
viernes, julio 03, 2009
Staying Alive by Radio Lab

viernes, junio 26, 2009
lunes, junio 08, 2009
End the University as We Know It
GRADUATE education is the Detroit of higher learning. Most graduate programs in American universities produce a product for which there is no market (candidates for teaching positions that do not exist) and develop skills for which there is diminishing demand (research in subfields within subfields and publication in journals read by no one other than a few like-minded colleagues), all at a rapidly rising cost (sometimes well over $100,000 in student loans).
Widespread hiring freezes and layoffs have brought these problems into sharp relief now. But our graduate system has been in crisis for decades, and the seeds of this crisis go as far back as the formation of modern universities. Kant, in his 1798 work “The Conflict of the Faculties,” wrote that universities should “handle the entire content of learning by mass production, so to speak, by a division of labor, so that for every branch of the sciences there would be a public teacher or professor appointed as its trustee.”
Unfortunately this mass-production university model has led to separation where there ought to be collaboration and to ever-increasing specialization. In my own religion department, for example, we have 10 faculty members, working in eight subfields, with little overlap. And as departments fragment, research and publication become more and more about less and less. Each academic becomes the trustee not of a branch of the sciences, but of limited knowledge that all too often is irrelevant for genuinely important problems. A colleague recently boasted to me that his best student was doing his dissertation on how the medieval theologian Duns Scotus used citations.
The emphasis on narrow scholarship also encourages an educational system that has become a process of cloning. Faculty members cultivate those students whose futures they envision as identical to their own pasts, even though their tenures will stand in the way of these students having futures as full professors.
The dirty secret of higher education is that without underpaid graduate students to help in laboratories and with teaching, universities couldn’t conduct research or even instruct their growing undergraduate populations. That’s one of the main reasons we still encourage people to enroll in doctoral programs. It is simply cheaper to provide graduate students with modest stipends and adjuncts with as little as $5,000 a course — with no benefits — than it is to hire full-time professors.
In other words, young people enroll in graduate programs, work hard for subsistence pay and assume huge debt burdens, all because of the illusory promise of faculty appointments. But their economical presence, coupled with the intransigence of tenure, ensures that there will always be too many candidates for too few openings.
The other obstacle to change is that colleges and universities are self-regulating or, in academic parlance, governed by peer review. While trustees and administrations theoretically have some oversight responsibility, in practice, departments operate independently. To complicate matters further, once a faculty member has been granted tenure he is functionally autonomous. Many academics who cry out for the regulation of financial markets vehemently oppose it in their own departments.
If American higher education is to thrive in the 21st century, colleges and universities, like Wall Street and Detroit, must be rigorously regulated and completely restructured. The long process to make higher learning more agile, adaptive and imaginative can begin with six major steps:
1. Restructure the curriculum, beginning with graduate programs and proceeding as quickly as possible to undergraduate programs. The division-of-labor model of separate departments is obsolete and must be replaced with a curriculum structured like a web or complex adaptive network. Responsible teaching and scholarship must become cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural.
Just a few weeks ago, I attended a meeting of political scientists who had gathered to discuss why international relations theory had never considered the role of religion in society. Given the state of the world today, this is a significant oversight. There can be no adequate understanding of the most important issues we face when disciplines are cloistered from one another and operate on their own premises.
It would be far more effective to bring together people working on questions of religion, politics, history, economics, anthropology, sociology, literature, art, religion and philosophy to engage in comparative analysis of common problems. As the curriculum is restructured, fields of inquiry and methods of investigation will be transformed.
2. Abolish permanent departments, even for undergraduate education, and create problem-focused programs. These constantly evolving programs would have sunset clauses, and every seven years each one should be evaluated and either abolished, continued or significantly changed. It is possible to imagine a broad range of topics around which such zones of inquiry could be organized: Mind, Body, Law, Information, Networks, Language, Space, Time, Media, Money, Life and Water.
Consider, for example, a Water program. In the coming decades, water will become a more pressing problem than oil, and the quantity, quality and distribution of water will pose significant scientific, technological and ecological difficulties as well as serious political and economic challenges. These vexing practical problems cannot be adequately addressed without also considering important philosophical, religious and ethical issues. After all, beliefs shape practices as much as practices shape beliefs.
