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Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Introducing Caleb!!!

David and Olivia Nelson are proud to announce the birth of their amazing, wonderful, beautiful, healthy son, Caleb James Nelson!
Caleb James Nelson
Caleb was born Wednesday, September 8, 2010 at 10:35am. He was born weighing 3.95kg and was 55cm long (approx. 8lbs 11oz and 21.5 in).

He is a wonderful child. On average he eats every couple hours, but sometimes he'll give us 3.5-4 hour naps in between feedings. He is able to be loud when he cries, but fortunately this is rare. At night he usually gives us about five minutes of smacking before he even starts to cry for food. I think he takes after his father in that he is strong. Though he is a newborn he can lift his head and look around (briefly). He is gassy, seeming to stink up the vicinity around him frequently (which I think is normal).

He is in a house surrounded by people that love him. We were blessed enough to have Olivia's mother and my parents here for the birth and a little while afterward. They told us they came to help us out, they just neglected to mention the specifics of this help would mainly be helping to hold, hug, kiss, and love on their newest grandson.

If you would like any pictures of Caleb just ask as we have a few thousand of him already. This boy's grandparents should not be referred to as grandparents but grand-paparazzi.

The Delivery and Hospital Stay
After many months of preparing, planning, and praying; it all came down to the final moments. I woke up at 2am to my wife nudging my shoulder telling me that her water had just broken. I cooly and calmly got out of bed and said "Okay, let's go". I was then told we have to wait until the contractions start and get to be about five minutes apart. Being 2am I was thinking, "Okay, I'm going back to sleep it's going to be a long day", but being sensible, I asked, "Okay, what else do we need to do before we go to the hospital?" We then spent about 20 minutes gathering the last of the items together that were on the list the hospital had given us, and put them in Liv's pregnancy bag.

So after everything was gathered we jumped back in bed and were going to sleep as much as we could getting ready for the day ahead. This unfortunately was not going to happen. Almost right away Olivia's contractions started, and they started quickly. The first one came, then six minutes later the second one followed, then 5 minutes later the third came, then 3 minutes later the fourth came. And from that point forward contractions were coming consistently every 2.5 minutes. Needless to say we woke everyone on the house up and got out the door as quick as we could! (Liv going as quickly as she could down the stairs since our elevator was still broken).

All the way to the hospital I was going over in my mind what I had read the day before on how to deliver a baby if you don't make it to the hospital. We were rushing! It was 2:30 am so the roads were clear. And I was looking forward to flying down the road reaching the hospital with a couple police cars in chase. Of course, for a couple reasons that didn't happen. Every light we came to was green, we saw no police, and if you have driven in Ukraine you know that the condition of the roads is not good enough to speed along with a pregnant lady on board.

Once at the hospital though, things slowed down. As most of you know, Olivia and I have been studying the Russian language since we moved here. Unfortunately, despite the progress we have made, we struggled to communicate as well as we would like in a hospital setting with medical terms. This is something that we were expecting when we decided to deliver here, but we felt confident enough that we would be able to handle it. Obviously it all worked out, but at the time with the added stress from a baby about to come and it being very early in the morning it was difficult.

I won't go into a lot of details about the deliveries, but I will share a few things that were significant to us.

The overall attitude of doctors here is that they are the doctors who know what they are doing so we need to let them do whatever they want. I do admit that the doctors here do know more than I do, but it is extremely frustrating for a doctor or nurse to give me an annoyed look and shake her head no as a response to me asking what they were about to inject my wife with. It goes against everything we have have experienced medically in the States and New Zealand. There the doctors inform the patients as to what is going on, what they are doing, and ask what they would like done, leaving the decision in the patients hands. That is not the case here in Ukraine. Here, we the patients do not know what is best for us, therefore there is no need for us to know what is going on.

Delivery was... interesting. Going into this I knew that I did not want to be anywhere except by Liv's head when she was delivering. I had no desire to be anywhere else. I have no problem with blood or anything, I have a problem with smells. I'd like to think I have a very very sharp sense of smell and that is why bad smells really get to me, but really I probably just can't handle bad smells. But when it all started happening, I was there for my wife doing everything that I needed. When she was in too much pain and too tired to even understand what the doctor was saying, I was there telling here when to push, breath, and relax. When the doctor asked her to try delivering standing up, I was under her arm holding her up. When the doctor told her she needed to hold her legs back further, I was there helping her do this. When the doctor needed me to start pushing on Liv's belly to help her out, I was there pushing. Before we went to the hospital, I wasn't interested in being anywhere except by Liv's head, but when the moment came I wanted to do everything I could to help Liv do her job.

Our hospital stay lasted from 2:30am on Wednesday morning to noon on Saturday. And our time there was an eye opener. Usually only the mother and child can stay up there, and visiting hours are from 11am to 6pm. But for us they made an exception. Because we had the hospital's head doctor as our doctor, we were able to have special privileges that others did not have. I was able to stay the whole time with Olivia without leaving. And when we had guests, they did not have to have the required chest x-ray to come and visit us. All throughout the day starting at 6am we had nurses and doctors bursting into the room asking for the temperature of the mother and baby, dropping off water to wash Caleb's eyes, coming in and stabbing Caleb's big toe and taking his blood, checking how Liv is recovering, making her go get an x-ray, making her give blood, telling her how she needs to feed the baby, telling us to open the window to let fresh air in, then another nurse telling us to close one window and open the other one, then another one telling us off for having windows open with a baby in the room, etc. Seems like every time the baby had just started to fall into a deep sleep, the nurse would barge in and mop the floor. All in all I think it was probably pretty close to how hospital stays go worldwide, it was just extra trying for us, because the only English spoken to us was "September 15", and more than half of the staff we dealt with did not exercise much patience with us in our inability to speak/understand Russian fluently.

Probably the most frustrating thing for me though was the very frequent trips to the hospital pharmacy. A few weeks before the due date we met with the Hospital consultant (with an interpreter) and received a run-down on how everything would go as well as a list of everything that we would need at the hospital. Well, come to find out the list they gave us only contained about a tenth of the things that we would need, and almost half of the things mentioned on that list were not necessary at all. When the nurse would come around and tell Olivia to bring her gloves for a blood test and we didn't already have them, we would then be told off for not having gloves when we were supposed to have already gotten them. Same thing with the x-ray paper, for some reason unimaginable to them, we did not realize we were supposed to have brought our own x-ray paper. In the end there were many trips to the pharmacy to buy yet another item that they expected us to have, but no one informed us that we needed.

I hope I am not sounding too negative about our hospital experience. There were a lot of great things about the hospital stay as well. Like I mentioned before, our doctor was the head doctor, and she went out of her way to make sure our stay there was as nice as possible. She was very friendly and accommodating. She was not the only wonderful person there, there was a nurse that would come and spend about ten minutes with us everyday that we got to talk with. She was very nice and complimentary of our language saying we speak very well and with a very good accent. Especially compared to the other foreigners she has met in Ukraine. We know that we will be remembered at that hospital for awhile, and hope that through our contact with the head doctor, we may be able to participate in some sort of ministry there at the hospital.

One last comment about the hospital. The first day there they had no running water. Yes that's right, there was a group of about six nurses that filled up hundreds of buckets and distributed them to all the toilets, and rooms of the hospital. At the six hour mark after delivery, when they have the mothers get up and take a shower to clean up, they brought Olivia a bucket and ladle saying that she needed to hurry and wash up before the water gets cold. Yeah, this is Ukraine, what can I say.

Now that we are home, Olivia is recovering, and Caleb is sleeping and eating well. We look back and laugh at our hospital experience. At times it was frustrating and at times made us regret not leaving the country to give birth, but now we are past it and can laugh about it. And we are extremely happy and proud parents now.

We were blessed by God that nothing went wrong, that there were no complications, and that Caleb was born healthy. We thank God for taking care of us, and we thank all of you who have been praying for us as well.

Thank you God for giving us an amazing son!

Jocelyn said...

thank you for the post and pictures! Caleb is so handsome and you both look so happy in the pics! Levi was 3.89 kg and 21.5 inches, so very similar is size to caleb, so maybe that is part of why i think Caleb is just an extra cute baby. I'm so glad for the answered prayer of a short labor and safe delivery. In the US (i'm a labor and delivery nurse) all you have to bring is your pregnant self, everything else is provided...so i was interested by how little they provided. Thanks for sharing.
Congratulations! Can't wait to see more of the zillion pictures :)

KIrt said...

Liv and David, Thanks for sharing this. I have not heard very much and it was good to hear. I am enjoying all the pics, thanks for sending me some hardcopies!

Michael said...

You did it! See you in a couple months.

Allan said...

Awesome pictures! Wonderful story! Amazing God! I can't wait to share the pics of that little preacher with your loving church family at Legacy. We love y'all so much and can't wait to see Caleb --- and you two, also --- in November.

Katie said...

Wow! What an experience! So glad you can laugh about it now. Love you both. So proud of you guys! Can't wait to see you on Skype and meet little Caleb. :)

Jeanette said...

What? You don't bring your own x-ray paper to your appointments, you are so weird! LOL
Thank you for sharing your birth story.

Xiang Nan said...

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Being ‘against’ the edublog awards… wait… what?

