37 - Does WWW go local?

Rhys Blakeley from the TimesOnline tells you in what ways the WWW goes local. Interesting, especially if you live in Chicago.

36 - Intent Driven Search

John Battelle's post today has a link (and comment) on the new Yahoo search feature (beta+demo version): intent driven search via "Mindset". The main point is, search results are sorted according to whether they are more commercial or informational. A slider can be moved in either the commercial or the research/academic/informational direction. I tried it out with a few searches, and it worked (roughly)alright. However, I fail to see the advantage of search results being divided into info/commercial. But maybe I'm missing something. Anyway, I'm going to try it out for a while.

35 - The Seven Deadly Sins

This weekend was meant to be a relaxing one (and it turned out very much so), therefore the weekend-reading was also a light one: Doctored Evidence, by Donna Leon, a murder mystery, with Leon's long-term hero Commissario Brunetti, and set in Venice. An old Venetian woman is found murdered in her flat, her missing Romanian maid is the one and only suspect. When she tries to leave the country she is tracked down by police,and in an attempt to flee, is run down by a train. However, things are not, what they seem to be ..

I like the side-theme, which actually is the red thread throughout the mystery: The seven deadly sins which have, as voiced by Brunetti's wife Paola, ceased to be seen as sins - which might not be a bad thing, but it makes a difference for society and ethics altogether. I agree, although one still has to differentiate between gluttony and avarice, but on the whole, the "deadly-sin-notion" seems to have died away (pun intended), even for fundamental Catholics. On the other hand, I wonder,is the same true for the seven virtues ?

34 - Meo Meo

nelly und djangowindow
Originally uploaded by francessa_Rich.

If you feel like comparing the sounds of the world’s animals, check The Global Language Monitor. Thus, you will find out, a bee in Japan sounds “bunbun, and in Ukrainian “dzzz”. A cat in Vietnam makes “meo meo” and in Catalan “meu meu”. The Global Language Monitor documents, analyzes and tracks trends in language the world over, such as Youthspeak, Business speak, Internet lingo, endangered languages, new Global English words, such as fantabulous or ginormous. There are links to fine language sites, such as the Klingon Language Institute. At the moment, they attempt to pinpoint the precise number of words in the English language. What’s your guess?

33 - Newsmaps + Buzztracking

It's always rewarding and amazing to watch those Newsmaps and Buzztracker maps.

Newsmaps visually analyze headlines in graphical view. You have lots of coloured squares, each square representing an article, colours represents popularity, size represents age - the most recent entries being larger.

Buzztracker shows the frequencies and relationships between locations in the Google news directory. You can see the interconnectedness of the world.

You can also see that journalism focuses on certain centers - in accordance with theories of news factors - what are newsworthy items - and themes.

Here's a summary of Stefan Krempl on the social construction of news and Newsfactors in a Global World.

This is grounded in research of Norwegian professor Johan Galtung on news values.

32 - Beware of Austria ..

thxnomilkatlinkbelow
Originally uploaded by francessa_Rich.

...IF you're NOT a tourist,your skin is of a darker shade than the skin of the average Austrian, you're seeking political asylum ... and so on.

"Due to a ministerial order from the Austrian Ministry of the Interior, which went into effect in early October 2002, the situation of those seeking political asylum in Austria has become dramatically worse. Refugees from certain countries are no longer eligible for federal care, which means no lodgings, no food and no medical care – while simultaneously being prohibited from working."

This is part of the mission statement by the agency "no_milk///no_honey" which was founded in 2003 to call attention to these circumstances with unconventional methods, such as pictograms of real-life-incidents. The one you can see here hints at the case of the Nigerian Marcus O., who suffocated in the course of deportation. Read more …
Articles such as towels, t-shirts, bags can be purchased via NoMilk

If you speak German,read AI's annual report (2005)on Austria.

31 - Secrets

Want to see a secret? Lots of secrets?

Go over to PostSecret, a community art project where people mail-in their secrets anonymously on one side of a homemade postcard.

30 - Let's talk Globish

"It happens all the time: during an airport delay the man to the left, a Korean perhaps, starts talking to the man opposite, who might be Colombian, and soon they are chatting away in what seems to be English. But the native English speaker sitting between them cannot understand a word.

They don't know it, but the Korean and the Colombian are speaking
Globish, the latest addition to the 6,800 languages that are said to be spoken across the world ..." says
Mary Blume in the International Herald Tribune.

