forms of being & 7100 languages

"Miracles of Human Language: An Introduction to Linguistics" - this new online course about language started this week at Coursera. I watched the first videos. So good, with an atmosphere that is both personal and global. It is astonishing to explore the complexity of language, and all the different languages that are out there, each with an own set of words.

One of the course videos is about "Why isn't there only one language?". Another is: "What defines a language". Here's the course page: https://www.coursera.org/course/humanlanguage

And a second link: Ethnologue is an online database of the languages of the world: "Ethnologue contains information on 7,102 known living languages. Begin by clicking World Languages in the page header...."

While browsing Ethnologue, I remembered the language installation I once put together. The photo above is a screenshot of it, here's the moving version: "forms of being",

And here's the original publication in qarrtsiluni's "Translation" issue: forms of being

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On another note, I think I will go and revisit links from the past more often. So much out there, or rather: so much back there.

Violence, the world, "violent" links, and a new blue "bomb" in the supermarket

Watching the news these days is difficult. So many tragedies, the Middle East and Ukraine and Ebola, and all the small dramas that happen close and far. And the brutality of it. It feels, all this shouldn’t be happening, that mankind was on a more peaceful path at the milliennium, and got all off the path. 

But then, looking at the larger timeline, Europe for a long time was going through the violence that now is shadowing the Middle East. And maybe mankind at its core isn’t really a species that opts for the peaceful paths.

Still. There is all this technology and knowledge, and shouldn't we learn at some point? And is it helpful to show and watch the pictures of violence and of its effects, in the amount that is continually present in the news, and where does all this violence come from? 

I don't have the answers, but in the last week, it was a theme that was in my mind, and either there are more articles about it, or I noticed them more than before. Here are some "violent" links: 

• What are all these violent images doing to us? - a blog post from a journalist, which includes this link in the comments: Tragedies & Journalists: "A 40-page guide to help journalists, photojournalists and editors report on violence while protecting both victims and themselves."
• Coursera has a new course up, which is about violence. Started by a nurse, who was faced with violence and the injuries it caused - and who looked for patterns of violence, and for ways to prevent it:
  "Understanding Violence: Violence is among the top three leading causes of injury and death in the US and globally. We will focus on different disciplinary approaches and perspectives to understanding and potentially preventing violence."
  I watched the first parts, it’s approaching the theme both on a personal and global level, and is presented by two instructors and additional experts, which also adds to the broader view of this complex theme. 
• Watch as 1000 years of European borders change timelapse map that shows how European borders have changed over the last 1000 years. and the maps don't say it, but probably most of the changes were the result of wars, or acts of violence  

Ironically, when I went shopping, I walked past the shelf with energy drinks, and even there the theme was present: "Bomba" is a new energy drink, which picks up the mood of the world, it seems.

Peace ~

big skies, tiny life, the extravagance of creation & world stories

"The country made the city and all its anxieties seem small and silly, and yet when you had been too long in the city, you forgot how the sun moving through its path was a long slow drama, and the way the sky was always there, big and easy-going."

The quote, or rather: the thought of big summer sky,  it's the first thing that came to mind when I read the new photo friday theme "Big", which then made me go and look for the exact words in Kate Grenville's novel "The Idea of Perfection", and for a sky photo:

The sky photo is from June. It's one of my favourites of the year, with the moon in it, and with the different cloud shapes and colours - almost as if it was two or three photos (or skies) merged in one moment. The world and all the phenomenon it creates, every day anew - that's also a theme of one of the current Coursera courses. The title of it is "The Emergence of Life". 

The course started in July, and is fascinating, reaching back to the emergence of our solar system, and the earth itself - and the "perfect storm" that made the difference for the earth, this cosmic combination of factors that made it possible for life to develop. 

Here are some lines from the introduction: 

"How did life emerge on Earth? How have life and Earth co-evolved through geological time? Is life elsewhere in the universe? Take a look through the 4-billion-year history of life on Earth through the lens of the modern Tree of Life.

The pioneering work of Professor Carl Woese on the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign campus has revolutionized our understanding of the fundamental structure and evolutionary relatedness of all living entities on Earth. This has resulted in a new "Tree of Life" and a first ever understanding of what life looked like before the base of the root of the Tree had evolved. This course will evaluate the entire history of life on Earth within the context of our cutting-edge understanding of the Tree of Life."

