One may fail to see the humor of the situation for want of experience, another may fail to appreciate the experience (in a joke) for lack of humor.

It’s funny, this occurred to me on today’s road trip… and all these variations are playing off of each other. Some stress the situation experienced, others a statement on the situation. I’ll leave it to the reader to play with the permutations. Drop the parenthetic remark above, and some aspect of the sense changes, but both carry meaning, multiple meanings for me. The abundance and joy of polysemy.

Wendell offered a comment that if working with XSL is hurting, you are probably approaching it in the wrong way. This applies to many other things in life, certainly.

In the Mumonkan – the Gateless Gate – a collection of 48 koans, the second koan is known as wild fox koan. Having recently reflected upon that koan at some length while thinking of the a-temporality of xslt, I’ve been reading some Zen into the programming philosophy behind XSLT. I’ve applied my own transformation to the question posed in the Wild Fox.

Shall the XSLT Master, applying templates with devotion, escape the law of temporal-causality?

It is worthwhile to think more about the FLOSS (free/libre open source software) context in relation to the Gateless Gate.

I’m taking a course on storytelling. Although I have been involved in community informatics for several years as an activist and organizer on digital divide/digital excellence and community networking, I found this work to involve the telling of stories and general reframing community and what we are about, or what is possible for us.

I was watching a video from the TED conference where Isabel Allende offered the old adage: What is truer than truth? The story. (Variants on this answer may be a matter of translation: Legend, Myth, Story, Narrative.)

I grew up on Grimm, and many mythologies… great preparation for an early encounter with Joseph Campbell via the Power of Myth (where Bill Moyers, another hero, interviewed him). I later made extensive study of semiotics and have an enduring interest in narrative, and the importance of story and discourse.

In recent years Italo Calvino brought me back to the play of stories/storytelling in the work of the OuLiPo — where art is craft that you work at each day, and good art or literature arises from finding the right combination of signs through experiment and experienced judgment.

Campbell’s work on myth and ritual, the idea of the story opening a path to greater truth than mere facts, or perhaps a greater truth in discourse around a story than in any particular telling or offering of an account, and the idea in Calvino that folktale is not myth degenerated but that myth arises out of folktale when the right combination his hit upon, these are all connected.

Storytelling is part of the natural and necessary repertoire of human behavior… it helps us cope and adapt as well as honor and remember. Though stories can be used to divide, their healing potential is critical in this moment. Our creative play can reconfigure our individuality and our collective life.

Common sense is not a simple thing. Instead, it is an immense society of hard-earned practical ideas – of multitudes of life-learned rules and exceptions, dispositions and tendencies, balances and checks.

that which arrests the motion of thought is false

This is an ethical and an intellectual principle for me,  dare I say a semeiotic principle?

When I first learned of the vision to develop the Network of Integrated Consumer Knowledge – NICK I was stunned. It’s something we clearly need. I thought: how the heck are we going to get there? It takes some chutzpah to even dream this thing, but that is exactly what we need more of. And we do need NICK. Though it looks to be a long-range project, it may be better to think of NICK as establishing a standard and a technology for sharing consumer knowledge. That’s what I like about it. The Open API for Consumer Knowledge.

If that wasn’t cool enough, look at the underlying technology they have evolved in trying to bring this big vision to the world: WagN

They say Wiki + Tagg’n = WagN, and that’s a good mash-up style descriptor. But being a stickler for the evolution of our language and logic in these new worlds I wonder how we will describe it in the future when it is more natural to us…. when we are, let’s say, more fluent in WagN. And I do think we ought to think of these applications in terms of a grammar of what they make possible. We’ll leave that aside for now.

And then there is Hooze.

Hooze?

I don’t know.

Third base.

Abbott & Costello aside, Hooze will help us to know or remember who’s behind a product and that will help us mean what we pay as the Grass Commons saying goes.

that has been the refrain…

our hands are clean … we give them what they want

I don’t accept the premise.

If you give some of the people some small part of what they want, or a substitute for what they want… that would be a more accurate statement.

There is much that people really really want that the mainstream press is not giving them. Is that not clear?

Some things the press gives the people is really a substitute for something else they want …

Much of what people want, the press cannot give in direct way – it would be beyond the power and form of the press…

The press cannot give people power, money, or sex in the sense that the people would have those things … rather it indulges fears and fantasies of power, money and sex.

Does no one want information, does no one want good reporting and investigative journalism of high caliber? Where shall they (we) go?

You cant give people a meager sliver and say you have given them what they want.

The base … the lowest common denominator leaves a lot of people cold.

Try a new refrain. Sing a new song.

