a blind flaneur

Salman Khan talk at TED 2011

• Khan Academy | Learn almost anything for free
  With a library of over 2,400 videos covering everything from arithmetic to physics, finance, and history and 150 practice exercises, we’re on a mission to help you learn what you want, when you want, at your own pace.
• Learn to code | Codecademy
  Codecademy is the easiest way to learn how to code. It’s interactive, fun, and you can do it with your friends.
• Full Interview: Cathy N. Davidson on Evolving Education | Spark 090211
  [re attention blindness; William James on attention] Duke University professor Cathy N. Davidson is author of the new book “Now You See It: How the Brain Science of Attention Will Transform the Way We Live, Work, and Learn.” She believes that how we learn is a relic of 19th century values, and if it has any chance at relevancy, must embrace aspects of our digital lives that are normally shunned by scholars – technology, collaboration, and yes, even distraction.
• Remembering the Twin Towers Using Augmented Reality | Spark 082911
  Brian August has created an app that uses augmented reality to add a silhouette of the World Trade Center to images of New York City’s skyline. He calls the project 110 Stories, and he tells Nora why he thinks this app is about more than the destruction of the twin towers. (Runs: 8:47)
• 9/11 Memorial Webcam | National September 11 Memorial & Museum
  EarthCam’s live webcam brings into view the National September 11 Memorial & Museum. Use the navigation tools to direct the camera. You can also save the high definition image on your computer, print it or share it with friends.
• National September 11 Memorial & Museum | World Trade Center Memorial
• All The Names: Algorithmic Design and the 9/11 Memorial | blprnt.blg 061011
  Jer Thorpe: “The project was to design an algorithm for placement of names on the 9/11 memorial in New York City. In architect Michael Arad‘s vision for the memorial, the names were to be laid according to where people were and who they were with when they died – not alphabetical, nor placed in a grid. Inscribed in bronze parapets, almost three thousand names would stream seamlessly around the memorial pools. Underneath this river of names, though, an arrangement would provide a meaningful framework; one which allows the names of family and friends to exist together. Victims would be linked through what Arad terms ‘meaningful adjacencies’ – connections that would reflect friendships, family bonds, and acts of heroism. through these connections, the memorial becomes a permanent embodiment of not only the many individual victims, but also of the relationships that were part of their lives before those tragic events.”
• Jer Thorp on Algorithmic Design and the 9/11 Memorial | Spark
  On the newly opened 9/11 memorial at Ground Zero in New York City, the names are laid according to where people were and who they were with when they died. Jer Thorp had the difficult task of designing an algorithm for placement of the names, and he talks to Nora about the challenges of using math and computer science to tackle a very, very sensitive problem. (Runs: 13:44)
• Spark 154 – September 11 & 14, 2011 | Spark
  On this episode of Spark: The Future of Education, The Myth of the Digital Native, and Designing Memorials for 9/11. | The Myth of the Digital Native: It’s easy to assume that anyone under the age of 25 is “tech savvy”, but it turns out that’s not entirely true. A new study of undergrads suggests that these so-called “digital natives” are not so digitally minded after all. Nora speaks with Andrew Asher, the lead anthropologist on the project, as well as Eszter Hargittai who has researched differentials in how much young people know about tech. (Runs: 12:28)
• Roger Ebert Talks Friendship, Food (And Missing It), And Living ‘Life Itself’ : NPR 091311
  Melissa Block interview with Roger Ebert, whose new memoir is “Life Itself”: “Ebert still churns out half a dozen reviews every week, and typing has become his means of speech. “This is ‘Alex,’” he explains, “a voice that came built into my computer.” Alex is part of a text-to-speech program; Ebert types, Alex speaks the words. The words flow at a remarkable rate, given that he laboriously hunts and pecks with just two fingers across the keyboard. | I came to talk with Roger Ebert about his life as a film critic and his life with illness. Because typing is a long and exhausting process for him, we agreed that I’d send some questions in advance.”
• ‘Wonderstruck’: A Novel Approach To Picture Books : NPR 091311
  “Wonderstruck” is the story of Rose and Ben, a young boy and girl who live years and worlds apart. By the end of the book, the reader learns they have a special connection. But from early on, they have one thing in common: She is deaf and he loses his hearing when he is struck by lightening. Selznick says the idea for the book began forming when he saw a documentary about deafness and deaf culture. One of the deaf educators emphasized how hyper-attuned deaf people are to the visual world. So Selznick set out to tell the story of a deaf character in pictures. “We experience [Rose's] story in a way that perhaps might echo the way she experiences her own life,” he explains.
• Christine Lagarde: Changing of the Guard – Magazine – Vogue
  When she does arrive at her office, the force of her presence is palpable. When we call somebody a star, we’re sometimes hinting that along with the glamour, there may be an element of fragility or caprice; Marilyn Monroe was a star. It would be better to say of Christine Lagarde that she is a planet with a powerful field of gravity, orbiting through the skies of global high finance, the first woman to be in charge of the world’s economy. Not everyone is in her constellation, though: She’s been charged with actions in her capacity as Sarkozy’s minister of finance that resulted in a lucrative legal settlement for a powerful French businessman, Bernard Tapie; and, perhaps more shocking, she’s been accused by political skeptics of being elegant, usually a compliment in France, now subtly turned to a term of belittlement by several male members of the political elite.

