Jabberwocky - the podcast

As part of the class I'm taking, I need to experience podcast production. I couldn't think of anything inspiring or interesting to say (that I didn't think could be said better in blog form, anyway) so I decided to take someone else's words. Lewis Carroll's, to be exact.

Michael graciously agreed to employ his vocal pyrotechnics for me, and he recited Lewis Carroll's "The Jabberwocky." I like that poem because it is fun to say; it is pleasant to shape your mouth around the gibberish words. Try it - you'll see.

What I hadn't noticed, however, is that Lewis Carroll manages to paint an incredibly vivid - and entirely comprehensible - picture using words that don't actually exist. What does brillig mean? What is a vorpal sword, and how does one outgrabe? Individually, the words are nonsense, but put them together, and you know exactly what they mean. Not only that, but once you have the picture in mind, words like brillig and vorpal do a better job at describing the scene than any other word would. This poem is a masterpiece of construction.

I really think you need to hear it to truly understand it, though. So, here you go. Let me know what you think of it. Could you understand the poem? Do the words seem real to you, or are they still just a collection of sounds? How does the music impact your reaction to the poetry? Just for comparison, here is the poem read again, but with no background music. Which do you like better?

UW-Madison News Release--Study: Monkeys Show Self-Awareness

I'm not even going to comment on the following article. I think you all know me well enough to guess my reaction to it. Here it is:

FOR FIRST TIME, MONKEYS RECOGNIZE THEMSELVES IN THE MIRROR, INDICATING SELF-AWARENESS

MADISON - Typically, monkeys don't know what to make of a mirror. They may ignore it or interpret their reflection as another, invading monkey, but they don't recognize the reflection as their own image. Chimpanzees and people pass this "mark" test - they obviously recognize their own reflection and make funny faces, look at a temporary mark that the scientists have placed on their face or wonder how they got so old and grey.

For 40 years, scientists have concluded from this type of behavior that a few species are self-aware - they recognize the boundaries between themselves and the physical world.

Because chimps, our closest relatives, pass the test, while almost all other primate species fail it, scientists began to discuss a "cognitive divide" between the highest primates and the rest.

But a study published today (Sept. 29) by Luis Populin, a professor of anatomy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, shows that under specific conditions, a rhesus macaque monkey that normally would fail the mark test can still recognize itself in the mirror and perform actions that scientists would expect from animals that are self-aware.

The finding casts doubt on both the relevance of the mark test and on the existence of a definitive cognitive divide between higher and lower primates.

Populin, who studies the neural basis of perception and behavior, had placed head implants on two rhesus macaque monkeys, while preparing to study attention deficit disorder. Then Abigail Rajala, an experienced animal technician who is in the university's Neuroscience Training Program, mentioned that one of the monkeys could recognize himself in a small mirror. "I told her the scientific literature says they can't do this," says Populin, "so we decided to do a simple study."

Much to his delight, it turned out that the graduate student was right.

In the standard mark test, a harmless mark is put on the animal's face, where it can only be seen in a mirror. If the animal stares at the mirror and touches the mark, it is said to be self-aware: It knows that the mirror shows its own reflection, not that of another animal. (Animals that lack self-awareness may, for example, search for the "invading" animal behind the mirror.)

Rhesus macaques, a mainstay of medical and psychological research, have long failed the mark test.

But in Populin's lab, the monkeys that got the implants were clearly looking in the mirror while examining and grooming their foreheads, near the implant. Tellingly, they were also examining areas on their body, particularly the genitals, that they had never seen before. In some cases, the monkeys even turned themselves upside down during these examinations. In other cases, they grasped and adjusted the mirror to get a better view of themselves.

When the researchers covered the mirror glass with black plastic, these behaviors disappeared, and the monkeys ignored what had been a subject of fascination.

Furthermore, although a macaque will often interpret its reflection as representing an intruding monkey and adopt either an aggressive or submissive response, the implanted monkeys showed dramatically fewer of those "social" behaviors compared to the behaviors, such as exploring hidden body parts, that indicate self-awareness, Populin says.

