All entries for Thursday 19 August 2004

August 19, 2004

Fun with elephants

See the reversing lights! This elephant forced the car a long way back down the road:

Most of the elephants you see in the Kruger are big males:

Peacefully munching reeds outside of our cottage at Shimuwini:

He noticed us watching:

And then said "how dare you!"

And drove home his point with a mock charge, load trumpet and an ear shake:

Close:

Closer:

Far too close:

Emma gave him one of her 'teacher stares', so he ran away:

All images taken with a Nikon F50, 35–300 Sigma, 2x Jessops Convertor.


Tuku, Zimbabwe, what shall we do?

Title:
Rating:
5 out of 5 stars

I'm listening to this right now. It is quite an extraordinary album. Tuku (Oliver Mtukudzi) is Zimbabwe's greatest living singer. This music distills that Southern African characterstic of lightness, depth, sadness and happiness in one moment. The second track, Todii (what shall we do?) is one of the great African pop songs.

Listening to it reminded me of some ladies that came to the front gate of Emma's home in Gaborone a couple of weeks ago. They were selling avocados. They were Zimbabwean ladies, probably Ndebele from near Bulawayo (not Mugabe's favourites). They had carried the fruit all the way. When asked what things were like back home, although they tried not to sound sad, it was clear. People are starving there. Emma's mother has a Batswana man who works for her. He must take food to the border near Francistown to feed his relatives in Zim.

It's far worse than what you see on the news.

Emma and I got married in Zim, in Hwange. We love the country. It's people are so friendly, always helpful and cheerful.

This disaster!


Academic FOAF – good or bad?

Writing about web page http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/

Yesterday something happened that reminded me of Kieran's interest in the academic use of FOAF (friend of a friend) networks.

I had a fascinating meeting yesterday with Jonathan Vickery of the Centre for Cultural Policy Studies. Although being oriented towards some specific projects relating to learning technology, the discussion was necessarily wide ranging, covering issues such as the convergence of design practices, creativity and culture, creativity and education, aesthetics, and much more. We seemed to be thinking along very similar tracks, with a similar mixture of philosophical perspective and practical perspectives on creativity, design, technology and aesthetics.

After about one and a half hours, Jonathan asked me about my background. So I explained about the strange convolutions of my career through teaching, AI, and working for an international criminal conspiracy. And of course I explained that my studies at Warwick in the Philosophy Department were fundamental. At which point connections started to appear that at least in part might explain our similar viewpoints. Anyway, i've invented a FOAF description, which is an attenmpt to illustrate how this might work. It is based partly on the standard FOAF schema. However, the FOAF relationship schema isn't descriptive of academic relationships, so i've come up with a rudimentary idea of how academic relationships would be represented….


<foaf:Person>
<foaf:Firstname>Robert</foaf:Firstname>
<foaf:Surname>O'Toole</foaf:Surname>
<foaf-academic:Tutor>Nick Land</foaf-academic:Tutor>
<foaf-academic:graduated-from>Warwick University</foaf-academic:graduated-from>
<foaf-academic:IT-advising>Jonathon Vickery</foaf-academic:IT-advising>
</foaf:Person>

<foaf:Person>
<foaf:Firstname>Jonathan</foaf:Firstname>
<foaf:Surname>Vickery</foaf:Surname>
<foaf-academic:Supervisor>Jay Bernstein</foaf-academic:Supervisor>
<foaf-academic:current>Warwick University</foaf-academic:current>
<foaf-academic:graduated-from>Essex University</foaf-academic:graduated-from>
<foaf-academic:IT-advisor>Robert O'Toole</foaf-academic:IT-advisor>
</foaf:Person>

<foaf:Person>
<foaf:Firstname>Jay</foaf:Firstname>
<foaf:Surname>Bernstein</foaf:Surname>
<foaf-academic:Supervisee>Nick Land</foaf-academic:Supervisee>
<foaf-academic:Supervisee>Jonathan Vickery</foaf-academic:Supervisee>
<foaf-academic:current>Essex University</foaf-academic:current>
</foaf:Person>

<foaf:Person>
<foaf:Firstname>Nick</foaf:Firstname>
<foaf:Surname>Land</foaf:Surname>
<foaf-academic:Tutee>Robert O'Toole</foaf-academic:Tutee>
<foaf-academic:Supervisor>Jay Bernstein</foaf-academic:Supervisor>
<foaf-academic:graduated-from>Essex University</foaf-academic:graduated-from>
</foaf:Person>

So you can see that both my peronal tutor and Jonathan had Jay Bernstein as their PhD supervisor. Jonathan had never met Nick, but had heard the usual legendary stories. The question is, would all academics who have a link to the 'dark one' (as he is often known) want to have this link publicly represented on the web? If so, perhaps they could make use of some of the more descriptive attributes of the relationship schema, such as 'enemy-of'.

I think academic foaf is a good idea, especially once profiles contain more descriptive information about projects and research interests. But like all these things, there are interesting cultural and psychological issues to explore.