[Dr. Zoidberg is preparing to look for a mate]

Dr. Zoidberg: How do I look?
Bender: Like whale barf.
Dr. Zoidberg: Then the illusion is complete.

Ken Sane’s Transparency essays  provide a fabulous overview for my start up thinking on “whale barf” in education and “whale barf” in myself....

Whenever it happened, today, we have entered a period in history that can truly be referred to as an age of simulation, in which advanced forms of fakery and illusion are now dominant elements of culture and society.Transparency 

And the Onion Video: “Warcraft” Sequel Lets Gamers Play A Character Playing “Warcraft” captures my “where to next ....?” .... imaginings

'Warcraft' Sequel Lets Gamers Play A Character Playing 'Warcraft'

Although it is convenient to blame technology we don’t need technology to betray and manipulate ... our words are enough ....

I have been reading The Power of Words   - an article from cj about Fernando Flores, someone I only “knew” or as it turns out "did not know" as the name on the spine of Understanding Computers and Cognition.

Flores works to transform individuals ... leaders .....  using “speech acts’ that confront deception.  

“Talk all you want to, Flores says, but if you want to act powerfully, you need to master "speech acts": language rituals that build trust between colleagues and customers, word practices that open your eyes to new possibilities. Speech acts are powerful because most of the actions that people engage in -- in business, in marriage, in parenting -- are carried out through conversation. But most people speak without intention; they simply say whatever comes to mind. Speak with intention, and your actions take on new purpose. Speak with power, and you act with power.” The Power of Words

Now Flores technique for exposing the “whale barf” sounds rather like brushing up against a 240V electric fence for anyone accustomed to how we confront individual weakness within organisations in the wobbly isles ...

We might not be aware of "the amount of self-deception and self-limitation that we collect in our personalities. “ but when you look at our institutional practice in education in New Zealand it seems plausible that many of us have chosen to remain unaware ...  

I guess I could experiment with a Flores-like   “following the script exactly as it is written ... “ exchange with the Magnet ..... we have always been pretty frank at critiquing our work  ... and pretty good at moving on ...  

...... perhaps week four  would be a good time to Flores-explore the “whale barf” .... when we are trapped in the snorting beast on the road to Hamilton ... 

.... still the likelihood that she would deposit me on the roadside in Huntly and carry on to do the conference by herself

(or vice versa)

remains

too high.

I am dumping Flores action script in preference for submerging myself in Prune Blogs Other Simulated Worlds  where Alexander Trevi has the most wondrous post exploring the historical photographs of the permanent and temporary exhibits images made available by The American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) and the way in which these simulations are influenced by their place in time

Apparently, dinosaur displays are not entirely the product of accumulated scientific data, of empirical truth. They are cultural artifacts, our “national psychic erector sets which we've put together in different ways depending on our mood.”

I figure that despite all our talk about “evidence based practice” ... in time we will be able to make a similar exhibit featuring  all the versions of The New Zealand Curriculum.

Comments

[Janet Hawtin]

Some kinds of simulation might enable us to make better connections to the real.
Perhaps to ecology and culture which we have not been able to recognise previously.
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/07/ragogmakan-google-goes-to-amazon.html

[Michael Doyle]

Whale barf used to be the cat's meow, at least the sperm whale variety: ambergris. Charles II liked it with his eggs, and it still fetches a pretty penny if found on the beach. (We can't sell it here in the States, but a NZ outfit asks $20 USD per gram.)

"Although it is convenient to blame technology we don’t need technology to betray and manipulate ... our words are enough ...." Amen.

I love words. I fear words. Not sure if Jerry Mander has made it to your side of the woods, but the sentiment's the same.

At any rate, any blog that mentions Lowly Worm, floating placentas, and whale barf on first glance deserves a read. And for the few folks that stumble into my neck of the woods, I'm steering them back to the land of wattled bats.

[Artichoke]

Re: Some kinds of simulation might enable us to make better connections to the real.

Thanks for the link Janet ... you might enjoy this one also in Pruned -Dioramas in the American Natural History Museum

• “With precise depictions of geographical locations and the careful, anatomically correct mounting of specimens, these stunning dioramas are windows onto a world of animals, their behavior, and their habitats. Moreover, since many of the environments represented have been exploited or degraded, some dioramas preserve places and animals as they no longer exist. The viewer of a habitat group diorama is able to travel not only across continents, but also, in some cases, through time.”

[Artichoke]

Thanks for your comments Michael, I loved learning that whale barf is available online in New Zealand ... and much enjoyed Jerry Mander

... and given the way you write about wonderment in science and that hole that became a pond ...I suspect you will enjoy these images as much as I did

Try Ranarum Nostratium

..... from another blog that is full of wonderment BibliOdyssey

[Janet Hawtin]

Many beautiful things. Some of the BibliOdyssey things remind me of the
Griffin and Sabine series. These are the kinds of things that sometimes the internet cannot match. Out of gamut.

The Dioramas are memorials and take me back to the other post.
They are lovely but so sad. There was an exhibition at the Adelaide Art Gallery recently which felt the same. Baroque vases full of silk and plastic flowers birds feathers glitter and light. Masses of too much, out of context and under glass. Feels wrong and disconnected.

[Michael Doyle]

Ranarum Nostratium is simply marvelous! Johann Rösel von Rosenhof saw beyond the light itself, if that makes sense.

When I was a tadpole in medicine, we had all kinds of atlases available during gross anatomy. Carmine Clemente's transcended photographs for me. I still wonder why. von Rosenhof's drawings do the same. I will try them in class this year on 14 year olds and see what kind of response I get.