"This report makes a unique contribution to our views about primate self-awareness because the 'mirror test' has been the traditional gold standard for determining if a person and/or animal met a criterion for having a sense of self," says Christopher Coe, a primatologist and professor of psychology at UW-Madison. "If a young child, brain-damaged adult or animal was able to recognize and appreciate that the image in the reflection was really them, then it was interpreted as proof of being aware."

Thus, Coe says, "If we follow that logic through with the belief that mirror recognition is proof of a sense of self, then we need to extend that attribute at least to rhesus monkeys."

Scientists who have used the mark test to explore self-awareness have found the quality in one species of bird, in one individual elephant, and in dolphins and orangutans. And so instead of asking how self-awareness evolved only among primates, they face the larger question of how it evolved multiple times in distantly related species.

The study may refine how the mark test is used, Populin says. "We clearly have data showing that these animals recognize themselves in the mirror, but fail the mark test."

The mounting data on self-awareness has undermined the concept of a cognitive divide in the primate lineage, Populin says. "There is another idea in primatology, and Charles Snowdon of UW-Madison has contributed to this, that instead of a divide, self-awareness has evolved along a continuum, so we will find it in different forms in different locations on the tree of evolution. I think the mark test may not be sensitive enough to detect self-awareness in the lower species; they may have it, but in a different form, and it may show up in different situations, using different tests."

Power

Here are how two rap songs contemplate power. The first is "No Handlebars" by the Flobots.



In addition to just really cool orchestration, I like this song because I get two different messages from it, depending on if I'm watching the video or just listening to the song. Listen to the song, and you feel there is just one person talking. I feel like the song is contemplating what happens when emotionally immature people come into great power, be it economic, social, or political. If all our politicians are playing a game of one-upmanship ("oh, yeah? Well, I can ride my bike with no handlebars! Beat THAT!") then we'll never end up with meaningful compromise or social discourse. To get anything done, politics requires a level of maturity that seems to be sorely lacking.

Watching the video, however, gives me a second message. This time, the song is sung between two friends who both start out at the same place. One boy takes a job in a big company, where the culture of his business, the media, and everything around him twists him into a hateful, frightened, friendless beast. In this view of the song, it is actually society and/or the giant corporation that is the villain. The boy would've been just fine, had he been in a better environment.

In our political world, I do think this happens all the time. People may enter into politics for noble reasons, but the reality of campaigning will twist them. How can it not? We expect these people to perform all day, every day, for years if they are going into national office. We scrutinize them. Have they ever made any mistake, ever? We will broadcast it, blowing it out of proportion. In an effort to win votes, candidates will promise the world to everyone they meet - by intimation, if nothing else. Then we become disappointed when the impossible fails to happen after they get into office. It is near to impossible for a candidate who is not a lying, egocentric ass to get into office.

It doesn't happen all the time, of course. And some people who get into office are still honest people who are trying to serve their country well. But it does happen sometimes. Just like, sometimes, our leaders are children in 45 year old bodies.

I think the song also cautions against letting corporations have too much influence in politics. Large corporations have lives of their own, but they are unencumbered by such things as morality, empathy, and looking towards the greater good. They really shouldn't be in charge.

If the Flobots have something to say about the corrupting influence of power as seen from the outside, Kanye West speaks about power from the inside, as one who has it in abundance.



From the Sword of Damocles to the assassins to the gaggle of women who aren't even looking at him, Kanye West sits on a precarious perch, and knows it. Power is a fleeting thing, the song says. As soon as you get to the top, there are people surrounding you to tear you down. To be successful in power, you need to revel in their angry cries and accept that your time in the spotlight will end (probably sooner rather than later.) Live it up while you can, and let it go when your time is done.

I don't think this song is quite as meaningful (powerful, if you will) as the Flobots song, simply because Kanye celebrates his ascension over those who would keep him down a bit too angrily for me. But it is still a great song, and the video is a-freaking-mazing. The movement, the symbolism, and flashes of color...stunning. I just love it.

So, that's my review of power, cats and kittens. Now I'm going to go watch that Kanye video again.

Podcasts

The next section in the class I'm taking is about podcasts. I already listen to the podcasts of my favorite NPR shows: Car Talk, Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, Radio Lab, and This American Life. Those podcasts are just the normal radio show in podcast form. It's like TiVo for radio.

