I just uploaded my last liveblog post using ScribeFire, and will have to use it a bit more before I state that Windows Live Writer (WLW) is easier to use. I really liked Ecto, but without future Windows development and new features in WordPress that it does not support, why would I want to continue using that? Ecto is a really great program, but it needs a new version. BTW, I would gladly pay for it . . .

I just got a firewall notice that it just defended me against a cyber attack. That is ironic–criminal and malicious cyber attacks

while serving in my role as a prospective juror.

They are finally calling us . . .

I have been experimenting liveblogging from my jury duty while using Windows Live Writer, and decided it is now time to expand my horizons with ScribeFire. I have not used this program in several months, if not longer, and it seems there are now some changes to it.

Of course, going to my blog while trying to figure out some of the cryptic and somewhat lacking features of ScribeFire, I notice my blog is not working with FireFox. Instead, it just loads some of my images from Flickr. I wonder what is wring with my new WordPress install, to cause such trouble? I know my blog is working fine with Internet Explorer, but that is something much too in-depth for me to try to troubleshoot while awaiting being called to sit on a case.

BTW, why does ScribeFire call WordPress categories Tags? Where are WP keywords? Why aren’t there easier instructions for using ScribeFire?

Not knowing what to expect, I will try to post this liveblog now, as they indicated they will soon call us for a case.

Powered by ScribeFire.

Technorati Tags: ScribeFire, liveblogging

While wifi worked well for a short time this morning, it seems to now be down. I will continue to liveblog using Windows Live Writer and upload as network access becomes available.

I am typing this in a small room they have off to the side with some cubicles and some laptops. Very glad I brought my own.

Now that I am thinking about this, I believe my liveblogging experience here during jury duty will help my upcoming liveblogging presentation at Northern Voice 2008. I was planning to just talk about liveblogging using Ecto (formerly my favorite liveblogging and offline blogging application), but Ecto has not been updated in some time and does not run very well with Windows Vista. Their website states it will be updated, but the only indication I have for this is the set of Mac-based screen shots. I will thus plan to learn a lot about Windows Live Writer as a liveblogging tool, and will probably explore FireFox’s ScribeFire more as well.

Wifi is available again, so let me post this . . .

We handed in our jury selection paperwork and were explained as to our functions and the particulars about serving jury duty for the New York State Supreme Court. We were told how we will be expected to sit in on a number of trials until either we get selected for one or get dismissed tomorrow afternoon.

At least they allow computers and have freely available wifi. Nice to see my taxes at work. I just hope I get either dismissed or otherwise able to get to my new Business Communication class I am teaching on time tonight.

Technorati Tags: liveblogging, jury duty

I arrived to 111 Centre street for jury duty. After going through security and having my bag x-rayed, I arrived on the 11th floor and was greeted with a documentary film on justice. Ed Bradley narrated this film and spoke about trial by ordeal, the Code of Hammarabi, and justice during Medieval France and England.

The film is surprisingly good. There are video and movie clips, an engaging explanation of trial by ordeal (including a movie clip of being bound and thrown into the water to see if the person sinks and is therefore innocent). I learned about the important role of a jury, and how jurors are the only ones in the system who are entrusted with the ability and responsibility to determine truth and falsehood according to the laws and how people do and do not act in accordance with them.

This will be an interesting experience, and I will attempt to liveblog it as much as possible. I am using Windows Live Writer for this.

Technorati Tags: liveblogging, jury duty, justice

He will present the methodological foundation for his entire book.

Axel speaks with a smart German accent. Wow, he is reading his work. Not paraphrasing, but actually reading it.

The political changes have not been beyond social criticism. Wow, he just mentioned Foucault’s work.
Critical theory is out of the Hegelian tradition. The historical past should be understood in an historical way. Positive form in Horkheimer or Marcuse or negative in Adorno or Benjamin.

One of the main tasks today is to develop an alternative concept of justice (not a Kantian way), but rather from a Hegelian concept. From Hegel, the theory of justice is immediately an analysis of society. With Kant, there is a split between analysis and a concept of justice.

Division of left and right Hegelians, and the sense that existing institutions should be given moral legitimacy. In Germany, the revived sense of Hegelian justice. Axel wants to reconstruct Hegel’s theory of right. This can not be resurrected as is, but will need to look at it in light of current society and history.

Axel is concentrating of four premises:

1. Specific concept of society to presuppose of justice. The ordering of society shape the actions of its members into mechanism of different social practices in different spheres. The members of society normally follow the norms that have been established. The economically subsystem as a normative aspect of society. The idea that we should understand society as objective spirit. The notion of objective spirit as an analysis of all of society.
2. Justice as imminent claim of all societies. For Hegel and those in his tradition, such as Marx, the notion of justice indicates the binding intention to render everybody his or her due. Thus, others should be treated in a manner required by different aspects, dependent on the differences of people. What is just is what produces actions in a given society with an ethical distribution of labor. All people produce different amounts and are complementary way. In taking up Hegel’s approach we have to refrain from taking up structures in society before judging them. This immanent approach

• liveblogging is tough when the content is tough. Not much of the this is what I will say, here I am saying it, and this is what I said!

No wonder the Symposium has not yet started; that welcome is outside the room where the presentations will take place. I have no energy to go out there, so will sit here and type and check email. Isn’t liveblogging interesting? It is like longer Twittering. Perhaps Twitter (without formatting or image inserts or tags) is really a liveblogging application?

Technorati Tags: liveblogging

The symposium was started in 1980 by Reiner Shurmann, the chair of the philosophy department at the time. The purpose was to look at the contemporary issues that were important to Hannah Arendt’s thinking. Reiner chaired the philosophy department for many years, especially during the time when the administration was considering eliminating the program.

It was through his efforts that the philosophy department exists and thrives today.

Nancy Fraser gave the introduction.

Many important thinkers have spoken at this symposium.

Critical Theory Today is the theme for this year. It is narrow in that it is associated with the thinkers of the Frankfurt School (even the New School

there is also a broader meaning of critical theory, which also has connections with the NSSR, that include reflections on what(ever) meanings of emancipation means.

Critical theory, in both senses, is at a crossroads, as it is a time for cross-disciplinary work and dialogue for what critical theory should be. The hard and fast lines between the Frankfurt School and french post-structuralism, and critical theory is becoming much more inter-disciplinary sense–incuding historians and sociologists. To foster this cross-disciplinary and cross-paradigm was to bring together the five most interesting thinkers as people who can be identified with charting a path in critical theory today.

This is thus a symposium to get a glimpse at some possible futures.

Jay Bernstein introduced Axel Honneth, the director of the Institute of Critical Theory in Frankfurt. Jay said he has made a distinctive contribution within critical theory. Axel has innovated and provided a vision for making critical theory sensitive and applicable to a variety of cases. He is the image of where critical theory will go after Habermas.