TheorySpeak

You know, I love academia as much as the next person, but sometimes it takes itself a little too seriously. Sometimes, it is straight talking out of its ass, as in the case below. What we have here is a conference invitation that a friend of mine recently received via email. I laughed when I first read it because it was so over-the-top in its theoryspeak. Just for fun, I have taken the email and paraphrased it in plain English for the edification of all.

TheorySpeak: "Interdisciplinarity draws its strength from the ontological view that reality may be explained from various different angles that permit interpretation of phenomena in a more complete way without becoming mere eclecticism. From an epistemological point of view, interdisciplinarity attempts to unify the field of action of the disciplines that study social facts and phenomena. It has no intention of achieving a priori integration of the paradigms of knowledge. Rather, its efforts are aimed at the enrichment and rational exchanging of the methods of various disciplines, to some extent independently of the categories specific to each science, in order to improve study of reality."

Translation: “There’s more than one way of looking at the world. These points of view may or may not complement each other, but since there’s no way to really prove anything, all we can do is get together and talk about the different ways we academics maintain our job security through the creation of elaborate and contrived jargons. Maybe our jargons will overlap somewhat, thereby giving us more than a snowball’s chance in hell of actually figuring something out about the world.

TheorySpeak: Transdisciplinarity, for its part, simultaneously covers what lies between disciplines, cuts across various disciplines or goes beyond any discipline. Its aim is to understand the present world, one essential feature of which is the unity of knowledge. Transdisciplinary research is in no way antagonistic to multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary research, but rather is complementary to it.

Translation: “However, what about the areas that fall outside our jargons? These are the areas we must seek to annex in order to further justify our self-importance. Under no circumstances must the layperson suspect that we really don’t know what the heck we’re saying. We must find ways to bring everything under our philosophical jurisdiction, so that no outsider feels remotely qualified to comment on anything – ever.”

TheorySpeak: As Basarab Nicolescu has pointed out, disciplinarity, multidisciplinarity, interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity are four arrows for one and the same bow: the bow of knowledge.

Translation: “As Basarab Nicolescu has pointed out, there are lots of different ways of learning things about stuff.”

TheorySpeak: Our objective is to make the Eighth Isko Spain Congress a meeting devoted to reflection and applications in the area of transdisciplinary organization of knowledge.

Translation: “Let’s get together in Spain, drink a lot, and toast ourselves into a wine-induced stupor!”

More Sketchup, Please!

So, the time has come for us to renovate our house. Actually, that's not quite true: that time actually came about 5 years ago, but we're only just getting around to it. What can I say - we've been busy. We're pretty excited about our plans, though, which include new flooring upstairs and down, new furniture, and, most significantly, substantial changes to the layout of the main floor and bathroom. Our little townhouse is only 975 square feet over two floors, so when you chop that up into several rooms, it tends to cut down on the usable space. So we're taking walls out. Three walls, to be precise. And one closet. We've been mulling over several potential plans for a couple of years now, and I think we've finally come up with a design that will require minimal demolition work while maximizing the available space on the main floor. We're hoping to go with the clean, modern look of a trendy Manhattan apartment: wood floors; concrete countertops; and colours that are bold yet tasteful. Now, to help us picture the final product, I have called upon a superfly little application called Google Sketchup. I first used Sketchup at work to create a virtual walkthrough of the ongoing renovations at the Lethbridge Public Library. The program is incredibly simple yet quite powerful. And it's free. Anyway, I applied my mad Sketchup skillz to our first floor, and this is what I came up with. It's pretty much to scale. Feedback/suggestions/constructive criticism welcome.

U of L Site Selection Redux

Funny how things work sometimes. My loyal readers will recall that one of my early posts discussed the location of the University of Lethbridge, and how cool it would have been had they located the University downtown instead of across the river. I now have something to append to that post: check it out:

The other day I was sitting in the local history room at the public library, working on a kaput PC. As I was waiting for the PC to do whatever it was doing, I let my eyes wander over the book stacks immediately to my left. Suddenly a title caught my eye: Site Selection Study for the University of Lethbridge, published in 1967. Gold Mine!

