I was reminded by Ephraim that today is the second anniversary of my first blog posting two years ago. It seemed such a long time ago. Blogging and Facebook have become a part of my routine now. They help me communicate with members of a younger generation whom I don’t often meet at house-to-house visits or neighbourood get-togethers.

Writing blogs forces me to organise my thoughts into a few short paragraphs. The blogs also serve as a kind of diary. I am grateful to Ephraim and Harold for having me post on their sites. It saves me the trouble of having to maintain my own blogsite.

Facebook is an interesting new phenomenon. The interactivity gives it a certain intimacy. For those who only read, FB must function also as a kind of reality TV.

Last month (March 25), in a report entitled My Biggest Mistake, TodayOnline reported that Malaysia’s Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi admitted making the biggest mistake in thinking that the Internet was not important. The PM’s ruling coalition suffered its worst results ever in March 8 polls that left five states and a third of parliamentary seats in opposition hands.

Among them was 67-year-old opposition Democratic Action Party chairman Lim Kit Siang who won a parliamentary seat in Ipoh Timor. He ran three blogs, which were meticulously updated with multiple posts every day. Long-time blogger Jeff Ooi, 52, also won as a DAP candidate in Penang. Like many other opposition leaders, they were able to reach out to young urban and educated people, many who were voting for the first time. Mr Ooi added that Web users are not limited by age. “We attract many citizens above 45 years old and these are the people who are more interested in politics and the oppositions’ viewpoint.”

In March last year, PR, market & biz dev coordinator Jonathan Dunn reported:

YouTube has launched a channel that will broadcast videos submitted by ‘08 U.S. Presidential nominees. The goal is for the channel to act as an information hub for the hopefuls and, one supposes, offer a way to counter unauthorized, potentially damaging, videos that may be posted by other users….

So far Rudy Giuliani, Barak Obama, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, John McCain, Dennis Kucinich, Bill Richardson, Mitt Romney and Joe Biden are on board. The videos seem to be a mix of carefully scripted campaign stops and the usual ‘on the trail/vote for me’ rhetoric. A click on the candidate’s videos on the channel home page (or on the candidate’s names above) takes you to a profile page for each candidate where other videos and info are hosted.

A few months later, in June, CBC News Today host Nancy Wilson interviewed broadcaster, researcher, and Internet evangelist Jesse Hirsh regarding the role and influence of social media on the 2008 US Presidential Election, e.g. “Why would candidates want to figure prominently on Facebook?”, intimacy on social media, dirty campaign tricks, blogging vs mainstream media, level playing field, etc.

By now, only three presidential candidates are featured on YouChoose 08: Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton for the Democrats and John McCain for the Republicans.

Will the US Elections voting patterns correlate closely with the subscription, viewership and interaction patterns on YouChoose 08 (on YouTube) and other social media such as Facebook?

Related Articles:

• YouTube: US “presidents”, UK queen & now Jap PM

CWNews:

Instead of the familiar scene of the Baby Jesus laid in a manger, the Vatican’s Nativity scene this year will show the infant Jesus in a home that also includes his father’s workshop. No reason has been given for the change.

Does the it look like this Honthorst painting of St Joseph, as displayed on AmericanPapist.com (with an infant instead of a child looking up at St Joseph)?

AN INTERESTING EXPLANATION from Zenit:

Lev [an art historian] said: “This Nativity is not so much a break with tradition but is presenting a new side of the Nativity, revealing a new facet.

“It is trying to represent Joseph’s experience, his dream of what will happen knowing that Jesus will be born and Mary is with child. He had no idea the way it would all work out as he prepared to take on this task given to him by God through a message of an angel. So it is what he imagines in his home amid his work before it comes to pass.”

“This fits Joseph and the acceptance of his call into the story,” Lev continued. “Joseph is never the star of the Nativity, but his role is crucial. So this is not upsetting biblical tradition, but [giving] a different facet, looking at it in a different light.”

“In the Nativity accounts, a mother figure is always there, but this Nativity makes present the importance of the father figure and the fact that he is essential. It’s a reminder that he wasn’t born only to a mother, while providing a source of meditation during this time when we are faced with the battle against marriage and the family. It is a good way for the Church, in nonaggressive and nonpolitical way, to remind us of the basis of our understanding of family through the Holy Family.

