort”? Perhaps Mark is pushing a valid criteria for judging the film. The film should be judged for its ability to express a comic’s aesthetic climate and feel. This may indeed be my problem: I don’t think the film came at all close to expressing the panels in the graphic novels. I saw that the film expressed the mood, color, and texture of the world. But I got that from the comic.

Why do I need a filmic version of Kevin’s hacking?

Mark?

Sin City and Posture

I read Frank Miller’s Sin City recently and while I found the art and graphic quality of the works interesting, I was never really grabbed by the stories. I found the film adaptation just odd.

The writing and acting aspire to classic noir. The visuals aspire to Miller’s rhythmic, psychologically jagged and electric blackness. But Sin City the film is all posture and no drama, all look and bored actors. It captures the look but goes flat from first to last gun shot. It takes a special kind of writing and image-making to pull off The Maltese Falcon or The Big Sleep. There’s also a form problem here. While the filmic League of Extraordinary Gentlemen suffered from an authenticity crisis, Sin City never really finds a good reason for being a film.

Learning Opportunities

In this post I’d written: “Good teaching is about creating the opportunity for learning to happen.” Christopher responded with this in his comment:

Teaching is about telling the story. Yes, I agree that a teacher creates an opportunity for learning. A large part of that (especially for a history teacher) is telling the story in such a way that the students start to learn without even realizing they are.

If teaching is about providing opportunities then we can deapen the argument. If good teaching creates opportunities for learning, then:

1. All questions that relate to learning should be followed by questions.

In some instances, the lit teacher might provide the definition of metaphor then offer some examples. If a student is asked to demonstrate their understanding of metaphor and returns the same examples earlier provided then the submission doesn’t really demonstrate. The rule is to generate original or independent understanding of the concept.

2. Question number 1 above should not be restricted to the classroom square.

One of the frustrating parts of teaching has to do with the attitudes students bring to the classroom about how learning happens and their role in the process. The classroom is a luxury for most people. It can also be a privilege. Yet for others it’s a priority, because without it they won’t make the goal. Some don’t need it; they will make their way regardless. For me the classroom is a big circle and a continuum. I don’t care why a student is in a class. They will all be responded to with inquiry.

3. There are indeed dumb questions.

When’s paper 1 due? Should we study the poem before we discuss it? Do we have to read the syllabus? Will the journal be evaluated? I’ve seen too many people run with the opportunities they’ve been given to start answering questions now. Here’s to you. You know who you are, and you know who you will be.

This is why a game is a good teacher. Level 2 needs level 1. In a hypertext, 2 links mean 2 paths and the choice will lead to a consequence. Story and consequence. Good one Christopher.

Marquez in Marquez

Susand Gibb writes

We all lust, but some get a tablespoon more of this element than others. We all have fear, measured out and weighed against our strength and audacity. Is this what Aureliano has learned locked in Melquiade’s room since shortly after the loss of Jose Arcadio Segundo? Or are we learning something that Marquez himself is willing to share with us from his own experience as a writer.

Strength and audacity. This is an interesting combination.

Nobility, Shakespeare, and Truth Telling

This morning I read that two Connecticut principles have submitted pleas of guilt

Peter N. Ellef, 61, and William Tomasso, 40, entered guilty pleas before U.S. District Judge Peter Dorsey to conspiring to commit bribery and conspiring to defraud the Internal Revenue Service.

Ellef, who was Rowland’s co-chief of staff, admitted using his position to make sure Tomasso got the contract to build the $57 million Connecticut Juvenile Training School in Middletown.

We know what happened here. The principles knew they had done wrong but, when caught, maintained innocence until the right deal could be made. Just once I’d love to see a criminal step up and say, “Okay, I did it.”

Katamari Damacy and Consumption

Ben Vershbow at if:Book writes of Katamari Damacy:

I’ve played a bit of Katamari lately and have enjoyed it. It’s a world charged with static electricity, everything sticks. Each object has been lovingly rendered in its peculiarity and stubbornness. If your katamari picks up something long and narrow, say, a #2 pencil, and attaches to it in such a way that it sticks out far from the clump, it will impede your movement. Each time the pencil hits the ground, you have to kind of pole vault the entire ball. It’s not hard to see how the game trains visual puzzle-solving skills, sensitivity to shape, spatial relationships (at least virtual ones), etc.

That being said, I agree with Bob and Rylish (links in original) that there is an internal economy at work here that teaches children to be consumers. A deep acquisition anxiety runs through the game, bringing to mind another Japanese pop phenom: Pokémon. Pokémon (called “Pocket Monsters” in Japan) always struck me as particularly insidious, far more predatory than anything I grew up with, because its whole narrative universe is based on consumption.

I don’t think that Katamari teaches children to be consumers. It’s not “acquisition anxiety.” Everyone knows that Katamari is about turning children into space-craving nuke-monkeys.

Consumer here is just too vague. We need a stronger link here.

Options in the list: could be greed. Could be a dehumanizing dark for mistaking people as pencils.

Could be the player has something entirely different on their minds.

Sometimes I take a look at teen magazines, like Teen People. There is darkness in these texts, weaving allure with want. Allure cannot exist without want.

Rylish’s argument is more nuanced:

so, we cannot really discuss games and learning and literacy without spending some time grounding that conversation in the economic and cultural environments which drive game production. my worry is not that games are too complicated or too violent or too masculine or too racist but that they are these things in order to perpetuate consumerism.

For the sake of perspective, what concern isn’t mixed up with some consumerist motivation or market drive? Even moraity needs a market.