The Blogging Bridge and Tunnel Authority

Since I started the online version of Internet Research I've been assigning blog creation as the final class project. It's meant to demonstrate back to as large a world as possible these three learnings:

1) The query formation techniques we develop while talking to search engines in the mechanical ways that search engines understand

2) The ability to integrate supporting design elements that reinforce a core topic or innate passion that will not extinguish after the grading period

3) That aspirational voice which withstood every doubting impulse that the student was too overextended, broke, or scared of technology to toss their hat in the reinvention ring.

As you can probably guess I'm partial to demo #3 when it comes to favorite blogs. It's always flattering when a student is able to create a parallel blogging universe that includes a custom search engine, RSS feeds tailored to topic, tag clouds, and blog rolls. I get a little emotional when I see a post explaining the finer points of using a tilde to expand a nested set of word algebraics. But I really choke up when I hear a professional transitioning from the boundaries that trapped them into a bad career move or an unpromotable position -- aren't they all these days?

The best blogs are where the student can clarify those aspects of their experience that they want to plant as a foundation for bridging what they do well into what they strive to be recognized for. That's the bridge they're building and watching them cross over is a beautiful view to be riding. The tunnelling chute refers to the immersive delight of mucking about in sandboxes of our own design. That quality of focus cannot happen in a more self-conscious social medium: you can tell a Face book page by its cover.

Blogs instead are a staging area for the thought that lies behind our work. Sure there's always wiggle room for the surface details and the name-dropping. But the underlying factors that motivate our best efforts will find a nurturing harbor in the introspective virtues of blogging.

Here then are links to the newest cadre of bloggers for your horizon-gazing and tunnel-drilling pleasure:

Teen Case Manager (Robyn Allen)
PI Student (Barbara Pulse)
Professional Investigation (Luis Carrasco)
TFX Consulting (Deirdre Lin)
Getaway Car (Joel Armstrong)
Law and Psychology (Jiyoung Koh -- pictured above)
Little Voices (Sharon Floyd)
One for the Dads (Tracy Jenkins)
PABIGGE (Chris Mordi)

The Blogging Bridge and Tunnel Authority

Since I started the online version of Internet Research I've been assigning blog creation as the final class project. It's meant to demonstrate back to as large a world as possible these three learnings:

1) The query formation techniques we develop while talking to search engines in the mechanical ways that search engines understand

2) The ability to integrate supporting design elements that reinforce a core topic or innate passion that will not extinguish after the grading period

3) That aspirational voice which withstood every doubting impulse that the student was too overextended, broke, or scared of technology to toss their hat in the reinvention ring.

As you can probably guess I'm partial to demo #3 when it comes to favorite blogs. It's always flattering when a student is able to create a parallel blogging universe that includes a custom search engine, RSS feeds tailored to topic, tag clouds, and blog rolls. I get a little emotional when I see a post explaining the finer points of using a tilde to expand a nested set of word algebraics. But I really choke up when I hear a professional transitioning from the boundaries that trapped them into a bad career move or an unpromotable position -- aren't they all these days?

The best blogs are where the student can clarify those aspects of their experience that they want to plant as a foundation for bridging what they do well into what they strive to be recognized for. That's the bridge they're building and watching them cross over is a beautiful view to be riding. The tunnelling chute refers to the immersive delight of mucking about in sandboxes of our own design. That quality of focus cannot happen in a more self-conscious social medium: you can tell a Face book page by its cover.

Blogs instead are a staging area for the thought that lies behind our work. Sure there's always wiggle room for the surface details and the name-dropping. But the underlying factors that motivate our best efforts will find a nurturing harbor in the introspective virtues of blogging.

