http://www.djsaab.info/blog djsaab's personal infospace Tue, 30 Sep 2008 14:24:23 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en http://www.djsaab.info/blog/2008/08/25/terraform/ Wade Davis makes the point: cultures are facets of the human experience. There is no pinnacle of culture, no culture that sits at the apex of a metaphorical pyramid. Each has something of value to share as part of the story of what it means to be ... http://www.djsaab.info/blog/2008/07/09/web-of-belief-and-ritual/ I successfully defended my dissertation research proposal yesterday. I was a bit nervous, as this is a pretty big milestone, but I've got a great committee backing me up. They asked a bunch of insightful questions and gave me some good advice on improving some things. I'll post a ... http://www.djsaab.info/blog/2008/06/13/successful-proposal-defense/ I found this navigation sphere via Information Aesthetics. I like the interface a lot, but it's not without its difficulties. It portrays a series of images in the shape of a sphere that are connected to each other with lines. Both the images and lines are clickable. ... http://www.djsaab.info/blog/2008/06/02/tedtalks-navigation-sphere/ I'm continuing to work on my research proposal for my dissertation. Heidegger's philosophical perspective is a significant part of my thesis, and I have been reading a lot of Heidegger lately. The following passage, from Lovitt's introduction to The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, really spoke to ... http://www.djsaab.info/blog/2008/05/15/a-destining-of-being/ Mycologist Paul Stamets studies the mycelium -- and lists 6 ways that this astonishing fungus can help save the world. It's an interesting presentation that offers some cool insights and innovative solutions to the climate and energy crises. There's also some interesting ideas about how ecosystems, and life ... http://www.djsaab.info/blog/2008/05/08/fungus-among-us/ I'm in the midst of writing and revising my thesis proposal. It deals with the ontology of tags--ontology in the sense of being and what is. While perusing the internet for information sources speaking to the notion of tags and folksonomies (collections of tags), I ran across something ... http://www.djsaab.info/blog/2008/04/27/granular-social-network/ One of these days I'll get to the IA Summit. There are some slides of presentations from this year's summit available on Slideshare. This is one that I wish were available for download, but unfortunately is not. But, I can post it here to make it easy ... http://www.djsaab.info/blog/2008/04/16/linkosophy-at-the-ia-summit-08/ Well, I set a date for defense of my dissertation proposal. It'll be on June 12, 2008 at 9:00AM. I've got a few more weeks to refine and finish up the proposal. I want to get it to my committee members about four weeks prior. So what's my ... http://www.djsaab.info/blog/2008/04/13/proposal-defense/ Al Gore did another TED Talk last month. He has a new slide show where he talks about the democracy crisis as a parallel to the climate crisis. He tasks us with a generational imperative. I think it's brilliant. And I only hope that my research ... http://www.djsaab.info/blog/2008/04/09/al-gores-ted-talk/