iSchool Pumpkins

iSchool Pumpkins

Originally uploaded by NVH.

Carved by students.

Spring Courses

I’m teaching two courses in the spring that are both, in essence, special topics seminars.

One, IS212, I teach regularly, is, in essence, Science and Technoloogy Studies (STS) as applied to information systems. It has a core of STS readings, but with a lot of variability (within and in addition to STS) to accomodate who’s in the course and people’s interests. The best description is the website from the last time I taught it, 2 years ago. It’s scheduled Mon 1-4, but if the class size is what I’ve seen in last years, about 10-15, we may be able to vary that if we can come up with a time that suits everyone in the class. Students who have taken the course before may take it again as an independent study; you should check with me. Since the content varies, it’s not the same course from year to year.

The other is a new, special topics course, I290-3, New Media Meets Visual Studies, TuTh 2-3:30. I’ m still developing it. Below is the official description; there’s a longer and more recent description here. I have never taught this and have no idea who will show up. The content will depend in part on who the participants are. (If there are people interested in participating who have ideas about what they would like to see in the course, let me know; I may or may not incorporate your suggestions.)

This course takes a social science approach to new media, specifically visual media. The social sciences are concerned with visual media in two ways: as research tools, and as a topic of research. As research tools, visual media are created and analyzed in field research, and used in publication. As a research topic, visual media represent a significant form of activity and communication. People are increasingly using new technologies and media, including digital photography, cameraphones, video, and the internet, to create and use visual media for new purposes.

We will explore a variety of issues related to both these approaches. Our primary orientation is from the social sciences, not the humanities, but both are needed to understand this topic. In addition, we’ll look at the technologies involved.

This course should be of interest to students in the social sciences, computer science, and the humanities who are interested in expanding their understanding of the uses of visual media and methods of studying them. This will be a highly-participatory seminar, with students expected to contribute to the discussion from their own discipline and to learn about other disciplines’ approaches and understandings.

The Value of Punctuation: a Comma Worth $1 Million Canadian

For those who think I’m too concerned about commas and other grammatical details: from today’s NY Times.

October 25, 2006
The Comma That Costs 1 Million Dollars (Canadian)
By Ian Austen

OTTAWA, Oct. 24 — If there is a moral to the story about a contract dispute between Canadian companies, this is it: Pay attention in grammar class.

The dispute between Rogers Communications of Toronto, Canada’s largest cable television provider, and a telephone company in Atlantic Canada, Bell Aliant, is over the phone company’s attempt to cancel a contract governing Rogers’ use of telephone poles. But the argument turns on a single comma in the 14-page contract. The answer is worth 1 million Canadian dollars ($888,000).

Citing the “rules of punctuation,” Canada’s telecommunications regulator recently ruled that the comma allowed Bell Aliant to end its five-year agreement with Rogers at any time with notice…

The dispute is over this sentence: “This agreement shall be effective from the date it is made and shall continue in force for a period of five (5) years from the date it is made, and thereafter for successive five (5) year terms, unless and until terminated by one year prior notice in writing by either party.”

The regulator concluded that the second comma meant that the part of the sentence describing the one-year notice for cancellation applied to both the five-year term as well as its renewal. Therefore, the regulator found, the phone company could escape the contract after as little as one year…

To bolster its appeal, Rogers commissioned a 69-page affidavit, mostly about commas, from Kenneth A. Adams, a lawyer from Garden City, N.Y., who is the author of two books on contract language. It disputes the regulator’s analysis of what Mr. Adams calls “the rule of the last antecedent.”

Foster Kittens

IMG_0296

Originally uploaded by NVH.
Fostering is great fun — I get a litter of kittens and get to watch them play and snuggle together.

Clockwise:

• Baby (male, the smallest who acts like a little brother trying to keep up with his older siblings, when he isn’t cuddling with them or me),
• Little Girl (female, the beauty of the group, the calmest and most people-oriented), and
• Boy (stocky, rambunctious, who likes to climb people as if they were cat scratchers).

All of them are very social, very friendly. Climb into my lap, follow me around, love being handled and played with.

My friend Traude Buckland runs a different rescue group: Home At Last.

Gender Relations of the Future? Stuck in the Past

As depicted by TV writers of today — specifically, on Battlestar Galactica.

I’m always a late adopter of popular culture, waiting to let others sort out what’s worth paying attention to: in this case, Battlestar Galactica. With the start of the new season, enough reviewers said this is one of the best dramas (of any sort) on television to get my attention; plus they did a special “The Story So Far” for people like me. So I’ve watched that plus the first regular episode of this season. And what struck me was the gender issues.

I’m sure this gets discussed a lot among BG fans, but I’m coming to it anew, untouched by the discussion. And the presentation of gender relations was both refreshing and annoying. Refreshing because women were fighter (Viper) pilots. (I haven’t followed it enough to know what to think of the female ex-president.) Annoying because:

• the Resistance seems to be entirely male. At least the leadership we see is.
• Kara was expected to — and seemed to be shown to — “instinctively” recognize her “daughter,” the child conceived using her ovaries, without her knowledge or participation. (Do they expect men to “instinctively” recognize the children conceived from their donor sperm?)
• Most of all, the language! After we’ve seen a group of almost-all-female viper pilots training, Commander Adama tells Captain (or whatever he is now) Adama, his son, that his “men” aren’t ready for battle yet. And when someone wants a woman officer’s attention, he calls her “Sir.” Surely it would have been as easy to say something about his “people” or “crew” or “flyers” or ANYTHING but “men.” And if they’ve come up with a new swear word (“frak”), surely they can solve the “sir” issue for addressing officers?

