I received an email from my colleague, Robin, who stated that he got this odd email. Trusting he would not send me anything like a virus or other problematic surprise, I clicked it. Ouch. Living in New York City these days prepares me for a lot, but nothing like this. I decided to reproduce it here for the full effect.

How to handle an irritating seat-mate on a plane
If you are sitting next to someone who refuses to let you travel quietly, follow these instructions:
1. Quietly and calmly open up your laptop case. 
2. Remove your laptop.
3. Start up.
4. Make sure the guy who is annoying you can see the screen.
5. Close your eyes, tilt your head up to the sky and move your lips like you are praying
6. Then hit this link

I showed it to a few friends, and they were all equally disturbed. I am sharing it here as I think it warrants discussion. Is this real? Alarmist? Funny? Racist? Stereotypical? Appropriate? Inappropriate? Callous? Fill in the blank ______.

It comes from the website of a talk show host, Neal Boortz. I am not familiar with him, but thought some people out there may be. What do you make of this?How do we make sense of a world like this? Can we? Is there sense to be made, or is this subject still too close and intimate? How do others outside the US feel? Perhaps my musing on this is just overreacting?

Aidan Henry recently wrote about how he wanted to learn more about his readers, and I have been thinking about how interesting this idea is. Now, I am not going to pretend I have a lot of readers, and while I do not really track my blogging stats, I do want to use this to partially share something about me right now, especially as I just celebrated my first anniversary of this blog.

Back then, I wrote:

I think silence and voice are elusive concepts that are so intertwined they cannot be seen independently. Silence means others can have a voice, and to have one’s voice means another is silenced.

Is it this simple? Who decides?

So, where am I today?

Well, I am still an instructional designer (though a senior one at this point) and an adjunct instructor (yes, a professor) at NYU Stern. I consult on organizational learning and communication issues more these days. I still conduct research in the fields of human resource development and adult education. I like philosophy, though appreciate it most when it is in an applied context, namely in the areas of political and social postmodern thinking (especially with issues of power and positionality and self-identity). I also really like love technology, primarily in its application to the above-mentioned things I do.

I expect this to further develop over the next year, as even dictionary definitions change over time as new experiences occur. I have certainly had no end of new experiences recently, and expect the same for the foreseeable future. I like to remain active and alive!

The New York Times had an interesting article in their Sunday Magazine about Hugo Chavez and how he is using profits from oil to support his vision of a socialistic Venezuela. While the Western concept of oil as belonging to whomever controls the land on which the equipment to get it out of the ground operates, one of the learnings I took from this article looks at it from another perspective. Can any person or company own these ancient reserves, or does it belong to the society itself under whose land the oil is drilled? Does Big Oil control oil since it could afford to lobby or bribe politicians to allow it to drill within state-controlled preserves or wildlife lands? Does oil belong to governments, to use as any other source of revenue? Does the oil belong to the people  (in Venezuela, the slogan states: El Petroleo es Nuestro!, loosely translated as The Oil Is Ours!), and thus nationalizing the oil reserves is a form of patriotism and duty of the govenerment to care for its citizens? Perhaps oil is more like a drug, where anybody who controls it and the potential wealth it brings wants to decide it is whatever is convenient, insofar as it maintains and supports the status quo for those in power? Perhaps oil is itself a necessary evil? 

Technorati Tags: Hugo Chavez, New York Times

So, here goes another conference proposal.

I am working on a research paper on post-modernism and HRD (Human Resource Development) for this conference in Lille, France, in May, 2008. The last paper I presented in the world of HRD was an overview of the literature which I presented in Halifax, Nova Scotia, last year. The theme of the conference this year is Developing Leaders and Managers, where an exploration into HRD and how it has been influenced by post-modern concerns and views cannot be underestimated. I just hope that the reviewers will agree with me!

I usually do not mention papers I am working on until (and if!) they get accepted, but December 14 is closer than it seems, and I can use all the encouragement I can get!

