So I have something on my calendar for the new year.
February 19, 2005
Northern Voice: Canadian Blogging Conference
at the UBC downtown campus.
February 19, 2005
Northern Voice: Canadian Blogging Conference
at the UBC downtown campus.
All of the sessions are intriguing, but on the top of my list are:
Introduction to Audio Blogging and Podcasting: Tod Maffin
Blogging in Academia (Panel): Laura Trippi, Stephen Downes
What is most exciting about this conference is that it will be held in Vancouver, which is just a short trip ferry ride from the island, and it was only $20 to register.
For a link to the conference schedule, click here.
What an exciting prospect... a blogging conference.
Mystery sister and I went for a walk the other day. I am always a bit wary to go for strolls in this city, as it has always seemed a little pedestrian unfriendly unless of course you are walking around a park where there are no vehicles. Not wanting to take too many chances with our lives... mystery sister and I stuck to quieter streets with less traffic. We garnered a few strange glances from drivers here and there, but since I was sporting my camera bag and mystery sister was leafing through a little mapbook of Calgary we assumed that they just thought we were tourists looking to get to know the real cowtown.
As we neared Kensington I came across a rather amusing sign on one streetcorner. "Elderly Pedestrians" the sign warned...
Again I will state that my pedestrian exploits in this city have always had a less than warm reception by motorists. It becomes very helpful to have experience in defensive cross-walking when venturing outdoors. Thankfully, the city seems to recognize this, and has responded by posting such helpful signs as we see here.
Luckily, mystery sister and I were able to make our way relatively unscathed. We stopped at the Oolong Tea House, which shortly after our arrival became very busy (apparently due to some recent newspaper article).
As you can see in the following pic, teas make great stocking stuffers. I would have to agree, having always been more of a tea person than coffee.
*Side note* I have recently discovered that I tend to connect the smell of certain coffees with the smell of cigarettes... Twice now I have stormed into the kitchen ready to complain to my sister about the smell of cigarette smoke coming from the upstairs tenants only to find her calmly sitting at the kitchen table with her cup of coffee in hand... the coffee being the source of the stench I find so offensive.
You can see mystery sister lurking off in the distance. She is the one dressed entirely in earth tones.
Our walk ended in the late afternoon, after browsing through the second hand book store and various other little shops. We returned home via the LRT to our respective final exam studying and research paper/essay writing. And so the educational journey continues.
Come to me my melancholy baby
Cuddle up and don't be blue...
All your fears are foolish fancy, maybe
You know dear that I'm in love with you!
Every cloud must have a silver lining
Wait until the sun shines through
Smile my honey dear, while I kiss away each tear
Or else I shall be melancholy too!
(1912, Music by Ernie Burnett, Lyrics by George A. Norton)
In my research (what else can I call it) I have discovered some interesting papers. Among the most recent (and by recent I mean the articles I have read over the weekend)... Blogging and the politics of melancholy by Michael Keren (published in the Canadian Journal of Communication, 2004. Vol. 29, Iss. 1: p. 5-23). Blogging and the politics of melancholy was a definite contrast to the other papers that I have read recently that discuss blogging in relation to Habermas' theory of the public sphere. Keren suggested a much more dismal outlook on the world of blogging: resulting melancholia from the desire of bloggers to achieve critical insight of the structure of society. As Keren states:
This critical insight is not constructive and active but destructive and passive. Pensky argues after Robert Merton that melancholy constitutes a specific form of rebellion: the despair and hopelessness of the melancholic arise from the concrete or imagined condition of utter helplessness in the face of a social order experienced as oppressive or stifling. From this perspective,
melancholia is a retreat from and a total rejection of society, due not only to the repressive function of social norms but also to the total effect of society, which the melancholic experiences as suffocating. The melancholic's rebellion is therefore a passive one. Under the conviction, whether justified or not, that all avenues toward effective action have been closed off, the melancholic rebel recedes into a resigned interiority, brooding over the very conditions of the impossibility of action themselves. (Pensky, 1993, p. 34)
Keren's paper offered another perspective on the question if blogs are an effective tool for the democritization of discourse. Do blogs just provide opportunity for expression that descends into melancholy? I found this paragraph from Keren's conclusion (where he details the position of one writer who is less excited about the effectiveness of blogs as a democritizing tool) particularly enlightening and amusing:
Benjamin Barber, on the other hand, is less optimistic. He remains skeptical as to whether virtual communities formed on-line can actually be seen as fulfilling the requirement of a democracy incorporating strong participatory and deliberative elements. As he puts it, "Lolling in your underwear in front of an electronic screen while accessing with your dancing fingers the pixels generated by anonymous strangers across the world is not my idea of forging a community of concern or establishing common ground, let alone cementing a trusting friendship" (Barber, 2003, p. 39).