• Roger Ebert Talks Friendship, Food (And Missing It), And Living ‘Life Itself’ : NPR 091311
  Melissa Block interview with Roger Ebert, whose new memoir is “Life Itself”: “Ebert still churns out half a dozen reviews every week, and typing has become his means of speech. “This is ‘Alex,’” he explains, “a voice that came built into my computer.” Alex is part of a text-to-speech program; Ebert types, Alex speaks the words. The words flow at a remarkable rate, given that he laboriously hunts and pecks with just two fingers across the keyboard. | I came to talk with Roger Ebert about his life as a film critic and his life with illness. Because typing is a long and exhausting process for him, we agreed that I’d send some questions in advance.”

Visitors at the National September 11 Memorial and Museum can touch the names of those who perished in the attacks. The names are cast in bronze parapets ringing the reflection pools that now fill the footprints of the Twin Towers. It is a worthy example of a universal design element that also provides tactile accessibility to blind visitors. [Source: C-Span live stream]

• 9/11: New York remembers | Reuters.com
• The Talk Online – Web Offers Both News and Comfort – NYTimes.com 091201
  [Dave Winerlinks to this] NYT writeup, the day following 9/11/01, on the role bloggers played in getting the first information about the attacks.
• Scripting News: My 9/11 | 091011
  Dave Winer: “I realize I am a strange duck from the standpoint of 9/11. I experienced it from California, and blogged it, as my NY counterparts couldn’t. I received their emails and pointed to their pictures and stories. I acted as an online anchor, and learned a lot that day, and grew a lot, all while being scared out of my mind and depressed. The blogging helped me get through it.”
• Scripting News: 9/11/2001
  Dave Winer’s historic blog post from 9/11 — still linked on the net.
• Let the Great World Spin (Book One) by Colum McCann | Poor Sap Publishing 062910
  John Francisconi: “That I already consider it likely the best post 9/11 novel is remarkable considering the entire book takes place, for the most part, on a single day in 1974. The knowledge of September 11th completely informs your reading of the novel, though. It lingers over every event in the novel. When one section follows mothers whose sons have died in Vietnam, an immediate parallel is drawn to the wars spawned by 9/11.”
• Telling jokes about september 11th – On The Media 090911
  Comedian and host of the WTF podcast Marc Maron was living in New York during the attacks of 9/11. Brooke talks to Maron about how comedians began to grapple with the tragedy in their acts and how he dealt with it personally.
• Growing up in the shadow of 9/11 – On The Media
  When WNYC’s Radio Rookies–a program that teaches kids how to tell their own stories–put out a call for personal tales of 9/11, Brendan Illis answered. Illis was 6-years-old when the towers fell, after which he became a voracious news consumer. He says 9/11 and the past decade of news have played a pivotal role in the direction of his life.
• Al Jazeera English in America – On The Media 090911
  Since its launch in 2006, Al Jazeera English has had a lot of trouble breaking into American markets. Andrew Stelzer reports a cautionary tale about Burlington, Vermont, a town whose cable service picked up Al Jazeera English, inspiring intense local protests.
• Newly Released 9/11 Audio – On The Media
  This week, Rutgers Law Review published an archive of conversations between air traffic controllers on the morning of September 11, 2001. Jim Dwyer of The New York Times wrote about the newly released audio, and talks to Bob about what we can learn from them.