Want an example?

a) Standard English: Globish uses a simplified pronunciation guide spelling which merges many of the vowels of English speech. People speaking this spelling dialect could be understood by other English speakers but their pronunciation would be considered a little off.

b) Globish yuzaz a simplifaid pranansiashan gaid speling wich marjaz meny av tha vaeulz av Inglish spich. Pipal spiking dhis speling dialect cud bi andarstud bai adhar Inglish spikarz bat der pranansiashan wud bi cansidard a litl auf.

Yu andarstend?

29 - Instant Answers

cool water
Originally uploaded by francessa_Rich.

Do you happen to know what a contronym is? There is a new search engine,Answers.com, which gives immediate help. It's a free service and displays quick, snapshot answers. Categories are business, entertainment, food, health, people, places, reference, science, sports, words, and more.

Just checked info on W. H. Auden- really great!

Besides, there is an html-link-generator for quick copy -pasting-posting - especially for bloggers.

28 - W. H. Auden

w.h. auden
Originally uploaded by francessa_Rich.

From "Today in Literature" we learn that on 20 May 1937 W. H. Auden's poem Spain was published in England, the proceeds from the sales went to the Spanish Medical Aid Committee, which supported the anti-Franco cause. On the same day, also in Spain, George Orwell was shot in the neck, also fighting for the Republicans.

By the way, W. H. Auden, one of the greatest twentieth-century English poets, died in Vienna in 1973.

In "Spain" he doesn't romanticize war and warfare warfare, but sees it as a necessity.

A few lines from Spain:
And the life, if it answers at all, replies from the heart
And the eyes and the lungs, from the shops and squares of the city:
"O no, I am not the Mover,
Not today, not to you. To you I'm the
"Yes-man, the bar-companion, the easily-duped:
I am whatever you do; I am your vow to be
Good, your humorous story;
I am your business voice; I am your marriage.
"What's your proposal? To build the Just City? I will,
I agree. Or is it the suicide pact, the romantic
Death? Very well, I accept, for
I am your choice, your decision: yes, I am Spain."

27 - Infinite Jest

little wooden pig
Originally uploaded by francessa_Rich.

At the moment I'm reading "Infinite Jest" by David Foster Wallace and this is not a weekend reading as it has 981 pages and almost 400 footnotes! Very dense, and I'™m only halfway through.
The setting is in the near future, in a continent where the U.S., Mexico and Canada are united in the Organization of North American Nations (O.N.A.N.). But mainly the plot is around Ennet House in Boston and the adjacent Enfield Tennis Academy. The citizens of O.N.A.N. spend their time watching entertainment cartridges playable on their "teleputers," companies are allowed to purchase calendar years, such as "The Year of Glad," or "The Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment." There is also resistance, e.g. by a group called the "The Wheelchair Assassins"
I will write a summary once I'€™m ready. What I like so far : the sideblows against consumerism, his satirical and humorous language, the references to popular (media) culture and cultural theory.

26 - Time for a Game

bamboleo close-up
Originally uploaded by francessa_Rich.

As Friedrich Schiller so nicely put it: For, to speak out once for all, man only plays when in the full meaning of the word he is a man, and he is only completely a man when he plays.
Time for a game! During the weekend, we played Bamboleo, a game by Jacques Zeimet, from the category dexterity and action games, for 2 to 7 players, age 6+.
The idea is (as is the matter with all the really great things) very simple. You have to place about 20-25 pieces of wood (in different sizes, of different weight and forms) on a wooden platter, which is balanced atop a cork ball, set onto a sort of conical pedestal. Now, each of the players has to remove a piece from the platter without creating so much of an imbalance that everything crashes down. When it crashes down, and it does so from time to time every player gets a point for each piece they could gain from the platter and a penalty of -4 for the player who caused the crash.
One of the amazing things of this game is how much (or how far down) the platter can tilt before the pieces of wood crash, much farther in any case than one would expext! Big fun!! Highly relaxing!

25 - God, Genes & Grass

Sundial in Telgte
Originally uploaded by francessa_Rich.

Papers and magazines are full with research findings about something like a "god gene". According to Dean Hamer from the US National Cancer Institute'€™s Gene Structure Regulation Unit he studied 2,000 DNA samples, interviewed 2,000 people and looked a the spirituality of the persons. He found that the VMAT2 Gene was significantly more common among people who believed in a higher spiritual being. Therefore, Hamer concludes, the tendency to be spiritual, is part of the genetic makeup.

Church representatives are not really enthusiastic about these findings.

Speaking of God, spring is a favoured season for going on pilgrimage. During the Whitsun-Weekend we were in Telgte, the church of St. Clemens and the Chapel of Pilgrimage being centres for pilgrimage from spring to November.

