StumbleUpon | alaingabriel's URL reviews

What Youll Wish Youd Known

Sat, 28 Mar 2009 12:57:37 -0700

"Look for smart people and hard problems. Smart people tend to clump together, and if you can find such a clump, it's probably worthwhile to join it. But it's not straightforward to find these, because there is a lot of faking going on.

To a newly arrived undergraduate, all university departments look much the same. The professors all seem forbiddingly intellectual and publish papers unintelligible to outsiders. But while in some fields the papers are unintelligible because they're full of hard ideas, in others they're deliberately written in an obscure way to seem as if they're saying something important. This may seem a scandalous proposition, but it has been experimentally verified, in the famous Social Text affair. Suspecting that the papers published by literary theorists were often just intellectual-sounding nonsense, a physicist deliberately wrote a paper full of intellectual-sounding nonsense, and submitted it to a literary theory journal, which published it."

Tools And Tech | Altitude Branding | Brand Elevation through Social Media

Wed, 25 Mar 2009 14:42:08 -0700

From the page: "I am a Material Girl and want to live in a Twitter World"

Collective Knowledge Systems: Where the Social Web meets the SemanticWeb

Mon, 23 Mar 2009 05:26:50 -0700

From the page: "The Vision of Collective Intelligence"

Iguane Xtet - Fresh new Caribbean jazz sound

Sat, 21 Mar 2009 14:10:46 -0700

From the page: "Fond� en 2002 en Guadeloupe, Iguane Xtet est form� de musiciens venant d'horizons divers. Les Antilles et l'Europe se retrouvent pour cr�er une musique aux influences vari�es, m�lant jazz, rock et musiques carib�ennes. La biguine, la mazurka, le funk, le jazz et le gwoka moderne s'entre-m�lent pour donner naissance � des compositions originales � la po�sie toujours pr�sente. Iguane Xtet nous invite ainsi � d�couvrir une fusion chaleureuse et color�e o� l'improvisation et l'�change sont rois. Musique �trangement famili�re et pourtant si nouvelle, elle dessine des ponts entre divers univers musicaux et ce dans un langage reconnu par tous."

Radical Notes - Being, Becoming and Breaking-Free: Peter McLaren and the Pedagogy of Liberation

Sat, 21 Mar 2009 10:12:26 -0700

And Robinson is correct in positing a crucial remaining question: What types of political vehicles will "interface" between popular forces and state structures? What's the relationship between the social movements of the left, the state, and political organisations? Previously the relationship was vertical (cultivating a top-down hierarchy), now it's horizontal (cultivating democratic social relations from the ground up). So what will eventually replace the neo-liberal model? Market capitalist models? Reformist models that will sustain the rule of capital? What are the forms of organisation we need to resist the rule of capital? At the level of the state as well as the public sphere. What political vehicles can the popular majorities create that can interface between popular forces and state structures? How can popular forces utilise state power in order to transform the state and bring about a socialist alternative to the capitalist law of value? According to Robinson, previously there was a vertical model. In the last 15 or 20 years, the emphasis has been on horizontal relations, networking among different social groups, and bringing about democratic relations from the ground up via participatory democratic forms of organisation. Here, indigenous organisations have taken the lead. We need countervailing forces from below - popular forces and movements of popular majorities from below that can put pressure on the state (where global forces pressure even revolutionary governments to moderate structural change), even when the state is working towards socialist ideals such as the case of Venezuela. What are the pedagogical implications in all of this? How can we look at critical pedagogy as a social movement, as a broad coalition of groups? How do we define pedagogy in this context? How is critical pedagogy a force for change that exists as much outside of schools as within them? These are questions that need exploring. And there are too few of us in the field of education engaging these questions.

Edge: THE FOURTH QUADRANT: A MAP OF THE LIMITS OF STATISTICS By Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Fri, 06 Mar 2009 17:21:07 -0800

Statistics can fool you. In fact it is fooling your government right now. It can even bankrupt the system (let's face it: use of probabilistic methods for the estimation of risks did just blow up the banking system).

Guadeloupe, Martinique, des sociétés marquées du sceau du déclassement

Sun, 01 Mar 2009 12:37:07 -0800

Guadeloupe, Martinique, des soci�t�s marqu�es du sceau du d�classement

The Wild Hunt & Quick Note: Agora Teaser Trailer

Fri, 27 Feb 2009 07:31:58 -0800

The movie "Agora", which chronicles the pagan philosopher Hypatia's attempts to preserve the collected wisdom of Alexandria, has released a teaser trailer.
"Agora" is scheduled for a mid-December 2009 release

Listology

Thu, 26 Feb 2009 06:30:05 -0800

From the page: "Lyrics to "Captain Nemo" performed by Sarah Brightman by celtchic "

Les amants de Karukère... - Face à face au Gosier

Sun, 22 Feb 2009 16:26:35 -0800

"
Face � face au Gosier Feb 21, '09 12:04 AM
by G�rard for everyone
Photos Patrick Gonfier
http://www.facebook.com/s.php?k=100000080&id=1569873516&ref=nf

Comme toujours en Guadeloupe tout et le contraire de tout...

Des gendarmes dont l'uniforme sort tout droit d'un film de science fiction, une belle route nationale et de mis�rables cases...

Des manifestants relativement bons enfants, une gendarmerie placide, un accident� �vacu�, un mangeur de banane...

Face � face oui, confrontation et r�pression non
"