So I had full intention of ignoring this issue, but it’s simply become too interesting to not discuss a little bit. I’ve also noticed, upon re-reading this post, that I’m a little biased. I beg forgiveness, as I (and others) worked hard on this event, and we do it, for the largest part, for the fun of contributing.

There have been any number of folks who are creating identity by being ‘against’ the edublog awards. There are any number of bits of social commentary hidden inside this expression alone, and in the number of comments as well, but I’ll confine my deconstruction to the discussion held at Doug Belshaw’s blog and while I was going to comment on Downes’ comment on oldaily, the points seem essentially the same. The point here is to assess why people feel the need to be ‘against’ the awards instead of simply not liking them. Why, given the long tail metaphor that most of us like, should people who blog about education feel the need to be ‘against’ something (a duality, usually) rather than observing it as a different cross-section of the community to which they don’t belong.
Doug’s post details three reasons for which he is ‘against’ the edublog awards. I’ll lay out each of his three posts with a little deconstruction along with it.

1. They foster competition instead of collaboration and co-operation

Doug makes a comparison between the Edublog Awards and graded courses that end in a final exam. And claims that, much like these courses, students are encouraged to be competitive rather than collaborative. Well… lets give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that he meant to include the idea that the exam course was ‘scaled’ and that not all students could get the top grade. This presumes a monolithic edublog ‘club’ in which the part of the community interested in voting plays the role of teacher, and, given an agreed set of ‘objectives’, that all year that group is measuring wether or not each blog is being ‘popular’ (or say populist) enough to make the ‘top grade’.
In here, also, is the presumption that everyone who was voted for is somehow in this for the award and is just trying to ‘make the grade’ rather than blogging for whatever reason they might be doing so.

So far we seem to have identified a cabal, a populist set of critireon assuring high grades, and a subservient group of bloggers who are ‘blogging to the test’. I don’t think that Doug would agree that he meant this… but these things seem implied to me. If it ‘creates competition’ then the bloggers must be effected… those bloggers are educators, like Doug. Yet Doug and the many who agree with him are not affected. This seems to create a distinction between ‘bloggers who blog all year in order to get an edublog award’ and those that ‘don’t feel the need to do this.’

Who are these bloggers so affected by the Edublog awards? When we take ‘imaginary people who blog to be graded’ down to real cases, it starts to sound a little more insulting. I don’t think that I’m one… and Edtechtalk did win one this year. In the 2 or 3 hundred hours I poured into that community this year (i really have no idea… alot) I don’t think a single decision was affected by my ‘desire to win’. I think it’s quite gratifying to some people in the community that we won… although I never heard any campaigning on the network. I’m sure there are others who don’t care much… haven’t heard from them.

2. They’re promoted by people who have vested interests
For this point, the fact that Josie and James are consultants is apparently the critical issue. (No mention of me or Jeff, Jokay, or the jokadians who worked so tirelessly to build all that cool SL stuff, so maybe our intentions were pure) More specifically, they are being paid as educators who aren’t in a traditional institution. (Interesting note here, one of Josie’s main areas of work as a consultant over the last 18 months has been trying to improve awareness about bullying on the internet.)
I notice that Doug is using a wordpress blog at and this seems like a really great example of how things that are given away for free (wordpress is free blog hosting software, I also use it here) and mostly made by people who are paid to work in software. Should we boycott wordpress because the people who created the software are paid programmers? My friends who develop drupal modules are betting paid consultants for their success. If Lullabot (a drupal consulting company) were to organize and award list… should we be ‘against’ it? How many bloggers out there are not paid, in some way, in the education sphere? I’m a paid consultant, and my participation in edtechtalk has resulted in paying contracts… conference presentations and wonderful prizes (well… maybe not that), but that’s not why I participate. (see Terry Freedman’s “Everyone has a vested interest” in the comments.)
And, as for Warlick’s tip jar, that’s a great idea. But, I believe, he also makes money as a consultant besides. And good on ‘im.

Money, in some people’s minds, poisons everything. Those people in the dirty business of earning it are not to be trusted… by extension, if they were not making money, they would be ‘more’ trustworthy. There is a definite division here between ‘real’ educators and ‘capitalists’ involved in education for purely monetary reasons. I’ve never understood this division, and why Josie should somehow get grouped in with Blackboard because she, occasionally (and not in this case) gets paid for her time devoted towards bettering education.

3. It’s very easy to rig them
Agreed. But, then, every award since the dawn of time has been, in some sense, rigged. This seems to be about being ‘against’ awards generally. In terms of campaigning for votes? If I campaign to have people vote for me, I have claimed a particular kind of identity… it says something about me. What that is, will change depending on who you are. I can understand people saying they don’t like it… but by what standard would people feel the need to claim that this is ‘wrong’.

I’m not sure if this is the ‘i don’t like what’s popular’ popular angle or not… it may just be the thing that was put because Doug wanted three things.

There are some very interesting comments my favourite being from Karl Goddard, who I sincerely hope was joking with his comment “I’m a doer rather than a blogger”… As if all that is done in the bloggosphere is the recycling of the rest of the bloggosphere. This is my favourite identity move, but, of course, he’s saying he doesn’t like blogging… not the edublog awards.

I’ve gotten this off my chest and managed to clear my mind about how I feel about this. Sadly, if you’ve gotten this far it’s probably because you agreed with me to begin with…

It is only natural I suppose, for people to identify themselves around events of import… in a sense it shows that, to some people, the edublog awards must mean something. I think this was my fourth one… and to me it’s a yearly top ten list, some time trying to put together a show that people will enjoy, and some new avenues for exploration… I guess I am ‘for’ the edublog awards. 🙂

Author: dave

I run this site... among other things.

15 thoughts on “Being ‘against’ the edublog awards… wait… what?”

  1. I like the edublog awards but someone on Twitter did point out that it would be just as effective without the hierarchy and voting and I think they’ve a fair point there. I like the focus on sites and bogs and activity generally – a list from the community about the community under different sections without anything else would be just as good I reckon. But it’s been a good lively debate nevertheless 🙂

    1. It’s a societal performance either way. I’m not sure it would be ‘just as effective’ it would be different, and that other thing happens all the time. There is something to be said for laying aside the ‘prom queen’ mentality we’ve inherited from the post war west… but I’d like to think that the awards are tongue ‘n cheek enough to poke fun at themselves as much as ‘reward the ‘winners”. Primarily… they’re fun for those who participate. Like (spoiler alert) the invention of a mythical fatman who brings presents in order to create ‘wonder’ we have the invention of ‘supposedly’ important prizes to generate ‘excitement’. As long as everyone is in on it, and everyone realizes that while the admiration is genuine, the format is staged… then all is well.

  2. Good post and good points.
    As someone who was nominated both last year and this year (in different categories), I felt mixed on the matter — I was honored that anyone bothered to read my blog and then felt strongly enough to nominate me, and yet, it seemed odd to pick out just a few from the many great sites out there.
    So, I see both sides of the coin, and I guess I am OK with that, too. We can have some dichotomy in the world.
    Overall, I liked that I found new blogs and new links to follow through the nominating process. Anytime we can uncover a new colleague or resource … that’s a good day.
    Take care,

  3. Is there some place where those of us who don’t give a shit can register our non-opinions? On second thought, I don’t care enough to even register my non-opinion about this non-event. 🙂

    1. LOL. but that kinda is the point isn’t it… why is it a negative opinion. The internet gives us so much access, and the ability to publish so much, that we feel the need to publish something about something we don’t care about. Imagine if you wrote something about everything in you home town that you didn’t care about. Lets take the School Christmas pageant. Would you post 6 “i don’t care”s one for each elementary school class? Well… maybe some of you do 🙂 and it would be funny… just not to some of the kids. Now, on the other hand, there are some very interesting points to explore about this kind of thing… What I’m talking about is tone and identity. Saying “i find it interesting that people feel the need to call all their friends and get them to vote, it might be because they want to use this award to leverage their career… actually, I emailed Vicki Davis and asked her why… and she said it was because it got her students very excited (I didn’t, this is just an example, and vicki said on doug’s blog that she had asked people to vote for her)”

      This is an important issue… it brings up how we use winning in our classrooms all the time, even though we claim we try not to… It’s collaborative victory, but really just a moved pattern, not one we’ve gotten rid of… it also has the potential to create… blah blah blah. Why “i’m against it” when it is such a nice platform for interesting discussion?

  4. I do thank you for writing your post……..

    but I still stand by my wish that they take away the 1st, 2nd, 3rd ratings unless there is a way to not “rig” the awards with people who are able to tilt in their favor.

    and I really do like the fact that this year there were so many new people/blogs/wikis/etc to check out to see what they share.

  5. Thanks for the reasoned blog response, Dave. 🙂

    You ask why I have to be ‘against’ the awards rather than just ‘not liking’ them. It’s because I don’t think they’re good for the health of the edublogosphere (if such a thing still exists). Just like opponents to smoking in public places felt the need to be ‘against’ it – because of a health threat – so I’m against these awards.

    I’ve got NO problem with people getting public recognition and thanks for their work. I just questin the format and wonder whether it doesn’t lead to distortion.

    My suggestion? Have a worldwide ‘Edublog day’ where educational bloggers blog about 5 blogs to which they want to draw their readers’ attention. Why on earth do we need a voting process?

