Paul Carter and Julian Sefton-Green seminar

We're establishing an international seminar series called Place, space, text based in the Hawke Research Institute for Sustainable Societies and the Centre for Literacy, Policy and Learning Cultures (University of South Australia).

The first seminar (December 3, 2007) features Professor Paul Carter from the University of Melbourne and A/Professor Julian Sefton-Green, an independent educational consultant based in the UK.

Come if you can. Will be an excellent event.

I'm making a list and checking it twice...

How many literacies does it take to suck all the meaning from the term??

Let's start to count:

digital literacy, technological literacy, computer literacy, financial literacy, emotional literacy, economic literacy, social literacy, mathematical literacy (huh?), religious literacy, spiritual literacy, cultural literacy, dance literacy, water literacy, environmental literacy, science literacy, engineering literacy, health literacy, consumer literacy, physical literacy, psychological literacy, agricultural literacy, safety literacy, medical literacy, media literacy, music literacy, drug literacy.

Any more? How about knitting literacy??

Monstro...the menace from the murky depths

Go here to read more. These are absolute classics from the late 1950s and very early 1960s. From 'I was face-to-face with the creature from Planet X' to 'I am Robot X', the works of Jack Kirby (who went on to create Captain America, the X-Men, Fantastic Four and the Hulk) are fabulous. Each one is a gem.

i told you so...

...the PC is dead (well, ailing, anyway).

Sydney Morning Herald (November 5, 2007) reports:
Masaya Igarashi wants $US200 headphones for his new iPod Touch, and he's torn between Nintendo's Wii and Sony's PlayStation 3 game consoles. When he has saved up again, he plans to splurge on a digital camera or flat-screen TV. There's one conspicuous omission from the college student's shopping list: a new computer. The PC's role in Japanese homes is diminishing, as its once-awesome monopoly on processing power is encroached by gadgets such as smart phones that act like pocket-size computers, advanced internet-connected game consoles, and digital video recorders with terabytes of memory.

PC sales are sliding, mobile phones and other mobile devices are increasingly embedded in our everyday lives.

I don't have a desktop anymore (and haven't for over 7 years). Do you?

i LOVE this

Graffiti Archaeology is amazing. We are all interested in space, place and time these days. My own interests are also focused on graffiti at the moment.

Put these things together and then find Cassidy Curtis' Graffiti Archaeology - a project developed to map graffiti-covered walls as they change over time.

The site creates a collage of photos taken of the same place by multiple photographers. It creates a visual time line of each site.

It's pretty wonderful.

Would the world be a different place if Washington DC had been called Feili Neivul

In the 19th century, Stedman Whitwell was "deeply troubled by the will-nilly way that cities and towns were named in America". It seems that the plague of Washingtons and Springfields was too much to bear. He proposed a "Rational Geographical Nomenclature".

In contemporary USA there are apparently Springfields in 34 different states (5 of them are cities with populations over 50,000).

More here.

Also at MapRoom.

A minor history of giant spheres

Cabinet magazine contains some fabulous, quirky stuff. A minor history of giant spheres by Joshua Foer has just been published in the Fall 2007 edition. The 'minor history' begins in 1664 with the world's first modern planetarium and ends with an ode to the Star Wars Death Star constructed in the United Arab Emirates.

The magazine itself is a joy. If you don't already read it regularly, you should treat yourself.









This from the New York World's Trade Fair in 1939. It contained a Utopian garden city of the future called "Democracity". Makes me feel quite melancholy.