November 29, 2004
How does Lance go vrooom?
Via Boing Boing, there's a new toy (TurboSpoke - Spoke Powered Super Engine Sound!) to make you faster on your bike plus you sound good too! Perhaps this gadget should be at the top of your Santa list.
On an episode of the TV show Braniac in the UK, a kid wanted to know if he was faster or slower with the turbospoke attached to his bike. So they set up a little circuit for him to pedal around with the thing on/off. Realisticly it should slow him down, but the result was that he went faster with the thing on, and what they figured is that it was psychological in speeding him up (with the "vrooom" and all).
I love to go cycling here in NC, especially towards the coast where it is nice and flat. I can see the potential psychological boost coming in handy in the mountains - maybe then I could fly right on up. I might be able to hold my own with the Harleys in my neighborhood too!
Posted by Mary at 12:57 PM | Comments (0)
November 23, 2004
Too early for bridges? too late?
Last week I hosted “An Evening of Political Healing and Renewal” with my friend Jim Ullman in the catacombs of a Durham mall (see Jim's blog for his account of the session). Jim had the idea for this session some time ago, and based on discussions we have had over the months leading up to the election, I was happy to join in. We anticipated that some sort of reconnecting would be needed after a particularly rancorous campaign.
We had a very small group of people show up - mostly left leaning – and we had a very engaged discussion. After efforts to publicize this nonpartisan event across the political spectrum, it was interesting to consider why so few people came out to talk. Jim and I both got replies expressing interest accompanied by words to the effect of “I’m not ready”.
Why am I ready to connect so quickly after this election when many are not? Part of the answer may be found in the exploration that Jim and I have done around seeing ourselves as “natural neutrals”. I am often able to “stand in the middle” of a discussion and consider viewpoints coming from different directions. When I notice that I am not feeling open to an opinion other than mine, I try to examine what messages within me are holding me back from the neutral position. In doing so, I can usually learn something about my beliefs and consider how they are serving me. Sometimes this happens rapidly, other times it can take months.
There’s more to why I want to engage – I’m naturally curious. In this case - curious to know how people have come to form different views of the political process and candidates. I learn about my own thinking when learning about how others go about their processes. There are plenty of blogs focused on politics – that’s not the only thing we will explore here, but it is hard to ignore.
There are three things I have learned never to discuss with people: religion, politics, and the Great Pumpkin. - Linus van Pelt in It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown
The ever-quotable Evelyn Rodriguez has an excellent analysis of the predicament of talking across a political divide in a posting called The Casualties of Ideological Warfare
The recent U.S. elections roundly demonstrated a macrocosm result of ideological gulfs - gulfs that begin in our own homes, families, friendships, neighborhoods, cities, states, businesses, churches, and anywhere where more than two people meet (or clash).
...
I struggle to find the spot of land - a little patch of grass swaying in the canyon gusts - across the ever-widening gulf to build a bridge. Our values aren't inherently that different. But it has come to the point where if I can perceive the other's side, I am excluded and righteously so.
This is the situation I find most frustrating re: politics, particularly this year – that the polarization is so intense that any mention of the “other” is met with derision. However, I remain hopeful, and can relate to the additional comments from the same posting (read the whole thing and have a look around her blog - she has a lot going on!):
There is continuum in our capacity to encompass wider and deeper perspectives into our perceptual awareness and relatedness that grows from egocentric to ethnocentric to worldcentric or, in other words, from me to us to all of us.
"The more you grow, the more you grow beyond you," says [Ken] Wilber.
By the way – another way that Jim and I are going to look for dialogue opportunities is through Let's Talk America:
Let’s Talk America is a nationwide movement that will bring Americans from all points on the political spectrum together in cafes, bookstores, churches and living rooms for lively, open-hearted dialogue to consider questions essential to the future of our democracy. Let’s Talk America reconnects with the ‘town hall’ meeting spirit that’s the lifeblood of our democracy. Let’s Talk America is where everyone can talk about America’s promise, about what freedom, democracy, unity and equality mean to us -- to "we the people." Let’s Talk America is a meeting ground where we can come together to listen, speak, ask and learn -- without being forced to agree, change or bite our tongues.