It's both obvious yet also good to remember that science and our knowledge of the world keeps developing and that the things we learned at school might be out of date already. And this course includes so many aspects of the world and the universe, shifting the focus from the now and here to the larger picture. Here is the course link again: Coursera: Emergence of Life 

Watching the lectures and thinking about the amazing complexity and connectedness of life made me pick up Annie Dillard's book "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek", her reflection on nature and its cycles and the seaons. A book that I ordered second hand a while ago, and expected to get a "used / good condition" copy. when it arrived, I thought: okay, this definitely is an older and used copy. Only that it wasn't used - and a first edition:

The stunning thing about Tinker Creek is how it moves from details and observations to larger takes, and back again. Here's a bit, on the extravagance of creation: 

"If the landscape reveals one certainty, it is that the extravagant gesture is the very stuff of creation. After the extravagant gesture of creation in the first place, the universe has continued to deal exclusively in extravagances, flinging intricacies and colossi down aeons of emptiness, heaping profusions on profligacies with ever fresh vigor. The whole show has been on fire from the word go."

It's refreshing to spend time with this larger themes, right now in summer, with nature in overdrive after the time of rain: new petals everywhere now. The roses and the bougainville are in second bloom now. i tried a macro photo, and the camera seemed to be focused on the larger themes, too: on the clouds above, instead of the petal right there in front of it. 

This world and the many layers it has: parallel to reading "Tinker Creek", i am reading the winning stories of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize, which features a global range of authors - this year's winners are from Uganda, Singapore, UK, Guyana and Australia. There was no given theme noted, but all stories dealt with the large theme of the world: life - and death. I already put together a blog post for the prize in the blueprint lit blog: Commonwealth Short Story Prize.

And here are the direct links to the stories: 

• -  "Let's Tell This Story Properly" by  Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi, Uganda
• - "A Day in the Death" by Sara Adam Ang, Singapore
• - "Killing Time" by Lucy Caldwell, UK
• - "Sending for Chantal" by Maggie Harris, Guyana
• - "The Dog and the Sea" by Lucy Treloar, Australia

The finaly story, the fifth, I read it today: "The Dog and The Sea" --- and its first lines end on the very image that started this blog post yesterday: big sky. 

"The beach pulled us from hundreds of miles away. The car slid across the desert seas, its windows open, and I sat with my mouth open, the wind blowing into it as if I was a sail and might be pushed along or even lifted right out of the window and up into that big sky... "

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Links:

• photo friday "big"
• reading the world
• notes on coursera courses 
• more quotes from Anne Dillard

Marriage, the Movies, and the Neurobiology of Everyday Life

The online eduction platform Coursera has launched 2 new Humanity courses that turn out to be rather fascinating to watch. Here are the links:

Marriage and the Movies: A History
The topic of marriage in the movies has always provided a fascinating reflection of changing social attitudes, shifting morals and gender roles. We will explore how films have defined marriage, identified seven core problems, and varied its three narrative components -- a couple, their problems, their situation -- from decade to decade from the silent to the modern era.

Understanding the Brain: The Neurobiology of Everyday Life
Learn how the nervous system produces behavior, how we use our brain every day, and how neuroscience can explain the common problems afflicting people today. We will study functional human neuroanatomy and neuronal communication, and then use this information to understand how we perceive the outside world, move our bodies voluntarily, stay alive, and play well with others.

Great to find those courses after the "Art for Artists" course ended.

Live!: A History of Art for Artists, Animators and Gamers, or: in my perfect world, what should art be like?

This week, a new open online course started at Coursera: "Live!: A History of Art for Artists, Animators and Gamers". I had signed up for it, and now watched the first lectures, and am excited about it. Each course at Coursera is different, some have fascinating themes but are rather technical in the lectures. Just recently, there was one called "Beauty, Form & Function: An Exploration of Symmetry", which turned out to be rather mathematical. But the art course feels like the right course at the right time, escpecially with the series of museums i visited.

And it got me pondering - for the first week, the course invites participants to do a starting assignment called "My World and the Art World" and share it in the course forum. The Instruction is: ""Make or describe something that stands for what you think art really should be in your perfect world - Then, make or describe something that stands for what you think people in the world think art should be. If your version of what art should be like and what the world thinks art should be like are the same, great! If they are different, then think about those differences a bit and write down your thoughts."

So interesting. I guess the photo above is my simplified and a bit stereotypical answer to the second part, how I think people in the world think art should be: something to put on a wall, or to put in a museum.

While I think, in a perfect world, art should be more like this piece of art: Something that offers a different way to look at our world.



