Bud the Teacher

    I’m going to be offline for much of the week as I’m headed off to spend some time with family.  I’m planning on posting lots of convention reflections when I return, as well as some thoughts on ARG’s and their potential in schools, a podcast from my NCTE presentation, and plenty more. 
   I hope all y’all that I met in Nashville are up to good things, or enjoying a well deserved break, and that your travel home was safe.  I hope all the rest of you are keeping busy with good and important work and family and life.
    Happy Thanksgiving to all, whether or not you actually celebrate the holiday.  There’s lots to be thankful for, isn’t there?

Terry Elliot passes this along, and I will, too, as this is Thanksgiving Week in the United States, and there’s often much to be thankful for that we simply take for granted.

The Dilbert Blog: Good News Day
As regular readers of my blog know, I lost my voice about 18 months
ago. Permanently. It’s something exotic called Spasmodic Dysphonia.
~Scott Adams

So begins the incredible story of how Dilbert creator
Scott Adams used poetry to cure his disease.  OK, I am exagerrating a
bit here, but the story does resonate with some old and new ideas.
First, it supports the old idea that experts should never be on top,
but only on tap. In other words it celebrates the belief that personal
responsibility should be  at the core of any credo of any substance.
Second, it supports the newish idea of the wisdom of crowds and
folksonomies.  Instead of internalizing our own victimhood, Adams
breaks out to tell a new story.  There is a danger to this.  As Steve
Biko said, “The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the
mind of the oppressed.”

    I’ve come to depend quite heavily on my Bloglines account — it’s where I keep the people that teach me what I need to know, as well as what I need to need to know, if that makes sense.
    My aggregator is the glue that holds all of my network together.  When it works.
    Has anyone else been having trouble with Bloglines recently?  I’m logging on to find no feeds sometimes, or a messed up memory of what I have and haven’t read.  I thought perhaps that the problem was me — but it isn’t.  I’ve had the same issues on different computers and networks.
    Sometimes it works, other times it doesn’t.  Yuck.  When my aggregator isn’t working, I’m lost.
    I recognize that Bloglines is a free service, and that I’m getting way more than what I’m paying for, but I’ve come to count on the service.  I need it to work.  All of the time. 
    Help?  I’d hate to move elsewhere.  But I might have to.

    An alert reader pointed out that the calendar in the top right corner of my blog is redirecting folks to another Typepad blog. 
    Huh.
    I haven’t a clue about why this is happening, but I have put in a request to tech support to solve the problem.  For the moment, please avoid the calendar — I can’t guarantee that you’ll find me linked there.
    I originally went with Typepad, in part, because I liked how well everything works.  But over the last year, there have been problems.  It’s beginning to get frustrating. 
    Typepad, I know I’m certainly not your biggest customer, but I really like your product, when it works.  Problem is, that isn’t as often as it should be.  I’ve noticed that you never fail to collect the payment from me each month — that system never seems to be broken.
    Can you please fix the rest of your system so that I will stick with you?

UPDATE:  Magically fixed.  Why’d it break in the first place?

I’m curious to see if this idea works, in spite of the fact that I’m not sure I agree with it. 

(Actually,  I wrote this post on Sunday night, but held off on publishing until I could reflect on some of the really good questions asked in the comments to Tom’s idea.   Now that I’ve read this follow up by Tom, I’m definitely in, although there’s still much to consider when it comes to treating the web like a special episode of American Idol  .  .  . or the US Congressional elections.)

Bombs away.

Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr.