I put this on Youtube so I thought I should use it here to demonstrate the range of activities that were going on that week and in the months to come. I mention this especially as we have a Music Barcamp coming up – www.unconference.defnetmedia.com
Category: Ramblings
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Banned books
I missed Banned Books week, so when a colleague mentioned it to me I thought this is going to be good, there will be a load of highly contentious political books but alas no – there was no book of the dead and I’ve read most of them.
Some time later……
I also came across this image at a much later date from http://www.flickr.com/photos/florian_b/44227093/ where i was asked to use the image and the message that is below. How could I refuse?
Against Banned Books (Please Spread This Pic & The Text)
Book Banning is such an awful thing,… parents who want to care for their kids challenge books and then… they perhaps ar banned… Banned Book week is a great celebration… celebrate freedom of speech and press is what they want to say… and these parents who “care” for their kids i cant understand them… they let them watch tvtvtv and play violent videogames but books shall be difficult? weird ^^
“Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech.” — Benjamin Franklin
“Without Freedom of Thought, there can be no such Thing as Wisdom; and no such Thing as publick Liberty, without Freedom of Speech.” — Benjamin Franklin
“Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us.” — Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas
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Draft messages on my mobile phone
My memory is not as good as I once thought it was. I don’t think any of our memories are as good as we think they once were. I do know I have the innate ability to forget things which I do not need to remember – like whole evenings
Plus the nature of humanity means that we sometimes change our minds, we think of something to say and then change our minds about it. In the case of a spent thought we simply right it off and a small piece of electrochemical activity that will never be revived – it is deceased, kaput. However, occasionally our chemical activity means that it makes it to our frontal lobe as a definitive idea of what to write or say.
We all have these definite ideas but on occasion nowhere to write them – myself, I have 5 notebooks but I am never quite sure which is the one at I am using today, is it a work notebook or a home notebook a notebook for ideas or for my website codes – so if I need to remember something I use my mobile and type a message as a draft and keep it without sending.
After having an initial idea and it making the struggling fight to the frontal lobe and being recognized as a genuine thought, it still won’t make it to the outside world. IT’S SURVIVAL OF THE FITEST IN HERE – ALTHOUGH IT’S NOT A CROWDED ROOM. Before that thought emerges from our mouth or before I hit the send button on my mobile a secondary filter will kick in and I/we think about how the message (my thoughts) will be received. Have I lost the confidence from starting it to finishing it that my message will be received with the same intention with which I send it.
So here is my full selection of draft text messages – thoughts that never quite made it to the outside world or notes as an aide memoir.
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Open your eyes
Play the Test your awareness video.
Have you watched it? Read on.
Although it has been around a while it is yet a great example of the human condition.
I watched the video knowing that there would be a dancing bear, but while I had my eyes on the fast moving ball I missed him completely, my eyes were going BALL BALL BALL – there was no bear. So convinced was I that there was no bear in the first half of the video I rewound it I didn’t trust them to play the same video again – I thought there was some chicanery involved. But no there he was waltzing across the video – my awareness completely missing him.
In this way it is a great safety video, for raising the awareness of drivers to the fact that they need to be looking in discrete places for those cyclists like myself. But does it also point to a weakness in ourselves and how we fail to notice the BIG in the room. The BIG could be anything depending on the circumstances, but the most obvious is performed nightly in front of an audience who are all watching with keen eyes – the old magic trick, be it a slight of hand or a fantastical feat of prestidigitation. We don’t see the hand placing the rabbit in the pocket or the large mirror, we sometimes miss the bleeding obvious and it is always important when we see it to point instances out.
We so often end up looking in the wrong direction.
The Worst Anti-Piracy Ad Ever?.
While others make serious comment about the Digital Britain report – my response is not.
Is this the weapon that Peter Mandelson will use to encourage people to stop file sharing? Never mind cutting off access to the internet as has been suggested in the Digital Britain white paper, this played constantly would probably work for me.