As it turns out, they actually did consider building the U of L downtown, but it seems to me they went about it all wrong. I will tell you what they were proposing, and you can follow along on Exhibit A: the Little Map Above, which is a poor-quality cell phone photo, for which I do apologize. Let's just say that the source material wasn't too hot to begin with. Anyway, the plan included the following

• A 10-story student residence occupying an entire city block between 5th and 6th Street and 5th and 6th Avenue, along with 3-story academic building on 3 city blocks, running from the current site of the Public Library, west to 6th Street.
• Or...One large 10-story building annexing four city blocks smack dab in the middle of downtown, between 3rd and 5th Avenue and 5th and 7th street.
  

Now, here's the clincher: both proposals call for a massive two-story parking garage covering 6 full city blocks (see dark outline in photo). How's that for thinking ahead? Even in 1967 they were planning for 50 acres of parking. So, either proposal would require the wholesale destruction of historical buildings, and the leveling of huge areas of downtown to make room for a titanic parking garage and either one or two gigantic buildings.

Anyway, that's all I have to say about that. The document pretty much speaks for itself, and I daresay it has spoken out of turn, and must don the Document Dunce Cap. The planners did look at placing the U downtown, but to my mind they didn't do much "out of the box" thinking. Even if they had placed the University on the site currently occupied by the Lethbridge Lodge and adjacent businesses, downtown would likely have become a vital and attractive part of town. Sigh.

Stand Sure

I've been thinking for some time of getting a tatoo, but I've never found anything that felt right. At one point I decided that I wanted to get one of those little plastic spinner things that goes in the middle of a 45 rpm record...you know the things. But then like 3 different snowboard companies and 2 record labels and maybe even a cat food manufacturer adopted that symbol as their logo, so that kind of ruined it for me. Anyway, when my Grandmother passed away last year, I received some of her old jewelry, among which I found a silver pendant in the shape of the Anderson Clan crest. Most Scottish clans have a crest of similar design - usually a wide belt around the outside, with a representative image in the centre and some kind of saying around the perimeter. The Anderson crest features an oak tree and the motto, "Stand Sure." Some of the crests are slightly oblique, if you ask me. For example, the McNabb crest features a black cat and the saying "Touch Not the Cat." Okay...won't touch the cat, you McNabbs. Anyway, the moment I saw the pendant, I knew I had found my tat. I booked an appointment the next day.

I'm not sure how to explain it, but getting this tatoo has been one of the best things I've ever done for myself. Not only was it an opportunity to confront my wariness (okay, fear) of pain, but it was an extremely visceral (not quite the right word, but you know what I mean) expression of my new way of doing life. Not least, it is a tribute to my grandmother and the life she led and the commendations that she'd received in her life for bravery during the war and during a particularly harrowing trans-Altantic boat voyage.

Speaking of harrowing, the above photo was taken at the summit of Crowsnest Mountain in September 2006. You can't tell from the photo, but I had just survived the near-death experience alluded to in earlier posts. In a nutshell, what happened was: I was crossing a small bowl in the upper reaches of the climb, when I heard my Dad call out from behind, "Rocks!" I looked up to see a shower of rocks tumbling down directly on top of me - some as large as a lunch box. There was no way I could escape, so I just covered my head (I had taken my helmet off under the assumption that we had passed the rockfall danger) and waited for something to hit me...but the expected hit never came! I could hear the rocks crashing all around me, but nothing touched me. I consider this no small miracle. Anyway, when I realized that the rockfall was done, I just got myself the hell out of there. Finally out of harm's way, I simply froze up, unable to go forward or backward. Bev, the most experienced of our party, gently but firmly reminded me that there was tricky climbing both ahead and behind, so I might as well get going. I knew she was right, so after a little while I was able to slowly start moving forward. Crowsnest is not a particularly difficult mountain to climb, but my arrival at the summit on that day was a personal victory on no small scale, and a re-affirmation of an inner strength that I had ignored for some time. It was my first real chance to stand sure.

