IN CONTRAST, 9% (not 28% as above) are gay, 3% are mostly gay, 6% are bisexual, 19% mostly straight, 61% straight and 2% others, according to a similar poll by Dave Munger on his “Cognitive Daily” blog:

According to “Sexual Behavior and Selected Health Measures: Men and Women 15-44 Years of Age, United States, 2002” (cited by The Neurocritic but link is broken now):

Sexual orientation

In response to a question that asked, “Do you think of yourself as heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, or something else?” 90 percent of men 18-44 years of age responded that they think of themselves as heterosexual, 2.3 percent (not 28% or even 9% as above) of men answered homosexual, 1.8 percent bisexual, 3.9 percent “something else,” and 1.8 percent did not answer the question. Percents for women were similar.

Is there a selection bias, as claimed by The Neurocritic (linked above)?

selection bias

Selection bias comes in two flavors: (1) self-selection of individuals to participate in an activity or survey, or as a subject in an experimental study; (2) selection of samples or studies by researchers to support a particular hypothesis.

If so, how much of a bias is there?

Is this also an indication that more gays and bisexuals are active online (as compared to straights), especially on Twitter (a simple microblogging tool), as compared to Cognitive Daily (which carries daily posts on psychology, a ‘heavier’ subject)? 

ANYWAY, HOW RELIABLE ARE ONLINE POLLS? According to Slate, online polls are NOT an accurate measure of public opinion because of the following reasons:

1. Respondents are not randomly selected. Poll organizers mailed ballots to people on a list of names.
2. Socioeconomic bias. Many have criticized online polling because Internet users tend to be wealthier, more educated, and more male than the population at large.
3. Questions and answers are always given in the same order. Pollsters speak of both the “primacy effect” and the “recency effect,” meaning that the first and last choices are more likely to be chosen, particularly when there is a long list of possible answers. In addition, the order in which questions are given can affect the respondents’ answers.

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Other factors could include:

.

And just two more questions: “How gay is Facebook?” and “How gay is the Internet?”

Hi jktan,

We’ve noticed that your slideshow on SlideShare has been getting a LOT of views in the last 24 hours. Great job … you must be doing something right.

Why don’t you tweet or blog this? Use the hashtag #bestofslideshare so we can track the conversation.

Congratulations,
-SlideShare Team

Upon checking my slideshow on this blog and on SlideShare.net, I found that the views were 50087 views as of today!

On second thoughts though, to receive a message like this on 1 April… Hmmmm…. What do you think?

SOME OF THE KEY BEST PRACTICES as presented in the latest Nielsen Norman Group report, ”Intranet Design Annual 2009: Year’s Ten Best Intranets“, are:

• Company and industry news
• Integrating internal and external information sources
• Editorial control of the intranet homepage
• Keeping the intranet up-to-date
• CEO blogging
• Employee and department weblogs
• Onboarding of new employees
• Consistent navigation
• Multilingual intranets; supporting international employees
• Multimedia and video on intranets
• Data visualization
• Web 2.0 features on intranets
• Community
• Polls
• Collaboration tools and discussion boards
• Internal wikis
• Employee self service
• Search
• Governance
• Development process for intranet redesigns
• Web analytics for intranets
• Staffing of intranet teams; where they report in the organization
• Updating and maintaining standards and guidelines for intranet design
• Intranet branding
• Promoting new intranet features
• Staff directory and employee profile pages
• Corporate calendars
• Personalization
• Customization
• Alerts
• Working with external design agencies
• Intranet budgets and staffing

FOUND THIS INTERESTING LINK ON a Facebook friend’s profile when I was about to post a birthday greeting to her. I agree with the author, Dan York, who wrote:

The only reason I visit a web site these days is generally if either:

1. The website turns up in a search result.
2. I get notified that there’s something interesting there that I should look at.
3. Random times when for some reason I decide to go there, perhaps remembering a URL for a site I wanted to check out.

 
That’s it. (Note that I do get the content of many websites through the ways I mention below, but I don’t actually go to those websites and see their page.)

As I think about it, my consumption of information online really comes down to five ways:

1. E-mail, although I get too much of it to read it all. [Me: Exactly!]
2. Twitter, where I see links from people or services that I follow. [Me: Now, it's the FriendFeed (or NewsFeed) on Facebook.]
3. RSS feeds where my reader pulls it in and I quickly scan through the posts.
4. Skype persistent group chats where I’m connected to several different groups of people on various topics.
5. Searching for data, typically using Google.

 
The key thing is that, with the exception of search:
All the data comes to me!

