Fordham Museum of Greek, Etruscan and Roman Art

I recently had the opportunity of visiting Fordham University's  Museum of Greek, Etruscan and Roman Art.  Located in the university's Walsh Library, the museum, which includes hundreds of Greek and Roman antiquities, is worth a visit if you happen to be in the area at the New York Botanical Garden or the Bronx Zoo.  The Fordham campus is lovely too-- what a university should look like.

Random Academic Quote Generator

I dislike the jargon that clogs academic journals. So I was amused when I came across the Random Academic Quote Generator. A typical example of such gobbledygook the site cooks up is "The interdependence of isomorphism is very nearly influential in its romanticism."

There is a illustrative story about how such convoluted language was used to foist a hoax. Physicist Alan Sokal pulled this off when he submitted an article entitled "Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity" to the journal Social Text. Sokal filled his essay with jargon that amounted to gibberish. It created quite a stir when the article appeared in a peer reviewed journal.

I'd suggest writers read George Orwell's essay Politics and the English Language and follow the advice he gives.

Halftime in America

Here's a video worth watching. Clint Eastwood is the man.

I Enter the 21st Century

As we are now more than a decade into the 21st Century, I thought I'd get with it, so I acquired an I-Phone and joined Twitter. As I was already in Facebook and LinkedIn, I'm pretty well up to date. Life is good. Now, if I could only come up with something to tweet about...

Interactive Flag Site

I'm a little late for Flag Day, but the Huffington Post's Which Star Is Your State is still worth a look. Sorta makes one proud to be an American.

Mixed Feelings

I have mixed feelings about Quantified Self. Is this a further indication that we are Bowling Alone? Take a look and tell me what you think.

Open Culture

Open Culture is primarily a blog that notes interesting web links, but it also contains connections to free films, podcasts, e-books, courses, etc. This site merits repeated visits.

The Browser

I have mentioned the Arts and Letters Daily site earlier in the this blog. It's still a great site that I visit regularly. The Browser is a similar site that provides links to notable articles about science and culture. It's worth a look.

Google Art Project

Do you want to visit the museums of the world in the comfort of your home, try browsing Google's Art Project. You can check out museum highlights and in some cases do a virtual walk in the chosen museum. Among the museums included are the Frick Collection and the Metropolitan Museum in New York, the Ufizzi Gallery in Florence and the Tate in London.

John Stewart's "I Remember America"

A couple of days ago, I was dabbling in my CD collection and came across John Stewart's song "I Remember America." With the recent gun violence in Tucson, Arizona, this nostalgic and melancholy song struck a chord in me, so I thought I'd pass along this YouTube video.

Stewart, who passed away a couple of years ago was a member of the Kingston Trio and wrote such songs as "Daydream Believer."

Baby Name Wizard

I came across an interesting site called the Baby Name Wizard. Like other similar sites, one can find the background and meaning of various names. What makes this site unusual is that one can check the popularity of a name by year and geographically by state.

I found it notable that such once popular names as Agnes, Mary and Arthur have plummeted in popularity, while such names as Logan and Olivia have boomed.

There's Still Life in This Old Blog

I came across Picnik while doing a wiki project on the fly. Picnik allows one to edit pictures for free. I especially like its rotate function. The whole site is easy to use. I recommend it.

Future Me & Personal Mission Statements

Today, I came across a site called Future Me. It allows a person to write an e-mail to himself (or more like herself, if the public messages are any indication) and have it delivered at a specified date in the future. I guess that, because I don't have much in the line of good advice for myself now and can't imagine what I would say to my future self, I find this idea creepy.

I had the same eerie feeling a few days ago when I found a site that gave instructions about writing a personal mission statement. I'm not a big fan of institutional mission statements either, preferring to go with the flow, but mission statements are hot, and I thought I'd investigate how to write one.

The first step advised keeping it short--good, I like short. But trouble started as soon as I started reading the 2nd step: "Your mission statement should touch upon what you want to focus on and who you want to become as a person (character) in this part of your life."

Step #5 clinched it: "Think about how your actions, habits, behavior and character traits in this area affect the important relationships in your life."

I was out of there in a flash. I don't do introspective stuff too well--I am a guy after all-- and I have a feeling that, like an onion, if all my layers were peeled away, there wouldn't be anything there. Ooh, even that was too deep. I must stop and pull myself together.