Recently, I've started listening to a few shows that are made specifically for a podcast audience. These shows are shorter, and perhaps they don't have as exhaustive of a review of a subject, but their very brevity is what makes them interesting. If I've got a 15 minute car ride, I can listen to a story on The Moth instead of trying to remember what was happening on This American Life the last time I listened to it, a couple of weeks ago. I also started listening to Planet Money, which is a fabulous little podcast about the economy. It's a spin-off of This American Life, so it has a similar feel, and they do a very good job explaining specific parts of the economy.

I did a review of some different podcasts for this class, and my new favorite is called Grammar Girl. I just love it. Each episode talks about a different grammar rule - what the rule is, exactly; why the rule is, perhaps the history of the rule... Stupdendous. Oh, and Dad? It IS okay to frivolously split infinitives. HA!

I also watched the beginning of a few different podcasts offered by Stanford University on iTunes. This is a really cool idea, and I wish Colby did it. They have podcasts of guest speakers, podcasts of university performances, podcasts interviewing various academic departments (they feel like little documentaries), and podcasts that are made by and/or for students. I would be very interested if my alma mater posted dance performances online. (Although, that might run afoul of some very tricky music copyright rules...the bane of all podcast producers!) And I remember nights at Colby when a very popular speaker was coming. They televised the speech, and I'm sure the college still has the video in storage somewhere, but a VHS kept in a library box is nowhere near as accessible as a podcast!

So, what makes a good podcast? Well, an interesting subject matter surely helps, of course. More subtly, though, a good podcast involves people who are comfortable in front of a camera (or microphone, for those audio-only podcasts.) It can't sound stilted and scripted. The voice has to have natural pitch, and can be neither too fast nor too slow. Podcasts, no matter how easy or low-tech to produce, are performances. If you are uncomfortable performing for an audience, podcasting is not for you.

Try blogging.

Craigslist Intrigues

I don't have much time to write a blog post right now, as I'm really behind on homework. But it has been an awfully long time since my last post, and I felt the need to post SOMETHING.

So, here is an interesting article I found. I'm not very involved in Craigslist, but apparently some people use this version of the Classifieds to post ads for prostitutes. Or, I guess, advertising themselves as prostitutes. Fancy that, someone used the Internet to find sex.

Well, the plot thickened significantly last month when 17 state attorneys general demanded Craigslist drop all its adult ads. It's pretty clearly a political stunt, but it does open up a whole crazy host of questions.

Is Craigslist responsible for everything that is posted on their enormous site? If they are, where does the line of responsibility end? Are newspapers responsible for everything that shows up in their classifieds? Is eBay responsible for everything that is auctioned? Is Google responsible for all the sites its search engines find?

If you spend more than half a minute contemplating the attorneys general self-righteous letter to Craigslist, you might also feel more than a little annoyed at them. The letter written talks about the victims of prostitution, the women and the children. Can't you just see them? Just praying for that day when prostitution is finally eradicated because Craigslist doesn't advertise for it anymore. On that day, there will truly be no more violence against women and children. This letter is what infuriates me about politics - politicians surround themselves with rhetorical bullshit that doesn't actually accomplish anything at all, but gives them something to point at with pompous pride: look at how I have made you safer! As the blogger pointed out, "It's a heckuvalot easier to write a strongly worded letter (followed by a press release) to grab headlines for being tough on prostitution without having to getting your hands dirty by, say, actually being tough on prostitution."

Discuss amongst yourselves. I must return to my homework.

What I Did on My Summer Vacation...

...or my weekend. Whatever.

I have been playing on Flickr like a maniac, and I just have to show off my stuff.

To get my feet wet, I created a "set." I uploaded a bunch of pictures around a theme (in this case, fun things to do in the summertime). Sets are basically personal photo albums. You don't have to have photos in a set, but I thought it would be nice. I played around with tags and geotagging. I couldn't get the map function to work - this would allow there to be a map showing exactly where the photo was taken just to the right of that photo. Maybe it doesn't agree with Firefox. Here is a link to my set, The Joys of Summer.