Telgte has become famous as the setting for the novel "The Meeting At Telgte"€ by Nobel prize winner of 1999 Guenther Grass. He recounts a - fictional -meeting of German Baroque writers (such as Simon Dach, Gelnshausen (Grimmelshausen), Gryphius and more during the Thirty Years'™ War€“, with Germany a ruined and starving battlefield. Grass contrasts two events: the negotations for the later Peace of Westphalia, and the meeting of the intellectual elite with the intention to discuss the state of poetry, fatherland, and religion. But the meeting is not as noble, as it may seem.Very soon personal rivalries and vanities as well as excesses and gluttony take over. In between thewriters realize the invalidity and insignificance of their doings and compose a peace resolution, which is destroyed by a fire because they had forgotten it between the fishbones.

The Meeting at Telgte is a complex description of both, literature and politics of that time, the writers are portrayed very fondly and in great detail. Besides, it is a tribute to the "Group 47", a loose asscociation of politically committed writers, and its head, Hans Werner Richter.

24 - A Star Called Henry

This is a Whitsun/Pentecost-Weekend-Reading-Blog from Muenster. A Star Called Henry is a novel (first part of a trilogy) by the Irish writer Roddy Doyle - and one of his best, in my opinion. It's set in Ireland between 1916 and 1923, the times of the War for Independence and Civil War. The main figure is Henry Smart, a Dublin slum boy - his father a one-legged whorebouncer, his mother a weak little person who cannot overcome the death of one newborn baby after the other, and takes to alcohol. Henry becomes a robber and beggar, a star of the streets. At 14 he joins the Irish Citizen Army, later - using his father's wooden leg as a weapon when he fights as one of Michel Collins' boys.

The following passage describes Henry's attempt for getting schooling for himself and his little brother Victor. On their first and second day, which will be the only two school days in their lives, they are taught by Miss O'Shea (who is later to become Henry's wife).


.. Now she said, up at the blackboard. - Sums. Henry?
It took me a while to realise: she was talking to me.
- Yeah?
- Yes, Miss O'Shea.
I didn't understand. I waited.
- Say Yes, Miss O'Shea, she said.
- Yes, Miss O'Shea.
- Very good. Stand up, please.
- I'm only after sitting down.
More laughing at the back.
- Stand up, Henry.
She said it kindly, so I got out of the desk, tried to hold it down as I rose. Victor's weight beside me helped.
She picked up a long piece of chalk and wrote 6+6+14-7 = on the blackboard. She did it without looking at the numbers; her eyes roved the classroom. Then, tapping the board unter each number, she spoke.
- Now, Henry. Tell us all. If a man has six very valuable male dogs and six very valuable bitches and they have fourteen puppies but he has to sell seven of them because he's a bit slow with the rent and the landlord is threatening to evict him, how many dogs will he have left?
- Nineteen, I said.
- Yes, she said. - Six plus six plus the fourteen puppies minus the seven for the rent equals nineteen. See? It's easy, isn't it? Thank you, Henry. Now, I want you all to use your heads like Henry.
Victor slapped my leg. He was delighted. And so was I. My first compliment.
- You can sit down again now, Henry.
I slid easily into the desk.
A hand went up in front of me.
- Yes, Cecil?
- Who did he sell the pups, to, miss?
- Different people, Cecil. Now.
She cleaned the board.
- Hey miss, My uncle buyed one of them pups.
We spent the rest of the morning buying and selling pups and dividing bits of cakes. I was several slices ahead of the rest and Victor was no slowcoach either; I could almost see the jam on his chin. I was learning nothing new. But I was happy. I knew that I'd been able for anything".

Two days later they're expelled from school.

23 - Dr Johnson

One of the most interesting persons in the field of language and literature is Samuel Johnson (1709 – 1784), byname Dr Johnson. He was born in Lichfield as the son of a bookseller and became poet, journalist, critic, lexicographer and much more. What is known about him we know from James Boswell’s “The Life of Samuel Johnson LL.D." He married Mrs Elisabeth Porter, a widow 20 years his senior and is said to be the most-quoted man in literature. Two examples: "One of the disadvantages of wine is that it makes a man mistake words for thoughts." "Whatever you have, spend less." Despite having been - due to illnesses – a weak child, he was later of strong athletic build, his appetite was legendary and it is said that he often drank over 25 cups of tea on one sitting.

Dr Johnson became famous for“The Lives of The Poets” and "Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary, two volumes thick, 2,300 pages long, 8 years of work – which was a milestone in the development of standards for the English language. He gave big space to ordinary words, illustrating their usage by quoting from writers like Shakespeare. But sometimes he was not unbiased. Here's his definition of oats: 'a grain, which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people.' Obviously, he had a low opinion of the Scottish people.Johnson's dictionary was used by authors such as Oscar Wilde, William Wordsworth, the Brownings, Thomas Hardy,Charles Dickens and more.