HOW DID INSTITUTIONS DESIGNED FOR LEARNING become so widely hated by people who love learning? It’s been almost two years (spring 2007) since Dr Michael Wesch of Kansas State University invited the 200 students in his “Introduction to Cultural Anthropology” class to tell the world what they think of their education by helping him script a video for YouTube.

The result was the disheartening portrayal of disengagement below (viewed almost 3 million times worldwide as of today):

LAST OCTOBER, Dr Wesch wrote, “Despite my role in the production of the video, and the thousands of comments supporting it, I recently came to view the video with a sense of uneasiness and even incredulity. Surely it can’t be as bad as the video seems to suggest, I thought… But when I walked into my classroom for the first day of school two weeks ago I was immediately reminded of the real problem now facing education. The problem is not just ‘written on the walls’. It’s built into them.”

The problem

“The video seemed to represent what so many were already feeling, and it became the focal point for many theories… Most blamed technology, though for very different reasons… luddites imagine students to be distracted and superficial while techno-optimists see a new generation of hyper-thinkers bored with old school ways…

“Texting, web-surfing, and iPods are just new versions of passing notes in class, reading novels under the desk, and surreptitiously listening to Walkmans… despite appearances, our classrooms have been fundamentally changed. There is literally something in the air, and it is nothing less than the digital artifacts of over one billion people and computers networked together collectively producing over 2,000 gigabytes of new information per second… Classrooms built to re-enforce the top-down authoritative knowledge of the teacher are now enveloped by a cloud of ubiquitous digital information where knowledge is made, not found, and authority is continuously negotiated through discussion and participation. In short, they tell us that our walls no longer mark the boundaries of our classrooms.

“…The walls have become so prominent that they are even reflected in our language, so that today there is something called “the real world” which is foreign and set apart from our schools. When somebody asks a question that seems irrelevant to this real world, we say that it is “merely academic.” Not surprisingly, our students struggle to find meaning and significance inside these walls. They tune out of class, and log on to Facebook.”

The solution

“Fortunately, the solution is simple. We don’t have to tear the walls down. We just have to stop pretending that the walls separate us from the world, and begin working with students in the pursuit of answers to real and relevant questions…

“We can acknowledge that most of our students have powerful devices on them that give them instant and constant access to this cloud (including almost any answer to almost any multiple choice question you can imagine). We can welcome laptops, cell phones, and iPods into our classrooms, not as distractions, but as powerful learning technologies. We can use them in ways that empower and engage students in real world problems and activities, leveraging the enormous potentials of the digital media environment that now surrounds us. In the process, we allow students to develop much-needed skills in navigating and harnessing this new media environment, including the wisdom to know when to turn it off. When students are engaged in projects that are meaningful and important to them, and that make them feel meaningful and important, they will enthusiastically turn off their cellphones and laptops to grapple with the most difficult texts and take on the most rigorous tasks.”

The other groups measured in the study were the Central Asians (Indians), East Asians (Chinese and Japanese), the Southeast Asians, Arabic (north Africa and Middle East) and Amerindian-Mestizo (Mexican and Central America). All these groups will experience a population growth.

Question: Why is global white population declining and not the other groups? Does this have anything to do with the legal recognition of same-sex couples worldwide among predominantly white nations in modern history, besides general reluctance to have babies (see Causes of “Sub-fertility replacement” on Wikipedia)?

The media giant is the owner of the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, Baltimore Sun, Orlando Sentinel, Hartford Courant and several other papers. It also operates 23 television stations.

“…factors beyond our control have created a perfect storm — a precipitous decline in revenue and a tough economy coupled with a credit crisis that makes it extremely difficult to support our debt.”

“Like many US newspapers, the Tribune has been grappling with declining circulation, a loss of readership to online media, and a steep drop in print advertising revenue.

“The New York Times reported last week that another debt-ridden major US newspaper chain, the McClatchy Co., is seeking to sell one of its flagship newspapers, The Miami Herald.

“And the New York Times itself has not been immune to the crisis gripping the newspaper industry. The paper reported Monday that the New York Times Co. plans to borrow up to 225 million dollars against its mid-Manhattan headquarters building to ease a potential cash flow squeeze.”

September Update: See also “Dow Jones shutting down FEER” and “Journalists Losing Jobs at Three Times Rate of Average Workers“.