    1. But you can have that Doug… just organize it. Why does it need to be ‘one thing’? Why the duality? And no, I don’t think that the Edublog Awards are like smoking in public places… or that the edublogosphere ‘exists’ or has ever beyond the many different ways in which people use that word…

      Your comment here is a nice microcosm of what I’m talking about.
      1. first one… thanks. Not sure if you’re being sarcastic but, text is a weird medium 🙂
      2. This is the part that I find worrying, discussed below.
      3. Question is good, would like to hear more about what you mean by distortion and what it is that is being distorted
      4. This is a great idea, and the response to the question is that it generates excitement… and running events is based on excitement.

      Do you want to police this perceived ‘edublogsphere’ so that it conforms to your ideals. How would you know if your view is sufficiently complex for ALL of us to follow? Why should we have only one set of ideals? Are you sure that competition is bad?

      Your questioning of the format is great. Question it! It deserves it! Work on it (or something else) to bring about the vision that you are interested in. But your post did not critique the edublog awards, it was an identity performance of your personal beliefs against “competition”, “money” and the “idea of awards”. Hence my response.

  6. Where exactly did I say I ‘didn’t like blogging’?

    I said I tend to be too busy sourcing, developing and implementing ed tech resources to be able to actually sit down and write blog posts on subjects that have already been blogged about numerous times.

    I could write endless posts or tweets about every single thing I do as part of my digital life, but I choose not to – as I generally don’t have the time to do so.

    ergo the comment I’m a doer rather than a blogger.

    So please in future post a direct quote from any comments I make and don’t make something up, which you clearly have done by stating I don’t like blogging.

    1. My interpretation of your comment on my blog… is that you don’t like blogging. I do a fair amount of “sourcing, developing and implementing” and find that blogging and “twittering every part of my digital life” actually makes me more efficient, because it avoids duplication… Community building being one of the key outcomes of blogging. Being open to critique is another one of those… and, clearly, you don’t like mine. (fairly, though, there are lots of others you might be quite open to)

      Interpretations are made up, in a sense, but they are mine to make up. I quoted you and then interpreted. And, if I find your comments somewhere again, will do so in exactly the same manner. 🙂

  7. You’re ‘critique’, as you put it, was grossly inept.

    I am not ‘against’ the vast majority of all things ed tech, including blogging. I actively promote blogging with my school and other schools in my LA.

    To make such a comment as ‘he doesn’t like blogging’ is taking interpretation to the extreme and I do take that as a personal insult to the work I have done promoting new technologies over the past 7 years with primary, secondary and FE establishments.

    In fact I’d have to say your tabloid level ‘interpretation’ of what I posted was possibly only intended to give your original viewpoint a touch of credibility. Considering you simply made something up, leaves me with a very low opinion of your abilities to make objective commentary on others views.

    To clear things up for you, as you seem unable to do so for yourself, I am not ‘against’ blogs. I just can’t see the value or point in Edublog awards – I am not against them either.

    Finally, feel to pass comments on any future posts I make. I’ll happily keep pulling you up if you misquote me / plainly lie again.

    Should you wish to correspond, I’ll welcome your email(s).

  8. Hi Karl,

    Thanks for your response. Your judgment on my skill level is noted, but I don’t think that I was claiming that my interpretation of your comment was qualitatively good, but, rather, that I had quoted you exactly and then interpreted it in my own way. Which, I believe, to be the soul of blogging.

    I expect the ‘value’ that people receive from my postings to be different depending on their point of view and willingness to adapt to my particular idiom. I thank you for providing me with the far extreme (so far) of those who don’t like it.

  9. Get over it, Karl. Admittedly, I haven’t read every post and every comment on the Edublog awards, and find the entire discussion about whether we need to have awards for educational blogging to be pointless.

    But based on your comment on Doug’s post, I too would interpret that as a criticism of educational blogging. In your comment, you are implying that there are people in the blogosphere who are so busy writing about the same old things that they don’t bother to try to implement any of the ideas/tools/resources/etc, and that you’re not one of them. You’re dismissing the edublog awards as a back-patting party for a small group of people who constantly recycle the same old thing.

    I don’t have a problem with that opinion. But Dave’s conclusion that you don’t like blogging, or, perhaps better put, that you don’t see the value in edublogging, is a valid one based on that comment. Based on the dismissive tone in your comment, I find it hard to reach any other conclusion.

  10. Karl,

    I think Dave likes to be provocative. It is why so many people follow him and read his blogs – he likes the conversation. Get him going on “One Laptop Per Child” sometime. Your conversation with him probably resulted in more followers for you also.

  11. John, Gary… firstly ‘Hi’ to you both 🙂 Don’t know either of you but thanks for your take / comments on my post(s).

    My point with Dave is, to give a loaded example, if I were to say ‘I don’t like the Oscars, I find them to be a load of old claptrap’ could one infer that I didn’t like movies just because I don’t like film industry awards?

    No. One would be an idiot for making that assumption.

    Dave, from his ‘interpretation’ of my post, falls into that category for blindly (and quite wrongly) second guessing what the orientation of my post was. Several other folks have called me out via email for the post I made and I gave them my reasoning behind my post. They seemed satisfied with my response – new edu-tech friends have been made and all is well with the world again 🙂

    I still object to someone who neither knows me or any of the work I do to make such a rash comment as ‘Karl, clearly doesn’t like blogging’.

    That is just simply nonsense. But he’s entitled to his opinion – I called him out on it -I invited him to discuss the points I made via email… my Gmail inbox is still sans Cormier.

    To reiterate, I *personally* can’t see any true ‘value’ in the Edublogs awards and I’m VERY strongly in favour of Belshaw’s suggestion (see his post for his ideas). As a side note I also don’t really favour most ‘awards’ ceremonies – but that’s just me 🙂

    I love edu tech. I love blogs. I promote the use of blogs for educational purposes… hell I’m even spending Christmas Day arguing my point on a blog and earlier today took time out from cooking Christmas lunch to set up another blog for a Year 10 and Year 11 Art project ready for next term.

    Not bad going for blogging Luddite, eh?:)

    And to qualify my comments of edu blogging in general… I find there is a lot of duplication on edublogs. One guy Tweets about a ‘new tool’ he’s found… a week later and there’s 20 blog posts on what this ‘new tool’ does by the guys who follow him on Twitter. If Dave wants to call me out on that comment, I’ll back up my opinion with evidential posts from multiple blogs on the same subject within a short time frame.

    Anyway, that’s as much reiteration and clearing up as I’m willing to participate in for one year. Thank God 2009 is only a week away then!!

    Merry Christmas Garry and John!

    Dave sling an email over to me if you’re up to it (only joking! Merry Christmas, mate)

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Sherry Turkle – the flight from conversation… a response

In today’s New York Times post Sherry Turkle talks about the value of conversation AND solitude and the limitations of digital connection. It’s a difficult piece to read, not for its overfocus on context/stories/facts or for its technical language, it lacks both, but for the way it which it will polarize the reader. You probably know already whether you will like it. She critiques the new technologies of connection for both cheapening conversation and eliminating solitude. In this piece I’m going to try and unravel one of these arguments from the whole and address the way that Turkle hearkens back to an imaginary past where people had long, meaningful conversations with each other about what was important to them… she creates a simulacrum.

The unravelling – solitude good, but not relevant
The points that are made in the article about solitude are very compelling. I think she’s entirely right about the slow dying of solitude, and the need for free thinking space. I think that I as a person and as a parent need to model the value of alone time, of thinking time, of device free time. This is not new, the radio and the TV have started this process… and my Galaxy SII has continued it. All true. It is not, however, either the title or the direction of the article. It is an entirely separate stream of very reasonable arguments that seem, at first, to support her main thesis… That conversation is being turned away from, when in fact it has nothing to do with it.

So. Out with the solitude arguments. The author’s long walks on the beach and her advice to take free quiet alone time is well noted and not relevant to the argument.

To conversation

The piece is difficult in that it claims a great deal of research (presented in Alone Together) but cherry picks out a few anecdotal examples meant to illustrate her points. This confuses things, as it seems to draw on the history of research… where one would expect someone trying to see the whole story, and yet we only hear of the examples of people connecting superficially.

  1. A boy who wants dating advice from a computer, because it has more data to work with
  2. a nursing home resident who is comforted by a mechanical seal
  3. another 16 year old hoping to learn how to have real conversations some day
  4. a business person sitting down with all their technology and putting on headphones

These are all visceral examples… we see the future of relationships ruined, a poor old lady in a nursing home deceived, and, most importantly, the end of conversation. The idea, one supposes, is that we are replacing the excellence and ‘good for you’ challenge of the messy face2face conversation between humans with other fill ins. I will leave aside those of you who take comfort in music, dogs, cats, chocolate and the thousands of other things we use to comfort ourselves and let you all defend your non-human ways of connecting. I want to look at how she describes what conversation ‘used to be’… or at least, what it can be.

What turkle says about conversation
With each of these quotes, we are left to understand that these are the kinds of conversation that our two young people, our nursing home resident, our business person and ourselves will be having.

FACE-TO-FACE conversation unfolds slowly. It teaches patience.

Face-2-face conversation mostly doesn’t and never has unfolded slowly. It teaches power. In many conversations people express their own personal power over each other, whether it be in their right to speak, to speak first, to control the direction of conversation and it’s content. Equally true i would say. There are a very few people with whom i EVER have slow patient conversations with. I have met some of them online and never in person. My partner is one of them. They are rare and beautiful… but not common. I leave it to you to tell me if they were EVER common.