Here then are links to the newest cadre of bloggers for your horizon-gazing and tunnel-drilling pleasure:

Teen Case Manager (Robyn Allen)
PI Student (Barbara Pulse)
Professional Investigation (Luis Carrasco)
TFX Consulting (Deirdre Lin)
Getaway Car (Joel Armstrong)
Law and Psychology (Jiyoung Koh -- pictured above)
Little Voices (Sharon Floyd)
One for the Dads (Tracy Jenkins)
PABIGGE (Chris Mordi)

Birthstones and Data Tablets

On my birthday this year, my friend of 38 years Terrence Patrick "Canuck" Canade presented me with the gift of "data." This was not a euphemism for friendly advice, stock tips, or score-settling evidence to break a friendship-straining stalemate. This was the keepsake of categorical rankings. From baseball stats to band composites, categorical listings are not offhand references. They are artifacts of record. They are tablets and they are stone. True, you can sort, filter, and classify this living testiment but gifts of data come wrapped in spreadsheets. They are definitive and fluid.

Our collective musical adventures are unhinged from boundaries of current time and storage space. We need not ever prune or liquidate our musical downloads the way we did our beloved 'bums and less-esteemed CDs. So when Canuck archived our shared compilations of the bygone 00s I looked back over the decade the same way I used to reminisce over every Met game I attended while still in single digits. I listed out the final score, the winning or losing pitcher (depending on whether my team won), and even the attendance totals. Any of these records proved as evocative as any scorecard or newspaper clip.

In truth the most meaningful data to leave Shea was the visiting dugout phone number that Canuck and co-conspiring Bal pilfered after staking out the cleanup crew after an uneventful weeknight game in 1978. Their postgame squatting led to the ultimate intervention of Canuck's Presidential impersonation when press secretary James "Bal" Taylor placed a congratulatory West Wing call to that same dugout number. It was to Pete Rose the night he singled off Craig Swan to break the NL hitting streak record. Rose took the call but later told the media he knew it was a prank because he campaigned in the prior electoral cycle for Gerald Ford. And I thought it was because Canuck sounded more like Dan Ackroyd doing Jimmy Carter. No worksheet holds a candle to that. Curiously it's President Carter who has spoken out for Rose's reinstatement for hall-of-fame eligibility.

Canuck's email inscription that accompanied my data gift reads:

"Sol, thank you for sharing this wealth of tunes with us over the years. On this day when we reflect on aging, we salute you for keeping us musically young."

Today on Canuck's 48th birthday I echo the reverberation. Music springs eternal. It is not an ardent hope but a universal truth that music transcends all gifts. This understanding unhinges us from the finite and the sums of all our parts.

Birthstones and Data Tablets

On my birthday this year, my friend of 38 years Terrence Patrick "Canuck" Canade presented me with the gift of "data." This was not a euphemism for friendly advice, stock tips, or score-settling evidence to break a friendship-straining stalemate. This was the keepsake of categorical rankings. From baseball stats to band composites, categorical listings are not offhand references. They are artifacts of record. They are tablets and they are stone. True, you can sort, filter, and classify this living testiment but gifts of data come wrapped in spreadsheets. They are definitive and fluid.

Our collective musical adventures are unhinged from boundaries of current time and storage space. We need not ever prune or liquidate our musical downloads the way we did our beloved 'bums and less-esteemed CDs. So when Canuck archived our shared compilations of the bygone 00s I looked back over the decade the same way I used to reminisce over every Met game I attended while still in single digits. I listed out the final score, the winning or losing pitcher (depending on whether my team won), and even the attendance totals. Any of these records proved as evocative as any scorecard or newspaper clip.

In truth the most meaningful data to leave Shea was the visiting dugout phone number that Canuck and co-conspiring Bal pilfered after staking out the cleanup crew after an uneventful weeknight game in 1978. Their postgame squatting led to the ultimate intervention of Canuck's Presidential impersonation when press secretary James "Bal" Taylor placed a congratulatory West Wing call to that same dugout number. It was to Pete Rose the night he singled off Craig Swan to break the NL hitting streak record. Rose took the call but later told the media he knew it was a prank because he campaigned in the prior electoral cycle for Gerald Ford. And I thought it was because Canuck sounded more like Dan Ackroyd doing Jimmy Carter. No worksheet holds a candle to that. Curiously it's President Carter who has spoken out for Rose's reinstatement for hall-of-fame eligibility.

