Family Fathomings: Father and Son Squidology

My eldest son has a school project to build a marine animal for the classroom. He loves giant squids, and who wouldn't, with their galleon crushing tentacles and pirate eating beaks and slightly unhinged looking globular eyes. So off we set to turn a Nutri Grain box, plastic bags and several newspapers into Squidicus Giganticus.

There is something serene about sharing a project with your child. Their wonderment and fascination of the world given solid reality through tape, glue and paint is a real joy.

It's natural creativity at its best. Well he did a marvelous job cheered on by mum and dad and this is the result. Any more real and I would carve it up for calamari.

Social Scrutinies: Ken Robinson on CNN

Ken Robinson has appeared on CNN this week to discuss "Why teaching is 'not like making motorcars'" and continuing his crusade to get the world to wake up to the coming revolution. As he says it is not a matter of improving our education system but radically transforming it.

Ken Robinson on CNN

"The problem" as he so eloquently states "is that educating young people is not like making motorcars -- at all... And one key difference is that motorcars have no interest in how they're made, and young people do."

I feel mesmerised listening to Ken. His advocacy of personal passion and incorporating that into an institutionalised process like the education system is refreshing. Is it actually possible? He certainly makes it sound so and the possibility he creates touches, moves and inspires.

He sums things up beautifully - "A lot of people, in my experience, or perhaps a majority live their lives doing things that they're not really much concerned with or interested in. You know, they just get along with it and they do it because they've wandered into it and they wait for the weekend."

People are prevented from following their talents and passions by a forced inclusion and indoctrination of a system built for production. A factory process designed to turn out effective workers. With Australia adopting a new National Curriculum fresh, or perhaps just strengthened, standardisation and mass production paradigms are taking hold, not necessarily by evil design but by ill-conceived and ill-planned bureaucratic necessity.

Ken equates the education of our children to growing plants. You don't make one by gluing roots to stems and tacking on flowers. You nurture the seed and create the right environment for strong and successful growth. It is an organic process not a machine process. Currently education is broken as it is "absolutely dominated by habits of mind" and needs some rethinking.

Bravo Ken! Bravo!

Reality Ruminations: A Friend Indeed

In a world determined to reduce friendships to digital soundbyte interactions I often stop and wonder what a real friend is. We all (well I shouldn't assume that but I would think most of us did) had 'best friends' in school who we were inseparable with through all kinds of adventures and explorations (I'm seeing Stand By Me playing in my head but it never got that far out...well we did get chased by a large dribbling Alsation once after cutting across someone's backyard on the way to school) but do we maintain that depth of affection into adulthood...?

The dictionary defines 'friend' as

1. a person attached to another by feelings of affection or personal regard.
2. a person who gives assistance; patron; supporter.
3. a person who is on good terms with another; a person who is not hostile.
4. a member of the same nation, party, etc.

I'm sure we can do better than that though - A true friend is someone with whom you can be fully self expressed. How does that sound? The liberty to be completely and unabashedly yourself with someone else (or elses) is a real pleasure. Unconditional love mixed with a commitment to you being the best you you can be. I would exclude 'friendships' built around being feverish, selfish little clods of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy as Shaw would call it. That's just one sod propping up another. The sublime pleasure of slipping into comfortable youness with someone you trust completely can never be undervalued. The opportunity for robust debate where you can engage in vigorous discussions without trampling on the opinions of others or having your own trampled upon is a must too!

Friends come and go. It's a simple fact. Sometimes that parting is painful, sometimes a relief. As the seasons of life come and go aligned entities enter and exit our lives. The can touch us deeply or touch us briefly and then move on as their own journey winds blow them somewhere else. Some are more teachers, some are more students. In the words of Anain Nin “Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.”.

Can you get this online...? I doubt it. This can only be gotten in face to face interactions, time spent together and laughs shared. Anything else if just a synthetic parody.

Medieval Musings: State of the Art

Now I know that if I am going to discuss my take on some medieval art I need to be overt that I understand that Medieval art covers thousands of years and dozens of periods and styles. When I refer to medieval art for the purposes of my blog (and remember this is not an art blog!... once more...this is not an art blog!) I am referring to the very human looking examples to the right. What I have always been fascinated with in these illustrations is the strange sense of depth you still get in an otherwise cartoony or iconic style of representing things in a rather flat looking piece of work.

They have a quasi religious bend to most of them as well which appeals in a mixed innocent (we are beloved of God) and desperate (oh please come and save us from this terrible poverty and barbarian invasions) kind of way. And the costumes and armour and general attire on them are just great too.

I think the ones I like are "Byzantine" but don't quote me on that. I enjoy their simpleness yet somewhat clandestine iconography (remember that the church well and truly ruled the roost back then so it was ixnay on the questioning of the ristchay).

Technology Tidings: Google Wave

Google's latest offering promises "a personal communication and collaboration tool" and was announced by them at the Google I/O conference on May 27, 2009. Being a Google tool it is a fully web-based computing platform, and communications protocol designed to merge e-mail, instant messaging, wikis, and social networking. It is designed as a collaborative, real time interactive tool that not only allows conversations but full document collaboration.

We are currently testing the product but all initial impressions are positive!