Self-reflection in conversation requires trust. It’s hard to do anything with 3,000 Facebook friends except connect.

Self-reflection requires confidence (and maybe trust). It requires the courage to look deeply into yourself and see the good and well as the bad. To think about it and share it is difficult. Connected, probably, to her points about solitude but not about conversation. Blogging has been doing self-reflection very well… for years. I share my self-reflections as many other people do with my blog through twitter or Facebook.

If there were anything challenging about social media its the massive amount of self-reflection that i see… sometimes i have to turn it off being overloaded with it. Finding self-reflection in face2face conversation can be very difficult… I’ve collected some very, very good friends over my life, and that’s one of the things that I look for. It is hard… and again, not that common.

During the years I have spent researching people and their relationships with technology, I have often heard the sentiment “No one is listening to me.” ” Have we so lost confidence that we will be there for one another?”

This is used as an explanation for why people turn to social media… that they need to find someone to connect with. Certainly in our case, baby-loss was one of those things. If it hasn’t happened to you, it is very difficult to listen to someone else talk about it. People find like-experienced people through social media… they connect, and share. It’s good. Finding someone who can talk to you, who can listen to you is very important. And easier if you have a wider network. I have seen sad tweets from friends, and called them to setup some time to talk… or at least called them just to talk. Social media is part of my life… on and offline line.

When was this point in the past when we HAD confidence in each other? I can’t imagine. Was there some magical past when we could look next door, when we needed someone to comfort us, and someone was available to listen to us? Not in my past.

Most of all, we need to remember — in between texts and e-mails and Facebook posts — to listen to one another, even to the boring bits, because it is often in unedited moments, moments in which we hesitate and stutter and go silent, that we reveal ourselves to one another.

Absolutely. But this isn’t because of texts or emails or facebook… it’s because of life. ANd has ALWAYS been because of life.

The simulacra
Sherry Turkle has been at this for a long time. She has a cutting eye for seeing the in-between space of how technology influence our own lives. In this new york times piece she does an excellent job arguing for solitude. I yearn for it… and agree with her. When she turns to conversation, she loses me entirely. She has either had a uniquely perfect life filled with excellent and constantly available friends, or she has not been honest with herself. She is hearkening back to a past that never existed. Creating an image of perfection, of utopia, before the present time. Baudrillard called this a simulacra. One of the famous examples is ‘main-street’ USA at Disney. A perfect past, from the 50’s, where everyone was friendly, where yards were clean, people had job and all was happy. And a past, obviously, where everyone had profound, slow, supportive conversations with each other. But only at Disney.

Sherry. Look at this website. Tell me how this connection is like what you describe. The technology can make this happen, and it can allow us to be fantastically superficial. Just like everything. Turning off the computer does not equal ‘better’ conversation.

Author: dave

I run this site... among other things.

47 thoughts on “Sherry Turkle – the flight from conversation… a response”

  1. Thank you. I’ve saved this for my summer teaching.

    Another thing she misses, and it is not your job to catch everything, is that she is really only thinking about her personal experiences/desires and not those who are different. As an autistic adult, I learned to communicate through technology, though this was long before social media existed. I rely on social media (though not Facebook) to maintain and nurture my social network. I have many friends who I cannot meet in real life, not just because of distance, but because there are few people I can actually be around without melting down. And I usually fill up my load of meeting people at work and have no stamina left for friends. I have a great and wonderful social life because of technology, and I would be much more isolated without it.

    I have many friends who, though neurotypical, also have problems engaging. They are bed bound or wheelchair users, who cannot or cannot afford to travel. Some can’t speak, some are isolated on small islands or on different sides of the planet. I’ve been lucky enough to fly to meet some of them, and even fly them to where I live for a day or two, but our lives and our endless long winded conversations happen online. They use speech to text so I can read them (listening to speech is too slow for me, so I have multiple simultaneous conversations).

    Sherry thinks not so much of a simulacra, because her ideal location has happened to someone, and probably is happening right now, but as Lefebvre writes in his book on space, there was a brief location when we knew what this was like, and we’ve lost it, so we speak about it as if a simulacra. Or I was thinking of this as I read your analysis. Also, I was thinking of postman’s building a bridge to the 18th century, another harkening back to days when things were real. Or george steiner’s nostalgia for the absolute.

    I’m rambling, but i’m on holidays, so that’s ok.

    The one thing Turkle never seems to do is critically reflect on the wonderful conclusions she comes up with in her work. If she, as most of us try to do, sat down and came up with more lists of reasons as to why our arguments, logical structures and examples are full of shit, she might winnow away at her work and find something of substance to share.

    Just like you did. In a very nice reflective and conversational tone. 🙂

  2. as “neurotypical” but very nearly housebound and living in isolated rural area (can’t afford to travel either), thank you Jason, for expressing so well what I regularly try to explain and often fail… and Dave for opening the subject and, reflectively, poking holes in what not a few will no doubt take as gospel.

  3. Hi Dave-I think your piece should have been titled “Why I Flee Real Conversation-sub-title-“Protecting my tiny space in the blogosphere”.Guess what Dave?I read the piece & was not “polarized” as you suggested.An “imaginary past of meaningful conversations”. Oh! Really? “Out with solitude arguments”.Dave you seem really really insecure & alone.Take off your headphones,turn off all your devices & drop out.If you do you will see everyone having relationships with their devices, viral friends in restaurants,at the movies,crossing the street & like you in their cubbyholes.DAVE -I Recommend a live talk face to face chat with a live person at least once a day-maybe then not only will you see the light of day but the real you!
    Best Regards& wishing you lots of success with your blog/Stanley

  4. Thanks Grainne, ann, Venessa and Mary Ann.

    @jason as i tweeted the other day, thanks hugely for your comments. Very interesting perspective.

    @STANLEY a quick google search confirms my suspicion that you are an imaginary person. Thanks for your inflammatory commentary 🙂

  5. thanks. working with people with disabilities has shown me how much we fundamentally exclude those who are different from ourselves, and then wonder why they are not here.

  6. Nice post. I may flip through the book, though, like you, I was ambivalent about the article. I did appreciate at least that it avoided the shrillness of some others on this issue.

    One of the things I find surprising is that she does not consider the possibility that it is the *question* “Why is no one listening to me?” that is relatively new. I know for my parents and grandparents generation there was much less an expectation that anyone would listen to you, at least initially. Getting listened to as kids, teens, spouses, and employees was pretty hard-won stuff, at least if my impressions of that time are correct. My father actually came back from a war and felt like he shouldn’t burden anyone with talking about it.

    A lot of that changed with the rise of consumer culture — for better and worse.

    She also misses one of the more interesting things about physical conversation which is all the “mirror-neurons” that fire. We miss that online, and I think a good case could be made that that is a loss we need to look at very carefully, especially as more teen culture and education moves online.

    I guess I’m still looking for someone to write the book that lays out this case well. Not sure Alone Together is it.

  7. Good response Dave – Turkle is more thoughtful than most, but it still harkens back to some Camelot past. I moaned about this in response to an article about the death of friendship ( In Turkle’s TED talk she says kids now will be damaged because when they come running out of school, the first thing they see is their parent with their head buried in their phone. But compared to what in the past? the parent not being there maybe and the child having to go home alone. Maybe they can do the school run now because they’ve been liberated from the office. It is a very privileged view of how everyone used to live.
    There’s also an inherently dim and techo-deterministic view of people in this. All this stuff is new, we all get a bit carried away with new stuff, but we adapt and it settles into a normal role in our lives. Think about how much you used to use twitter when it was all new, compared to now. We should trust people a bit more to find sensible accommodation in their lives.

  8. Dave-You disappoint me & your riposte proves my point.I google Stanley who does not blog, ergo he does not exist.Therefore,conclusion -“he is an imaginary person”.No, Dave I am real & just because I don’t spend my days & nights like you blogging away does not make me any less real than you.Thank you for not censoring my comment which you describe as inflammatory but I would describe as a simple difference of opinion.I can see by the majority of favorable comments that your sarcastic replies to those who disagree with you works well .It’s obvious that the article by Sherry Turkle has turned your blogosphere world upside down.I suggest a walk along the beach with a non imaginary friend to straighten you out.
    All the best/Staley

  9. @martin Yeah.. i read that post… and may have stolen a bit from it now that you mention it. There are definite class implications as well…

    @STANLEY you have posted on other websites before, with the same argumentative tone… without giving back. In a sense, you don’t exist. You are participating in an online conversation with no way for me to find a context for your views. I don’t know if or where you work, what kinds of things interest you, and the only other conversations you have had that I have found are those in which you have been impolite to others. This leaves me with a caricature of you. I am left imagining you as someone who walks around shouting your name in all caps, and telling people how to live their lives.

    I’m assuming you are more than that. But i can’t find out.

    In your comment you say that you weren’t ‘polarized’ and then you spoke from one of the two ‘poles’ of the discussion… the position that I needed to have ‘offline’ conversations (and more of them) in order to be a healthier person. So… I thought you were joking. Because you claimed that you weren’t a thing and then spent a whole paragraph being that thing.