“This is a Nativity very much of Joseph Ratzinger, a teaching Nativity. Instead of complacently laying out the characters, this year they are being laid out in a way so we have to think about what this momentous birthday means, think about the circumstance in which Jesus is born, while reminding us of Joseph’s essential role.”

Another fun Simpson video:

• After this video ends, choose the fourth video from the left: “World of Warcraft in the Simpsons”.

You are Yoda

Photo credit: CC license by Orange Beard (metrojp).

So now, on my Followers page, I have the honor (perhaps) of seeing this:


ACTUALLY, I DON’T understand politics in Singapore or in the USA. However, it’s really interesting to read and observe a few things:

• Scoble’s post, Political use of social media: Edwards (1); Obama (.5); Clinton (NA)
• Social media on John Edwards’ website (see right)

Also, Scoble’s interview with Elizabeth Edwards:

And Scoble’s interview with John Edwards:

Here’s a humorous video made in support of Shutdown Day 2007, to show that “You don’t have to turn your computer on to have fun with it”:

The rationale is great, but the day is a problem! So unfortunately, for all attendees and organizers of Nexus 2007 in Singapore, the answer would have to be a resounding “No!”

FOR A LONG TIME, I’ve believed in the free culture espoused by Lawrence Lessig and the open sharing of ideas, theories, studies, research advocated by Terry Vessels (above). I’ve therefore downloaded and consumed (installed, used, read, watched, listened…) lots of free software, ebooks, video, podcasts, news reports, in-depth analyses, research studies, etc. on the Internet over the past few years.

Recently, however, I’m beginning to ask myself, “Do I really believe in free culture and free exchange of ideas? Have I’ve been more the taker than the giver?” Granted that I’m normally a frank and open person. Yes, my work has been almost invariably very demanding. And yes, I’ve been blogging from time to time, sharing new things that I’ve learnt. Still, there were times when I’ve hesitated and held back. For example, I’ve kept my research study (begun in 2005) under wraps on the Net until a few days ago. Another example, I’ve been adding lots of useful information to a wiki on a sub-domain for almost two years now. Yet so far, I have chosen not to link them from my blog.

PERHAPS MISTRUST FIRST set in when a Masters program classmate asked quite pertinently some time ago, “But how could we share our research ideas, especially in a public domain? What if someone else were to steal our ideas and claim them as his/her own?”

Our eminent Trade Minister George Yeo probably spoke for many among us when he said on BlogTV (Episode 12: Big Boys Blogging) a few days ago:

“If they expect me to say things which I’d only say very privately, then they will be very disappointed because the blogosphere is not private space… There are things which you will say to your wife which you would not say to your friends, there are things that you would confide in your teacher which you would not confide even in your classmates. That’s part of life, we all have circles of trust…”

The minister was answering young blogger Gayle Goh’s very frank comments that (1) people who read blogs want fresh new perspectives and a strong, personal voice; and (2) people might find it very difficult to trust what politicians have to say especially when they won’t deviate from the party line at all.

Gayle’s response? She looked quite skeptical, even a little disapproving.

At first, I smiled at her youthful audacity and seeming naivete. Upon reflection however, I think Gayle raised an excellent point. Yes, indeed. Just who, in their leisure, would be interested to read a party manifesto? Even though it comes in blog postings?

Jeremy Wright, in his book Blog Marketing, wrote (paraphrased initially, words in brackets below are mine):

“Most blogs are expected to have these qualities — an authentic voice, honesty, and authority… this holds true even more so for the corporate blog…. This presents unique challenges for business leaders who want to understand blogging (connect with readers), as the concepts of transparency and authencity are not often associated with corporate communications practices….

“Blogging is really about three things:

• Information: Telling your customers what you’re doing and finding out what they are thinking.
• Relationships: Building a solid base of positive experiences with your customers that changes them from plain-old consumers to evangelists for your company and products.
• Knowledge management: Having the vast stores of knowledge within your company available to the right people at the right time.

“Without blogs, company messages can get so filtered by public relations or the media that CEOs and other senior management have decided to talk directly with customers — whether it be in the company’s stores, on the company’s airplanes, or at special events set up specifically for communicating with customers. The value of direct customer feedback is obvious, and blogs provide that [one-to-one and daily] on a global scale.”

