One Trick Pony

Click on the thumbnail to the right and scan the headlines. Which one do you find the most exciting? For me, it was the prospect of seeing thinner thongs at the beach this summer. Sadly, it appears that I misread it. 

Or even more interesting, I should say. Alex pointed me to Bow Street Runner, an historically accurate game being developed by Britain’s Channel 4. It’s a murder mystery that takes place in the seedier neighborhoods of Georgian London, and the production values are fantastic. You poke around at things, talk to people, and little by little the facts are uncovered.

Makes me wish for programs of similar quality to be developed here for education. Imagine doing problem-based learning in this format as a way to teach history and reasoning at the same time. The Jasper Woodbury videodiscs pointed the way years ago. Today’s kids would want something a bit edgier and more interactive. Who’d be up to the task? Discovery Learning? The History Channel? Has to be someone with deepish pockets.

Maybe we’ll be returning soon to a time like the post-Sputnik years when federal dollars were spent developing creative new curriculum and not just on testing the bejesus out of kids. One can hope.

This seems like a good day to reminisce about a memorable day from my past and to reveal something I’ve never written about: unlike most Americans, I’ve seen Fidel Castro in person.

It was May 7, 1972. I was in Freetown, Sierra Leone, for my mandatory “termination physical”… a quick look by the Peace Corps doctor to document the damage two years in the tropics had done to my skinny young body. Malaria? Check. Lost 30 pounds? Check. Weird digestive quirks? Check. Same as everybody else.

Walking back from the embassy, I noticed people beginning to line the streets. Why, I asked? Turns out that Fidel Castro was making a quick side trip to Sierra Leone in the middle of his state visit to Guinea. The crowd got noisier, and a minute later there he was in an open car next to Siaka Stevens, Sierra Leone’s president. Castro was talking non-stop to Siaka, so I guess his English was up to speed. He seemed tall and wiry and overcaffeinated, his eyes darting around at the buildings and not really connecting with the crowds. Looking for snipers? The car zoomed past and it was all over in a few seconds.

I’ve seen Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, Howie Mandell, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak up close but this is almost my favorite brush with fame. It’s second only to JFK.

Two videos came down the wire over the last day or so that are worth sharing. One’s for Obama, the other for Ron Paul (though I didn’t know that until I read the comments about it.) Were there songs this good in the last election? I don’t remember any. These both moved me by their cleverness and their message.

Yesterday I started playing around with my long-dormant account on Global Rent-A-Scope and took my first picture from a telescope in Israel. This is M82, a galaxy in Ursa Major around 12 million light years from here. It gives birth to new stars at a higher than usual rate because of its gravitational interaction with  M81.  It’s not a great picture, but I’m basking in the coolness of being able to control a telescope half a world away and taking pictures of the stars while it’s broad daylight here.  Over time I’m going to master the fine points of exposures and binning and capture some better images. Watch for more pictures here soon.

What a bloody amazing world it is.

Just watched a heartening segment on the PBS program Now showing a community radio station in a Nairobi slum. What an inspiration these 20-somethings were, pushing back against the authorities and giving their neighborhood a voice. They called what they do ‘edutainment’, clearly not knowing the ironic subtext that term has in ed tech circles.

Coincidentally, yesterday one of my regular Google searches brought a surprise to my screen. My little town in Sierra Leone, Bonthe, now has a community radio station! Radio Bontico is a low power FM station, so the only way I’ll ever get to hear it is to go there. More and more often, I think about actually doing that. Such a difference from when I lived and taught there when there were no AM or FM or TV stations. In the morning and evening, the state-owned Sierra Leone Broadcasting Corporation would do the news, and the rest of the day we could only hear the BBC and the Voica of America Africa service. Nothing much local grown. Like podcasting, this is a great counterbalance against a world increasingly taken over by News Corp and Clear Channel. I wish I had the tech skills to help people do things like this.

There’s a mild Santa Ana condition, so some of the Southern California air crud has been blown out to sea and skies are dark and clear. Good time to go out and look up for this year’s celebrity, Comet 17P/Holmes. One of my Canadian twitterpals was talking about it weeks ago, but I knew the sight wouldn’t be as impressive here as in Saskatchewan.

So out I went before dinner, looking up towards Cassiopeia and then searching for Perseus. It’s a naked eye comet if you know where to look and after a few minutes with binoculars, there it was. Like the other comets I’ve seen, it was impressive and disappointing both at once. No tail, no color. Just a dim, round smudge in the sky as though God’s teacher had come by to inspect his work and poked a chalky finger on the firmament.

But impressive, still, when you think about how far away it is, and how big, and what a gift it is to be able to see this unpredictable brightening that changed overnight by a factor of a million. It’s the size of the moon’s orbit around earth and there’s no tail because we’re looking straight down through the comet’s nucleus.

It will be moving slowly through Perseus through the next few months. There’s no way to know when it will dim again, or if will flare up a second time. Go out, look up, and take it in while you can.

Stayed inside all day, as the air smelled of smoke and everyone was encouraged to stay off the roads. The sky was clear overhead but the gray-pink pall continued to the north and south. [see map]. Spent time cleaning up the random files accumulating on my desktop and listening to the scanner. SDSU classes are cancelled for the rest of the week, so I’ve got time to catch up on things and noodle around on stuff I never have time for. I’ve discovered a load of interesting sites for those interested in listening to what the fire and police are doing, like ScanDiego and ScanSanDiego.Net. That last one leads to live scanners that you can listen to in iTunes. Click here to hear a sample of what’s happening.

So far, students, friends and colleagues all report still having a home to go back to, even if they’re not able to be there now. There’s an estimate that one out of three county residents have been evacuated.

But we San Diegans evacuate in style. There was an interview with someone in Qualcomm Stadium describing how some of the evacuees (or volunteers) have set up yoga and meditation classes there to help alleviate anxiety. This is the same stadium that pioneered an outdoor smoking ban and added sushi to the menu.

Looks as though we might be past the worst of it.

It’s deja vu. Just like 4 years ago, the air is smoky, classes are cancelled, and we’re glued to the TV all day. Unlike the last time, though, we’re not feeling it here at home. There are two major fires, one a twenty minute drive north of here, the other a half-hour south and east. The wind is blowing the ash straight out to sea and avoiding us. Up on the UCSD campus, Alex reports seeing the air impacted more than here.

Still, though, our throats are irritated and we’re feeling groggy and tired. I watched Larry Himmel, a well liked local TV personality and comic reporting the fire while watching his own home burn to the ground. At least one of my faculty colleagues and two of my game design class students have been evacuated, probably more.

A lot depends on the winds. If they pick up again tonight it will be very bad. Pictures are here.