omg, scratch

Scratch!
OLPC type thing, like Squeak?
Easy to use.
Fun to use.
Uses for teaching info literacy?
Critical thinking?
Social networking aspects.
Fun to use.
Sharing tips, sharing knowledge, groups learning together (yes, social networking!)...
I like.






[found via Spencer]

French comics culture

If you look further you will see that the BD section - pronounced Bay-Day - is in fact sub-divided into several categories.

There will be classics - Asterix, Tintin, Lucky Luke, the cowboy who shoots faster than his shadow - plus many that never made it out of Franco-Belgium, like Rahan - l'enfant des ages farouches or child of the age of savagery - about a Tarzan-like figure from prehistoric times.

There will be the latest best-sellers. Top of the book lists this month - beating Harry Potter and the latest on President Nicolas Sarkozy's love life - has been the last in a long-running adventure series called Thirteen about a man trying to rediscover his identity after losing his memory.

There will be the American comics section, the Japanese Manga section - this one getting bigger and bigger because they are getting more and more popular.

There will also be the adult section, with works of quite astonishing vividness.

And then, pride of place, the section for what the French call "les Auteurs".

Here, the most highly regarded authors are catalogued by name.

This is the art-house end of the market.

An album in this section may sell only a few hundred copies - compared to half a million for the latest hit - but the true connoisseurs will know all about it.

Here, experimentation and the avant-garde allow the Bay-Day fan to see him or herself as more than just a consumer, rather as a cultured devotee of a thriving art form.

[BBC story: link]

Thanks, Heavy D.

band names 9

The Norman, Oklahoma Blood Quantum & Bling City Review

nighty, night for WikiLeaks

If you bothered to get excited about the implications of WikiLeaks, you can stop.

It's killed.

Unless:

SUPPORT OUR FIRST AMENDMENT CASE TO APPEAL BUSH APPOINTEE JUSTICE WHITE'S ORDER TO CENSOR WIKILEAKS.ORG!
Back our defense fund by emailing supporters@sunshinepress.org with your pledge!

george dyson's mad infoskillz

Anthropotek has this video [link] of George Dyson at TED. I'm really dumbstruck by the man's infoskillz... he found so much on Project Orion that NASA ends up buying thousands of pages from him. Now that's a helluva historian. NASA, he says, continues funding a small contingent to work on this emergency evacuation of the planet contingency... Amazing.

Oh, here's his book on the subject [link].








{also: Long Now lectures}

word has it

Woody don't twitter.