    Further in your comment you responded to my comments about an ‘imaginary past of meaningful conversation with “oh really” (which tells me nothing about your position, other than you, apparently, don’t agree with mine. Then you went on to take the ‘out with the solitude arguments’ part of my post out of context. I suggested that the solitude argument was not related to the conversation argument. You suggested that it meant i was ‘insecure and alone’… which, you will admit, you don’t have any evidence of. So…

    Are you a caricature? You sure seem to be. 🙂

  10. Mike…interesting point about Turkle and the sociocultural changes in expectations of being listened to. i think she has an unfortunate tendency to frame problems in contemporary society as being the effect of contemporary practices, without always doing a good job of looking at what things were like even within living memory. it makes it hard to take some of her other points seriously, in spite of her excellent former work in Life on the Screen, etc. it’s like she got stuck on the idea that there’s a virtual world and it’s separate from the real, and she can’t unpack that digital dualism.

    and it seems like what Stanley’s – and to an extent, Sherry Turkle’s – positions miss is an understanding of the nuances of digital identity and that the same rules govern sociality offline and on.

    Stanley, what you just did is the equivalent of popping up in a public space – say a bar – inserting yourself into a conversation with a bunch of people whom you don’t know, and then calling the person speaking “insecure and alone.”

    being dismissed as irrelevant to the conversation is one of the better-case outcomes of that kind of behaviour, in face-to-face interactions.

    being “disappointed” at that response here is disingenuous, just as it would be in a bar.

    if you have a public space like a blog or Twitter account (preferably both, so they can be triangulated) and you leave traces of yourself and your thoughts and ideas there for others to engage with, then people will interact with your “digital self” much in the same social way they’d interact with someone a degree or two removed from their social circles: as an entity. they may disagree with you but will tend to try to build some type of relationship.

    whereas, if you only show up to poke holes in what other people say without any identity to which they can invest over time – no public traces, no identity for them to treat as part of the group – they’ll dismiss you. at best.

  11. @Bon — I think that’s exactly right. I’m OK with that sort of correlational argument being made, but there’s a real myopia in terms of how far back she looks. She could go back further in time. She could look at current differences between different countries in 2012. She could at least acknowledge lurking variables.

    It’s actually these omissions that make me want to pick the book up — I have to imagine that not covering this stuff is partly a result of the nature of newspaper articles. I hope it is…

  12. @Dave – I know I shouldn’t feed the trolls, but sometimes they are irresistible, so my apologies in advance. I enjoyed your post and it made me think (again) about what role technology has played in my own relationships over the past 22 years. Sherry’s arguments about the death of relationships remind me of people who said the printing press would be the death of writing or newspaper would be the death of social interaction since they isolated people from each other. Of course, as we now know, the opposite was true in both cases and I bet the opposite will prove to be true here. I wonder what Sherry has experienced in her life to give her this personal perspective on technology and relationships, don’t you?

    @Stanley: You hold a different opinion from Dave – which is absolutely fine. But the way you expressed that opinion in your comment was obviously inflammatory. If you’d like people to thoughtfully consider your point of view, I suggest focusing on arguments that are, as Michael Feldman would say, “well-reasoned and insightful.” Yours were not. Here’s an example of a more appropriately reasoned opinion piece to help you out (it was written by my 12 year old).

  13. Conversation, solitude and digital connection – I, like most, love all three. There is, however, truth in Turkle’s observation that “it’s hard to do anything with 3000 Facebook friends except connect”. The question is, really, whether Facebook (or the like) has to be more than that…?

  14. Dave-Help!I am being treated by you & your followers as some kind of nutty ninja who enters your blogosphere & quickly disappears without leaving a trace in the viral world.Just because you cannot take my measure by vetting me on social sites does not make my comments agreeing with Sherry Turkle less valid.I am attacked for my opinion not being reasoned, insightful & inflammatory when all I really said perhaps in a too sarcastic & humorous way for the sensitive eyes of you & your followers was that way back in the 20th century people did not need machines to talk to each other.And that was a good thing.Dave I’m happy to read you now have a Galaxy S-11 & that’s a good step in the right direction.Lighten up!
    Best Regards,Stanley

  15. Dave … I’m game … let’s give it a try. I will here (in Chicago) attempt to talk to you (in PEI) without a machine. The pigeon should be landing there sometime in late May … until then, my friend …

  16. On JR’s “The question is, really, whether Facebook (or the like) has to be more than that…?” (commenting on Turkle’s “it’s hard to do anything with 3000 Facebook friends except connect”):

    Social media does not have to / should not be the same for all, or even the same all the time for just one. But 3,000 is not everybody or even most ~ fan. business, some organization or publication etc pages excepted. Even so, anyone who wants 3,000 is welcome to them just as long as that and keeping score is expected of all. So high school that. Encouraged, yes (it’s the data, we’re the product) but not required and capable of saying thank you, but no thank you

  17. @Debbie S.: You are comparing your 12 year old son’s feeble attempt to formulate an argument to Stanley’s lucid and humorous prose? I hope that he doesn’t know that you have exposed him to ridicule. Shame on you!

    @Dave: So when does being vetted by Google become the benchmark for deciding if you blow someone off who disagrees with you? You’re probably one of those types who meets someone at a cocktail party and zips into the toilet to Google them before deciding if they are worth your time for a conversation. You talk a good game, but your reaction to a bit of criticism blew your cover.

    1. hey “john”. two imaginary online identities, both with IPs from the same part of Paris, France. fascinating. And they seem to agree with each other.

  18. Hi Dave

    Interesting comments. My interest in them relates to the fact that I have to do a lot of on-line teaching and the difficulty of getting students to participate.

    I have been recently asked to write a course in community development which involves what have been traditionally thought of as face to face skills,

    I have always compared computer interactions unfavourably with f2f conversation but your post has given me pause to think more deeply about this.

  19. I haven’t read the article, but did watch two of her recent TED talks on this topic – and I’m with Sherry.
    First, this is not an ‘all or nothing’ – it is about how people use or misuse social media. It isn’t an argument that social media is wrong or bad, but that people can fall into traps of neglecting those around them to spend time connecting with those who are remote. The connecting isn’t a problem – it is the disconnection with people supposedly close.
    She also was not really discussing blogging, which after all is something of a minority sport compared to posting pictures and one line status updates on twitter/facebook and compulsively checking email.

    Basically, is the idea of switching off facebook/twitter alerts and putting the phone away while sitting down or hanging out with family/friends for a while such a bad idea? She is simply describing a situation in which some people are unable to do so… and having both been annoyed by others spending an entire mealtime in a restraunt messaging on their phones, and been asked (sorry, ordered!) by my own kids to put away my phone while doing something with them, I can totally see Sherry’s point.

    It isn’t everyone, it isn’t all the time, but for some it is a problem, and when it’s a problem, it’s a problem.

  20. Dave-You always disappoint but never surprise.I suggest you spend more time honing your educational skills as per the title of your blog rather than your sleuthing skills in uncovering IPs.My goodness two persons who agree with each other but disagree with Dave.Must be a communist plot since both IPs are from Paris, France.

  21. Monsieur David,
    I think John Hurt sums it up best when he said:
    “I am not an elephant! I am not an animal! I am a human being! I … am … a … man!”
    He would have added in 2012: “I am my own IP!”

  22. @ Shane that can be tough… would love to see what you come up with.

    @Daniel The point you’re making here does not address her point in the NYT article. No one that i’ve ever met thinks that you shouldn’t at some point ‘put down your phone and talk to your kids’. You should. We all agree on that.

    She argues for this by using anecdotes like the one you describe… which we’ve all been privy to. Then she imagines a past where this didn’t happen and suggests that we return to it. My point here is that the past that she describes didn’t exist, and, by extension, if we’re going to connect more and better, we need to frame it in terms of what is happening today.

    How do we make time for conversation? How do we avoid constant text message interruptions/email checks/status updates during f2f time?

    We don’t do it by going back to the 1950s. We do it by developing new literacies, new habits and new conventions.

    It’s a problem. Agreed. But simply saying ‘old things good, new things bad’ isn’t addressing it… nor do I think it’s accurate.

  23. Dave, I appreciate your analysis of Turkle’s article. Though I am allied with Turkle in her quest, I too found the article a mixed bag. I think Turkle mistakenly characterizes conversation unfolding slowly while digital devices are ramping up the velocity of communications. In fact, one of the reasons digital media is preferred is because of the buffer placed between interlocutors, a point Turkle makes at the beginning of her article. Heck, writing changed the world because it made possible the kind of in-depth reflection Turkle is advocating, so I think she got off track promoting conversation as the key to self-reflection.

    However, I think you missed the strength of her argument. What she is saying, to put it very simply, is that human beings are increasingly desperate for someone to be there for them, and they’re turning to technology to meet their need. And it does meet their need, providing a shriveled version of human interaction – “connection over conversation.” You dismiss this by pointing out that people have always been too busy for one another – same story, different chapter. But there is in fact plenty of sociological evidence that points to the fact that people are lonelier and have fewer close friendships than ever. In his seminal work “Bowling Along” published in 2000, Robert Putnam found that “friendship in the 1990’s were fewer, weaker, and more fluid when compared to the 50’s.” He pointed to “social surfing” as the culprit, and we were only getting warmed up at the turn of the century.

