The EdTech Survivalist has been hacked!

Posted on September 25, 2008 by Reverend

While I was trying to record the most recent EdTech Survivalist video, I was hacked by an alter-ego I thought had been laid to rest long ago. So forgive the quality of this recent installation, but I was shanghai’d in to giving a more instructive, albeit confusing, explanation of the syndication oriented framework of UMW Blogs. I’m not responsible for any of the propaganda in the following video, and given Tom “Catfish” Woodward has expressed interest in further involvement, I’m sure there will be a number of new and improved EdTech Survivalist videos coming this way over the next several weeks.  In the mean time, all I can do is apologize for the following aberration.

Anarcho Syndicatin’alism

Posted in edtech survivalist, edupunk | Tagged , , , , | 7 Comments

Who’s your EDUPUNK daddy now, bitches?

Posted on September 25, 2008 by Reverend

From the latest issue of Wired:

Who knew it was a noun?

Thanks to Jerry Slezak for getting me started all over again 🙂

Posted in edupunk | Tagged , | 22 Comments

Smith College gets their WPMu on

Posted on September 24, 2008 by Reverend

I have to give some love to the work Esther White is doing with WPMu at Smith College Blogs, it is well worth a look. She has shared her process for customizing the front page, which details some very cool hacks. Moreover, today she posted about using WPMu as a space for faculty bio pages and personal blogs/sites.

I just met with some folks from College Relations to talk about how they could use WordPress for faculty bios, which got me totally amped! They want to make faculty responsible for updating their own bios, which was being done with Adobe Contribute, with much resistance from the faculty….We settled on this for a plan: College Relations folks will administer a Faculty blog with one page for each faculty member with a bio….Faculty members can also update their personal pages/blogs and link back to them from their bio’s on the Faculty blog if they’re into that sort of thing. We also discussed ways to get the RSS feed from their personal blog to show up on the bio page….

Very cool stuff, and the plugin for bringing in faculty RSS feeds may very will be aggr. It’s this kind of thing that just further reinforces how useful it is to share what happens in our work regularly. Moreover, it illustrates how key it is for colleges to have a simple, powerful publishing application that will allow this to happen more readily. Looks like Esther is taking care of this for Smith College, so bully for her.

Posted in wordpress multi-user, wpmu | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

EdTech Survivalist: Episode 1

Posted on September 23, 2008 by Reverend

“Fishing with Tom”

In our first episode we were ever so lucky to catch up with Dixie’s most impressive edtech survivalist Tom “Catfish” Woodward. We tunneled all the way down to the swamps of Slocum, Alabama to find him, and we were duly rewarded with some invaluable gems about trotlining RSS to feed the entire family fresh knowledge on a daily basis. Bon appetit!

Credits: Special thanks to Catfish for giving so freely of his limited time and unlimited genius. And once again thanks go to Serena Epstein for applying her special touch.

Posted in edtech survivalist, edupunk | Tagged , , , , , | 11 Comments

Looks like Minor Threat has a new front man…

Posted on September 20, 2008 by Reverend

Hat tip to Mikhail Gershovich for the link.

Posted in edupunk, fun | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Paul McCarthy & Mike Kelley’s Heidi

Posted on September 19, 2008 by Reverend

paulmccarthyheidi19922ky2

I have to apologize for this post ahead of time, but after talking with the great Carole Garmon about Kienholz (see my previous post for context), she recommended I watch Paul McCarthy and Mike Kelley’s Heidi (1992). The video from YouTube below is an edited version that, as the uploader notes(the original is 51 minutes long), “these are just some of my favorite scenes, most of the film contains material which YouTube would redeem offensive.” This film is not just disturbing, but absolutely nuts. Here’s Paul McCarthy description of it:

A collaborative work based on Joanna Spyri’s novel, Heidi. The entire work consisted of a fabricated set, a group of partial and full life-size rubber figures, two large backdrop paintings, and a video tape shot entirely on the set….We were interested in imitating film and television production, and exaggerating the fractured process of film. The intention was to create convoluted associations between Heidi, the purity myth in America and Europe and the media view of family life, horror movies and ornamentation – the grandfather, Heidi and Peter, a rural family. Grandfather is abusive and senile. Peter is retarded. Heidi is Madonna and the sick girl is a vision. (Quoted from the ArtTorrents blog).

So, it’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre meets the tried and true classics of western children’s tales and Saturday Morning kids’ television. But, unfortunately it is far more disturbing than anything Tobe Hooper could ever dream up. It seems to me to be almost the limits of taste and all things holy. So with that long disclaimer behind me, let taste be damned and prepare yourself for an endless supply of nightmares:

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/57293131[/vimeo]

Posted in art, video | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Kienholz on Exhibit

Posted on September 19, 2008 by Reverend

Once again the Internet Archive delivers the goods. Check out this amazing documentary by June Steel about Edward Kienholz’s retrospective exhibit at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) in 1966. I first discovered Kienholz thirty years later in LA at this 1996 retrospective of Kienholz’s work at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. This exhibit blew me away, and may very well be the most powerful exhibit I have visited to date.