I just find it disappointing that a show that goes so far as to show women in most of the roles traditionally associated with men STILL makes such silly decisions. I’m sure the language issues were debated by the writers (how could they NOT debate about calling all those female viper pilots “men”?) and these were the choices they made. Don’t tell me “men” really means “people,” or will in the future, not until a mixed group is just as easily called “women.”

IDEA Conference Oct 23-4 Seattle

Peter Merholz has sent out one last reminder about the IDEA Conference, “a conference on designing complex information spaces of all kinds,” in Seattle, Oct 23-24.  What I especially like about the program is that it’s not the same people who seem to speak at every conference, and a wide range of organizations and kinds of information spaces are represented, including libraries and the National Park Service, as well as people doing information visualization and interaction design.

I’m not going, but if it were local I would definitely show up.  Looks very interesting.

A Little Bit of Radio Frame

One of my favorite radio programs, when I hear it, is Minds Over Matter on KALW Sundays 7-8 pm. It’s a literate, educated, funny quiz show. Very informal: the panelists ask questions of one another and the radio audience, and listeners call in and try to stump the panelists. (Two questions from last night: Name the 4 Mediterranean countries whose names start with M; What American movie was the first to get extensive play in Communist Russia?) So last night a panelist asked the name of a kind of centerpiece dish used for fruit and flowers with arms. And I knew this from when I was a reference librarian: epergne (with accent on the last e).

So I called in and the panel reacted with awe. (Really!)

It’s more informal and local (and participatory) than my other favorite literate, informed, funny quiz show: Says You on KQED-FM Sundays at 4 pm– which is also terrific. One of their best segments: the 3 people on one team are given an odd word; one has the real definition, the other two make up definitions, and the opposite team tries to guess which is the genuine definition.

When I was a reference librarian we got all the Antiques Roadshow kinds of questions: “I found this in the basement,” (we don’t have attics in California), “Grandpa brought it back from France in the 20s,” or “We’ve been told it’s been in the family since the Civil War, what is it” and (especially) “Is it worth anything?” Once something was: a painting by a French artist from the 1920s who had been out of fashion but was coming back into favor. That’s how I learned about epergne.

Me in front of Ahwahnee Webcam

Me in front of Ahwahnee Webcam

Originally uploaded by NVH.

I keep the browsers on my various computers set on one or another of the webcams hosted by the Yosemite Association, Ahwahnee, Sentinel Dome, and Turtleback Ridge. So, of course, when I’ve gone to Yosemite I’ve tried to track them down. This time I not only tracked down the Ahwahnee webcam but had a cellphone signal and called around and found my friend Morgan by a computer to capture the image. (Morgan also posted one of these images.) My Flickr stream shows the site of the webcam. I’m that tiny figure at the bottom of the image — you need to click on this image to get to a larger version to actually see me.

So for those of you who weren’t parked at your computers watching the Ahwahnee webcam yesterday, here’s one of the images. I’m waving my hat and I’ve got a cellphone to my ear as I moved closer to and further from the webcam (over the door of one of the employee housing units on Ahwahnee Meadow, aimed up at Half Dome, so I had to go way out in the meadow to get into the frame).

And my apologies to any strangers who were monitoring the webcam, as I do, and watched all our jockeying around as I moved closer to the camera and further back and Morgan captured the images.

Others had evidently done the same: there’s not a trail, exactly, but a path through the meadpw where the grass has been walked on, walking out from the webcam to where I was.

(The Tioga Pass webcam has been a bust — it has been on the same image since July 1. The Turtleback webcam appears to be at a PG&E site atop the tunnel between the Valley and Glacier Point road. The Sentinel Dome webcam may be accessible from Glacier Point Road –I almost tried looking for it this weekend, but I was feeling the altitute up at Glacier Point.)

Viet Nam update

I’ve been following reports of Typhoon Xangsane that hit the central Viet Nam coast at Da Nang, Hue, and Hoi An over the weekend. It took roofs off, and collapsed buildings. Current reports are 7 dead — I suspect that’s optimistic. One of the travellers I met in Viet Nam was a civil engineer from Australia who was appalled at the buildings she saw under construction — poor quality, not strong walls, despite growing heights. Hoi An is a small old town full of tourists, with major resorts on the ocean and the town itself on the river not far inland. Queries have been posted on the Lonely Planet’s Thorntree Forum, but it’ll be a while before anyone who was in Hoi An will be able to post.

On a lighter note, I happened across The Amazing Race on TV last night and they were in Saigon, so I stopped to watch. One of the rules was that participants were not allowed to drive or ride motorbikes at any time in Viet Nam, for safety reasons. Travelling in Viet Nam and NOT riding a motorbike is near impossible.