These are the beginning stages of an educational transformation. There is phenomenal educational content waiting for engagement. The class you need to feed your soul maybe as close as an mp3 recording or a video ready for download.
What You Need
There is a Power search option that will help you target specific content providers and also help you locate closed captioned media inside of iTunes. You will find class lectures, presentations or special seminar events that have been recorded; either as an audio, video or document. You can select one file or subscribe to an entire course.
I have two and half minutes to convince you.
We spent the morning looking at data from yesterday and trying to debug the communications failure problem. We had some ideas but we were not sure what the exact problem was. The mission for the day involved traveling to the narrows – the part of lake that connects west lobe to the east lobe. The bot swam about 1.5 km to reach the far east – this is the farthest the bot had ever been. Much remains unknown about this part of the lake and we were very excited to see the visualizations from the sonars on the bot. We might go there again later for getting more data.
In 24 days, I will be packing up my stuff, throwing it onto a C-17, and flying away to New Zealand where I'll finally see my Nate - and the whole Antarctica experience will be in the past. When a little blurb in a chapter of life ends, I'm left wondering what will happen next. What's next? When will I get a chance to feel that anxious/excited/nervous of the unknown feeling again? I think that when you're in the middle of an experience, a little reality is lost because you're so wrapped up in what is happening in front of your eyes. No matter how hard you try, you just can't imagine it ending and what it will be like to say, "When I was on the Ice....."
Today was better than opening a Christmas present. Today was something of pure luck, something that I want to believe only my Mom made happen. She made so many things happen for me when she was alive, I owe so much to her and her only; but this was a gift I've been waiting for for since I set foot on this continent.
Death in the Morning from Adam Quirk on Vimeo.
In honor of (Inter)National Videoblogging Posting Month this is my contribution to Day 21 for November 2009. This is my answer video, Life Walking 2009:The amendment prohibits federal funds for abortion services in the public option. It also prohibits individuals who receive affordability credits from purchasing a plan that provides elective abortions. However, it allows individuals, both who receive affordability credits and who do not, to separately purchase with their own funds plans that cover elective abortions. It also clarifies that private plans may still offer elective abortions.Personally, I feel that the amendment should not have been allowed in their in the first place. Why waste time striking it when you could have bounced it from jump street? Anyway, this is a summary, you should read the full text for clarity.
Come to our Halloween book burning. We are burning Satan's bibles like the NIV, RSV, NKJV, TLB, NASB, NEV, NRSV, ASV, NWT, Good News for Modern Man, The Evidence Bible, The Message Bible, The Green Bible, ect. These are perversions of God's Word the King James Bible.Crystal at Slaughter of the Sheep doesn’t much care for non-Christians. She feels that Christians are different people. That is her opinion and she has a right to express it just as I have every right to disagree. Crystal feels that this (bible burning) is going too far:
We will also be burning Satan's music such as country , rap , rock , pop, heavy metal, western, soft and easy, southern gospel , contemporary Christian , jazz, soul, oldies but goldies, etc… …There will be BBQ Chicken, fried chicken and other fixings.
Lori Stanley Roeleveld at Deeper in Jesus in Rhode Island is equally concerned. She make it clear that she is absolutely against book burning. My understanding of her reading her full post is that she is looking inward to herself as to not being afraid to take a stand or live in action instead of fear. Her desire is to turn folks away from the dark side to the light. Lori doesn’t approve of this act but doesn’t like what she is seeing in the world:Hey, I’m all for getting together on Halloween (if your church decides to do that) and give the kids a night of Christian fellowship and good food. No problem. But this is nonsense (which is turning out to be my favorite word in these last days).
…however misguided the action at least they church is acting on their convictions. Again, I am opposed to book burning and think these brothers and sisters are misguided at best but every day I sit by and watch people opposed to God make what I believe is true look like a lie and dress up the things God says are detestable to look as beautiful and appealing as a harem of Victoria Secret models.