    Just because a person hasn’t experienced a healthy allotment of friends and loved ones giving him or her their full attention without any sense of hurry or distraction doesn’t mean that’s not the way human beings are meant to live. That idea, more than anything else, is what Sherry Turkle and others like me are trying to say when we urge folks to put their damn smart phones away, look each other in the eye, and give the person in front of you your full attention.

    1. Dave,

      I left a comment on your response to Turkle’s piece that you chose not to publish. I’ve commented on hundreds of blogs and websites over the years and this has never happened to me, so I’m curious why you chose to exclude from the conversation.

      Sincerely, Greg Graham

  24. Had a look at the article now… it seems to be pretty much a transcript of her TED talks, with a few changes in anecdotes.
    I don’t think she does say ‘old things good, new things bad’ – as I commented above, I think she is asking for moderation and consideration of how we use the new technology – and commenting on the ways that she sees people using some new technologies in her work. I think you have read that simplification into her essay.
    Yes, some of the idealizations and images might be corny, but I think there are very valid points at the heart.
    “We do it by developing new literacies, new habits and new conventions. ” – on that point, I image Sherry would agree with you, all I think she is doing is questioning how well we are doing in developing these new habits… perhaps not always as well as we think or would like?

  25. Hmm … so what have we here? I see a conversation that is unfolding slowly (asynchronous conversations really have an advantage in that regard) and that is teaching at least some of us patience. I also see strong evidence of self-reflection, trust, and confidence. People are speaking their minds and points of view, and they are willing to engage other points of view that are different from their own. That takes trust and confidence, as you hardly need either trust or confidence to echo yourself with your peeps.

    I don’t know that this particular conversation could have happened 30 years ago as we are all too geographically dispersed, but it can happen today, and I think it will happen even better in 30 more years. This post and the comments are both good conversation and good connection, even with the problematic connections and disagreements.

    Still, we would be foolish to ignore the changes in conversation and the ways those changes are changing us. We are changing, and that’s certain. For better or for worse? I don’t think we are in any position to say for certain; however, we could point to writing (disclosure: I teach college writing) as an earlier technological shift in the ways that humans connected and conversed. I don’t think anyone here will argue that we are worse off as a species for having made that shift. Still, I’m sure that not a few curmudgeons complained that people were spending too much time scribbling on parchment and paper and not enough time talking with those sitting with them in the same room. Perhaps they viewed with horror all those mad scribblers in the British Library not pausing long enough to talk to those other mad scribblers sitting at the same table. It’s an image not too different from a group of people on their smart phones, texting—yes—instead of scribbling, but not too different for all that.

    Humanity changed itself when it invented spoken language. I think it was a positive change, though enough bad has come of it as well. Humanity reinvented itself when it devised written language—another mostly positive change, to my mind. I think there’s a better than even chance that the shift to electronic communication will also be mostly positive, though I know that I cannot be certain. However, I am certain that we will make the shift, and make it much faster than we shifted to spoken or written communications. And that is basically the problem I have with those who complain about this shift. Does anyone think we can pull the plug on this Internet thing? Aside from an asteroid strike, I don’t see it slowing down, so tell me how to ride it, not how to avoid it.

    Thanks for the conversation in this blog space. I couldn’t have done it otherwise. Really.

  26. I think she is right when she suggests that instead of trying to get help from other people, we try to
    do that by sitting in front of computer. This obviously increases the sense of isolation but opens up
    a more reliable source of data which can be more helpful than the help you receive from a face to
    face conversation.

  27. I came late to this via a circuitous route, so please forgive me if this is no longer relevant to join into. However, I’d like to add two comments.

    First, as several people have said, Turkle does seem to make some telling points but as you say Dave, hankering for a halcyon and likely imaginary past is not really helpful. I’m reminded of a study I read moons ago where the author traced back claims about ‘youth being better and better disciplined in my grandfather’s day’ and found that the grandfather said that too … and his, and his, all the way back at least as far as Plato. So pointing out wryly that ‘nostalgia is not what it used to be’ is a fair call. And seeing, as you and others do, that social media have an upside is right. I may be nearer 70 than any other round number but I like Facebook, etc…

    Second, a slightly different point. Rather than arguing the toss over our ideas about real conversation, let’s ask what the literature says. Here I think that without fully taking Turkle’s side I want to be a bit cautionary about people getting over excited about electronic communication models. I strongly recommend the work of Garrod and Pickering on (e.g.) “Why conversation is easy”. (It’s worth a Google). These guys show how, over evolution, we humans have developed a repertoire of skills that make face-to-face communication easier and more interconnected than other modes. If we neglect that, and rely too much on the electronic (rather than having both and a balance, which is what I think you are arguing for, Dave) we risk emptiness. The sociologist George Simmel distinguished intimate relations (‘you are irreplaceable to me’) from sociality (high inter-changeability as with those we chatter to at cocktail parties).

    What Turkle points to, I think, is a danger that massive sociality cannot replace intimacy. Like her, it does somewhat bother me when I walk a beautiful beach here in Australia and cross paths with people who instead of exchanging a glance, a nod and probably a cheery, “Good day” are plugged into the iPod, texting or talking on the phone. They may think they are connected but I think they are kidding themselves …

  28. Dave,

    Thanks for publishing this. From your writing and the responses that have been posted already I see some consensus around discrediting some of Sherry Turkle’s concerns about the lost art of conversation ( – lost to technology). Keith Hamon points out that we here in this blog – space are listening, reflecting, and responding to points made by others with a patience that is literally required of us because we have to wait for our partners in the conversation to reply. What have we lost?

    Another concern would like to hear responses to that Dr. Turkel’s voiced in her TED Talk is that we are putting out artificial “best” forms of ourselves when we don’t engage in face-to-face conversation. I am not sure I understand the harm in putting out your “best” self in a text or a blog if that self is reflective and has had time to look up evidence to support a position, rather than the “real” self who blurts out something they half-remember in the heat of a debate/face-to-face conversation.

    1. Yeah… and I don’t think it’s as simple as ‘best/real’ in the way that Turkle portrays it in her work. (that is, i think we’d probably both agree on that). There is no social interaction in which we don’t shape our approach based on who her speaking with, where we are and what we’re on about. She simplifies the act of interaction in order to make a point… an important one I think, that connection is important. What she fails to understand is that connection happens in different ways for different people and that ‘her’ way might not be everyone’s way.

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Posts Tagged: Nikon D90

Spring Photos – Using a Gold Reflecter

These Photos were taken using a Gold Reflector to highlight the Subjects faces to fill in the shadows and provide natural Sunlight.

Gallery: Dallas Cowboys Stadium – Mar 23

A gallery: Dallas Cowboys Stadium – Mar 23

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A gallery: SuperMoon – Mar 19, 2011

I took these outside my back yard of the Super Moon!  I hope this doesn’t mean that we will have any more Tsunamis and Earth Quakes!

These were taken with My Nikon D90 with my Telephoto Lens.  The photos were taken free hand (no Tripod) and with very little clean up on Lightroom.  Mostly bring out more vivid contrast of the moon!  One of the three photo’s is what it looked like naturally with the slight yellow tint.  The other two photo’s I did some Temperature Correction to look light it did to the Human eye.  Not sure why the camera was picking up the yellow tint!  I love taking photo’s of the moon.  Very easy to do free hand, since it is so bright.  I usually brace myself against something like a tree, car or wall.  In this case I braced against the backyard wall of the house!  If you have any moon shots, send a reply and include a link to your photo gallery!

Jillian Portraits

Jillian Portraits, posted with vodpod

Gallery: Dogs

These are photos of my two dog’s Bella and Raven!

Gallery: Jillian Portraits

Portraits of Jillian using a 36 X 24 Softbox!

Taking HDR Photographs

You might have heard the term HDR photo. So what is High Dynamic Range (HDR)? Photographs taken in HDR are achieved by caputuring multiple photographs using a technique called exposure bracketing (I used my Nikon D90 and used exposure bracketing settings of -2, 0, +2 exposure). The photographs are then merged together using HDR Software. I use HDR Photo software called Photomatix Pro and then use Adobe Lightroom and/or PhotoShop to improve overall picture quality and modify the image to get the result I wanted. Click on HDR Photos to see examples of my HDR photo’s.

ExpoDisc – The White Balance Solution

To anyone new to the Digital Photography world, you will learn more about the advanced features & functions of your DSLR Camera. One of the biggest challenges in making your photo’s look right is getting the White Balance and exposure set correctly. White Balance is basically the light conditions you are taking your photo’s. In your camera you set the white balance by selecting one of the presets; flash, daylight, cloudy, florescent, night, or some other option. When you set the white balance you are setting the coolness or warmth of the available light for your photo. Digital Sensor’s in the camera need to have this set correctly to recreate what naturally occurs with film camera’s.


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outfit of the day: last of summer

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Outfit Details:
Dress- Ann Taylor
Cardigan- BCBG
Monogram Necklace & Pearls- Gifts
Sandals- Shoe Show

Fall is here, however I wanted to share one last summer outfit! It's still 90 degrees outside, so boots and scarves would be a bit out of place right now. I totally broke out the boots this past week though! I am ready for fall weather, but mother nature does not agree with me. This time of year on East Coast is an awkward transition. Coats in the morning, but tees in the afternoon type of awkward. I am looking forward the cooler days to come. I am jealous of all the instagram ladies who have been dressing in plaid scarves or J.Crew's excursion vests.

