My (latest) Del.icio.us linksOK, ready?
Try not to think about a … purple elephant.
Did you succeed?
No, you didn’t. And that is a significant fact about our consciousness - we can’t stop stuff from coming in the eye gate and the ear gate. We have to process it, and with all the consciousness-grabbing tools out there, we have to learn [...]
Here’s a tool I use for writing, and it exemplifies what I like about technology: Not exciting, but it’s cheap, tough, simple and it just works:
The Alphasmart Dana. This is a Palm device with a full-size keyboard and a wider than normal screen.
It’s cheap. About 300 bucks new, but you can get one on e-Bay [...]
What does that mean? Well, it’s a pun, it’s a play on words. It comes, and sounds like, from the English phrase, “sink or swim” – in other words, they throw you into the water, and either you sink into the water, and die, or you start swimming – you learn.
Think or thwim, of course, [...]
My dad was a sailor, and he tried to teach me what he knew. Where other kids might have bonded with their fathers by learning to work on cars, hunt deer or work with wood, at our house, it was seafaring.
Not just for fun, either. Dad didn’t take me out beyond the breakwater until I could swim a half mile. And I got The Talk: “We can have a lot of fun out there, but you can drown, too. Pay attention.”
Although his instruction was hands-on, there was history as well. He presented seafaring and navigation as one of Mankind’s great achievements, taking centuries in the West, opening up trade and explanation, rewarding those who succeeded with economic and military power.
Dad’s story started with learning to sail on Buzzard’s Bay, crewing on yachts, joining the Navy in 1939, in which commanded an LST through six invasions in the Pacific. After the war, he was a mate on oil tankers and on one of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution’s research ships.
And then there is our bloodline. Dad’s mother was Hawai’ian, and although we didn’t talk about it much, one thing we knew about Polynesians was that, as a ‘primitive’ people, they populated most of the Pacific, without benefit of the European, Arab or Chinese maritime traditions.
I always wondered how Polynesian seafaring worked. How did these people manage to cross thousands of miles of open ocean, without compasses, sextants, chronometers, all the technological stuff of the West? Starting about when the Roman Empire was falling apart, mind you.
The Polynesian seafaring tradition is an example of a separate, and different, solving of the many problems faced by those who risk their lives to cross oceans. I asked my dad this, and he acknowledged the achievement, but had few answers. I’ve read as much I could find, and here’s the short answer:
They paid closer attention to small signs that were there for anyone to see, but could easily be overlooked.
For instance, the Pacific has regular seasonal wave patterns, and the Polynesians who sailed learned to read those patterns better than anyone since. Imagine noticing a little change in the waves under your boat, and realizing that that little change meant that you had sailed by an island, out of sight, 50 miles away. Then following the wave refraction pattern back to that island.
It’s easy enough to understand when it is explained, but these people not only saw, but understood.
palaninui @ June 12, 2008
Technology - Software Comments (4)
As part of my internship, I’ve been tutoring university-level EFL students in writing.
In particular, I’ve been helping them try to understand the process of writing a research paper. I’ve really enjoyed this.
One very specific way I was able to help a couple of my students is in using the outlining function of Microsoft Word®.
I found myself walking two student through the process of using the outlining function, so I decided to make a screencast explaining the process.
Here is the screencast: outlining_in_word1
Screencasts aren’t for everyone, so I also wanted to do a written description: outliningword
( Notice that you have a choice of media; a screencast or a pdf file which you can read, print and save. I have a notion that all of us have prejudices about the form in which information comes to us.)
palaninui @ June 5, 2008