More: SJ, WikiQuoteJohnson,
Victorian Web, Overview.

22 - Wrapped Up in Books

Amazon has a new service – „search inside“, unfortunately this is not yet available at amazon.de or amazon.at. A click on the book reveals a lot of information. Let’s try it out with one of my favourites: “Ulysses”:
1) There’s a concordance, an alphabetized list of the most frequently occurring words. Here we find “bloom” “mr” “said” “stephen”.
2) It lists books on related topics, such as critical essays.
3) there are text stats, one being the the fog index: indicating the number of years of formal education required to read and understand a passage of text, for Ulysses it says 9.0 years (isn’t this very little?), other pieces of information such as sentence structure, complex words, how many sentences and so on.
4) citations of other books
5) sample pages: back cover, front cover, excerpt.
Plus, you can search for words within the book: I’ve tried it with “Howth” and got seven pages where Howth appears in Ulysses.

Wrapped up in Books is a single from Belle & Sebastian’s album “Dear Catastrophe Waitress”. If you go here you can play the “wrapped-up-in-books-game” which is great fun.

21 - Constructivism

Ernst von Glasersfeld, one of the main proponents of Radical Constructivism was in Vienna and much to my regret I didn’t see him in person. He gave a speech at the university of Vienna, where he explained his theory.

Radical Constructivism is one of the leading theories in natural, cultural and social sciences and claims that knowledge exists only and exclusively in the human brain and can only be constructed on the basis of experience. What we perceive as the world we live in, is a construct made of our own unique experiences. Thus, knowledge is a self-organized cognitive process and not a compilation of data. But, let’s hear Glasersfeld on this: “1 a) Knowledge is not passively received either through the senses or by way of communication; b) knowledge is actively built up by the cognizing subject. 2 a) The function of cognition is adaptive, in the biological sense ofthe term, tending towards fit or viability; b) cognition serves the subject's organization of the experiential world, not the discovery of an objective ontological reality.”

Important and indispensable is constructivism in connection with teaching and learning,especially when it comes to “meaning”. Once you realize, there is no such thing as “shared meanings” everything changes.
How do we mean? A Constructivist Sketch of Semantics.

There’s more about Constructivism here and a very good portal Constructivism Overview

20 - New Digital Divide?

last photo before the rain
Originally uploaded by francessa_Rich.

Seth Godin muses about the New Digital Divide as compared to the old digital divide. The new "haves" would be the Digerati (who blog, use firefox, use RSS readers and so on) and the new "havenots" would be The Left Behind (using Internet Explorer, having no idea of flickr and so on).

His remarks sound interesting. However, I believe all of this a bit exaggerated, because this is a divide of choice,as Seth himself points out, made by the "haves" and as such not even a subdivide of the old digital divide where there is no possibility of choice.

All these divide findings are based on the Knowledge Gap Hypothesis established by Tichenor, Donohue and Olien in 1965,and they are affirmed day by day, with new characteristics, of course. And as the Knowledge Gap Hypothesis states, the gap widens constantly. There are measures to close or bridge this gap - which is only a symptom of deeper divides such as lack in income and literacy - but they are way too few.
More: .....Digital Divide Network, Economist, E-Inclusion

19 - Frequent Flyers

muensterland from above
Originally uploaded by francessa_Rich.

Frequent Flyers

will love this: photos of airline meals are displayed at AirlineMeal.net with the matching descriptions and reviews. What is more, everybody is invited to take their own photos, with descriptions as to the taste, and ratings.


Frequent Flyer is one of the novels of Kinky Friedman. Quote: "In New York nobody really regarded anybody as dead; we just thought of them as not currently working on a project". (From: Greenwich Killing Time). Friedman, whom I had the pleasure to experience live at a music club in Vienna a few years ago, is a former country singer, as is the narrator in his novels, who, additionally is an amateur sleuth. At the moment, Kinky Friedman is candidate for governor in Texas.

18 - Oryx and Crake

sharp cloud
Originally uploaded by francessa_Rich.

Oryx and Crake (by Margaret Atwood) was my weekend reading.

It's SF, the main character, Snowman, lives in a wasteland area, littered with computers and ruins - the earth at one time - on a tree, covered with an old bedsheet and mourns the loss of his friends, the scientist Crake, and Oryx, a former child prostitute with whom he had lived in a love triangle. The area is populated by strange animals like wolvogs and pigoons. Only the green-eyed children of Crake - cloned human-like creatures visit and worship him. He tries to piece together what happened and so the story unravels.