One does not need to know Greek or Hebrew to understand God's Word. God has promised to preserve them, not man. If the preservation of God's Word was left up to man than we would mess it up. That's what we have with modern versions. But divine preservation is God's promise to give us his pure words and we have that in the KJV. God's Word is not lost or hidden somewhere. We have them today for the English Speaking people and that is through the KJV.The balancing act comes in when I need to point out factual errors but not intentionally or unintentionally disrespect another person’s faith. There is a strong part of me that cannot believe faith requires self-induced closed mindedness. It seems like there are stories that are rushing up to meet me every day to try to prove me wrong. The women that I discovered working in the area of academic biblical scholarship provide interesting entry points to questions that are not always easy to answer. The difference is that they love the questions.
Every year in the mainline seminary in which I teach, I encounter more aspiring pastors who have never heard of Daniel or the allegorical reading of Song of Songs. If I want to challenge a traditional interpretation, I have to teach it first. My colleague in New Testament doesn’t face quite the same level of biblical illiteracy: he can still count on most people having strong opinions about Jesus. But even he reports that students’ knowledge derives far more from pop culture and pop religion than from the Gospels.April DeConick at The Forbidden Gospels is a professor of Biblical Studies at Rice University. Her post, Creating Jesus 24: Transmutative Soteriology had me hunting for the dictionary. Soteriology is the study of salvation. April writes about another perspective of salvation. How God and Jesus met as one as a means of modeling what humans could emulate.
Because we have here a christology in which God and the flesh meet, forming an extraordinary human being, the goal of this paradigm is for all humans to experience this same transmutation, a perfecting that alters their humanity in the same way that it had altered Jesus'. This is a process called theosis and it is captured in the words of many of the church fathers from the east, "God became man so that man can become God."Suzanne McCarthy has a series on the women who have made contributions to the translating of biblical text such as Francis Siewart and Helen Spurrell. What caught my attention was her posts about gender exclusivity and the use of male pronouns to represent all of humanity. Suzanne is concerned about proper translation from the Greek language and the inclusion of all people found in the original source material. One more for the road. Over at the Society of Biblical Literature – visit the podcast page where you can hear an interview with biblical scholars like Shawna Dolansky, and other professionals in the field of academic biblical study and research.
Into Knoydart (part 2) from Documentally on Vimeo.
No one is in control. Obama isn't getting anything done, despite being the most powerful person on the planet, because he can't. The 'leaders' aren't going to deal with climate change or peak oil or pandemic disease or unsustainable debts, because no one has the power or authority to do anything, and because it would be political suicide to admit that the only solutions that might work will be radical, painful, and require a lot of sacrifice from everyone. So all you get is posturing, and it's just going to get worse. This is what unsustainable means.I think Dave is having a form of burn out or something. It is hard. Waiting for people to have a clue that the gimme-gimmies are not working as well as they have in the past.
Saturday, the audition was fine. It really was. I mostly loved it, which is why the couple of questionable notes among dozens of other good ones really piss me off. I felt like I was really present in what I was doing, except that for some odd reason, I could feel my poor little knees shaking, and it seemed impossible that the panel didn't see it.DivaVixen is a Mezo Soprano at Viva La Diva. There is the day job at the gym, interactions with three-year olds and having to sing “art songs” as opposed to arias.
And a lot of the time, you only get to sing art songs if you are performing for a specific art song competition or are famous enough to be asked to sing a recital for the paying public. I am a LOOOONG way off from holding recitals and have managed to dodge, thus far, the art song competitions.There are fees for auditions, having to listen to contrary advice and a nerve racking experience of The Mikado that will not be forgotten. I liked reading their stories about the challenges on pursuing their careers in Opera. I have questions about the exercising that is done, I think it is for endurance on stage and not necessarily for shape. Joyce DiDonato has a performance website and a blog at YankeeDiva.
Garanča is more problematical. Carmen needs a bit of dirt under her fingernails, and no, an elegant smudge of brown greasepaint is not the same thing. Her agile, honeyed voice is elegance personified; there's little to suggest an earthy gypsy heart beating beneath.The Opera Tattler is similar in style but also writes about Opera news, gossip and what happens on and off the stage. I do think it is a good idea to report the behavior and make up of the audience. Also check out An Unamplified Voice and OperaChic.
Too many questions with names for answers.
Art is subjective; it can be quantified as being beautiful, inspirational or for the early painters a form of reporting the events of the day. Kitsch is more like syrup on top of ice cream. It is of the heart, the emotions and a strong dose of guilty pleasures. There are times when it is hard to tell what is art and what is kitsch.