4X4ing is fun

So...this fall I experienced a redneck rite of passage...a weekend of 4X4ing in the foothills of the Canadian Rockies. It was fricking great. As some of my dear readers know, I own a Toyota Land Cruiser Prado that I imported from Japan last fall. Up until this, my first weekend of off-roading, it was what is commonly referred to as a "Pavement Princess." Well, no more...we've got the dents, bends, and scratches that prove we experienced our first wilderness hazing and lived to tell the tale.

Here's a quick rundown of the weekend: Friday night, left straight from work, drove to the "Chewed Bridge Ranch" up west of Sundre, Alberta. Arrived in the dark, settled in for a good night's sleep in the back of the truck. Next morning, up at dawn. Plenty of activity about. Pancakes are served, preparations made. Wayne Smith, the trail boss for the day, looks over my semi-bald street tires and deems them useless. I spend a few minutes swapping on an even balder set of 31" tires, which may seem senseless, except that these tires were equipped with chains on the rear. Sweet.

The morning run is decided upon - a 1 hour jaunt along a short loop - maybe 12 km total. Around camp, engines fire up and a string of 14 Land Cruisers of all descriptions heads to the trailhead. Somehow, I find myself second in line. No probs, it's supposed to be an easy day. Hmmm...well, without going into too much detail, the 1 hour run turned into closer to 6 hours, with a whole bunch of stucks and mechanical problems along the way. It was a blast. I had no idea that my little 'Cruiser would be so capable off road. We crossed streams; we descended hills that I would never have dreamed possible; we ascended hills that were tricky to walk up...we pulled each other out of mud puddles; we crossed bridges designed for quads...we had a lot of fun. Here are some pics...

Above: the first stuck cruiser of the day. They winched themselves out. Thanks to the chains on my rear tires, I was able to power through this mud-filled ditch.

Here's a fellow named Roy crossing a quad bridge in his BJ60. His tires are hanging about 4" over either side of the bridge. This is where you want a trustworthy spotter to guide you across, because you can't watch both sides at once!

Wayne drives a 1990 PZJ70 (5-cylinder diesel) with 36" tractor tires. He overheated his engine pulling people out of the mud and up some hills. The tow strap got a lot of use out there!

I don't want this post to get too long, so I won't get into some of the specific stories. Suffice it to that that I came away from the weekend with a bunch of new friends and a new respect for the ability of these amazing vehicles. The next run is May Long Weekend 2007...anyone care to come along?

The Great Fall

I remember from my university English lit classes that the loss of innocence is a major theme that runs through much of Western literature. We watch as protagonist after protagonist is painfully and inexorably stripped of his/her ideals, dreams, aspirations, joy, etc. Naive optimism gives way under the weight of unbearable reality. Innocent trust sours into a jaded exoskeleton of bitterness and regret. Just ask me, I know all about the loss of innocence. I've read the books. I've written the term papers.

But I never thought it would happen to me.

Don't get me wrong, I'm glad to be alive. I'm just discovering that life doesn't always turn out the way you planned...

Anyway, enough of the pity party. I haven't posted for a long time. Lots going on in every area of my life: everything from my first 4x4 expedition in the 'Cruiser to a near-death experience on Crowsnest Mountain. And lots more. I'll get it up here soon enough.

You crave to shoot like a film star…

Spam email is, along with neoconservatism, the scourge of modern society. That said, it can be worth a laugh from time to time. For example, I have recently received spam from the following senders:

• Receipting M. Rubberier
• Mousiest B. Greene
• Soapy H. Sandblaster
• Cognacs F. Incapacitates
• Assonance T. Load

Aren't those frickin' great?! I love them! They have a wonderful surrealist quality to them. The random juxtaposition of otherwise unrelated terms (always separated by an initial, of course) creates some really beautiful images. "Soapy" has got to be my favourite, but "Assonance T. Load" is glorious as well. Heck, they're all great!