A Water program would bring together people in the humanities, arts, social and natural sciences with representatives from professional schools like medicine, law, business, engineering, social work, theology and architecture. Through the intersection of multiple perspectives and approaches, new theoretical insights will develop and unexpected practical solutions will emerge.
3. Increase collaboration among institutions. All institutions do not need to do all things and technology makes it possible for schools to form partnerships to share students and faculty. Institutions will be able to expand while contracting. Let one college have a strong department in French, for example, and the other a strong department in German; through teleconferencing and the Internet both subjects can be taught at both places with half the staff. With these tools, I have already team-taught semester-long seminars in real time at the Universities of Helsinki and Melbourne.
4. Transform the traditional dissertation. In the arts and humanities, where looming cutbacks will be most devastating, there is no longer a market for books modeled on the medieval dissertation, with more footnotes than text. As financial pressures on university presses continue to mount, publication of dissertations, and with it scholarly certification, is almost impossible. (The average university press print run of a dissertation that has been converted into a book is less than 500, and sales are usually considerably lower.) For many years, I have taught undergraduate courses in which students do not write traditional papers but develop analytic treatments in formats from hypertext and Web sites to films and video games. Graduate students should likewise be encouraged to produce “theses” in alternative formats.
5. Expand the range of professional options for graduate students. Most graduate students will never hold the kind of job for which they are being trained. It is, therefore, necessary to help them prepare for work in fields other than higher education. The exposure to new approaches and different cultures and the consideration of real-life issues will prepare students for jobs at businesses and nonprofit organizations. Moreover, the knowledge and skills they will cultivate in the new universities will enable them to adapt to a constantly changing world.
6. Impose mandatory retirement and abolish tenure. Initially intended to protect academic freedom, tenure has resulted in institutions with little turnover and professors impervious to change. After all, once tenure has been granted, there is no leverage to encourage a professor to continue to develop professionally or to require him or her to assume responsibilities like administration and student advising. Tenure should be replaced with seven-year contracts, which, like the programs in which faculty teach, can be terminated or renewed. This policy would enable colleges and universities to reward researchers, scholars and teachers who continue to evolve and remain productive while also making room for young people with new ideas and skills.
For many years, I have told students, “Do not do what I do; rather, take whatever I have to offer and do with it what I could never imagine doing and then come back and tell me about it.” My hope is that colleges and universities will be shaken out of their complacency and will open academia to a future we cannot conceive.
Mark C. Taylor, the chairman of the religion department at Columbia, is the author of the forthcoming “Field Notes From Elsewhere: Reflections on Dying and Living.”
martes, junio 02, 2009
jueves, mayo 28, 2009
domingo, mayo 10, 2009
domingo, mayo 03, 2009
Monólogo de la película Synechdoque New York de Charlie Kaufman
Everything is more complicated than you think.
You only see a tenth of what is true. There are a million little strings attached to every choice you make; you can destroy your life every time you choose. But maybe you won't know for twenty years. And you may never ever trace it to its source. And you only get one chance to play it out. Just try and figure out your own divorce. And they say there is no fate, but there is: it's what you create.
And even though the world goes on for eons and eons, you are only here for a fraction of a fraction of a second. Most of your time spent being dead or not yet born. But while alive, you wait in vain, wasting years, for a phone call or a letter or a look from someone or something to make it all right. And it never comes or it seems to but it doesn't really. And so you spend your time with vague regret or vaguer hope that something good will come along. Something to make you feel connected,
something to make you feel whole,
something to make you feel loved.
And the truth is I feel so angry and the truth is I feel so fucking sad, and the truth is I've felt so fucking hurt for so fucking long and for just as long have been pretending I'm ok, just to get along, just for…
I don't know why, maybe because no one wants to hear about my misery, because they have their own.
Well, fuck everybody.
Amen.
sábado, abril 18, 2009
sábado, abril 11, 2009
domingo, febrero 15, 2009
MAHNAMAHNAMANA y SAX AND VIOLENCE- THE MUPPETS
Para cuando M esté aburrida
sábado, febrero 14, 2009
sábado, febrero 07, 2009
viernes, enero 23, 2009
sábado, diciembre 20, 2008
The year 2008 in Photographs
Maasai warriors cover a battle field as they clash with bows and arrows with members of the Kalenjin tribe in the Kapune hill overlooking the Olmelil valley located in the Transmara District in Western Kenya on March 01, 2008. The Massai, the Kalenjin and the Kisii tribes have recently clashed over ongoing land disputes that erupted after botched local elections during the general elections held in Kenya in December of 2007. Over twenty warriors from the tribes have been killed in bow and arrow battles near the borders of these tribes in the last couple of months. (Yasuyoshi Chiba/AFP/Getty Images)