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My favorite part was their first look. Nina and Bryan have such a sweet relationship and they celebrated with so much love and joy through the day. I adored how sweet and caring they were during the day, he couldn't keep his eyes off of her during the first look. And she teared up, but had a huge smile standing with him during the first look. It was the best! I loved capturing them!!!

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outfit of the day: western denim shirt

What I wore:Andrew's Co. denim shirt, Old Navy shorts, Thrifted belt, Charming Charlie watch, Kay Jewlers pearl necklace, Belk's pearl earrings, Old Navy sunglasses, and Unisa sandals. (engagement ring: gift =) lol)

denim shirt by lisaanatha featuring short shorts
This denim shirt is very similar to J.Crew's western denim shirt here. (And pictured above) I'm not wearing the J.Crew's denim shirt, however I made an awesome find going through old boxes of clothes my mom had in her basement. A lot of clothing worn in the 80s and 90s are making it in today's fashion. I also found it humorous Zach and Kelly, from Saved by the Bell (show i loved from the 90s) , sported these denim shirt looks. Do you guys remember that?! Don't let go of this staple piece. I think it has been a summer trend, but it can easily transfer to fall and winter must haves too! In the winter I would wear this under a sweater for a warm, but chic look. Stay posted for that outfit of the day.…


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Friday, August 15, 2014

In Mob 47/Protes Bengt we (crust) trust!

Mob47/Protes Bengt will help our friend Jocke and his label D-takt & Råpunk Records who almost lost everything in a big flood last week. Barvak at Insane Society Records helped us print a bunch of Protes Bengt 7” and all the money from this 32 song ep will go to Jocke and his label, so next time you see Mob47 or Desperat playing live buy a record and support him. Keep up the mangel and In Bengt we trust.
/Chrille, Åke, Johan, Per and Ola

1 comment:

Thomas said...

Can't you print Protes Bengt t-shirts that you can sell on the gig?
I will buy one imediately.


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Wednesday, 31 August 2011

Twitter Vs Strawman / Dorries

It is rare that I find myself in agreement with the majority of Twitterettes and Twitterinos, so was not unsurprised that I found myself on the wrong side of the herd view, what did surprise me was the ratio.

In a very unscientific analysis of the hashtag, I found only one other poster that agreed with me.

The subject of course is Nadine #Dorries and her proposed amendments in reference to abortion.

Now I understand that many people dislike Dorries so even taking this into account, (That people will say the sky is pink if she says it is blue) I am surprised by the opposition on a couple of parts of what she says.

Opinion One, that any organisation that benefits financially from a particular outcome, should not be classed as independent, when it comes to whether that outcome is taken or not.

That is common sense, isn’t it?

Someone tried comparing it to the RSPCA somehow, saying that ‘Stopes’ having a vested interest in abortion is the same as the RSPCA having a vested interest in cruelty.

That is a bit of a strange comparison on a couple of fronts.

Firstly, the RSPCA would make more money by NOT treating animals; just sending them away, would be easier than operating etc.

Secondly, it is suggesting that the choice between abortion or not abortion is similar in context to animal suffering or non-suffering.

There is an automatic assumption that the only people allowed to give advice will be religious fundamentalists though Ms Dorries has said “This won’t be offered by any religion-affiliated groups, but by the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy”1

So unless the BACP have suddenly become religious zealots, I am a bit unsure what the cause of this ‘Straw-man’ nonsense is.

As an atheist and anti-theist I have no enthusiasm for practical decisions to be made in relation to mythological belief, but this is not the only alternative so it is misleading for it to be framed in such an either/or way.

Her second opinion which has upset people, but has been less (a little less) vilified is her opinion that the upper timescale limit of 6 lunar months should be reduced to 5. i.e. 24 weeks to 20.

This apparently makes her ‘evil’.

When I asked why this would be the case I am often ignored.

Her is my research on the subject, and please keep in mind I have no axe to grind, I am pro-choice, I have no moral objection to the idea of pregnancy termination.

According to meta-analysis cited by, up to 70% of pre-mature births at 24 weeks can survive; published articles in medical journals put this figure more conservatively at 39%-50%.

These figures alone are quit worrying, now consider that these are where pre-mature birth is caused for a whole range of different reasons, a lot of them to do with the health of the mother and/or baby which would increase the chance of mortality, and you can imagine the levels of survival from babies about to be aborted at a much higher level.

I am all for personal freedoms, I am a libertarian and consider personal liberty paramount but with one very big exception. The acts of a person should never take away someone else’s freedom or life and it is quite evident that life is indeed being taken away in some of these late term pregnancies.

Again, I feel I need to stress that I am NOT an anti-abortionist, but for me what happens to fetuses is abortion, what happens to babies is murder and when something is alive in its own right, it is a baby not a fetus.

Let the vitriol attacks begin


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In many ways, Martian Manhunter is like an amalgam of Superman and Batman. He is a detective, cunning and logical, but he is also one of the last of his race, capable of many of the same superhuman talents as the Man of Steel.

Science and science fiction have always speculated upon the notion that there was life on Mars. One scientist, Dr. Saul Erdel, attempt through experimental communication technology to contact the red planet. What returned through the beacon he transmitted was not just a message from Mars; it was a Martian, and not the sort fictionalized by H.G. Wells. This being was humanoid, at least to a degree, for his shape was random. He was a shape-shifter.

Erdel learned that Mars was dead, burned, lost in time. This Martian was named J'onn J'onzz. He had no desire to invade earth, but instead took to this world, joining its people and the Justice League to make certain that the end that befell Mars would never threaten Earth.

The Martian Manhunter's fear of fire suggest hypersensitivity, but this is too simple an explanation. His weaknesses would be too common to this world as well as Mars. Perhaps this is because his mass changes depending upon the form he adopts. [1]

  • Investigation: Rivaling Batman, John Jones may yet been his world's greatest detective. Being connected to all other Martians makes hiding a secret a difficult task, John is trained to see the unseen and can detect a lie in more ways than just hearing your heartbeat. [8]

  1. Justice #3
  2. The powers and weaknesses listed are based on the common abilities of Martians first demonstrated by J'onn J'onzz. The refrences listed are based on J'onzz as depected in the Earth-One and New Earth continuities.
  3. 3.00 3.01 3.02 3.03 3.04 3.05 3.06 3.07 3.08 3.09 3.10 3.11 Detective Comics #225
  4. Martian Manhunter #4
  5. Detective Comics #226
  6. Martian Manhunter (Volume 2) #8
  7. JLA #89
  8. Justice #3


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The Thinker is a crime boss in Metropolis who has Jimmy Olsen kidnapped and replaced with a lookalike called Baby-Face in order to obtain information on Superman, Olsen's pal. The Thinker and Baby-Face are defeated by Superman, who rescues Olsen.

  • This version of Thinker (Earth-One), including all history and corresponding appearances, was erased from existence following the collapse of the original Multiverse in the 1985–86 Crisis on Infinite Earths limited series. Even though versions of the character may have since appeared, this information does not apply to those versions.


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100th Release

So according to Manga Updates, the last release we made prior to this one was number 99. Given I made a small fuss about the 50th release, I figured I’d make a small fuss about this one as well.
It did kinda get me thinking though, 100 releases, that sounds like a lot. But then it dawned on me, surely we’ve done more than 100 chapters? I mean, we’ve done just over 70 of Karate alone! So I guess the question is, how many chapters have we actually done?

Well, according to my numbers, it’s as follows.
Karate – Well that’s easy, 71.
Shibatora – Also easy, 35.
Hanagata – Easy again, 9.
Capeta – Well, we’ve done 4 early chapters, and 4 later chapters, so 8 in total now.
Peace Maker – We’ve done 15 chapters.
Rookies – A bit more difficult to calculate. We did 40 chapters at the start, and now we’ve done another 8. So 48 in total.
Misc Chapters – We’ve done a few misc things. In total, it’s 9 chapters done.
So realistically speaking, we’ve actually released 195 chapters. In just the last year, we’ve actually released 91 chapters in total. I think that’s pretty good, and we’ve certainly made a comeback since our lacklustre first 2/3rds of 2009.

Anyway, enough history and number of chapters we’ve done. Today, I’ve got a release that will make everyone happy. That’s right, all our current series, we’ve got at least one chapters for. So head on over to the Forums to get them via direct download, or to our Irc Channel to grab them there or hang out and chat.
Give your thanks also to Illuminati-Manga (And also congratulate them on their now 5th year running), as well as thanking Endless Abyss who will be helping us with Hanagata from now on.

Most importantly, enjoy the chapters!

  1. Keika Reply

    Hey guys,
    just wanted to congratulate you on the Karate releases. I really enjoy this manga. I hope you’ll take it to the end…

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Welcome to C.B Agency your Michelin tyre dealer in Karur. Meet our team of trained specialists and get advice or assistance in the selection and fitting of your Michelin tyres.

Find summer or winter tyres at your Michelin dealer in Karur, learn about the condition and wear of specific tyres for cars, SUV, or 4x4...

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Don't wait to visit C.B Agency to find tyres for your vehicle and your driving comfort.