I must be an oddity then... not lolling around in my underwear as I seek out information online. Perhaps that will change as I find myself becoming progressively more and more melancholy. I hope that will not be the case. I cannot deny that my lurkings online have failed to provide me with a constant sense of community, but these past few months of dedicated online learning and the resulting "research" of online materials has allowed me to discover many strangers with whom I can relate to, at least in the sense of their own areas of educational research. I wouldn't go so far as to consider them friends... strangers on common ground would be a better description.
Each year I usually compile a list of the books that I might like getting as presents. I most often send this list around Christmastime, but I make sure to imply that I would welcome the addition of these books at any point during the year. My list is usually comprised of novels that were nominated for some award (yes, very tough criteria I employ) or recent works of novelists that have won those awards in the past. However, topping my list this year are a series of text books related to theory and research methodology. My level of geekness has reached new heights, and I proudly proclaim it to the world. But, for good measure I also threw in a few knitting books to provide some selection to my prospective gift-giving family members. It all makes perfect sense you see... the theory and research texts result in stress from overwork and the knitting books promote serenity through meditative knitting. The combination of books achieve perfect balance.
There has been all this hoopla about blog being named the word of 2004. But the word blog is not nearly as exciting as the 2004 entry on the list A Word a Year: 1904-2004 on AskOxford.com. The word on this list was definitely one that I hadn't heard before, and warranted a little more research. So, here is a little more on the alternate 2004 word of the year, chav.
In my limited search for info on chav I found a rather amsuing and informative article by Michael Quinion of World Wide Words. Quinion states:
The press in Britain has recently been having fun mocking a group for which pejorative descriptions have been created such as “non-educated delinquents” and “the burgeoning peasant underclass”. The subjects of these derogatory descriptions are said to be set apart by ignorance, fecklessness, mindless violence and bad taste.
He goes on to detail the look of chav, or more specifically the chav style of dress;
a love of flashy gold jewellery (hooped earrings, thick neck chains, sovereign rings and heavy bangles, which all may be lumped together under the term bling-bling); the wearing of white trainers (in what is called “prison white”, so clean that they look new); clothes in fashionable brands with very prominent logos; and baseball caps, frequently in Burberry check, a favourite style. The women, the Daily Mail wrote recently in a characteristic burst of maidenly distaste, “pull their shoddily dyed hair back in that ultra-tight bun known as a ‘council-house facelift’, wear skirts too short for their mottled blue thighs, and expose too much of their distressingly flabby midriffs”.
Chav is quite a fascinating term, much more exciting to me than blog or other 2004 list toppers like incumbent, electoral, insurgent, hurricane, cicada, peloton, partisan, sovereignty, & defenestration (although defenestration has always been a favourite of mine). UrbanDictionary.com gives some rather interesting definitions of chav submitted by seemingly concerned citizens who want to increase awareness of chav. Qunion's article provides a less violent and angry perspective on the origins of chav, listing the wide variety of local names given to the type, like neds, scallies, kev, janners, smicks, spides, moakes, steeks, bazzas, scuffheads, stigs, skangers, yarcos, and kappa slappers. As Quinion reports, the social implications of this term have become a concern in some liberal circles as, "This upsurge of popular distaste towards one group may be evidence for a cultural shift back towards a class-ridden British society."
Oh, the world of words.
The beauty of the blogging world, especially that of blogger... is the option of mobility. I am sitting here in the Schlumberger Computer lab of the L wing in the Senator Burns Building on the SAIT campus, reporting live.
As usual there is not much to report. I have spent the day in the company of my sisters, alternating from younger to older from morning to afternoon. I spent a short time compiling some more research for my essay on the educational uses of blogging and then did a little more research about possible programs for Graduate Studies. I'll be a long term thinker/dreamer for life. We will be hanging around campus until younger sister is finished for the evening and then head out for a meal.
This is probably one of my most boring blog updates... but I am in no mood for any philosophical musings. Perhaps something of interest will happen this evening. One can only hope.