Canuck's email inscription that accompanied my data gift reads:

"Sol, thank you for sharing this wealth of tunes with us over the years. On this day when we reflect on aging, we salute you for keeping us musically young."

Today on Canuck's 48th birthday I echo the reverberation. Music springs eternal. It is not an ardent hope but a universal truth that music transcends all gifts. This understanding unhinges us from the finite and the sums of all our parts.

Self Help Wanted

For each withdrawal we make in our belief in institutions there is an equal deposit made in our own individual faith. This used to be called the self-help industry but it's really become the self-help economy.

This is something of an extended family business. My uncle Stephen planted pre-wikipedic primers, field guides to buying homes, life scripts for difficult conversations, and road maps in the fertile beds of personal finance. My cousin extended the license to food and agriculture. He is a rally cry and cultural beacon who many eaters consider before they fill their grocery carts. Back to Cousin Michael later in this post.

Self-help is the battering ram between real estate and eating well. As my cousin described this in a discussion a few years back people get really worked up about food because it represents the last stand they can take on local control of a global resource.

Flash forward to page one of the self-helper instruction guide: golden rule for guru-teacher-authors -- convince all disciples that their shortcomings are common foibles and that their strengths are not just extraordinary but unique to the worlds they wish to dwell in or even build from scratch. The chapter concludes with the coaching lesson factory of dreams made real by our American-bred Wizard of Oz.

This is the assumption that the student/apprentice holds the keys to all the cards -- not their life coaches or foremans inside dream factories. The break they're going to catch is the one they give themselves. Self-helpers make their own beds, their own luck, and their own way through this clubby, rigged minefield of petty checks and gaping imbalances. That's my experience anyway with my virtual students in particular. They are trying to reorder their priorities and remake their worlds by pursuing online programs that augment their careers and hiring credentials.

However, it's one thing to put this on our credit cards. It's quite another to experience immersion in a foreign subject in virtual isolation. Every outside distraction and prior commitment that outlives the program compounds the doubts of falling behind the pace that the other students are keeping up with. Virtual struggling is in many ways a lot more challenging than classroom struggling. That's what I was responding to on an email to a follow-up pep talk / phone call:

It's hard working in virtual silence with no visible support. That part is for real. The part about not keeping up and imagining that everyone else is moving flawlessly along? That's not reality at all!

Freeing online students from their isolation chambers is only half the battle. Then they have to reconnect with the passion that motivated them to accept the self-help challenge of online education. It can be liberating and scary to make good on that Wizard of Oz assumption. Being the captain of one's own ship infers that we know where we're sailing to. This is clearly not the case for most of us. But those willing to ask the question are owed something by their gurus: the trade-offs between realizing their dreams and some sacrifices they'll meet along the way.

Without the benefits to risks discussion we're back to the same inflated pap that serves as public debate in today's cable news calendar. More services -- great taste! Fewer taxes -- less filling!! That brings me back to Michael. In my limited estimation he was ambushed last week on NPR for this very reason.

All Things Considered turned into the Daily Show for one fleeting sequence when he was lampooned as the Pope of high cuisine as ATC staffers confessed some sardonic food sins. Chef Boyardee was the bait as Michael decried the moral and dietary perils of the modern slaughterhouse in the Upton Sinclair tradition.But if it was as simple as exposing the sinister backstories of Archer Daniels, Cargill, etal. we'd be out of the feed yard woods.

But convict the Meat Industry for its hate crimes against cows, pigs, and chickens and our McMansion pantries are still clamoring for cans of non-perishable pasta-sized sirloin implants. That's the caloric reality. The I-have-a-food-dream speech is rather spartan and bland:

Eat.
Not too much.
Mostly plants.

Michael's advice has not fallen on deaf pallets. But this edict is about as appetizing as washing down to weight loss pills with a meal-replacement shake topped off with a sprinkling of wheat germ in a psyllium powder reduction. You can't waffle toast a muffin breakfast sandwich big enough to accommodate the stretch it takes in a public pursuit of pleasure and joy within this formula.