In “Chapter 3: The Power of Blogs for Business”, Wright wrote:

Be Real: The Scoble Story

“…sometimes the most important person to be blogging in your company may not be an executive. For Microsoft… the most important blogger is arguably Robert Scoble… Scober started blogging before he joined Microsoft — his existing blog was actually a major force in landing him the job. In his role as a technical evangelist, Scoble has to be both authoritative and honest.

“One of Scoble’s rules is to tell the truth, even if it means admitting that a competitor’s product is better or if it means Microsoft is doing something wrong. This can be scary for an executive to do — though Sun’s Schwartz does it quite successfully (another story in the book). For Scoble, this comes naturally, and the net effect is that he has become one of the most influential people in a company with more than 55,000 employees. The external effect is that Microsoft now has a trusted voice who will give the straight and passionate answer to even the hardest questions.”

Finally, BG Yeo himself had observed in the first part of the BlogTV show:

“It’s strange. The emotion connected with blogging is very different from that connected with say, giving a speech or addressing an audience. For some reason, there’s an intimacy associated with going into the blogosphere which you don’t associate with a public meeting.”

Hmmm…. Can BG Yeo really maintain a public, party-line stance and yet achieve that “intimacy” with young people in Singapore? What do you think?

Browsing through her online album, I was particularly impressed by the interesting evolution of the seven forms (which marked seven phases of her life) and the evident beauty and professionalism in her work.

The hottest concepts in American politics are not liberalism or conservatism, preventive war or globalisation. Rather, the concept which exercises professional politicians and their handlers most is framing.

According to Hatchet Jobs and Hardball: The Oxford Dictionary of American Political Slang, framing is “the attempt to define the debate so everyone knows what everyone else is going on about…” Known as framing, as in ‘framing the debate’, this sometimes occurs as a storm of criticism intended to kneecap adversaries rhetorically, to force them into inflexible political stances, or to goad them into reputation-damaging statements”.

A recent article in The New York Times Magazine gave the following example of framing from the last presidential election: The Bush campaign’s successful effort to portray Senator John Kerry as “flip-flopper”, “forever bouncing erratically from one position to another”.

President George W. Bush and his campaign “made sure that virtually every comment they uttered about Kerry during the campaign reminded voters, subtly or not, of this one central theme”.

Mr Kerry helped considerably in the effort by saying, of a Bill to fund US troops in Iraq, “I actually did vote for the US$87 billion before I voted against it.”

The Bush campaign hit the jackpot again when Mr Kerry allowed himself to be filmed wind-surfing, tacking left and right to catch the wind. The Republicans used the footage in an advertisement — “the smartest ad of the campaign”, said the Times.

“Democrates, on the other hand, presented a litany of different complaints about Bush, depending on the day and the backdrop; he was a liar, a corporate stooge, a spoiled rich kid, a reckless warmonger. But they never managed to tie them all into a single, unifying image that voters could associate with the President. As a result, none of them stuck. Bush was attacked. Kerry was framed.”

STARTED ON TWO interesting and complementary modules this semester (late July to end Oct): Training Methods & Strategies and Multimedia Development I. Thanks to a great idea by new project mate L., i’m now looking forward to working on an old subject dear to my heart with an unusual and fun perspective: a comic one!

Read a very interesting book by Scott McCloud over the last few days. As the overview on the author’s website put it, “A 215-page comic book about comics that explains the inner workings of the medium and examines many aspects of visual communication along the way. Understanding Comics was a Harvey and Eisner winner, was praised in The New York Times, Publishers Weekly and Wired, and is in over 13 languages. A favorite of interface, game and Web designers despite the fact that it doesn’t mention computers once!”

SOME CHOICE QUOTES from the book, Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud:

“…you might say that before it’s projected, film is just a very very very very SLOW comic!

