mink

Yesterday, I found the following video on more than one channel of communication I maintain, including e-mail and social media timelines. The video is a Fox News interview with Reza Aslan on his new book on Jesus. I find Fox's "critical" questioning of Aslan's work quite uncritical. I also find Aslan's defense graceful yet exactly the kind of critical that the discussion as a whole should have been. As Aslan points out, instead of targeting the 8 or so questions over 10 minutes towards the author's personal life, Fox should have targeted the questions towards the arguments put forth in the literature. In any case, I think the discussion on social media has been lazily unfair. How many people who are cajoled into ridiculing Fox news as "ignorant", "bitchy", "low", "illiterate", etc. have actually read Aslan's book and genuinly understand him? Further, how many people actually make informed judgments as Asla...

According to a rough search, the word "cultivation" yields two types of definitions. Bot relate to growth based on something. One type concerns biological cultivation - that is growth of living things - particularly of plant life. Another type concerns metaphysical cultivation - that is growth of a certain sense - particularly of human and communal life. I was prompted to conduct this rough search after a conversation with MK last night. The conversation - as always - covered many topics, but one seemed to stick for some time. That topic was about cultivation. Though we didn't use the word, we spent some time contemplating what it is that we grow up to be. Growth is inevitable, it is something we cannot prevent or whose rate we cannot decrease. So what is the reason for which we grow? Some options we discussed for answers to this question were: To make a living, to reproduce, to maintain the young or elderly, to search for new frontiers, to create from what is ar...

While real estate concerns space on land, virtual estates concern spaces in the media. "Media" here refers to broadcast media (radio, print, TV, etc.) as well as digital media (the Internet, mobile networks, satellite, etc.). Spaces in the media are not as scarce as spaces on land, particularly because more space can be created in the media than on land. Yet, because human beings have limited attention spans - much like we have limited needs for space on land - the media cannot possibly be consumed in its entirety by any one human being. Therefore, securing virtual estates could mean that you secure your content for future generations to observe. How well these estates are secured could foretell how long they will last before they are taken over. And how long they will last could foretell how many future generations could observe this content. 

Through historical accounts, we can find different forms of employment that required a special kind of education. This education did not only involve learning the theory from an institution, but also involved working with the institution in the very business it taught. Fields such as teaching, philosophy, exegisis and translation, vocational skills (building, cutting, refining, binding, etc.) were all fields in which you went to someone to learn something, and learned by doing. Today, we may regard schools as being completely absent of paid work. In some cases, we may even go so far as justifying why paid work during school is a bad idea. But I think we would be contradicting ourselves if we went into this justification. There are  forms of work that exist in schools today. Examples such as apprenticeships , interships , externships , work-study schemes and co-ops  all point to the existence of learning programs that call for practical experience. The practical experi...

In this article from The Economist , some key concerns about the business of education are raised. Given the increasing use of massive open online courses, some have begun speculating on MOOC income streams and how they could affect the business of traditional universities. Two main concerns intrigued me: 1) The possibility of advertising within education is raised, as a means to have degrees sponsored for people. One commentator says: "Ads propelled radio and TV, why not education? There is a lot of misplaced snobbery in education about advertising." At first thought, brands being infused within lectures sounds disastrous. But on second thought, can this be avoided if we want to provide free education that is not backed by Governments? Also, are there no brands in our current curriculum, such as inventors, popular designs and particular texts? 2) Several companies seem to have offered longer-term pay offs to students by betting on their learning systems now. One way i...

Around this time last year, I contemplated the value of conflicting positions , using the example of how the status of a hero is reinforced by his enemy. Can the same value be applied to conflicting opinions? Here is a scenario: I am in a crowd of 200 people. All of us work at a construction site. One day we are told that we will no longer have a lunch break. I know for a fact that one of my coworkers disagrees with this. I have mixed feelings. In this case, is it better to keep quite in order to keep my coworker quite in order to let the company run better so that the building can be completed? Or is it better for me to speak up with my coworker and express difference in hopes that the rule may somehow be dropped? The first option benefits the building contractors, the building occupants, and perhaps a few others, but it brings trouble to us construction workers (no lunch!). The second option brings trouble to the contractors, occupiers, etc. but benefits us. Who counts? ...

The most successful technologies throughout humanity have been ground in processes that actually assist people. Technologies that were introduced as new processes seldom lasted for long. It's no wonder that proceeding technologies are built on those very same processes. Today I came across this article from The Economist , which contemplates whether the telegram is dead. It concludes by saying the telegram is not dead. Rather, new mediums have risen that emulate the telegram but in cheaper and faster ways than the telegram: "The 19th-century technology of the telegram lives on, in spirit at least, in our 21st-century devices." In this respect, old technologies are worthy of attention for people who look forward to new technologies. Humans tend to go with default options, and the most default of options in everyday life are options that are ground in historical behavior and innovation.

On May 11 last year , I briefly discussed Amartya Sen 's recommendations for how media could be more useful in the promotion of justice . One of these recommendations was to use the media as a tool for public reasoning. "Reasoning" can be defined here as the act of thinking logically, rationally and/or analytically. Public reasoning, then, can be understood as logically, rationally and/or analytically thinking as a group or as the citizenry. For this to happen, two things need to be in place: There need to be people who are thinking, and there needs to be a way for them to deliberate on thoughts collectively. Everybody has thoughts, so I will assume that there are thinking people wherever you look. But not everybody has a way to deliberate their thoughts with other actors in the public sphere. Sure, they may be able to exchange thoughts with their neighbor, local storekeeper or family members. But will this really be "public" or private? In order to...

Barack is in Dar today and tomorrow. The country has seen crazy amounts of media focusing on his visit. To me, this is awkward. It's not awkward because it's overhyped. It's awkward because from what I know about leadership, security and communication today, a lot of it is engineered. Imagine you're in Barack's shoes: Your trip to Tanzania was tentatively scheduled about a year ago. You have an adviser who has at least 10 arguments why the US is politically and economically invested in the East African region. You have an agent who is advising you on the method of your travel; everything from the suit you will wear to the wheels of your car. You also have a media analyst who has been studying the country's most common and least common media topics. The set up can be further illustrated. My point is this: Barack isn't the only guy visiting Tanzania. He comes with an entourage, indeed a country. This comes with a complex set of co...