a thaumaturgical compendium

Apropos our discussion this week, the following newsbrief from my most trusted mainstream news source:

WASHINGTON, DC—Congress scrapped the open-source, open-edit, online version of the Constitution Monday, only two months after it went live. “The idea seemed to dovetail perfectly with our tradition of democratic participation,” Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid said. “But when so-called ‘contributors’ began loading it down with profanity, pornography, ASCII art, and mandatory-assault-rifle-ownership amendments, we thought it might be best to cancel the project.” Congress intends to restore the Constitution to its pre-Wiki format as soon as an unadulterated copy of the document can be found.

Drat! The dangers of sleeping in. Finally took the dog out late today just to see them striking for today’s filming of Margaret on the street right outside my apartment. I’ll have to remember to catch the film when it comes out to see what I missed. At least the dog didn’t eat Matt Damon—though at least that might have been entertaining. But then what would we do without the Bourne Ultimatum and Oceans 13?

Update (22:00): OK, looks like I was wrong, they weren’t striking, they were setting up for shots in my building. Aparently the person renting the place got a new paint job and appliances out of the deal. Sweet.

On Monday (10/3), Ang Peng Hwa, Dean of the School of Communication and Information at NTU, will be giving a talk entitled “The UN Working Group on Internet Governance: An Insider’s Perspective.” (Yes, a practice run for his keynote at IR 6.0, I’m sure.) The talk is at 2pm in 545 O’Brian. I would encourage anyone interested in policy and the internet to attend. (RSVP to Pat at prandall@b…, so she can get a head count, I guess.)

Here’s a quick bio, stolen from the IR 6.0 Agenda:

Ang Peng Hwa is Professor of Media Management and Law at the Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. A lawyer by training, he worked as a journalist before going on to pursue a Masters in communication management at the University of Southern California and a PhD in mass media at Michigan State University. He is a central committee member of the Consumers’ Association of Singapore and is the legal adviser to the Advertising Standards Authority of Singapore. He has consulted for government and private bodies in Singapore, as well as international agencies such as the United Nations Development Program on law and policy issues regarding the Internet.

The annual conference for the Canadian Association for Information Science is June 1-3 at York University (Toronto). 500 word proposals are due no later than January 26, 2006. Full call for papers below.

Presentation in a few minutes on blogging and wikis in teaching. Here is a pdf of the slides: pdf

The presentation detailed here is a bit generic. I’ll see if I can capture audio for it as well. Hopefully, we can do something a bit less linear with the process.

Wednesday Schedule

0030 (Nowish) Go to bed, later than planned.

0340 Up, shower, out the door. (Time permitting: dress.)

0405 Subway to JFK (Soak in that early morning humidity on the 2.)

0700 Flight to BUF (Jet Blue’s normally witty flight crew still not warmed up.)

1000 ETC Blogging/Wiki workshop (Hopefully, with participants!)

1220 Meeting (Hopefully, with food!)

1300 Workshop w/ Trebor/Axel et al (Creativity on demand on my part; or at least the illusion of same, provided by caffeine.)

1600 Com Theory Seminar, leaving early for… (Talcott parsons, structural-functionalism, and C Wright Mills, stuffed into 2 hours.)

1800 Axel Bruns Presentation (note to self: prosumer /= produser)

1930 (or whenever Bruns pres. complete), Systems Seminar (Solving any possilbe difficulties with RealID.)

2210 Flight for JFK (If it’s like last time, with about five other people.)

2345 Catch subway home (MP3 player batteries vital!)

0145 Kiss dog, walk wife, sleep

Forecast for next Wednesday: same, but ending in Chicago for IR 6.0, instead. Woohoo!

Just a quick note that this week I will not be in my office during normal office hours, as I am participating in a workshop. Meant to note this in class, but the week snuck up on me. Always happy to chat via phone, or catch me in the hall sometime on Wednesday.