“Why…are…we…so…involved? Why would anyone young or old, respond to a cartoon as much or or more than a realistic image? … cartooning as a form of amplification through simplication…. Simplifying characters and images toward a purpose can be an effective tool for storytelling in any medium. Cartooning isn’t just a way of drawing, it’s a way of seeing! …”

“But, most striking of all is the substanitial presence of the fifth type of transition, a type rarely seen in the west. Aspect-to-aspect transitions have been an integral part of Japanese mainstream comics almost from the very beginning. Most often used to establish a mood or a sense of place, time seems to stand still in these quiet contemplative combinations…. Rather acting as a bridge between separate moments, the reader here must assemble a single moment using scattered fragments…

“The art of comics is as subtractive an art as it is additive. And finding the balance between too much and too little is crucial to comics creators the world over.”

THESE DAYS, i’m once again intrigued by the concept of duality — just like earlier days when i was continually fascinated by many apparently contrary sayings of wise men such as Laozi, Buddha and Kahlil Gibran.

Was reminded of this while showing my Engineering Communication students a Graphics Design video last Monday evening. The narrator was introducing the key steps to successful design: (1) Purpose, (2) Media & Arena, (3) Supplies & Results, and (4) Discipline & Freedom.

YES, Discipline & Freedom! Seems like a paradox, doesn’t it? Yet, it ties in closely with what have been written in many biblical and mystical texts that I have loved. And with what Paul Rand (1914-1996) wrote in the A.I.G.A. Journal for Spring 1951:

1. Designing is not capricious arrangement.
2. Freedom of expression is not anarchy.
3. Understanding of the nature of new materials is not a exercise in novelty.
4. Functional form is not streamlining.
5. Order, discipline and proportion are not a Greek monopoly.
6. Simplicity is not nudity.
7. Space does not mean ‘empty space’; nor is ’space articulation’ the arbitrary placement of things in a void.
8. Sensitivity is not fussiness nor is it preciousness.
9. Glass bricks do not a modern house make.
10. Lower case letters and sans serif do not make modern terminology.
11. Montage is not synthesized confusion.
12. Cropping and bleeding are not the prerogative of a Blue Beard.
13. Texture is not exclusively a physical experience.

LIKEWISE, German architect Mies van der Rohe (1886 – 1969) is famous for his ‘Less is More’ and ‘God is in the details’ maxims. Throughout his life, especially in the last 20 years of his work, Mies tried to create contemplative, neutral spaces with material honesty and structural integrity through a glass and steel (sometimes also known as ’skin and bone’) architecture. His later works provide a fitting denouement to a life dedicated to this ideal of a universal, simplified architecture.

However, as Paul Rand pointed out, “Glass bricks do not a modern house make.” i suspect, as usual, a proper balance of Discipline & Freedom is key. In many ways, Mies’ architecture resembles Zen architecture in spirit — elegant and minimalist (but no simpler). It is achieved, i think, through one of those rare ‘Eureka’ (or what some people might call ‘Nirvana’) moments after lots of exploration and experimentation.

IN A SIMILAR VEIN, Picasso is famous not only for his abstract Cubist paintings but also for his earlier naturalistic paintings. Ditto for Zhang Daqian — initially well-known for his imitations of Chinese master paintings and later for his innovative splash ink technique. As T.S. Eliot has pointed out, and i extrapolate, it takes a master of rules to innovate and create true breakthroughs.

Interestingly, Robert McKee (author of STORY: Substance, Structure, Style and The Principles of Screenwriting, and said to be the consummate screenwriting teacher) made a similar point during a 3-day seminar in Singapore last January: “The Miniplot (minimalism) and the Antiplot (anti-structure) cannot have any meaning without the Archplot (classical design) as the reference point.”

Again, i see Discipline & Freedom!

(see Discipline & Freedom II in OnlineLearningTeacher)

“Ludwig van Beethoven (1770 – 1827) was a famous composer. He started going deaf in 1800. He had to use his ‘inner ear’ – his memory of sounds – to compose his great music. His Ninth Symphony is the longest symphony ever written. It closes with a choir singing the Ode to Joy. He took 10 years to compose it. Here was Beethovan, deaf, but demanding that the choir sing about joy! When the Symphony was first played on 7 May 1824, in Vienna, the audience loved it. However, he could not hear them. A singer had to turn him around so he could see them cheering.

“BUT MANY music critics made bad remarks about the Symphony. It was music completely new at that time. To include a choir was innovative. In fact it was shocking. It was the first time in history such a thing had ever been done – because it involved singing, it was only part symphony. It was a mixture the critics were not comfortable with. One conductor called the piece tasteless. A composer called the grand finale badly set.