The "wave" component is a new term for what Google calls "equal parts conversation and document". Conversation are stored as threads in a forum style layout but display real time updates and conversations in a fully searchable format. If you imagine all the verbal conversations you have had in the past they all (to a lesser or greater extent) entailed the conversation itself, things that were referred to (external resources), documents discussed (text, maps, images etc), people discussed who may also have joined and left the conversation as it occurred, decisions made and action steps agreed upon. In Google Wave all of these assets (for want of a better word) are collated under a titled "Wave". Some of these assets would also have been utilized or referred to in other conversations and Google Wave lets you cross correlate those items as well.

Google Wave is written in Java and utilises OpenJDK. Its web interface uses the Google Web Toolkit. Google intends to release the source code as a public open source resource allowing other developers to create their own Wave services as well. There are also Third Parties working on commercial plugins as well.

I will post more as I continue my journey down the Google Wave rabbit hole!

Movie Mumblings: The Godfather Trilogy

I finally found the time to sit down and enjoy the Coppola restoration versions of the Godfather series. The new set (which I actually purchased at the end of last year) is a meticulous restoration by Paramount Pictures, overseen by Coppola himself. In September last year they released the fully restored first two films along with the newly remastered version of The Godfather Part III as a full collection called "The Coppola Restoration Collection".

The Godfather and The Godfather Part II underwent extensive frame-by-frame examination and restoration utilizing state-of-the-art digital technology which took more than a year to complete. The result is an enhanced feast of these academy award endowed favourites.

The films track the evolution of the Corleone crime family.

In "The Godfather" we follow Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando) as his power wanes, and his youngest son Michael (Al Pacino) as he rises to become the family head.

In "The Godfather Part II" we follow Michael's further challenges as the Don as well as flashbacks of Vito's (Robert De Niro) early childhood migration to America and rise to power in the 1920s.

In "The Godfather Part III" we follow Michael's attempt to legitimize his family's business interests against a changing world of young hungry gangsters.

What makes these films such a pleasure for me is their lack of reliance on violence and over the top special effects and high action (which have their place in other favourites of course :D). Instead the films focus on the characters, their strengths and weaknesses, their victories and failures and their interactions as both a family and bunch of mobsters making offers "you can't refuse!".

Set aside some serious time though to watch them all together as combined they are 8 hours 47 mins of sublime viewing.

Brain Banterings: Dark Chocolate

Sometimes, just sometimes a snippet of knowledge presents itself which refutes my "all the good things in life seem to be bad for you" presuppositions and today, with a fanfare of trumpets in the background, the health benefits of Dark Chocolate (a very old time guilty favourite) made themselves known and God himself gave me a conspiratorial wink.

"Dark chocolate boosts your brain while protecting you from heart disease and cancer" they tell me in my new favourite book "Training your Brain" in the "Teach Yourself" series from Hodder. "Eating approximately 20-150g a day of dark chocolate can improve your learning and your memory...improve blood flow and therefore oxygen to your brain...relax your blood vessels reducing blood pressure, brain damage and risk of heart disease."

Researching this further I found that the health benefits are vast and somewhat of a well kept secret (It was even used in the Spanish courts as a medication and brain stimulant and was so highly prized that its presence and use was considered a state secret, the revelation of which was punishable by death! - I know how they feel though as I have murderous thoughts when I find my stash depleted too!) I will paraphrase the "Teach Yourself" data here as it is a well collated.

"Professor Ian McDonald found the increased blood flows in the cerebral cortex persisted for up to three hours after eating dark chocolate. Dr Helen Berg of Harvard found that rates of heart disease were lower by 1,280 percent in parts of the world (for example, Panama), where drinking dark chocolate was part of the everyday diet." Now that's science I can believe in!

The Magic of Dark Chocolate

1. Dark chocolate contains anandamide (known as the BLISS chemical" because it makes you feel good (and is similar to THC you get in Cannabis except that it doesn't act on the whole brain and make you lose your mind [though surely there are some health benefits in that too?])).
2. Dark chocolate contains monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAOIs) which allows the anandamide (as well as general dopamine (feel good chemical that cocaine tries to replace)) to circulate more freely in the brain. These are already high in children but less so in older adults resulting in decreased physical activity, mental spontaneity and general levels of joy. A shot of dark chocolate then can bring back your youthful exuberance! A good antidote to negative thinking and depression too.
3. Dark chocolate also produces endorphins that induce that loving feeling that can lead to sex. (Do I really need to go on)
4. Dark Chocolate contains magnesium which decreases coagulation of your blood and helps your heart deliver oxygen to your vital organs.
5. Dark Chocolate is rich in antioxidants (flavonols). It is twice as rich in them as red wine, three times richer than green tea and five times richer than the well favoured blueberries. This means less DNA damage and susceptibility to tumours and cancers as well as less sticky platelets which decreases the risk of strokes.
6. Dark Chocolate contains theobromine which is a brain stimulant similar to caffeine, but unlike caffeine (which brings a downer after it has worn off) theobromine is gentler and more sustained, lasts four times longer and is kinder to your heart.
7. Dark Chocolate contains phenylethylamine (PEA) which activates the neurotransmitters in your brain that control mental attention, concentration and alertness. This gives the same effect as enjoying a great movie, sports events or social gathering and results in that "time just flew" experience of euphoric engagement.

Well there it is. A great day in knowledge gathering which I am now celebrating with a great big mug of dark chocolate. As they say in the book - "Sometimes life is less complicated if you just eat the chocolate"...nuff said.