• Could ‘Submission’ Be America’s Sept. 11 Novel? : NPR 090611
  Maureen Corrigan: The Submission is a gorgeously written novel of ideas about America in the wake of Sept. 11. It tackles subjects like identity politics, undocumented immigrants and the stress fractures of democracy. Maybe the most audacious question that’s posed by Amy Waldman’s debut novel, however, is the implicit one that lingers long after a reader finishes it: Namely, could it be that a decade after the attacks, America finally has the Sept. 11 novel — one that does justice, artistically and historically, to the aftershocks of that day? | Of course, there have been other serious fiction contenders that have ruminated on Sept. 11; among them, Joseph O’Neill’s Netherland; Deborah Eisenberg’s short story collection, Twilight of the Superheroes; Don DeLillo’s Falling Man; and Ken Kalfus’ dark tour de force, A Disorder Peculiar to the Country.
• Big City Book Club | ‘Let the Great World Spin’ – NYTimes.com 090611
  Gina Bellafante: “Let the Great World Spin,” Colum McCann’s award-winning 2009 novel, a portrait of the city in perhaps its most vivid period of decline. Set in the 1970s, the book is a 9/11 narrative by implication, his idea being that New York is, fundamentally, a place where wondrous things rise from the ashes. We can argue (and I hope we will) about whether or not he is right in his assessment, but I think it is fair to say that above all, “Let the Great World Spin’’ is an enormously hopeful book. What struck me initially was the extent to which Mr. McCann, a native Irishman, shares a certain kind of New Yorker’s nostalgia for the blighted New York of the ’70s… But he is primarily committed to a characterization of the city as a place animated by mad and glorious subversions: by a feral artistic sensibility, by a radical sense of religious fealty, by a willingness on the part of certain members of the elite to seek and find connection with those far beyond their social order.
• BBC – BBC World Service Programmes – The Strand, 30/08/2011, Francesc Torres – ‘Memory Remains’
  Francesc Torres talks to Anna McNamee about his photographic exhibition Memory Remains which marks the 10th anniversary of 9/11.
• Slain Priest: ‘Bury His Heart, But Not His Love’ : NPR 090911
  Father Mychal Judge was a Franciscan friar and a chaplain to the New York City Fire Department. He was also a true New York character. Born in Brooklyn, Mychal Judge seemed to know everyone in the city, from the homeless to the mayor. On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, Father Mychal arrived at the World Trade Center shortly after the first plane hit. And as firefighters and other rescue personnel ran into the North Tower, he went with them.
• At Maison Lesage, Beauty Embroidered By Hand : NPR 090911
  Adornment rules in a series of sunny rooms at Paris’ oldest embroidery studio Maison Lesage — the House of Lesage. Workers in white lab coats attach sequins, beads, rhinestones, shells, ribbons and feathers to pieces of air-thin fabric … which will adorn de luxe creations by the top names in fashion: Dior, Louis Vuitton, Yves Saint Laurent — all the famous French designers. The Lesage studio was purchased by Chanel in 2002. Chanel chief designer Karl Lagerfeld wanted to ensure that this 130-year-old embroidery business would stay in business, in a world of mass-produced, made-in-China clothing. The House of Lesage is a house of hand work. Executed by what the French call petites mains — little hands. They do it all. “The drawing, the sewing, the embroidery …” Everything done by “very precious hands,” says Chanel’s Angelique Ginguene.