Blatant Blog Roll

Yes, I know I haven't written in months. (I wonder how many blog entries start out like that.) I have been writing other things-- an article in a journal called New York Irish History, a biographical sketch in Modern American Environmentalists, and a couple of book reviews.

Anyway, I'm back, at least briefly, to do a little blog rolling. Check out 10 Books to Read before You Die. I have to admit that I've been splitting my blogging time and am one of the people who post to this blog.

TBD-- A Social Networking Site

I became interested in social networking sites through my work as a librarian. There have been a number of articles in library magazines about using these sites to reach out to library users. So, I set up profiles on Facebook, Linkedin, Karma411 among others. I have found Facebook to be useful to keep in contact with younger relatives, but the site that has provided the most connections with people I have never met is TBD—which stands for To Be Determined. The site was set up mainly for people over 40.

When someone joins TBD, he or she can fill out as much of the profile as they like. This includes an About Me section, and spaces to list interests and areas in which one has some experience or expertise. There is also an area where one can set up a scrapbook—something I have not done so far—but the most intriguing section of the profile consists of a series of questions. These include such queries as “If I have a free minute I like to______” and “I always wanted to live _______” along with many more.

TBDers also have the option to join groups created by members. Not surprisingly, I joined a few books/reading groups and one about blogging for boomers. Other available groups address such topics as dating, spirituality, communication in relationships, and careers. Group members can post questions for discussion.

Members can also browse the profiles of other members, and, if they like, contact another member asking to be their friend. Perhaps because most members are “of a certain age,” as they say, or perhaps because most use nicknames, TBDers seem more comfortable in reaching out to other members. For instance, one person asked me to edit a story she had posted to a writing group to which we both belong. Another member asked for advice about getting housing for a daughter going off to college.

So, if you’re interested in a relaxed and welcoming social networking site, try TBD.

The End Is Near- Part 2

If one needs further proof that the end is near (see earlier blog entry below), go to Doors or Four Squares.

Think about it. Someone actually took the time to create these sites. At least the picture to the left is pleasant.

2 Time Sites

My first entry in this blog was about time. I have 2 additional sites to add now. I caution that I found them on a list of pointless websites.

The first site is the barcode clock. This ticks of seconds while changing the lines in a barcode.

The other site, A Dot for Every Second in the Day, is a bit more elaborate; it shows a chart with 86,400 dots--the number of seconds in a day. As each second goes by, a dot changes from a lavender color to gray. The change is fairly subtle.

May I remind you that I did call a recent blog entry "The End is Near."

Boomshine

I recently came across a site for the game Boomshine. It is a fairly simple game, in which a number of small colored orbs are floating around the game area, and the player is supposed to place a larger ball in a space where the most orbs are likely to hit it. The number of small orbs and the target number of hits increase thoughout the game. I find the game both hypnotic and addictive. There is a sound track that reminds me of the piano music in Peanuts cartoon shows, and for some reason, I keep thinking that if Peter Max was to create a game, Boomshine might be what he’d come up with.

Clay Shirky---WOW!

Somehow, I had not heard of Clay Shirky until today. He studies cultural changes and identifies sometimes positive, sometimes unsettling trends that we have already begun to experience. Below are links to two knock-your-socks-off lectures in which Shirky expounds upon his findings.

In the first one, Shirky discusses what he calls cognitive surplus. He suggests among other things, that a tiny decrease in the amount of time Americans watch television would free up enough free time for us to create a couple thousand Wikipedias a year.

In the second video from TED.com Shirky explores changes coming about due to technology and predicts that these transformations will shake many established institutions to the core in the coming years. Shirky says that this will have ramifications that we can’t imagine today. Fascinating stuff.

Shirky’s online writings can be found at http://www.shirky.com/.

Striking Back

Tired of spammers and telemarketers? It’s time to do something. But what? Below are links to items by 2 culture heroes who have already struck back.

The first of these shows one method of dealing those maddening calls that often come at mealtimes.

The second is an admittedly lengthy exchange of emails that resulted from a guy responding to one of those spams promising thousands of dollars if the spamee will only come to the assistance of a persecuted Nigerian family. This sometimes verges on the absurd.

If these sound too good to be true, you may be right. Still, they are laugh-out-loud funny.