After that, I created a gallery. If sets are personal photo albums, galleries are the albums you make with other people's photos. Galleries are my absolute favorite part of Flickr. I think the galleries are where this overwhelming mass of mostly mediocre pictures becomes a place for art. My gallery isn't the most amazing out there, but I like it anyway. I did a sort of pictograph version of the lullabye poem "Wynkin, Blynkin, and Nod" by Eugene Field. It was definitely fun to do, although it took a really long time. Here it is.

Finally, I played around with annotations. If galleries draw the artists, annotating draws the educators. Annotations allow you to place a little box around one specific spot in the photograph and then place a note about the thing in the box. I used a couple of photos we took in San Francisco from the Coit Tower, a huge tower set on top of Telegraph Hill. I tried to identify some of the sights, and maybe add a little interesting fact about them. The end result is pretty cool, although it took FOREVER to do. I was hampered by the fact that I don't actually know San Francisco, so I was trying to figure out the names of the buildings using Google Earth and Google Maps. Here is the first picture and here is the second.

I could think of a bunch of educational applications. You could identify plants in a picture of a garden or forest. Or parts of a plant (or animal). In the zoo field, you could identify good (or bad) aspects of an exhibit. Or particular traits of an animal which help it to adapt to its environment. Annotations would really only be useful, however, if you wanted to investigate parts of a whole.

Setting up these Flickr "exhibits" is really work-intensive, though. I spent hours on the gallery and the annotating. I'm not really sure how useful Flickr really is in terms of educating. But it is cool. I'll give it that.

Bats

I was walking down to the mailbox this evening, right as twilight was deepening. The sky was still a fairly light blue, but the landscape had faded into shades of gray. That's when I saw the bat, flitting back and forth above me. It was just light enough so that when he made a sharp turn, I could just make out a line of light along the "finger" bones in his wing. I watched and silently cheered each turn. It was probably a little brown bat, Pennsylvania's most common bat, and just one of these fabulous little hunters can catch up to 1,200 insects in an hour. Watching bats fly always makes me smile. The sight brings back memories of summer nights at camp, watching the sunlight fade before going to eat my S'more at the campfire, surrounded by friends.

Bats in the northeast are in serious trouble, though. In 2006, a New York State wildlife biologist named Alan Hicks found a large number of dead bats in four caves around Albany. Some of them had a white fungus around their noses. In the time since then, the fungus Geomyces destructans has spread - as have over a million bat deaths. White-nose syndrome is prevalent in New Hampshire, Vermont, NewYork, Massachusetts, Connecticut, NewJersey, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Virginia in the US, and in Quebec and Ontario in Canada. Slowly, however, the disease is spreading.

Scientists have no idea where this disease came from. They don't even know if the white fungus causes the death, or is an opportunistic infection which comes when the bats are hit by something else entirely. All they know is that something wakes up a hibernating bat, causing it to use up precious fat reserves. The bats then freeze or starve. No bat (as far as we know) has survived this disease. In some places, entire colonies of thousands of bats have died - their thin bodies piled on the floor of the cave for helpless bat scientists to find in the spring. Little brown bats seem particularly susceptible, but no bat species has proven immune. So far, there is no cure.

If current trends continue, the little brown bat will be nearly extinct by 2020.

So tonight, as I watched my neighborhood bat, I said a little prayer that his hibernation spot stays clean this year. Then I went to Bat Conservation International, and donated some money for research to combat this disease. Anybody who is reading this, please donate as well! Bats are not only wonderful creatures, but they are extremely important for the ecosystem. They are such effective predators of insects, no one really knows what might happen if they are suddenly taken out of the picture.

If nothing else, we are an ingenious species. We are clever. If anyone can figure this thing out, it will be us - but only if we have the will to do it. The white-nose fungus has been found on a bat in France...a totally healthy bat. Hopefully, this bat isn't the exception to the rule. Hopefully, we won't watch the destruction of European bats, too. Hopefully, this bat is actually immune to white-nose disease. If he is, maybe we can figure out a way to help our bats combat the disease.

I want my kids to watch bats in the summertime, too. Don't you?