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Wake at 830, shower and head to Starbucks for a breakfast croissant and coffee. Edit till around 3pm, stopping for a walk but not getting far in the rain. Around 5 I stop editing and head down to meet everyone, there's a loosely planned end of year 'party' planned. We head to 46th street to Daisy May's BBQ :

Daisy May’s BBQ specializes in authentic regional BBQ from all over the country. Under one roof, we bring the best BBQ has to offer together. We’re located in Midtown Manhattan, on the corner of 46th Street & 11th Avenue. We also provide BBQ Delivery & BBQ Catering services; we bring the BBQ straight to you!"

Alt text Brad waiting for his food at the collection point

Alt text I went for pulled chicken, brisket, 'good ol' Mac n Cheese & wait for it...Peaches, which I knew would be good, and everyone dips in and agrees (they're hot in a syrup)

Brad and James after one almighty meal

After the BBQ joint we head to lucky strike and are told we have at least a two and a half hour wait for a lane and we need two. James, Con, Fin and I decide we'll head back, opting not to sit and wait for that long in the loudest bar I've ever been to. I order an uber and head down to Brooklyn Bridge, getting the driver to drop me off in Dumbo for some good views and a nice walk.

Alt text Alt text

Taken with my Sony A7SII and the Zeiss Loxia 35mm f/2 lens, a manual lens that I love. I almost sent it back as I wasn't using it a few months ago, now it's my go to lens on this camera. Haven't quite worked out the best picture profile for stills yet, and I wished I had my X-T1 with me, but the shots still look ok, just a little grainy, but I don't mind that too much.

Alt text pano

Also tried out the panorama mode, which as always gives too low a resolution for the images to be useful for me. If I'd had my tripod with me I'd have reeled off some manual panoramas, but alas...

Whilst walking round Dumbo I see a couple trying to figure out how to take a selfie and get the bridge in shot. I walk over and offer to take a photo for them, which they seem happy about. I walk a bit more before ordering a car to take me up to the Rockefeller so I can see the tree and maybe get some extra footage as well, which I do.

Alt text Alt text Alt text

The Rockefeller at night and that pretty special Christmas Tree.

I head back to the hotel in the rain happy that I've managed to get what I thought I wouldn't get chance to today, when I arrive in my room I offload the footage and edit some pictures in Lightroom, posting this one to Instagram before hitting the hay around 1am.

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Always looking up in New York


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Let me ask you a purely academic question: Hello?
— Dean Blehert

Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Macbeth Hath Murdered Sleep

 MacBeth hath murdered vision,
for he can see only his reasons,
whatever in the world justifies
what he has done: in a rainbow,
inevitable disillusion; in sex,
the hectic twitching of decaying flesh;
in life, all life, a disposable litter,
dead leaves disturbed by a cold wind;
in priestly teachings the mockery
of mangy crows conversing
among gnarled winter branches.

MacBeth hath murdered memory,
for he has put into the world
much he prefers not to know:
that one much like himself
can be a corpse, a nothing;
that one even more like himself
can be a monster; that dreams
of greatness can end
in what he now is.

MacBeth hath murdered imagination,
for to do what he has done and now must do,
requires the consolation of not knowing
that in others dwell ones like himself
or like what he once was, one with hopes,
dreams, people he cared for. It is
a leap of imagination to say “Hello”
and mean it. He can say it, but can
no longer mean it, for it is uncomfortable
to be there to say it or to imagine
anyone exists to receive it.

The universe demands compensation:

Having deprived it of willing awareness
(his own and that of those he has overwhelmed),
he must supply an unending compulsive wakefulness,
if only to his nightmares.  MacBeth
hath murdered sleep.

Having deprived it of lucid memories,
he must be hounded by vivid fragments
of what he would not see, their jaggedness
unsoftened by understanding. MacBeth
hath murdered sleep.

Having deprived it of an alertness
to what cannot be seen, the spiritual existence
of himself and others, he is lost
entirely in visions others cannot see:
MacBeth hath murdered sleep.

He hopes death will give him rest,
but he is already dead, yet sleepless,
having murdered sleep.


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All you want to know about promotional products

Promotional products are the items that are branded and attached with the logo and are mainly used for marketing purpose. These items are given away to promote a company’s product. So in simple words we can say that these are the products having logo on it. A pen or a pencil is marked with the logo and is promoting the name of the company is known as promoting a product.

Promoting product is always overlooking when any of the business is developing its marketing campaigns. The best promotional product will be available to you at fewer prices and not only this has they provided you with great service. Various sites help in promoting services for various industries that help them in promoting their product and the company that is associated with that product. We provide you with the best online services for loyal customers for years. We help you in providing all the necessary information of the product with the best promotional services.

The main aim of these promoting online sites is to provide better services to its customer. They help in providing better advice that will help the customer in choosing the efficient product. They help you in providing the better solutions, the better experiences, and help you in enhancing your marketing skills and will help you in finding the best product that fits your budget. This site not only provides its customer with help but also helps the business and corporations to get the better solution for promoting their product. We help you in getting all the best out of your product and present it in front of the customer. They provide you with all the online facility that helps you in getting the best out of the product. Here are some services that are being provided by the promotional sites.

Know all about the services that are provided by the promotional sites

Branding and marketing services-, we offer you with the range of branding and marketing services of various companies. We help you in understanding the importance of quality promotional merchandise that will help you in providing your company with success and experience and better strategy.

Creating recognizable identity of the brand– there are more than 5, 00,000 companies that are promoting their products using our sites. This becomes more challenging to create the recognizable brand identity among its competitors. It is said that statistics and various strategically designs can help in making your product best with the best goodwill. According to the Australian promotional product association, it is said that a good impression of the company can be only made with high-quality promotional items.

We design, create delivery– we offer you with a great customizable merchandising solution that will help you in building brand awareness help you with recognized industry leaders. We provide you with the high quality branded products that will support your branding strategy, helps you in building equity and increasing sales by helping you in creating the great connection between the brands and the customer.

These are some of the services that are being provided by the promoting sites.


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Kansas City Area: 1-800-255-6285
Houston Metro Area: 1-800-638-9877

33130 Lone Star Road
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Local Phone: (913)294-5020
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Debrick Truck Line Company is an organization that specializes in shipping and heavy haul transportation services.

We have built our reputation one customer at a time, and we want to be the partner you can rely on for all your shipping needs.


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Dedicated to the definitive superhero non-team.

Monday, July 28, 2014

The Ruby of Domination

Roll Call: Valkyrie, Dr. Strange, Sub-Mariner, Hellcat, Daimon Hellstrom, Hulk, and Gargoyle.

Dr. Strange summoned an assortment of Defenders to the Sanctum Sanctorum to see if one of them might draw out Bruce Banner's mind within the Hulk, who Dr. Strange temporarily subdued with a spell of somnambulance (Marvel Fanfare #20).

As Dr. Strange stepped into his study, the evil wizard Xandu trapped Dr. Strange in another dimension and mystically prevented him from calling any of the Defenders to his aid. But all was not lost. With time in short supply, Dr. Strange created a magical portal to contact Thing.

Using the powerful Ruby of Domination, Xandu magically coerced Hulk into battling Thing. Unable to overpower the green goliath on his own, Thing instead destroyed the Ruby of Domination—thereby weakening Xandu and freeing Dr. Strange. The ordeal left Dr. Strange too fatigued to further pursue any magical means of bringing peace of mind to the Hulk (Marvel Fanfare #21).

Thing guest-starred in Defenders #20 but still regarded himself as a member of the Fantastic Four during that appearance.

Friday, July 25, 2014

Portfolio Page

Marvel Fanfare #20 (May 1985) closed with several stand-alone pages of artwork by Charles Vess. The portfolio included this full-page image of the New Defenders.

Roll Call: Gargoyle, Iceman, Valkyrie (riding Aragorn), Cloud, Angel, Beast, and Moondragon.

Sunday, July 20, 2014

Mental Block

In Dr. Strange #59 (June 1983), the master of the mystic arts learned that Dracula was again at large. The disturbing news jogged the sorcerer's memory of his initial encounter with Dracula in Dr. Strange #14 (May 1976).

Seven years in real time elapsed between the publication of those two issues, but characters within the world of comics tend to experience time at a slower rate. According to Dr. Strange's account in #59, barely two years had passed since he met the Lord of Vampires in #14.

Yet only after summoning the all-seeing Eye of Agamotto from his mystic amulet did Dr. Strange recall a more recent encounter from Defenders #95 (May 1981), when Dracula had invaded the Sanctum Sanctorum under the influence of the Six-Fingered Hand. How could Dr. Strange have forgotten such a pivotal event? The sorcerer suspected that Mephisto was responsible for obstructing his memory and numbing his awareness of Dracula.

Friday, July 18, 2014

Dire Consequences

The New Defenders joined forces with several other super teams to stop the extraterrestrial Dire Wraiths from conquering the Earth in Rom #65.

In the aftermath, Valkyrie was the first to ask how the captured Dire Wraiths should be punished. While other heroes hemmed and hawed, Rom the Spaceknight ultimately followed his modus operandi by using his Neutralizer Beam to banish the Dire Wraiths to Limbo (#66).

ROM. Vol. 1. No. 66. May 1985. "The Day After!" Bill Mantlo (story), Steve Ditko & Steve Leialoha (art), Janice Chiang (letters), Petra Scotese (colors), Mike Carlin (editor), Jim Shooter (editor in chief).

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