Now that the peer-produced encyclopedia, Wikipedia, surpasses all but the premier commercial encyclopedia in completeness and quality, and it is arguably the equal to that one (Britannica), I see it as only a matter of time before peer-produced independent media surpasses all the commercial offerings (can anybody name one that might compete, ok maybe in print, the NY Times, but that’s it)?

Gerry’s comment brought forth an echo from my recent visit to the Pantheon (Paris) where there is a statue to Diderot to the effect that the Encyclopedia paved the way for the social revolution…

So, now, the revolution of the Internet and a wiki-mode of participating in knowledge.

Sometimes it is important to trace lineage… or to search in one’s self and ask how you got where you are, and what influenced you. I was influenced early on by exposure to the history of radio broadcasts largely through the deep knowledge of a family friend, Rick Hall, who worked in Radio. He had quite the collection of vintage broadcasts and I feel so fortunate to have listened to such classics as The Shadow and a plethora of others programs, I won’t even attempt to recall.

In the realm of sports and media, there is the oft-repeated theme of the magic of the radio broadcast… the experience of the nation. We all can’t be there in person. The radio opens the minds eye when the broadcasting voice is creatively gifted. And as our mind’s eye is opened it weaves tapestries and this weaving is what matters.

I think it was a gift to be exposd to Radio in this way. Even if it was much after the original broadcasts. To listen in the dark of night to these stories. They set a fairly high bar for the art of the story. One I always aspired to, but one I recognize as quite the challenge. It established a taste for this art… and later in discovering the work of Ken Nordine and other such radio artists later in college, was really opened wide. Written and Spoken word with layers of sound and narrative. This mindscape was a source of comfort and curiousity through many a night. Finding the right radio station willing to offer history and the avant-garde was always on my mind when traveling to new cities.

With the Internet and the growth of Indy Media I expect that we have so much opportunity for experience and experiments once more. Take a moment… a dark moment, shut yourself off from the multiple channels of connectivity and stimulation. Your eyes may be open or closed in this darkness, but open your ear.

I was in Batavia to meet with others concerned about the political process in Illinois… considering everything from http://www.ballot-integrity.org to campaign finance.

ilCTC and NPOTechs had something to say on civic use of technology, but our deeper concern rests upon recognition of the alienation of so many from the political process. There is much to be repaired to overcome the malaise of the electorate. The act of gathering to repair has restorative function in itself.

Among the more interesting issues to come up was the backstory on HAVA… federal legislation that signals a shift in power from the states over voting procedures and which is pushing many states towards an incautious certification of propietary electronic voting systems.

I encourage you to dig for the backstory of HAVA… who introduced the legislation (now law)? Who helped draft it?

A more talented political voice than I could easily develop the theme:

Who wrote HAVA and how it hurts us all

It seemed very odd to me that the electronic voting devices with clear and obvious problems – not to mention problems surrounding security and sanctity of process – have been taken as a done deal by some of the active voices in the state on these topics.

Accepting that HAVA brings deadlines to the states for implementation of these new requirements is wrong headed. We should be fighting HAVA if the GAO has issued critical reports on electronic voting machines.

Meanwhile in Illinois we’ve approved machines that Governors of about seven other states have decertified. It would be nice if those Governors sent a friendly note to the Illinois Governor informing him of how they reached their decision, and encouraging him to have the State Board of Elections revisit the issue… or possibly disbanding the SBoE in its current form as they have not heeded public reason.

In fact, as I understand their recent meeting where the equipment was approved may have violated rules requiring open public meetings.

It’s time to do something if we want people to have faith in political process…. that is…. it’s time for us all to do something.

There was a great sports metaphor offered today in Batavia by a gentleman from the Quick’n Clean Foundation… He described the political process through the metaphor of a baseball diamond… the four corners representing key themes drawn out in discussion.

He then built out this metaphor … driving home the point … in addiition to the diamond we have the grandstand where we’re all spectators. Yes, politics as spectator sport… but he urged us to take the field and to cover the bases… his four points of the diamond….

Hmmmm.. What was the name of that film again?

how would you describe contemporary films of this sort?

One of my longstanding film favorites has been Zentropa. At that time I enjoyed the films and followed actors more than directors so I didn’t go out of my way to pursue Lars von Trier.

Later, making the connection with such films as Dancer in the Dark I kept my eye out for von Trier’s work.

When I get a taste for something I will tend to immerse myself in it… as when I devoured Roland Barthes’ “A Lover’s Discourse” and realized devour was the only word to fit… consume didnt do it unless I acknowlegded that the work consumed me.

So I bought Medusa, and one of his crime/noir stories… and jumped at the opportunity to see The Five Obstructions.

to which the insight…

respond with Corinthians most widely used as a reading for Weddings:

simply…

Love is patient…

What is this that undergirds patience if not love?