The subject lines can also be fun:

• This is most modern and safe way not to cover with shame
• offshoot craftsmanship
• You crave to shoot like a film star…
• double-cross warlike

Deee-lightful! I never click on these things, but I was seriously tempted to see what "double-cross warlike" was all about...

If only...

Today I was walking around downtown Lethbridge at lunchtime, thinking about what great potential exists here, what with the wonderful historic buildings built to human scale, and the cool little shops and coffee joints that eke out a living in the city's core - especially (hooray!) a brand new record shop on 4th avenue. Anyway, lunchtime is a good time to be downtown, because there are actually people out and about, enjoying the fantastic weather. One actually begins to suspect there there might just be a pulse quietly throbbing away under the surface of this otherwise comatose prairie town. As I walk along, I think about what might have been, had the city's administration not made a few glaring errors that have seriously handicapped more recent efforts to revitalize the downtown core and hopefully bring the people back.

Now, folks are going to think that I have some kind of weird obsession with the University, since 2 of my 4 posts mention it, but no, no I don't. It's a coincidence, I swear. Anyway, I would invite you, my gentle reader, to close your eyes and picture what downtown Lethbridge might look like today if someone back in the day had said:

"Gol' darn it, why should we build a university on the west side of the river, where there ain't nothing but grasshoppers and abandoned coal mines and a one-lane wooden bridge to get to it? Instead, how 'bout if we rip up some of them railway tracks and build us a university right downtown, right opposite Galt Gardens? Hell, someone's just going to build a dumb ol' mall there someday anyway. Let's at least put something of value there while we have the chance!"

In case that ficticious quote didn't make sense to you (hell, it barely makes sense to me, and I wrote it!), what I am suggesting is that if someone had had the foresight to put the University of Lethbridge where Park Place Mall now resides, Downtown Lethbridge would be a completely different place today. I imagine dozens of coffee shops and lunch places flourishing around the perimeter of Galt Gardens. I picture groups of students hanging out in the park, playing hacky sack, doing homework, whatever. I see at least one decent nightclub where young folk can gather to dance and drink (Please! One decent nightclub isn't too much to ask, is it?!). I envision an efficient and well-used public transit system (not much parking downtown, after all - and yes, that's a good thing!). I see students choosing to live and work downtown, because it's handy to school and to everything they need. Grocery shops, a bakery; maybe a good Indian restaurant - we could have all of this and more if there was a university downtown!

Other folks would start to move downtown, too, drawn by the human energy and cultural life that radiates from the University like a beacon of hope. Young professionals would no longer aspire to a 3000 sq ft house in the 'burbs, but instead choose to be where the action is. There would be concerts and festivals and community celebrations where more than 20 people show up. Buskers ply their trade on the street corners. Flâneurs discuss Neo-marxist literary criticism on outdoor patios while sipping Tsing Tao and smoking Djarum Blacks. Persons with developmental disabilities are out and about, caring for the gardens and abundant hanging flower baskets. Crime is rare, because, well, there are people everywhere. Because people know and recognize each other, they're watching out for each other. It's called community.

Well, this post is getting rather lengthy, but I think you catch my drift. If we could take the thousands of people that head across the river each day, and plant them downtown instead, we would see a radical change in Lethbridge's urban landscape. If we had built it, they would have come. Instead, we go to Wal-Mart to see people, while after 5 o'clock, downtown is all tumbleweeds and drifters. Come on Lethbridge, let's learn from our mistakes! When the University finally does fall into the river, you know what to do!

How to rig an election

Today I read an article that astounded me. An article by Bobby Kennedy in the June 15 edition of the Rolling Stone is surely one of the most profound indictments of the Republican Party's misdeeds that has ever been published. If this article doesn't shake the foundations of American democracy, then the dear ol' U.S. of A. is in very, very deep trouble indeed.