Time exposure of the Swiss mountain resort of Grindelwald next to the north face of the Eiger mountain, seen on January 10, 2008. (REUTERS/Stefan Wermuth)
martes, diciembre 16, 2008
sábado, diciembre 13, 2008
El Google Zeitgeist de Colombia 2008
"El 2008 ha sido un año de muchos cambios en Colombia, y las personas han estado utilizando Google para acceder a información relativa a estos cambios. La lista de los temas más buscados incluyen temas políticos, deportivos, de entretenimiento y más, como los intereses de la población en temas de solidaridad económica o el nivel de educación superior; así como búsquedas de eventos locales en el país, como conciertos y escándalos de famosos. Estas listas pueden darnos resultados de 2 tipos; resultados de búsqueda más populares, que indican los términos que más se buscaron durante el año, o Resultados de búsquedas con mayor crecimiento, que indican las búsquedas que más crecieron en comparación al 2007. ¡Navega por el sitio para conocer más de Zeitgeist, el espíritu de los tiempos, para 2008 en Colombia!
Emergentes (Fastest Rising)
hi5
naruto
youtube
sena virtual
computrabajo
traductor
juegos juegos
juego
you tube
Más Populares (Most Popular)
juegos juegos
juegos
colombia
youtube
hotmail
videos....
http://www.google.com/intl/en/press/zeitgeist2008/index.html#top
jueves, diciembre 11, 2008
domingo, diciembre 07, 2008
jueves, noviembre 27, 2008
THE WEEE MAN



martes, noviembre 25, 2008
miércoles, noviembre 05, 2008
lunes, noviembre 03, 2008
viernes, octubre 31, 2008
sábado, octubre 25, 2008
viernes, octubre 17, 2008
LA MANZANA ÓPTICA
Video recuperado y re-editado por mi.
Una propuesta llena de genialidad.
viernes, octubre 10, 2008
viernes, octubre 03, 2008
domingo, septiembre 07, 2008
CUT COPY- TIME STAND STILL Video cortesia de catch22prod en You tube
Buen grupo
lunes, septiembre 01, 2008
Podcast Recomendado: Radio Lab (Press the wake up button)

Radio Lab es un programa de radio de WNYC Normalmente, dura una hora y es presentado por Jad Abumrad y Robert Krulwich
We are still furiously working on Season 5, so while you wait we bring you today’s podcast of a conversation between Robert Krulwich and Brian Greene, physics and mathematics professor and director of the Institute of Strings, Cosmology, and Astroparticle Physics at Columbia University. The interview is part of a series called “Giants of Science” hosted by venerable New York institution, the 92nd St Y.
Robert and Brian discuss what’s beyond the horizon of our universe, what you might wear in infinite universes with finite pairs of designer shoes, and why the Universe and swiss cheese have more in common than you think".
http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/episodes/2006/04/28

Where does our sense of right and wrong come from? We peer inside the brains of people contemplating moral dilemmas, watch chimps at a primate research center share blackberries, observe a playgroup of 3 year-olds fighting over toys, and tour the country's first penitentiary, Eastern State Prison. Also: the story of land grabbing, indentured servitude and slum lording in the fourth grade.
Memory and Forgetting:
http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/episodes/2007/06/08
"According to the latest research, remembering is an unstable and profoundly unreliable process. It’s easy come, easy go as we learn how true memories can be obliterated and false ones added. And Oliver Sacks joins us to tell the story of an amnesiac whose love for his wife and music transcend his 7 second memory".Laughter:
http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/episodes/2008/02/22
"We all laugh. But why? If you look closely, you'll find that humor has very little to do with it. In this episode, we explore the power of laughter to calm us, bond us to one another, or to spread... like a virus. Along the way, we tickle some rats, listen in on a baby's first laugh, talk to a group of professional laughers, and travel to Tanzania to investigate an outbreak of contagious laughter".
Mortality:
http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/episodes/2007/06/15
"Is death a fact of life or a disease that can be cured (as some scientists claim)? We filter the modern search for the fountain of youth through personal stories of witnessing death...the death of a cell, the death of a loved one...and the aging of a society".From A to Zyxt: Reading the Oxford English Dictionary