That's why April Fools came early to All Things Considered. That's why good dreams don't come cheap and the best way to avoid sticker shock is to start out price conscious. That's a lesson for online learners and gurus of all methods and teachings.

Self Help Wanted

For each withdrawal we make in our belief in institutions there is an equal deposit made in our own individual faith. This used to be called the self-help industry but it's really become the self-help economy.

This is something of an extended family business. My uncle Stephen planted pre-wikipedic primers, field guides to buying homes, life scripts for difficult conversations, and road maps in the fertile beds of personal finance. My cousin extended the license to food and agriculture. He is a rally cry and cultural beacon who many eaters consider before they fill their grocery carts. Back to Cousin Michael later in this post.

Self-help is the battering ram between real estate and eating well. As my cousin described this in a discussion a few years back people get really worked up about food because it represents the last stand they can take on local control of a global resource.

Flash forward to page one of the self-helper instruction guide: golden rule for guru-teacher-authors -- convince all disciples that their shortcomings are common foibles and that their strengths are not just extraordinary but unique to the worlds they wish to dwell in or even build from scratch. The chapter concludes with the coaching lesson factory of dreams made real by our American-bred Wizard of Oz.

This is the assumption that the student/apprentice holds the keys to all the cards -- not their life coaches or foremans inside dream factories. The break they're going to catch is the one they give themselves. Self-helpers make their own beds, their own luck, and their own way through this clubby, rigged minefield of petty checks and gaping imbalances. That's my experience anyway with my virtual students in particular. They are trying to reorder their priorities and remake their worlds by pursuing online programs that augment their careers and hiring credentials.

However, it's one thing to put this on our credit cards. It's quite another to experience immersion in a foreign subject in virtual isolation. Every outside distraction and prior commitment that outlives the program compounds the doubts of falling behind the pace that the other students are keeping up with. Virtual struggling is in many ways a lot more challenging than classroom struggling. That's what I was responding to on an email to a follow-up pep talk / phone call:

It's hard working in virtual silence with no visible support. That part is for real. The part about not keeping up and imagining that everyone else is moving flawlessly along? That's not reality at all!

Freeing online students from their isolation chambers is only half the battle. Then they have to reconnect with the passion that motivated them to accept the self-help challenge of online education. It can be liberating and scary to make good on that Wizard of Oz assumption. Being the captain of one's own ship infers that we know where we're sailing to. This is clearly not the case for most of us. But those willing to ask the question are owed something by their gurus: the trade-offs between realizing their dreams and some sacrifices they'll meet along the way.

Without the benefits to risks discussion we're back to the same inflated pap that serves as public debate in today's cable news calendar. More services -- great taste! Fewer taxes -- less filling!! That brings me back to Michael. In my limited estimation he was ambushed last week on NPR for this very reason.

All Things Considered turned into the Daily Show for one fleeting sequence when he was lampooned as the Pope of high cuisine as ATC staffers confessed some sardonic food sins. Chef Boyardee was the bait as Michael decried the moral and dietary perils of the modern slaughterhouse in the Upton Sinclair tradition.But if it was as simple as exposing the sinister backstories of Archer Daniels, Cargill, etal. we'd be out of the feed yard woods.

But convict the Meat Industry for its hate crimes against cows, pigs, and chickens and our McMansion pantries are still clamoring for cans of non-perishable pasta-sized sirloin implants. That's the caloric reality. The I-have-a-food-dream speech is rather spartan and bland:

Eat.
Not too much.
Mostly plants.

Michael's advice has not fallen on deaf pallets. But this edict is about as appetizing as washing down to weight loss pills with a meal-replacement shake topped off with a sprinkling of wheat germ in a psyllium powder reduction. You can't waffle toast a muffin breakfast sandwich big enough to accommodate the stretch it takes in a public pursuit of pleasure and joy within this formula.

That's why April Fools came early to All Things Considered. That's why good dreams don't come cheap and the best way to avoid sticker shock is to start out price conscious. That's a lesson for online learners and gurus of all methods and teachings.