Posted by Mary at 11:20 PM | Comments (0)
November 19, 2004
Entropy and Chaos
The other night, my husband, Tom, and I were talking about physics. He recalled enjoying physics--until he ran across a professor with whom he had to argue vociferously. This professor claimed that entropy was something precise and measurable; Tom understood entropy to be uncertainty. I recall entropy from my chemistry studies--and as I remember it--it was the "fudge factor," a number used to balance the thermodynamic equations--not something that was measurable in its own right. This got me thinking about whether the oft-used word "chaos" might be the new word for "entropy."
A quick Google search resulted in an interesting article Entropy and Chaos vs. Dispersion of Energy by a self-professed free-lance thermo engineer. The opening paragraph reads:
The "Great Confusion about Entropy" lies in the perception that entropy is "real", in the sense that it is a thermodynamic property (or dimension) of a system, often perceived as the dispersion of energy, instead of it being a measure for chaos, or disorder. However, no engineer needs to know a thing about entropy to calculate and design a thermodynamic machine, such as a compressor, a turbine, etc. In consequence, if entropy can be ignored by the engineer, without disabling him/her to make a functioning thermo machine, entropy can not be a physical property, the way internal energy is. It then simply is a quantitative notion and, as we will see in the following, of the amount of disorder (chaos).
Tom is an engineer and has designed and built many a system--concrete and virutal--without having taken entropy into account. I, once upon a time a chemist, knew entropy as the "fudge factor" to balance equations. And there are still professors claim that entropy has nothing to do with chaos and everything to do with the dispersion of energy. A reminder to me that in order to understand something, we create mental models. I wonder what it would be like if we could understand a thing without having to create an internal model....
Posted by Kerry at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
November 18, 2004
If you are new to blogs...
When I'm telling friends that Kerry and I have a begun a blog and that they should visit this site, I'm getting a lot of questions:
What is blog? a weblog? a web log? what are you saying?
Is it really just a journal? a discussion board? a website by another name?
And the ultimate curiousity - can you make any money that way?
We will get more questions I'm sure, and the answers will develop further over time, but perhaps more introduction is needed. I found this paper helpful - Understanding Weblogs: a communicative perspective, - here are a few key paragraphs:
Since the turn of the millennium a new genre on the internet has gained a lot of interest, the weblog. In short one could say that a blog is a special kind of website which is updated frequently with new postings and published in reverse chronological order (the most recent posting is on top of the page). Since there is free software available, everyone with a connection to the internet has the ability to publish a weblog. That means that there is a wide variety of blogs that can be read on the WWW.
At first sight blogging, publishing on a blog, seems merely a way to show one’s own opinions and ideas. What is different from a blog in comparison to traditional home pages on which people share their interests and hobby’s, is that from a communicative perspective a weblog not only transmits information through the internet, but also takes on a receiving role. Many bloggers give their readers the opportunity to respond to the different postings and get involved in conversations through a weblog. That makes a blog a different way to communicate with others than traditional web pages do.
…
When we would compare blogs to something that happens in the real world, we could perhaps best compare them to ‘Speaker’s corner’ in London. This is a corner of Hyde Park where people can meet up and discuss things that matter to them. (Wikipedia) What usually happens is that someone climbs on a box, starts talking about a subject and other people, passers by, can start a discussion with the person speaking. The place is freely accessible, anyone can start and join a discussion regardless of education or origin. Looking at blogs we could say that by blogging someone climbs on a virtual box to tell a story. This story attracts the attention of passers by on the internet, for instance by using a search engine. People read the weblog just as passers by at Speaker’s Corner can stop for a while and listen to what is being said. People who are interested can react on the things that are written through a comment function or by writing about the topic on one’s own blog.
What happens in both cases, at Speaker’s Corner and in blogs, is that through dissemination dialogue will be achieved.
…
By seeding the message in as much people as you can reach, the chances of reaching those that are interested and willing to receive get bigger. The discovery of the written word offers an opportunity to overcome physical distance so that it’s no longer needed to meet all people face-to-face, as well as text can overcome time distance. The written word can be seen as the first type of mass communication, taking it’s flight after the invention of the art of printing.