Snowman grew up as Jimmy in the 21 century, in a world where global warming destroyed cities, rose sea levels, the great majority of the people lived in slums and filth, the privileged ones in secure communities, owned and run by biotech-companies. Everything and everybody was genetically engineered, any animal could be created, via the internet constant pornography and violence was delivered. Eventually Crake's experiments lead to the destruction of humanity.

The scenario is, of course, horrible - but as everything with Atwood, brilliantly written and very provocative, pointing in the direction of what might happen if greed and the obsession with producing and growing life forms will get ahead of ethics.

Here's an excerpt

17 - Total Physical Response

If you don't take to Town Language Mnemonic maybe the good old TPR - Total Physical Response-Method will work for you. TPR improves memory through association with physical movement. Therefore, staying with Dutch,if I want to learn and really remember the Dutch word "eten" I have to actually eat something. Sounds feasible for a lower level of learning, but seemingly requires a relatively big amount of energy, money and time.

This weekend, I'm learning the Dutch word "reizen" - meaning: will be back on Sunday!
Dictionary

16 - Town Language Mnemonic

meadow and trees
Originally uploaded by francessa_Rich.

The Town Language Mnemonic seems to be an entertaining concept of learning new languages. For example you associate nouns to the most relevant locations, adjectives to the parks, verbs to the sports centers and so on. So, if I'€™m trying to learn, say Dutch and - on my way to work pass the bakery, I memorize the word "brood", in passing the library I think of "wetenschap", around the corner in the park "œgroen"€ comes to my mind and when I hear noises from the dancing studio I think of "zweet"€? Might as well give it a try.

Ascension Day is so uplifting!

15 - Finnegans Wake

jamesjoyce
Originally uploaded by francessa_Rich.

On May 4, 1939, Finnegans Wake by James Joyce was first published.

It is one of the most extraordinary works of literature. The story is relatively simple and revolves around the dream-thoughts of Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker, his wife Anna Livia Plurabelle, his daughter Issy and his twin-sons Shem and Shaun, sometimes also named differently. Earwicker builds cities, indestructable and for eternity and has for ever and ever to rebuild and reconstruct was was built before. It is a multilingual allusional playing with words, constructing puns, onomatopoeia, blending words and using, of course, as in "Ulysses"€ before the stream-of-consciousness-technique.

A short extract:
"And. She may be a mere marcella, this midget madgetcy, Misthress of Arths. But. It is not a hear or say of some amorous letter, signed Toga Girilis, (teasy dear). We have a cop of her fist right against our nosibos. We note the paper with her jotty young watermark: Notre Dame du Bon Marchais. And she has a heart of Arin! What lumililts as she fols with her fallimineers and nadianods. As a strow will shaw she does the wind blague, recting to show the rudess of a robur curling and shewing the fansaties of a frizette. But how many of her readers realise that she ist not out to dizzledazzle with a graith uncouthrement of postmantuam glasseries from the lapins and the grigs. Nuttings on her wilelife! Grabar gooden grandy for old almeanium adamologists like Dariaumaurius and Zovotrimaserovmeravmerouvian; (dmzn!) .." (p. 112/113, Faber edition of 1975).

Read out aloud!

14 - Schemes

chestnuttrees promenade
Originally uploaded by francessa_Rich.

One of the favourite pastimes of thousands of people seems to be the making of lists, plans,projects, schemes, undertakings they contemplate and design with a lot more animation and enthusiasm than the real thing.

What pursuits? Take a look at 43things , especially if you are looking for companions.

13 Things that do not make ..

the cows are here again
Originally uploaded by francessa_Rich.

sense ....are listed by the "New Scientist": 1: the placebo effect, 2: the horizon problem, 3: the ultra-energetic cosmic rays, 4: the Belfast homeopathic results, 5: the dark matter, 6: Viking's methane, 7: Tetraneutrons, 8: the pioneer anomaly, 9: the dark energy, 10: the Kuiper cliff, 11: the Wow Signal, 12: the not-so-constant constants, and 13: Cold fusion.

I rather like the Wow-Signal...
NewSc

12 Tones

Lilac Monasteriensis
Originally uploaded by francessa_Rich.

is another song by Stephen Duffy.

.. Little, get your coat we must leave. Get out on the street and in the breeze. Summers over night must fall. Cover me in 12 tones.

Lilac Monasteriensis as compared to Lilac Viennensis is more delicate and tender. But so is spring: rural, fragrant, noisy only because of the birds' songs in Muenster, urban, stinking, noisy from the cars' honking in Vienna.