Pinta bien el libro del hombre que se leyó el Oxford English Dictionary en un año. La reseña del New York Times (que vale la pena leerla) dice:
"Shea’s book resurrects many lost, misshapen, beautifully unlucky words — words that spiraled out, like fast-decaying muons, after their tiny moment in the cloud chamber of English usage. There’s hypergelast (a person who won’t stop laughing), lant (to add urine to ale to give it more kick), obmutescence (willful speechlessness) and ploiter (to work to little purpose) — all good words to have on the tip of your tongue when, for example, you’re stopped for speeding.
Shea’s book offers more than exotic word lists, though. It also has a plot. “I feel as though I am eating the alphabet,” he writes halfway through, and you want him to make it to the end. This is the “Super Size Me” of lexicography".
Mas en
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/books/review/Baker-t.html?_r=1&8bu&emc=bu&oref=slogin
READING THE OED
One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages.
By Ammon Shea.
223 pp. Perigee. $21.95.
Kermit Bale: What do Christian Bale and Kermit the Frog have in common?
Gracias Meema!
sábado, agosto 30, 2008
Y el Dr. W continúa: Un teaser por Muyi Neira

El amigo Muyi sigue con su serie de animación (infantil -6 o más- "but not really") llamada el Dr. W.
El doctor W es un "professional mystery solver" o "truth digger" que, en su programa de TV, indaga sobre misterios varios (y van desde el estornudo hasta las fobias).
Aqui les doy el link a un pequeño "teaser":
http://magoproduction.com/contenido/video/drw_teaser.html
Y más sobre el Dr. W:
http://magoproduction.com/dr_w/index2.html
Synopsis
Dr. W is a delirious Doctor who's always searching for the truth of natural facts of life. He hosts a general knowledge TV Show and on each episode he explains things in his own funny, ironical and sarcastic way, being very persistent and not afraid to do whatever it takes to get to the bottom of life's mysteries...
Technical info
3D animation serie
Color
26x4 - age: 6+
lunes, julio 14, 2008
El poder de 10 (mirada al cosmos y vice-versa)
Es muy impresionante!!
Vale la pena verlo hasta el final
martes, junio 17, 2008
lunes, junio 16, 2008
martes, junio 10, 2008
domingo, abril 13, 2008
Absolut Mexico

In this image released by the Mexican advertising firm of Teran/TBWA on Monday April 7, 2008, an advertisement created for Swedish Absolut Vodka which ran in Mexico, shows a map of the border of Mexico and the United States where it stood before the Mexican-American War of 1848. The Absolut vodka company apologized for the ad campaign amid angry calls for a boycott by U.S. consumers. (AP Photo/Teran/TBWA)..
jueves, marzo 20, 2008
Vampire Weekend M79
No existe el video pero en este link de youtube se puede oir la canción.
miércoles, marzo 05, 2008
martes, febrero 26, 2008
Wendy Sulca La Tetita
Gracias a Mel por semejante presentacion...
martes, febrero 12, 2008
lunes, febrero 04, 2008
sábado, febrero 02, 2008
martes, enero 01, 2008
Bachata... delicia...
gracias a Thea.. La bailarina, al final, queda embarazada... pero no dejen de ver lo que pasa alrededor en el minuto 2:40...
martes, diciembre 25, 2007
jueves, diciembre 13, 2007
martes, diciembre 04, 2007
Impresionante: Pruebas de supervivencia de algunos secuestrados
Vale la pena ver el de Jairo Duran Prieto...
martes, noviembre 27, 2007
Information Revolution: El compañero del anterior...the machine is us/ing us
Gracias a Juan Manuel Hoyos

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