I missed seeing Fernando Botero’s Abu Ghraib paintings when they were in New York last year, and just learned about them in the current issue of GQ Magazine (sorry, there is not an article on their own site about this; how odd). Wow, they are strong. Amazing how the pain in the normally playful figures central to his work is depicted, and after reading about the struggles he had early in life in the violent Colombia of his youth, I can see how the depiction of the prisoners in the Iraqi prision moved him to represent this through his art. The juxtaposition of his style and this subject matter is disturbing, just as are the photos of the soldiers humiliating the prisoners themselves. I find it interesting that the painter has chosen not to sell any of the fifty or so works in this set; quite telling of how he views torture and those who profit through it.

Technorati Tags: Botero, Abu Ghraib

I seem to be on a free speech kick here (how better than to be true to one’s own beliefs?) when I see that the American Episcopalians have somehow met the demands of their Anglican counterparts to not ordain any more gay bishops and not to bless same-sex unions. At least from this article, it seems the Anglicans in England and Africa have succeeded in controling those Anglicans (Episcopals) in the US. Amazing the role religion still plays in the world outside of radical Islam. This demand by a group of conservative religious across the world to tell how the American church how to believe and act seems more and more like the same criticisms against Catholicism.

I thought that was why the Anglican Church was formed in the first place–to confront being told what to do by a corrupt group of wealthy men from far away? Perhaps history does repeat itself?

I feel I just lamented how Columbia handled the free speech issue when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad spoke there last week, when I read about Ayaan Hirisi Ali in today’s NY Times. She was a former member of the Dutch Parliament who left there and fled the Netherlands due to the credible death threats she received from Islamic extremists when she became critical of Islam. Hmm, this seems so unfortunate given the credibility the president of Iraq has been trying to gain by speaking at Ivy League USA about how the West has his country and people all wrong.

Granted, I do not know if their is a connection between Ayaan’s threats and Iran, but it seems to me that free speech should be done from and on both perspectives as a promotion of credibility. Then again, credibility seems somewhat subjective, doesn’t it?

I wish I could have seen Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinajad at one of my Alma Maters last week, Columbia. President Bollinger introduced him, but in a way harsher than I thought fair for A. A world leader, B. An invited guest, and C. A controversial speaker who may have alienated himself from the audience but after such a straw-man set-up, looked pretty decent in comparison. Free speech is the very reason I blog here, and I think that the president’s confrontational introduction of the other president helped to reinforce the very self-righteousness that the Iranians commonly accuse Americans. Forget about some of the strange (and incorrect) claims that the Iranian president offered (can there really have not been a Jewish Holocaust in the 20th Century, or can there really not be a single homosexual in Iran right now?), I am just thinking here about the freedom of speech and the politeness that should be shown to an invited guest and (like him or not) a world leader who may have nuclear weapons.You be the judge:

I am currently participating in a discussion entitled Active Learning Strategies for Online Learning at SCoPE, and one of the participants posted this image that struck me as very applicable to a host of learning issues. I used to believe that information could be dumped in, but have since learned that socio-cultural and historical factors make this impossible. No two people could ever learn the same thing in the same way–context is against it.

I think about how this exemplifies Paulo Freire and his criticism of traditional pedagogy as “banking” education. In this form, education is banked and thus controlled by those in power to choose a curriculum. All knowledge is conveyed through this lens, with what is considered right and wrong, good and bad, and just and unjust seen in this manner as being what should (morality?) be done. Power is thus maintained by promoting a worldview that protects the establishment, even while on the surface claiming to challenge it. There is no more certain way to challenge a social system than by challenging both the content as well as the methodology of its educational establishment.

It is no wonder why many in society complain about our current state of education, yet it seems nearly impossible to fundamentally change the system itself. That would disrupt many whose careers are built around promoting the very thing that they claim is wrong. I wonder, in a psychoanalytic way, if this is a veiled form of self-hatred?

Technorati Tags: Paulo Freire, SCoPE, banking education