My Summer Syllabus ("Maps of Time" & c.)

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Re: My Summer Syllabus ("Maps of Time" & c.)

Postby Avalon » Mon Sep 06, 2010 5:39 pm

I'm re-reading the thread, and still having the same objections to the literacy problem inherent in Grassie's proposal. But on a more practical level, I can see that at this point we've got both the wiki concept and informational graphics training working sufficiently well to have a go at a distributed, graphic (strictly non-verbal) version of Maps of Time. That is, as long as we don't get to the point of "My hard copy? I thought YOU were making a hard copy of it!" if TSHTF rather suddenly.

My inclination, however, is to get the very basic stuff covered first before atoms and galaxies. This is how you make soap. Wash your hands before handling food, after handling the sick or using the latrine, which you've placed away from your clean water source. There are ways of breathing that can get you through some situations, like childbirth. Abacus, plant and animal breeding, food combos that provide complete proteins. Spinning and crochet.
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Re: My Summer Syllabus ("Maps of Time" & c.)

Postby Wombaticus Rex » Mon Sep 06, 2010 5:51 pm

^^It would be awesome to have someone like Tufte working on a visual encyclopedia of human knowledge -- no literacy required.
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Re: My Summer Syllabus ("Maps of Time" & c.)

Postby Avalon » Mon Sep 06, 2010 6:22 pm

The field is still small enough that if anything happens to Tufte, there isn't another household name that comes up immediately as a replacement (and I'm saying that knowing that he's a household name in a very small number of households). But there are now enough people in the informational graphics field that a purely visual encyclopedia is a possibility now, though getting it reproduced on fairly permanent materials and distributed appropriately is another hurdle.
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Re: My Summer Syllabus ("Maps of Time" & c.)

Postby Wilbur Whatley » Mon Sep 06, 2010 11:03 pm

This is a wonderful thread! This is a great example of why I've kept lurking here for so many years, after abandoning so many other blogs.

At the moment I'm not reading fiction. My wife and I, in our late 50s, have just started a computer game programming course at a local college. It's killing us!

But we're still kicking butt over the 19-something slackers in the class! At least it appears that way so far.

Always worth rereading: VALIS by Philip K. Dick.
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Re: My Summer Syllabus ("Maps of Time" & c.)

Postby barracuda » Mon Sep 06, 2010 11:05 pm

I just went on Amazon and ordered three of the books on this thread, so I can play catch-up in the fall.
The most dangerous traps are the ones you set for yourself. - Phillip Marlowe
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Re: My Summer Syllabus ("Maps of Time" & c.)

Postby 82_28 » Mon Sep 06, 2010 11:17 pm

Of all the ways PKD told the VALIS story, Radio Free Albemuth is the best. And though not one of the VALIS trilogy, I can't recommend The Transmigration of Timothy Archer enough.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Free_Albemuth

In this alternate history the corrupt US President Ferris F Fremont (FFF for 666, Number of the Beast) becomes chief executive in the sixties. The character is best described as an amalgam of Joseph McCarthy and Richard Nixon, who abrogates civil liberties and human rights through positing a conspiracy theory centred around a fictitious subversive organisation known as "Aramchek". In addition to this, he is associated with a right-wing populist movement called "Friends of the American People" (Fappers).

Ironically enough, the President's paranoia and opportunism lead to the establishment of a real resistance movement to him, which is organised through eponymous radio broadcasts from a mysterious alien satellite, by a superintelligent, extraterrestrial, omnipotent being (or network) named VALIS.

As with its successor, VALIS, this novel is autobiographical. Dick himself is a major character, though fictitious protagonist Nicholas Brady serves as a vehicle for Dick's alleged gnostic theophany on February 11, 1974. In addition, Sadassa Silvia is a character who claims that Ferris Fremont is actually a communist covert agent, and that her mother recruited him for the Soviet Union after she joins the resistance.

As with VALIS, Radio Free Albemuth deals with his highly personal style of Christianity (or Gnosticism), as well as with the moral repercussions of being an informer for the authorities, and his dislike of the Republican Party, satirizing Nixon's America as a Stalinist or neo-fascist police state. Eventually, Fremont captures and imprisons Dick and Brady after the latter produces and distributes a record that urges subliminal messages of revolt against the Fremont dictatorship. Brady and Silvia are executed, and Dick narrates the concluding passage about his life in a concentration camp, where "his" latest work is penned by a ghost writer and regime-approved hack. Suddenly, he hears other music, with another subliminal message. As Dick hears children singing the tune, he realises that all may not be lost after all
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There is no me. There is no you. There is all. There is no you. There is no me. And that is all. A profound acceptance of an enormous pageantry. A haunting certainty that the unifying principle of this universe is love. -- Propagandhi
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Re: My Summer Syllabus ("Maps of Time" & c.)

Postby JackRiddler » Tue Sep 07, 2010 1:56 am

Wombaticus Rex wrote:Jack, have you ever read Doug Henwood's books? I got 'em all as a package deal. Wall Street was pretty perfect, but my favorite was definitely After the New Economy -- I think it's his sharpest, and definitely his most data-driven work. It really turned my head around on a lot of the economic concepts I was brought up on through school. (And yes, I was fortunate enough to go to an actual school.) I think After the New Economy would be something you'd enjoy a great deal if you haven't digested it already.


Not the books and I should. I know him from his WBAI program and his LBO (Left Business Observer) articles. Has definitely taught me things and he's always on the money. Last time I heard him was slightly timid, attributing recent crisis to failures and stupidity. I guess he wants to sound sober instead of crying, "Crime! Crime!," except that's what it is. Wall Street is out of print but a while ago he was giving away the PDF for free. I'll follow your recommendation, eventually -- really! -- but want first to finally get around to reading Wall Street, which would be chronologically correct. Very curious about it since it's from the 1990s and seems to have described the familiar dynamics that have continued (more dramatically).

Thanks!
We meet at the borders of our being, we dream something of each others reality. - Harvey of R.I.

To Justice my maker from on high did incline:
I am by virtue of its might divine,
The highest Wisdom and the first Love.

TopSecret WallSt. Iraq & more
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