“The critics were even more upset because Beethoven had not followed the normal form of a symphony. This means that the first movement should be fast, the second movement slow, the third movement dance and the fourth movement fast. Beethoven broke the rules with his Ninth Symphony.

“Today, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony is accepted all over the world as one of the greatest pieces of music ever composed…. If your idea is good, you should not worry about all the bad remarks. With time, people will see how good your idea is. So keep thinking… keep trying… keep doing… keep making your own music!”

Today, the Internet provides different stories on why the CD has a normal playing lenth of 74 minutes. They all revolve around the effort to record all of the Ninth Symphony, one of the longest classical compositions, on a single audio CD.

According to one story, the world-famous conductor Herbert von Karajan, whose concert recording appeared at that time on the PolyGram label, demanded that Philips introduce a CD with a sufficient playing time for his favorite piece. Another version says that the wife of the then-Chairman and founder of Sony Akio Morita urged her husband to exercise his influence and pay homage to Beethoven with the extended playing time.

(Imported from a forum.)

Quite a coincidence. Since the forum was down, i’ve attended an SCO concert, a TheatreWorks play and a StageIt! musical on May 31, June 14 and July 4. The SCO concert happened to feature a pre-concert forum and some live calligraphy demo by Tan Swie Hian (TSH) during the concert itself! Was glad to finally meet TSH in person. He seems so cheerful and humble. And the live calligraphy demo was fantastic. His 马 步 was so good — he was half-squatting for about 10 minutes as he moved around and wrote large Chinese characters on a huge piece of rice paper.

Also saw his works and heard him talk on a ChannelNewsAsia Dreamseekers interview.

(Imported from a forum.)

A beautiful painting by TSH (on the right, above) is called the Night Kites. A critic (or admirer?) wrote that it is “an ecstatic phenomenon, a celebration of the power and the flux of creativity itself.” A friend commented that she could only see a stormy backdrop in this painting. For me, however, i see several orange butterfly-like kites flying above a gigantic lotus pond. Quite 诗情画意 (poetic). Yet, in a sense, this friend could be right. Maybe TSH is trying to show the triumph of one’s spirit in adversity through the soaring kites.

i guess this is the essence and beauty of abstract art — open interpretation. TSH’s art, btw, reminds me of Pollock’s. Just that TSH’s style at this point is perhaps more beautiful and controlled.

(Imported from a forum and edited.)

Was he inspired by Zhang DaQian’s splash ink? (Or the other way round?)

POLLOCK’S ART, btw, is known as Abstract Expressionism.

A friend commented, “That Jackson Pollock piece looks like one of the creations of the elephants in Thailand. They’re given a paintbrush to hold in their trunks, trays of paint and encouraged to splash the paint onto blank pieces of paper.”

Perhaps Pollock’s explanation could answer this strange observation: “When I am in a painting, I’m not aware of what I’m doing. It is only after a sort of ‘get acquainted’ period that I see what I have been about… the painting has a life of its own. I try to let it come through. It is only when I lose contact with the painting that the result is a mess. Otherwise there is pure harmony, an easy give and take, and the painting comes out well.”

And in response to the question “How do you know when you’re finished?”, Pollock replied, “How do you know when you’re finished making love?”

btw, more Pollock art can be found at: The Complete Jackson Pollock site.

(Imported from a forum.)

According to Artcyclopedia: “Impressionism is a light, spontaneous manner of painting which began in France as a reaction against the formalism of the dominant Academic style. Its naturalistic and down-to-earth treatment of its subjects has its roots in the French Realism of Corot and others.”

The movement’s name came from Claude Monet’s early work, Impression: Sunrise in 1873. Monet painted this picture of the sun seen through mist at the harbour of Le Havre when he was staying there in the spring. A sketch quickly executed to catch the atmospheric moment. “The hallmark of the style is the attempt to capture the subjective impression of light in a scene.”

Other Impressionists include Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley, Camille Pissarro, Edgar Degas, Gustave Caillebotte, Frederic Bazille, Edouard Manet, and Mary Cassatt.

(Imported from a forum and edited.)