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note:
both images are from the square art museum, the one i visited earlier this month. what you can't see in the first image is a brave detail: in the collection of panels, the upper two rows are works of art with moveable elements, and you aren't supposed to touch them. but the two panels in the lower row are "collective" works, and visitors are invited to move the elements.
here's a longer blog post about the museum visit: old stones & modern shapes, or: square afternoon.

currently reading: "História, História" & "Little Brother" (or: from islands to futureworld)

This blog post is inspired by the reading challenge: 7 Continents, 7 Billion People, 7 Books - Reading Challenge 2013 and by the "It's Monday! What are you reading?" series, more about both, at the bottom of this post.



"História, História: Two Years in the Cape Verde Islands" by Eleanor Stanford 

This is one of the books that I saw first in Goodreads, after Jason Pattus, editor of CCLP posted about the upcoming launch of this new book, set on the Cape Verde islands. "Cape Verde - that's an interesting and unusual location. i remember reading about the islands once in a travel brochure. The book will only be available in print first, or?" - i wrote.

Pay-what-you-like-e-book
I received 2 replies: "Once released, you can usually download here for free: cclapcenter/historia - Frances &  "That's right -- the book will be available in its usual free ebook form starting March 11th, when it officially gets released." - Jason (here's the Goodreads page + conversation)

Now i read "Historia". It's a fascinating and honest read - honest to the point of painful. At the same time, it's a poetic book, with tales of Cape Verde woven into the narrative, together with the characteristics of the islands: the wind, the seasons, the rhythm of life there. I definitely would recommend it, especially if you are interested in life in other cultures, and also in language.

Canary Islands & Cape Verde Islands
It also made me think of my own trips to the Canary Islands - the "sister islands" of Cape Verde. Both island groups are situated in front of the West African coast. The Canaries still belong to Spain, though, while Cape Verde belonged to Portugal and now is independent. And the Canaries are more touristic, due to the climate and the shorter distance to Europe (they are one of the main island / beach destinations in winter). Reading about the Cape Verde islands, for me it gave an idea how the Canaries might have looked before the rise of tourism. While reading "Historia", i revisited my own travel notes from the Canary Island- for more click Lanzarote, and here's a quote from one of them a travel story called "La Isla", which includes a question i thought about while reading "Historia":

"Walking back, she followed her own trails for a while, and couldn’t help but wonder how it would have been to grow up here, on this island, surrounded by water." (from: "La Isla") 

church in Teguise - here's a bit more island history  

But back to Cape Verde - here's the introduction to it:  "Eleanor Stanford and her husband join the Peace Corps and find themselves on the West African islands of Cape Verde. In this beautifully alien place, as she teaches her students and struggles to come to terms with the island's fascinating yet frustrating culture .... Part travelogue, part cultural documentary, Historia, Historia combines journalistic excellence with the gripping style of personal memoirs to bring you this lyrical, moving portrait of an enchanting, little-glimpsed geography. "

History / Story / História / Geschichte 
Here's one of my favourite passages of the book - starting with a tale and leading to island history. And also, including some reflections on language structure and synonyms. It's same in German, by the way: History and Story both translate to the same word: "Geschichte".

"This is how the stories begin: "História, história,” a mother calls, drawing the children into the lasso of lamplight. Once upon a time, there was a wily creature named Nho Lobu – Mr.Wolf. ....  Nho Lobu is the classic trickser of fairy tales – except that he gets tricked in the end. He’s the lovable rogue, the laughable picaresque, the prototypical Cape Verdean koitadu-poor thing.
It is the same word in Creole – as in Portuguese and other romance languages – for story and history.  ... Since independence, there is more emphasis on the history of Cape Verde itself, but still, there are few books written on the subject. When Portugal donates texts, they mention Cape Verde in passing if at all. It’s a small stone in the shoe of the great empire. History is something that happens elsewhere."

Audio Book: The Perfect Order of Things
I also started to listen to a (German) audio book, "The Perfect Order of Things", which sounded interesting from the brief description. But for the first time, I had problems with the reading voice - not sure why, but it felt like the "wrong" voice to read the story. So I gave up on the audio book.