For more information on white-nose syndrome, check out the U.S Fish& Wildlife FAQs and Bat Conservation International's FAQs. After you read up, here is where you can help the fight.

The Wonder that is Flickr

I've started reading about Flickr, and I was expecting to be impressed. I thought Flickr was just a place to dump all your digital photos, and I'm not really interested in seeing 10,000 pictures of a family that I don't know. I had thought that was all Flickr was about.

I was wrong.

There is an amazing amount of photographic art happening on this site. I am not sure how many of the photographers are bona fide professionals, and how many are "simply" gifted amateurs. I suppose it doesn't actually matter when you are working online, where the ease of publishing means all photographs can be judged on their own merits. Still, I was blown away. LEt me show you some of what I found:

Here is a series of dual photographs taken by a photographer in Atlanta, who stopped regular people and took portraits of them and photos of all the stuff in their bags. They all have the usual keys, cell phone, credit cards, etc - but there are also unusual items that hint at the personality of the person. The way he (she?) photographed both the items and the person also implied a kind of story that I found utterly fascinating.

Looking Into the Past is a "gallery" of photos taken by many people. I like the idea of galleries. Basically, you choose a subject or theme, and then find photos on Flickr that will go in that theme. In other words, you don't have to be a fantastic photographer to come up with a really interesting gallery. Making galleries would be a really fun and educational homework project...if I were a teacher, I'd make a mental note of that.

Here is another gallery with a more meditative theme. Just beautiful. And, of course, each photo is linked back to the original, along with what group(s) the photographer put the picture in. The groups are another interesting way photographs are organized, only this time there is no one "curator" of the group - photographers place their own pictures in there. There is a group for just about everything. The best groups have really vague themes - like the "Red Rule" group. The only rule is that the picture must contain red. The mix of types of photos is riveting.

The other really fascinating thing with Flickr is that it has public archive photograph collectionsm called The Commons. The idea is to make these archival photographs more accessible, and also (maybe) to get more information about the photo from someone, somewhere, who may know something. I got really excited about this idea for a little bit, because the Zoo has some great archival photographs, but they aren't really organized. How fabulous would it be to put it on Flickr?! Unfortunately, at this time they aren't accepting more Commons Photographs (although they encourage interested institutions to put their photos online through a more regular account, and maybe they can be added to the Commons collection later.) Still an interesting idea. Here is a photograph from Oregon State University, of all places. Among the Commons participants is the Library of Congress, the National Archives, and major archives from around the world. Awesome.

What I really like about Flickr right now is the creative potential of the site. You can create your own photo album, or you can create an album using other people's photographs. You can create a collection around anything at all, from a place (many photographs are linked to the specific location where they were taken) to an activity to an idea. And because you are playing with pictures instead of the written word, the ending product is just richer and more interesting. It is exciting.

In fact, I'm going to go play right now!


(Picture of Ben from a great set of the Philly Zoo! Thanks, ucumari!)

Librarians Do Gaga

I am a librarian now. I lot of people (including my own mother!) have stated disbelief that I would leave the zoo-keeper field to enter the wonderful world of records, archives, books, and magazines. I left I job where I would routinely scratch the head of a snow leopard! Crazy!!

But, hey, librarians are cool, too! And here is my proof...

Looking for a Wiki in a haystack of needles

This week I'm researching wikis. I can't say I'm impressed with what I've found. I suspect that browsing for wikis the way one would browse for books in a library is an activity destined for frustration and failure.

But let me tell you what I found. I tried looking for zoo-specific wikis. I found the promising American Zoo Wiki, which is supposed to have pages on all the zoos in America. It has one. The Central Park Zoo's entry says simply, "The Central Park Zoo is a zoo in New York City's Central Park. The zoo started out as a menagerie for exotic animal gifts."

Zoo Wiki also looked promising. It is a "collaborative animal archive wiki" with a bunch of entries, each on one species of animal. Unfortunately, the entries are all very small, including only the taxonimic information, the size of the animal, the continent where that animal can be found, and a drawing of the animal. As far as I can tell, there is only one contributor to the site, so it's not much of a wiki. The wiki manager also has a blog on her wiki, and it details her trials and tribulations. It is pretty disheartening - she starts out all excited for her lovely wiki, but she slowly has to shut down access to it because of intense and persistent spamming. As of May 2nd, she had to remove even the ability to become a member of the wiki because fake users were being set up with the purpose of vandalizing her blog. Now, if you want to be a member of her wiki, you have to contact her directly.

I got really excited when I found Zoo World Wiki. It had a bunch of entries, and the description on the main page started, "Hey, Zookeepers!" But it turns out that this is a wiki about a Facebook game called Zoo World. Apparently I'm not the only one frustrated: one of the comments under the Overview section was from "Angelsinthewindow": "Damnit! I thought this was for the zoo world on FACEBOOK! darn it all."

I also looked through Wikipedia's list of active wikis. The active wiki entry is a little annoying because all the links simply go to the Wikipedia entry on that wiki, as opposed to linking directly to the wiki in question. But I can copy and paste into Google with the best of 'em, so I followed up on interesting looking wikis for a while. I did manage to find some good wikis here. One that sounded intriguing was Whole Wheat Radio, which is a indie music-streaming website with an associated wiki. Interesting stuff (and good music!), although it was hard to search if you didn't already know a fair amount about Indie musicians. Another good wiki is the International Music Score Library - a library of public domain music scores for the use of all. I don't have much need for musical scores myself, but the wiki struck me as useful, at the very least.

I also found A Million Penguins, an experiment by Penguin Publishing to write a wiki novel. Within five paragraphs, I confirmed that it is indeed not a good idea to write a novel by committee. It's a mildly entertaining read if you go for post-modern random oddness. Are they in an internet cafe, or on the beach? And why is the walrus so intent on his painting? Very strange.

So, at the end of my searching, I've come to the conclusion that wikis may be a great collaborative tool, but I'm not sure how useful it is to collaborate with EVERYONE out there. If a wiki is just put out there in cyberspace, as the poor managers of Zoo Wiki and American Zoo Wiki learned, you're likely to either be spammed to death, or ignored. I think wikis should be used in more specific applications. My first idea for a wiki was an Enrichment Wiki for zookeepers. The wiki could be arranged by animal (or perhaps by type of animal) and zookeepers could post enrichment ideas they've had success with. There is something like this already, a database maintained by the Fort Worth Zoo. You can submit items to the database, but you have to be an approved member to actually post things. In a wiki, keepers could discuss what does and doesn't work, safety issues, etc. It would be more of a living document.

There could also be wikis on the husbandry of some difficult-to-care for animals, to allow the the subset of the zoo community involved in the species in question to develop best practices collaboratively. Or a wiki for zoo educators. There are many possibilities, but I think the wiki should be restricted to a specific population. The wiki also needs to be advertised to the appropriate audience. The enrichment wiki could be presented in the zookeeper's professional publication, Animal Keeper's Forum. The husbandry wikis could be supported through AZA's Conservation Committees. Etc, etc.

Wikis are collaborative tools, so the idea that you need a group to collaborate with might be completely obvious. With Wikipedia being the most well-known wiki, however, I do think a lot of people skip that first step. So, this is what I've learned: gather your group together first. THEN collaborate.

I know. I'm brilliant.

Weirdness

So, I'm pretty new to this whole blog thing. I don't really know what I'm doing. I'm not sure if it is me or blogspot, but I haven't been able to leave any comments on this blog. Since the discussion in the comments section is a huge part of a blog, I've really felt this lack.

I finally tried looking at my blog in Internet Explorer (I normally use Firefox) and it was a revelation! First of all, my blog looks pretty crappy through Explorer. Nothing is centered exactly right, and there are some differences in the colors. It's a little ugly. BUT (and here's the important bit) I can leave comments.

So. If you are using Explorer, I encourage you to look at the world through the eyes of another browser. And if you can't leave comments, you can go to Explorer, but don't pay too much attention to the look of the blog.

Or maybe I'm the only one with this weird problem. I probably hit a button somewhere. Or something. Ah, technology!

Where do emotions come from?