Poet Imtiaz Dharker

• Poetry Writing: Elements of Poetry
  [referring link to a blind flaneur: Imtiaz Dharker’s Blessing: “Voice Of A Kindly God”] “First, listen to Imtiaz Dharker herself read Blessing. She reads two poems in this video. You may choose to stop after listening to Blessing but you might find the second poem interesting as well. You may notice that the imagery in this poem involves sound as well as sight — and touch as well. After listening, read the poem Blessing yourself.”
• Michael Hart, inventor of the ebook, dies aged 64 | Books | guardian.co.uk
  Michael S. Hart on the 1971 origins of the ebook and Project Gutenberg: “Somehow I had envisioned the net in my mind very much as it would become 30 years later. I envisioned sending the Declaration of Independence to everyone on the net… all 100 of them… which would have crashed the whole thing, but luckily Fred Ranck stopped me, and we just posted a notice in what would later become comp.gen. I think about six out of the 100 users at the time downloaded it.”
• Michael S. Hart, e-book inventor and Project Gutenberg founder, dies at 64 — Engadget
  Michael S. Hart, the e-book inventor who founded Project Gutenberg, has died at the age of 64. []In 1971 he] founded Project Gutenberg — an online library that aims to “encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks” and to “break down the bars of ignorance and illiteracy.” By 1987, he’d already digitized a total of 313 books, including works from Homer, Shakespeare and the Bible, before recruiting more volunteers to help out. As of this June, Hart’s pioneering library housed about 36,000 works in its collection (most of which are in the public domain), with an average of 50 new books added each week. Described by Project Gutenberg as an “ardent technologist and futurist,” Hart leaves a literary legacy perhaps best summed up in his own words. “One thing about eBooks that most people haven’t thought much is that eBooks are the very first thing that we’re all able to have as much as we want other than air.”
• e-Book Founder Michael S. Hart Dies At 64 : NPR 090811
  In 1971, computer scientist Michael S. Hart typed the text of the Declaration of Independence and made it available on a computer network so others could read it as well. It was an electronic document, and he created what you might think of as the prototypical e-book. Before his death this week at the age of 64, Hart founded Project Gutenberg, which provides free digital literature, to spread literacy.
• Saving The Stories Of Loved Ones Lost On Sept. 11 : NPR 090811
  Each year, the oral history project StoryCorps has marked the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks with the voices of those directly affected by the events: wives and husbands, grandparents and friends of those who died that day. But as StoryCorps founder Dave Isay tells Morning Edition co-host Steve Inskeep, the outpouring of stories about Sept. 11 initially came as something of a surprise. “When StoryCorps started, I expected to see a lot of people come to StoryCorps who were dealing with kind of end-of-life issues,” Isay says. “What I didn’t expect to see were people coming to memorialize loved ones who were lost. And we saw that from the first days after StoryCorps opened eight years ago.”
• Zoe Keating: A Symphony Unto Herself : NPR 090611
  It’s fitting to find [Zoe] Keating in the middle of all this natural noise. In her studio, she creates a similar symphony of sounds, except she does it with just one instrument: her cello. Her secret lies in the way she constructs her songs. Keating uses computer software to record sounds and musical phrases as she plays them. When she plays something she wants to keep, she taps on pedals at her feet, which tell the computer program to save and loop what she just played. That frees her up to play a new musical phrase along with what she just recorded. The process repeats until she’s created layers upon layers of sounds, all from her one cello.
• Remix Breakdown: Turning Adele’s ‘Rolling In The Deep’ Into A Summer Jam | NPR 090511
  “When you’re in the remixing game you look for certain things in a song. Certain songs have a lot going on in them that are really hard to eliminate when all you want is the vocal sample or basic idea,” Dirlam says. “Every single DJ that has remixed ‘Rolling In The Deep’ owes Rick Rubin a huge kiss on the lips. Rubin strips down songs and exposes them for what they are. Here you have claps, guitars, bass, piano, her voice, and that’s it.”