Thankfully, Ben Metcalf knows what to do about it! (from Harpers Magazine, June 2006)

A Semiotics of the University of Lethbridge

So, lately I've been thinking about the University of Lethbridge. Not about the courses or the profs or the bad food in the cafeteria, but about the building itself. In case you don't know, this fascinating building was designed by Arthur Erickson in the late 60s, and built into the hillside of the river valley that runs through Lethbridge, Alberta. In designing the building, Erickson dispensed with anything that one might find on a traditional "campus." No sprawling greens, no cricket pitch, no courtyards or neo-gothic clock tower. Nothing remotely collegiate. Just a concrete monolith set into a hill. Inside the cavernous structure we find everything necessary for the academic life: classrooms, labs, lecture halls; a library. In the same building: residences, admin offices, a cafeteria, and so on...

Yes, the edifice is huge. It is long and narrow - a modern-day Noah's Arc sitting high and dry above the flood-prone Oldman River. In the 30 years since its construction, the original building has been outgrown, with new buildings springing up willy-nilly at the prairie level with such breathtaking lack of regard for the design of the original structure that Mr. Erickson himself is rumored to have disowned it altogether. Oh well...

But let's step back for a moment, shall we, and look deeper into the semiotics of the structure. What I find most fascinating about the U of L is what is says about academia and the world of knowledge. First, I think it no accident that Erickson put everything into one big building. Here we have the social sciences rubbing shoulders with mathematics. Psychologists sharing a hallway with geographers. Tidy management drones consorting with philosophy profs who never quite learned how to dress. It's Erickson's modern utopia - a manifestation of the Great Unified Theory, set in concrete and rebar. A prominent (if somewhat angular and unadorned) celebration of 400 years of human progress. All the Knowledge of Humankind gathered together under one roof - for the Betterment of the Species! "Indeed," the building says in all seriousness, "any distinction you may be tempted to draw between the disciplines is illusiory at best - and possibly detrimental to society." No, knowledge is a unit that cannot be broken down - not without abandoning the hope that we have placed in the human mind. Knowledge is a prime number. It cannot be divided.

And so, students entering the doors all fresh-faced and naive spend four years inside knowledge itself, only to emerge with a solid faith in Progress and Modernity. For the U of L is a thoroughly modern building. We might even call it a Temple of Modernity, so completely does it embody the modern ethos.

And that is why it is doomed. That is why it is in the process of self-destructing. And I'm not talking about the fact that it's slowly sliding into the river. I'm talking about the proliferation of buildings that have sprung up to supplement, in a most Derridian sense, the shortcomings of the original structure. You see, Erickson built his Temple on a myth. Even in the 1960s, the sands were shifting. Think of the Paris riots of 1968; the Vietnam war. "Progress" did not prove to be a firm foundation upon which to build a society, let alone a university building. In designing the U of L, Erickson forgot to account for the humanity of humans - their messy ways and irrational thoughts. Modernity was dying even as Erickson was trying to build it a tabernacle.

But fear not, Mr. Erickson, for fallible humanity is more than able to put your tomb of knowledge to good use, despite your best efforts!

About time...

...I started a blog. It's as much for me as it is for anyone else. I find lately that my thoughts are fleeting, and they often disappear before I can jot them down. I'm hoping that this blog will serve as a repository for my observations and ruminations, however inconsequential they may be. Perhaps the blog will become something greater than this, but I am content to let it evolve as it may.

I suppose it would be courteous to begin with an introduction. My name is Robin, and I'm a librarian at mid-sized public library in Canada. I'm what you call an e-librarian. I'm of the new school of librarianship. I get excited about things like social computing and ambient findability. I love how individuals and communities are creating spontaneous information spaces on the web through blogging and tagging. I know I am not alone here, and I'm hoping that like-minded others will find me.

This won't be a blog about libraries exclusively. Oh, no. As much as I dig my job, I've got lots going on in my head, and there's always some cross-over to other areas of life. My life informs my work, and vice versa. I carry my philosophies and interests with me wherever I go, like a set of spectacles that colour everything I see, and sometimes even bring things into focus! This blog is largely a space for documenting the connections and epiphanies that occur each day, with the goal of perhaps gleaning some nugget of wisdom, for my own interest, and, perhaps, that of others.

Well, this is adequate for a first post. Maybe next time I'll explain the "diesel" part.