I was skimming through the latest issue of "Science News" at work today, and I saw an article stating that people with Botox have a slightly harder time "evaluating descriptions of negative emotions." If your facial muscles are paralyzed, it takes just a smidgeon longer for you to read sentences about sad or angry things. It doesn't sound like that big of a difference, but we are hard-wired to pick up on the smallest and briefest cues from facial expressions. Even a slight hesitation in being able to read and respond to such a cue will be noticed - if only subconsciously. So Botox people may be at a social disadvantage. Maybe even more chilling, they may feel certain emotions less intensely, or are at least slower to feel those emotions.

This is crazy to me. I guess, deep down, I've always thought of emotion as coming from my mind or my soul, and my body simply expresses the emotion. But the article says, "...scientists have posited that facial expressions trigger and intensify relevant feelings, rather than simply advertise what an individual already feels." I listened to a Radio Lab episode (sorry, I can't remember which one) about this subject, too, and it really blows me away. The folks at Radio Lab were saying that, in effect, the body "chooses" an applicable emotion before the mind does. The mind actually picks up on the body's signals and says, "oh...let's see...I'm sweating, my heart is beating rapidly, my stomach feels like I'm falling. I must be scared. What am I scared about? Holy crap, a bear!!" (Or whatever.)

But this article is talking about something more subtle than the mind noticing the body's flight-or-fight response before the mind is aware such a response is needed. This is more like, "huh, my eyebrows are drawn together and the corners of my lips are being pulls down. Hmm...I must be sad about something. Ok, release all the feeling-sad hormones!" If your face is stuck in an angry position, your mind will find reasons for you to be angry. If you always look sad, you will find reasons to be sad.

If you keep smiling, you will find reasons to be happy.

This reminds me of a wonderful Real Live Preacher blog entry. He said, in effect, faith (and love) isn't something you feel or think. It's something you DO. You make a decision to be faithful, and you act in a faithful way. The feelings come after. Maybe happiness is something you do, too.

Zoo Blogs

The text I'm reading for my class is called "Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms," written by Will Richardson, the author of the blog Weblogged. In one of the blogging chapters, he describes a spectrum of posting, from journaling (which he does not consider blogging) to links with some analysis (simple blogging) to extended analysis of a subject over a longer period of time (complex blogging.)

When zoos blog, I think they are mostly journaling. "This is what we're doing right now." If there are any links, it is to a picture or video of something about the zoo itself: a cute baby animal, area teenagers involved in a conservation project, etc. Now, I don't agree with Richardson that journaling isn't blogging. If the journaling prompts reaction and replys in the comments section, I think it is blogging. It is very simple blogging, though. "Low-level" as my course mentor might say.

Could zoos utilize higher level blogging? Would the audience stick with the blog if it challenged them? I think a lot of people are tempted to write to the lowest denominator. People don't want to THINK! Give 'em another picture of the newborn tiger. Ok, newborn tigers are indeed awesome...but maybe people would like to think, too. Maybe, sprinkled in amoung the journal entries, should be a post about an upcoming legislative bill which would threaten a local green space. Or how buying locally grown food helps the environment. Or how the zoo makes breeding decisions. Something meatier.

I do think that would make the blog more interesting, and I think that would keep people coming back for more much longer than simple journaling. However, those posts are harder to write. As I said before, I good post is informal and conversational with a stong voice. It is difficult to find a writer good enough to make administrative decisions or legislative action interesting. If a zoo wants an effective, educational blog, it needs to find such a writer.

On the Nature of Blogs

I've been reading and contemplating a bunch of blogs for this class. Five of them were "suggested" by the syllabus, and they are written by and for teachers who are interested in using Web 2.0 technology in the K-12 classroom. To contrast those blogs (and to make it more interesting for me, as I'm not particularly interested in that topic), I'm also looking at the Woodland Park Zoo's blog and two blogs I used to read religiously, Real Live Preacher and Why Your Wife Won't...

These eight blogs encompass a wide range of personality. Some blogs have short entries designed to solicit a discussion in the comments section. Some have long philosophical discussions, meant to get the reader to sit back in her chair and THINK. Some are more educational, meant to teach the reader something specific. Some are more like journal entries: this is what's going on in my life right now. They're all different, and yet all successful; format doesn't really seem to matter.