Through blogging one starts with dissemination on the internet. The author writes something and publishes it for others to read. There will be readers, varying from some to thousands, just as there are listeners at Speaker’s Corner. Allowing readers to comment on the written entries makes it possible that conversation between the reader and the blogger, or between readers, can ensue.
Looking at weblogs in a communicative way we could therefore define a weblog as follows: The weblog, or blog, is a webpage on which the author publishes pieces with the intention to start conversation.emphasis mine
Posted by Mary at 11:07 AM | Comments (0)
November 17, 2004
designing edges
I've had a few conversations with folks about this site, and several have mentioned they like the design - all credit due to Kerry! So far we have both approached content as and when (and not so much has shown up just yet) but we wouldn't be visible at all but for her work behind the scenes. I am grateful that she has more technical expertise than me and has been able to get us up and running.
Early reviews have mentioned specifically that the fact that "exploring edges" sits near the edge of the block of red is significant - it really accentuates the point. Something I wouldn't have thought of doing - and I love it. I wonder if we can have it show up at different edges each time?? That would sure be appropriate to our continual exploration in different directions...
Posted by Mary at 09:47 PM | Comments (0)
November 15, 2004
What's the point of this blog?
Sebastien Paquet provides a great overview of blogging and develops the concept of personal knowledge publishing here:
In this document, I analyze an emerging form of knowledge sharing that I call personal knowledge publishing. Personal knowledge publishing has its roots in a practice known as "weblogging" that has been rapidly spreading on the World Wide Web over the last three years. It is a new form of communication that many expect will change the way people work and collaborate, especially in areas where knowledge and innovation play an important role.
This is the direction Kerry and I are going. We see our joint blog as a way to expand our community. The two of us have spent hours together over the past year, discovering our common interests and exploring our differences. We have found that we learn well together, and that happens to be an activity we both love. This blog is a challenge to us to expand our learning opportunities – we believe we can both expand our knowledge and fine-tune our thinking by seeking a broader audience. We need more people who think like us – and those who don’t – to really test our individual beliefs and to continue our personal development.
I heard Meg Wheatley speak at The Learning Consortium’s annual conference in Durham a few weeks ago, and she highlighted these key points regarding “What creates healthy communities?”
- It knows itself as a community – people are there for each other
- It focuses on what’s possible and vision, and who cares about seeing it the same way
- It talks to itself, and keeps expanding the conversation; relys on diversity; and comes together with dialogue
- It expects leadership everywhere – leadership doesn’t come from the individual but from the community. Really good communities create good leaders – they give birth to the leaders!
I believe Kerry and I have developed a great community together and this blog is a way for us to expand it.
Personally, working via this blog will help me learn about writing while writing about learning. I want to create a readibly accessible journal of my learning and development – and I don’t mind doing that publicly. The key reason for being public is to develop interaction with others. I’m seeking an expanded learning community – and hope that the healthy community that Kerry and I have together will be of use to others. Kerry and I have gained a great deal from being able to explore topics deeply and from many angles. Forming real bonds of trust in order share of oneself is the tricky bit to achieve – and I want to explore how this can be achieved through this medium.
Posted by Mary at 08:04 AM | Comments (0)
November 13, 2004
What's in a name...
It took us a while to come up with a name for this blog. "Exploring Edges" showed up as a last-minute contender on a list of less-than-perfect choices. And when we agreed to it, I felt like we were settling, and was hopeful that something better would come along. However, since we made our choice (about a week ago), the name has been growing on me.
Sometimes (OK, more often than not...) I procrastinate because I know the perfect answer (or at least a better answer) is just around the corner. Had Mary and I not made a choice of blog name last week, we'd still be evaluating, analyzing, researching, and second-guessing. By virtue of our "settling," we pushed ourselves to an edge--and we're now exploring that edge. So, from this vantage point "Exploring Edges" looks like a perfect name.
Posted by Kerry at 03:58 PM | Comments (0)