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Upcoming next: Futureworld & New Zealand
The next 2 books that are waiting here are for reading challenges:

"Little Brother" by Cory Doctorow

"Little Brother" by Cory Doctorow is a modern scifi story, it's one of the reads that is included in the Literary Course "Science Fiction and Fantasy: The Human Mind, our Modern World", which started with Grimm's Tales and Frankenstein, and now is arriving at contemporary fiction. (here the Tales post, and here's more literary courses online now).
I started reading into it, it takes a bit to get into it, especially after the island read, but it's brimming with insider views to the web, surveyance, hackers, coding... The title is a reference to Orwell and his "1984" - "Big Brother is Watching you".
PS. if you are interested in this book, it's actually available as free download from the author, who has an own webpage for it: Little Brother

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Some Other Country

"Some other country" is a story collection with stories from New Zealand. I'm reading it for the "Around the World in 12 Books" challenges, which moves to the South Pacific Islands for April
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Global Reading Challenge
This blog post is inspired by a Global Reading Challenge, more about it here: 7 Continents, 7 Billion People, 7 Books - Reading Challenge 2013 

The link is also listed in the "It's Monday! What are you reading?" series that is hosted by Sheila at Book Journey, participating blogs are listed in this Linky Book List

Previous reading blog entries are collected here: bookshelf: currently  reading... there also is a visual bookshelf, just click it to get there:

And my own new book... is Worl(d)s Apart. True.

A Beginner’s Guide to Irrational Behavior

"Monday 26 March 2012
 this weekend was like a short holiday: so much sun, and warmth. it was days like in May or in June. sitting outside on the terrace. wearing lighter clothes. seeing bees, birds, butterflies. and being out there." 

that's what i wrote in my diary, same time, one year ago. there are the words: day like in May or in June. back then, everyone knew it was unusually warm. but what mainly remained was the memory: March = warm. and not only the hope, but rather the expectation that this March would be the same like last year. because that's what our brains do: they learn from new experiences. only that we aren't exactly made like databases. we refer to our recent impressions.

that's what i thought about yesterday, after listening to the first lectures of a new Coursera class that is about irrational behaviour tendencies of the human mind. the class has the great title: “A Beginner’s Guide to Irrational Behavior”, by Dan Ariely

here's the brief course info: "In this course we will learn about some of the many ways in which people behave in less than rational ways, and how we might overcome these problems."

for more, visit the Course info page, or watch this clip from TedTalks:



Surviving Disruptive Technologies
PS: if you are interested in this topic, there is a second course that just started, it is about business, but goes into the same direction: it discusses the difficulties that companies face in a market in change, and looks at the possible (partly irrational) reasons for failure in such markets. the course is based on studies of companies that were once market leaders: Kodak, Blockbuster, Borders - and all stumbled over a combination of their own size / success / structure / and fixed ideas. here's more: Surviving Disruptive Technologies

Berlin, Hollywood

The Berlin film festival is on - and seeing the news and features about it brings back memories of Berlin, like this moment from the "Pariser Platz" - "Paris square", named after Paris not for romantic reasons, but due to the horse statue which once was captured by the French and brought to Paris, and later re-captured and brought back to Berlin:



And now, the Berlinale. the great thing about it is: even when you are nowhere near Berlin, it sparks film features and interviews - and one of the tv channels is running a film festival in their program, with Berlinale films from previous festival years. And of course, there are a lot of...

Interesting Berlinale links :

• official Berlinale homepage
• Berlinale Euronews 3-minute-clip with introduction & trailers: Cinema - Berlinale 2013 
• Berlinale 2013: Film Fest Spotlights Women and Eastern Europe
• Wong Kar-wai interview on "The Grandmaster" (the Berlinale opening film)
• Berlinale article in Berlin newspaper: Vorhang auf! Die Stars, die Filme, die Partys
• Bullett magazine: 10 most exciting Berlinale films
• twitterstream: #Berlinale
• mini-clip 1 from the red carpet: snow & stars
• mini-clip 2 from the red carpet: naked protest +  more in the Reuters news
• Berlinale article: A cineaste's dream: "Festival director Dieter Kosslick promises a mix of productions from major studios and independent filmmakers, a large selection of films from and about women and - in the great Berlinale tradition - globally sourced and politically committed works. .. Examples can be found in all sections of the festival, during which 404 films will be screened. A total of 19 productions are in the running for coveted gold and silver bears..."
• film review from the Hollywood Reporter: "The Act of Killing": "Joshua Oppenheimer’s artful confessional documentary gives fearsome killers the chance to re-enact their crimes as Hollywood gangsters... The result is a fascinating film not just about Indonesia but more generally about the corrosive after-effects of torture, political corruption and genocide. "
• PirateBay documentary on internet culture and copyright celebrates filmstart at the Berlinale - and online for free. Here's a  Verge-interview with director Simon Klose: "Four years in the Pirate Bay: director Simon Klose on why file-sharing is still political". More about the movie and where / how to watch it online, in the piratebay twitterstream. And below, the official trailer:

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Berlin, 90 years ago and still fresh, now in TV
Parallel to the Berlin international film festival, one of the TV channels is broadcasting a series of Berlin films. One of them is the silent film "Berlin. Die Sinfonie der Großstadt" - "Berlin. The Symphony of the Big City." by Walther Ruttman was first shown in cinemas in 1927, the same year that Fritz Lang released his now-classic expressionist film "Metropolis". In contrast to Metropolis, Ruttman's Visual Symphony is documentary, with an impressionist atmosphere, and even now feels modern. Here's a short sequence of the film:

 

There's a long version of the film up at youtube, too: Berlin. Symphony of a Great City (1927)
And here's a bit more about the film:

"As a "city symphony" film, it portrays the life of a city, mainly through visual impressions in a semi-documentary style, without the narrative content of more mainstream films, though the sequencing of events can imply a kind of loose theme or impression of the city's daily life. These films were conceived of in the mid to late 1920's amongst the "artistic" writers and filmmakers as an avant-garde, "new style" of early filmmaking that evolved from a script-free open narrative form that sought to show a clearer, less cluttered view of the world free from a real storyline or rigid structure." (wiki link)

 
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From Berlin to the language of Hollywood
Watching the Berlin film and other features about the Berlinale made me remember that i saw a note on a lecture-series on film and the language of Hollywood at Coursera, the online lecture website. So i went looking, and the class actually started just last week - and the first week is about the silent films of the 1920ies. So interesting to watch right now. The course includes 5-weeks, with 22 video lectures altogether, and a range of film examples that starts in 1928 and leads to 2002, here's the link: The Language of Hollywood: Storytelling, Sound, and Color

& some related links:

• Moments from Berlin + Berlinale film festival, with 12 film festival links + more
  that's from the first days of the Berlin film festival
• 9 film festival links: Oscars, Berlinale, Sundance..
  links to film festival websites and to trailer pages.

Below, the Berlin image, in full technicolor - it almost looks like a photo trick, with the radio tower in the background, but standing there in front of the Berlin Cathedral (which dates back to 1450), that's exactly the view you see 

 

the beginning of the web: "vague but exciting"

A surprise guest at the International Book Fair Frankfurt:

in the hall 4.2 with the science and education books, there is: CERN

with a desk of current publications,

but that's just the minor part of their presentation

their new "medialab" department created 2 installations:

one is a visualization of the "Higgs Field"

(that's the higgs-version of me, to the right, taking the photo)

"And we have something else," one of the CERN crew said:

"The first web server of the world, from Tim Berners-Lee”. 

it’s the one that i recently saw in the Coursera course about "Internet History and Technology" 

by Charles "Chuck" Severance, who had interviewed Berners-Lee, and who also

talked about visiting CERN in the course.

Together with the computer, they had a copy of the original "Information Management" proposal of Tim Berners-Lee. The proposal has a pencilled note on top that says: “vague but exciting” 

(click here for a larger version) 

Pretty cool to see this. There even is the term "Hypertext" included in the proposal.

I took a photo with the mobile phone, and posted a first photo with blog-per-email.

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there's a separate post with

more impressions from Frankfurt Book Fair

(those are a bit more of the bookish kind)

and one more photo- i just remembered taking it:

this is from the final lesson of the Internet course,

a wrap-up lesson with reflections and demographics,

including a world map with course participants.

(more in Dr. Chuck's Blog)

so exciting, indeed.

full moon & lessons in world music + networked life

a full moon moment from this week.

and a web find: like yesterday, i listened to a TED talk while doing some repetitive web / photo file formatting stuff. and this time, arrived at "What we are learning from online education" by Daphne Koller, who is enticing top universities to put their most intriguing courses online, free for anyone who wants to take them.

the talk made me curiouses for the courses, and so i visited the course website, which is named "Coursera". i somehow expected courses on Statistics, Maths, Economy, the usual things. they have those, yes. but they cover so much more ground.

here's the link to their course list: https://www.coursera.org/courses

now, where to start? i find those especially tempting:

• Fantasy and Science Fiction: The Human Mind, Our Modern World
• Listening to World Music
• Networked Life + Social Network Analysis 
• and this: A Beginner's Guide to Irrational Behavior