All of the blogs, however, were written in the same general style: informal and conversational. It is a style that draws the reader in. Maybe it is because we are a social species, and when someone is speaking to us in a familiar way, we feel almost honor-bound to at least hear them out before moving on. It is as if it would be rude to turn our eyes away from this person who speaks to us like we are already friends. The very best blogs are written by people who have such a strong voice that we DO become convinced we are friends. I defy any of you to read the early blogs of Real Live Preacher and not want to take that man out for coffee.

Really, at the end of the day, a blog is all about relationship-building. Before you can teach, before you can philosophize, before you can show off the pictures of your trip or your kid, you need to build relationships with readers. This is a really important point for people who want to use blogs for educational purposes. A blog will fail if it is just a forum for facts. People reading the blog need to hear the voice of the writer, and they need to feel a connection to that writer.

The Internet has been accused of isolating people so they sit alone at their computers on a beautiful Saturday morning (as I admit I'm doing now.) But we seek out passion and emotion and friendship no matter what our environment is, and the Internet is no exception. If a Zoo (for example) wishes to write a blog about wildlife conservation, it must embrace this reality. I've read a lot of Zoo blogs that have been full of interesting information, but is dry and boring overall. Zoo people need to forget about being a "scientific professional" and just be human.

And a good writer. That always helps, too.

The Facebook Mentality

I was watching The Colbert Report last night, and Colbert was talking about the secret documents posted to Wikileaks. Tom Blanton, the executive director of the National Security Archive and "one of those Open Information Guys" came on the show to talk about why he thought the leaks were a good thing.

They ended the interview speculating on why Brad Manning allegedly leaked the documents in the first place. "I don't know," Blanton said, "...maybe he's just applying the Facebook mentality to all these classified documents. You put it all out there. You put your embarrassing videos out there, you put your secret documents out there."

Maybe what we're seeing is a paradigm shift over what IS private. In the past, we've had different faces that we've presented to the world. Our private face, what we show to our family and close friends, is different from our professional face, what our boss sees. And that is different from the face we show at Church, or the face we wear while hanging out with a group of not-as-close friends. But maybe, now, all those faces are slowly merging into one. Maybe the discussions we have about what should be public and what should be private are more and more incomprehensible to younger people because there is no private. It is all public.

Maybe this means our "public faces" will melt away, and we all will stay true to our inner selves. OR (cue the doom-and-gloom music) maybe the "private face" will be the one to melt and we will end up without the opportunity to actually express who we really are.

Or this private-is-public thing is just a phase that will pass. That's probably the most realistic. The other two are much more interesting to contemplate, though!

My Purpose

The beginning of a conversation between strangers is always awkward. You don't know where the common ground is, or what the common interests are. And although I have kissed the Blarney Stone, I never got the Gift of Gab to get that conversational ball rolling. So, forgive me.

Hello, world! My name is Stephanie Eller (hence the "misspelled" stellar of the Blog title) and I actually started this blog to fulfill the requirements of a class I'm taking. It is a prosaic beginning, I guess, but I will be talking quite a bit about blogs, wikis, and podcasts, and how they can be used in an educational way, and I thought you should know why.

Now that I've set up my very own blog, though, I am already planning to use it for more than just my homework. Maybe I'll post my thought on interesting stories, or funny videos, or maybe I'll talk about my day. This is a new experiment. Will the fact that I'm sitting quietly in an empty room make it easier to reflect on issues and events? Will a real conversation begin with people I've never met? Or will this be a modern version of writing to myself in a journal?

I watched an episode of "House" where Laura Prepon (the tall girl from "That 70's Show") played a girl named Frankie, a dedicated blogger. She blogged all the time, including during her stay at the hospital, and she blogged about every THING. The episode asked how much personal information should be kept private, and how real the relationship between a blogger and her online audience really is. The show made me curious. I'd like to see if I can answer those questions for myself. I have contributed as a commenter to a few blogs, but now I'd like to experience the relationship from the other side.

Also, for my class, I want to experiment with the different faces a blog post can have. Introspective musings? Reflections on a piece of art? Criticism (positive or negative) of a written article? Invitation to a discussion in the comments? What works? What doesn't?

Well. Anyway. We'll see what happens.