Once upon a time my high school class made the pilgrimage to a museum of art. We saw works of the masters. We were silent and respectful, nodding our heads when the Docent pointed out why Van Gogh was a great painter. Then we walked into an exhibit of Marcel Duchamp.
Marcel walked a path of re-invention. The first thing i saw was a spotless white urinal. The second work was a knockoff of the Mona Lisa with the French phonetic letters beneath the portrait that spelled out “She has a hot ass.” We laughed and asked questions of the beet red Docent. “How is this art?”, “Why did he do this?”, “Isn’t this disrespectful?”
From Marcel we were led into Salvador Dali and then into the world of the Surrealists. For me, I had found my people. I continue to go to art museums but I remember that first trip as a life marker. There are some who define art as something high and inaccessible to the masses.
Some would say that Marcel and others like him are nothing more than upper level kitsch. Not me. Art with a sense of playfulness and humor gets me every time. It is the path not taken that can lead to discoveries within yourself.
Now I could show you really great artistic pieces. But that would be too easy. In order to know if something is good maybe we should spend time looking at really questionable but appealing works of Kitsch.
The traditional meaning was tacky or low quality art. Art that is mass produced or plays on sentiments or emotions rather than the quality of the work. That definition doesn’t really work anymore because there are multi-million dollar works of art in museums that are tacky and/or low quality. There is also art work produced with recycled materials that are truly great works.
For help in understanding Kitsch, let us take a brief visit with the priestess of Kitsch Culture, Ms. Allie Willis, and her Museum of Kitsch. Kitsch is the desert between crap and “that is interesting, let me see more.” It is a pop cultural connection to a past or a rocking present that you want to keep for posterity.
There is something about Kitsch that grabs a hold of person and requires a life commitment of co-habitation. Clair Smythe at World of Kitsch painted her kitchen a kind of green I’d never thought I’d see again. It has since been changed but my lord what possessed her? The items in her collection.
Kitsch stuff makes you do things no one else wants to think about, let alone thinking about painting the wall in your kitchen Slime Green. But the Naked Woodland Nymph? That totally rocks.
Over at Kitschy Kitschy Coo a pattern is starting to emerge. There are those that want to join greatness so they create a cross stitching the Sistine Chapel. Or finding a great buy that you can’t leave at a garage sale, like bowling pin animals. Kitsch might have something to do with latent need to hunt and gather.
Kitsch isn’t just about stuff. It can be the stuff that invokes memories. Over at Kitsch Slapped there is a poster of Andy Gibb. Now I personally didn’t have a thing for Andy, my attention was probably on any man with a good size Afro. But I can understand the attraction and the need for a sexual icon to help inspire person self-exploration. Deanna transitions from the poster to her reading a book, the Summer of 42, that helped her define what is and is not acceptable for her to experience.
I think we all have a need to keep something precious. For me it is my books and my record albums. I have to have them. Even though I had with no way to play them for 20 or more years. Recently I found an affordable LP to mp3 turntable. Doesn’t mean that I will ever get rid of my albums, it just means I won’t have to remember what a song sounds like anymore. It is my connection to a different time and place.
Shelagh Staunton at Weaving the Web muses a bit about this need:
Ownership is comfort and empowerment, but at what point does the scale tip in the other direction and the possessor discovers that he or she has become the possessed? Collections give us meaning and identity but only so long as we remain in control. In A.S. Byatt's Possession (aptly titled for this blog entry) the academic Mortimer Cropper is so determined to obtain the material artifacts of a poet's life that he sacrifices his own professional integrity in his quest to do so. It is the act of collecting- the chase- that takes precedence over the value of the objects themselves.
Over at Frieze Art Fair there is a recording on the psychology of collecting with an psychologist, an art collector and director of a museum. You can listen to the podcast or download the mp3 where they talk about people spending time, money and resources on collecting art and other items of desire.
Do I own the books and albums or do they own me? The albums, I control them. The books have dominion. Thankfully there is no room to start any other type of collection. But if I see that Black Velvet Elvis, he's mine.
Gena Haskett is a Contributing Editor at BlogHer where this post originally appeared.