Roxy's

Image from Roxy's Installation

Kienholz’s (and this refers to both Edward and his wife and long-time collaborator Nancy Reddin Kienholz) sharp social critique, crude yet affectionate vision of humanity, accompanied with an insanely detailed and textured attention to things, to stuff, makes viewing his assemblage and installations a kind of being. A being similar to occupying the darkest, most hidden spaces of our culture. It is almost as if you are sneaking into a crime scene or stumbling upon the long abandoned movie set of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Their mix of everyday, found materials and horrific human mutations within the most realistic of spaces makes him the perfect b-movie artist in my mind, yet he is far more than that. I kind of think of him as the contemporary of folks like George Romero and Tobe Hooper.

And I haven’t even gotten to the documentary by June Steel yet, which is an absolute ball to watch. She does an excellent job of capturing the opening of this show at the LACMA which was surround by controversy, particularly given the graphic nature of Kienholz’s most famous works which the documentary takes you brilliantly, including Roxy’s (1961-62) (an installation of a brothel –a masterpiece of the highest order in my mind), Back Seat Dodge ’38 (1962) (a truly sensuous and disturbing piece), The Illegal Operation (1964) (an early artistic critique of backroom abortions), and The Birthday (1964). Be sure to check out the part of the documentary where the film crew gets the different reactions from the white and black patrons responses to Roxy’s (the Brothel installation) , it is a brilliant moment in film more generally.

I have to say it, this is a must see!

Posted in art, Internet Archive, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

“Mr. Brecht, have you ever been a member of the communist party?”

Posted on September 18, 2008 by Reverend

Portrait of Bertolt BrechtOurs is by no means a monopoly on dark times. I came across this audio of Bertolt Brecht being “interviewed”  at the House for Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) hearings on October 30th, 1947 on this awesome Internet Archive blog post. The questioning by the committee is frightening, and while Brecht’s answers may at times seem comical (as they did to the audience of the hearing), I can’t begin to imagine how frightening this interrogation must have been after what he saw happen to his own country on the National Socialist party.

Yet, the fact that Brecht testified at all in from of this committee was controversial:

Initially, Brecht was one of 19 witnesses who declared that they would refuse to testify about their political affiliations. Eleven members of this group were actually questioned on this point but, as Brecht later explained, he did not want to delay a planned trip to Europe, so he followed the advice of attorneys and broke with his earlier avowal. On 30 October 1947, he appeared before the committee and testified that he had never actually held party membership.[55]

He never returned to theUS after that “trip” to Europe, and was blacklisted from Hollywood. He seems to have made an interesting figure at the hearings nonetheless:

During his appearance before the committee, Brecht wore overalls and smoked an acrid cigar that made some of the committee members feel slightly ill. He made wry jokes throughout the proceedings, punctuating his inability to speak English well with continuous references to the translators present, who transformed his German statements into English ones unintelligible to himself.

The Internet Archive delivers yet again. Enjoy a grim piece of American political history and satirical drama:

Download An excerpt from Brecht and the HUAC

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

WPMu comments bug

Posted on September 18, 2008 by Reverend

I stumbled upon a bizarre WPMu comments bug today (it may also effect single WP installs, but I’m not sure). Here’s the skinny, if you include to: with two trailing spaces, you will not be able to post a comment on UMW Blogs or bavatuesdays. I’m not sure this is true for all WPMu sites, and I guess others would have to test it for certainty, but it is definitely the case on the two WPMu installs I have tested it on. As soon as you try and post the comment containing the to: with two trailing spaces it will throw a 404 error. Think I’m kidding? Try and comment here with a to: and two spaces, I dare you, hippie. Heck, I’ll even give you 100 bucks if it gets through.

Thanks go to Patrick for knowing about this bug and helping me trouble shoot it, I would have been flummoxed without him.

Update: Even more bizarre is that I tried posting this post with the to: and two trailing spaces and it wouldn’t let me publish the post either, it just threw a 404 error. Wow, what a strange, strange bug.

Posted in Uncategorized, wordpress multi-user, wpmu | Tagged , , , , | 3 Comments

Hank Williams in Sunset Park, PA

Posted on September 18, 2008 by Reverend

Dave the Spazz of WFMU’s Beware of the Blog just posted on Hank Williams, I can’t pretend to know too much about Williams, but what I’ve heard of him is pretty phenomenal.  So the recording of a live performance by Williams in Sunset Park, PA on July 13th, 1952 was pretty educational. From his music I always imagined him as this dark and brooding figure (which I’m sure he was to some degree), but what’s great about this recording is how funny he is.  He tells a joke/anecdote about a guy who was in the doghouse with his wife, so he sent her a letter enclosing a check payable for a 1,000 hugs and kisses. Only to receive a letter back from his wife letting him know the iceman cashed that check this morning 🙂 Also, the music is pretty awesome as well. And perhaps a hymn is in order, “I Saw the Light” is wonderful. There is also a bit where he’s pushing his song books towards the end of the performance, offering autographs. Seemed like quite a different, personable venue for an icon of 20th century popular music.

Anyway, here it is, Hank Williams performing in Sunset Park, PA on July 13th, 1952

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , | 46 Comments