WHEN FRENCH IMPRESSIONIST PAINTER Auguste Renoir (1841-1919) was confined to his home during the last decade of his life, Henri Matisse was nearly 28 years younger than him. The two great artists were dear friends and frequent companions. Matisse visited him daily. Renoir, almost paralyzed by arthritis, continued to paint in spite of his infirmities. One day as Matisse watched the elder painter work in his studio, fighting torturous pain with each brush stroke, he blurted out: “Auguste, why do you continue to paint when you are in such agony?”

Renoir said: “The pain passes but the beauty remains.” So, Renoir continued to put paint to canvas. One of his most famous paintings, The Bathers, was completed 2 years before his death, 14 years after he got the disease.

(See also the Auguste Renoir page in the Web Museum.)

A VERY DISTURBING PAINTING of Pablo Picasso, probably the most influential artist of the 20th century, is a mural called Guernica:

GUERNICA was painted in response to the deaths of thousands of people during a massive air raid of the Spanish city Guernica by Nazi planes in 1937. The painting became one of modern art’s most powerful antiwar statements, against the “monstrosities brought about by man’s destructive war machines”.

As Raluca Preotu put it, “One such monstrosity is infanticide. To the left of the painting, we see a mother holding a dead child, her face turned upward in a scream. Her tongue is cone-shaped and sharp, accentuating her pain.”

Some critics say that Guernica could have been drawn by a child. Some say they can find secret images hidden in various parts of the painting – such as the hats of Harlequin (an underworld character and a master of disguise), a face, a skull, a bull’s head.

i wonder whether Picasso could have been inspired by the Chinese version of Hades. The strange bull’s head and weird horse’s face sure remind me of 牛头马面!

(Imported from a forum, and edited.)

Familiar with Western contemporary art movement, he created a unique splashed-ink and splashed-color style, based on the free, yet masterly texture strokes of his early years.

(Imported from a forum.)

The man’s so prolific and innovative. Besides excelling in drawings, paintings, and sculptures, he was also into mechanical (bridges, windmills) and aeronautical engineering, and even surgical operations!

One of da Vinci’s most famous paintings is Mona Lisa. If you have looked at Mona Lisa’s eyes before, you may have noticed that no matter from which angle you are looking at them, they will appear to gaze back at you.

A theory goes that Da Vinci achieved this effect by painting himself using something like a mirror.

(Imported from a forum.)

A friend once said something to this effect, “When art has reached its zenith, there’s nothing more to innovate or do except to try to emulate what has already been achieved. This is what has happened to Chinese art – it has been perfected after thousands of years of civilisation.”

Is this true, or just an excuse for not innovating?

(Imported from a forum and edited.)

I’M JUST AN OCCASIONAL ART-LOVER, ever since an Introduction to Art module during U days. Hope to share views and insights on favorite artists, artworks, and the art itself here. One of my favorite art pieces is Vincent van Gogh’s Starry Night which has been eulogised in a song entitled Vincent.

Van Gogh (1853-1890) was a great genius, utterly ignored during his lifetime. He created hundreds of brilliant paintings; only one was sold then. Killed himself at 37.

STARRY NIGHT was painted while Vincent was in the asylum at Saint-Remy and his behaviour was very erratic at the time, due to the severity of his attacks. As J. van der Wolk put it, “[Van Gogh] wanted to paint a starry night as an example of working from the imagination, which could add to the value of a painting: ‘we may succeed in creating a more exciting and comforting nature than we can discern with a single glimpse of reality’, he wrote.”

And so he did. Today, we have exciting new visions of nightscapes. Stars, instead of being little static twinkling lights, turned into great rolling balls of fire. A sleepy townscape actually became startling beautiful and yet gently mesmerizing … thanks to Van Gogh.

One problem Van Gogh had was that his style of painting was part of a new art revolution in the 1870’s, called Post-Impressionism. This new art celebrated modern everyday life in vibrant colors and using bigger, visible brushstrokes. By contrast, earlier European art depicted grand dramatic scenes from history, myth, and religion; and artists painted everything in sharp detail with hardly visible brushstrokes and subdued colors. Resistance to change was naturally great. (More commentary can be found at vangoghgallery.com.)

(Imported from a forum and edited.)