VIDEO NOTES BY DR WESCH:
0:00 Introduction, YouTube’s Big Numbers
2:00 Numa Numa and the Celebration of Webcams
5:53 The Machine is Us/ing Us and the New Mediascape
12:16 Introducing our Research Team 
12:56 Who is on YouTube?
13:25 What’s on Youtube? Charlie Bit My Finger, Soulja Boy, etc.
17:04 5% of vids are personal vlogs addressed to the YouTube community, Why?
17:30 YouTube in context. The loss of community and “networked individualism” (Wellman)
18:41 Cultural Inversion: individualism and community
19:15 Understanding new forms of community through Participant Observation
21:18 YouTube as a medium for community
23:00 Our first vlogs
25:00 The webcam: Everybody is watching where nobody is (”context collapse”)
26:05 Re-cognition and new forms of self-awareness (McLuhan)
27:58 The Anonymity of Watching YouTube: Haters and Lovers
29:53 Aesthetic Arrest
30:25 Connection without Constraint
32:35 Free Hugs: A hero for our mediated culture
34:02 YouTube Drama: Striving for popularity
34:55 An early star: emokid21ohio
36:55 YouTube’s Anthenticity Crisis: the story of LonelyGirl15
39:50 Reflections on Authenticity
41:54 Gaming the system / Exposing the System
43:37 Seriously Playful Participatory Media Culture (featuring Us by blimvisible: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yxHKg…
47:32 Networked Production: The Collab. MadV’s “The Message” and the message of YouTube
49:29 Poem: The Little Glass Dot, The Eyes of the World
51:15 Conclusion by bnessel1973
52:50 Dedication and Credits (Our Numa Numa dance)

FRANKLY, I DON’T KNOW what to make out of the Tibetan protests. I’ve not spent significant time researching on the issues involved. However, from what I know and remember of Chinese history, I feel quite strongly that Chris Nebe (as a foreigner with insider knowledge and experience of China) is speaking the truth about Tibet in the video here:


Nebe’s post in YouTube:
The West is trying to demonize China. Why? To ensure an upper-handed position economically, politically, and socially.

Too many harbor strong opinions about Tibet, yet know nothing more than the few slogans offered by the mass-media outlets.

The media screams:
“They killed innocent monks!” – but those “innocent” monks and other young hooligans killed innocent Chinese before a single shot was fired on them.
“The Chinese are oppressive” – do you consider freeing over 95% of Tibetans from slavery, building a state of the art infrastructure, and a new economy oppressive?
“The Chinese suppress Tibetan Buddhism” – then why have the Chinese spent a fortune restoring ancient monasteries and places of religious significance?

China doesn’t SPIN NEWS like we do. Their silence is too often mistaken as admission of guilt. Don’t be another uninformed drone. Do everyone a favor and learn truths before forming opinions.

Here’s to Peace & Harmony! The 2008 Beijing Olympics deserve support!

Reminds me of “Star Wars: Return of the Jedi”, where Emperor Palpatine said to Luke Skywalker: “The alliance… will die. As will your friends. Good, I can feel your anger. I am defenseless. Take your weapon. Strike me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!”

When I gave a talk on Web 2.0 & Its Business Impacts at COM1, NUS last month, I cited various real-life examples of how the blogosphere “chatter” could affect a company’s corporate image positively or negatively. Also discussed briefly the people (how they get younger and younger!) and the milestones behind successful Web 2.0 apps such as Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, etc. This slideshow provides a quick overview, featuring famous Web entrepreneurs such as Jimmy Wales (Wikipedia), Kevin Rose (Digg), Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook)… and Ping.sg celebrity Uzyn Chua (slide 19) :

Related Articles:

• Top Posts in Ping.sg & Tomorrow.sg Reveal That…
• Alexa Ranks Ping.sg Above Tomorrow.sg!
• Live Coverage of Flea Mart On Ping.sg
• A video guide to the Ping.sg celebration – by an absentee …

This slideshow provides a quick overview. Also features a Ping.sg celebrity towards the end (slide 19).

Note: The slideshow is now featured on a similar post with a different title and intro.

By the way, the interface of the YouKu.com site looks very like YouTube.com! In the spirit of Web 2.0 and open-source, let’s hope YouTube (or rather Google) would let things be.

HERE ARE SOME PRACTICAL TIPS from a very interesting girl called June (a.k.a. princessgx on YouTube):

Therefore, Google Docs users can now:

• Create and keep presentations in one place on the web that’s accessible anytime, from any Internet connected computer.
• Manage, update and share presentations with colleagues by sending them a simple email invitation.
• Edit together online and in real time, or contribute at different times to the same presentation on the web.
• Present and control slide shows for all viewers over the web, with no special setup required. Chat with viewers in real-time via integrated chat.
• Import existing presentations to get started quickly.
• Quickly publish presentations to the general public or individuals of their choice.

AND HERE’S A VIDEO showing how users can connect through Google Talk and “can chat about the presentation as they’re watching.”

More details in The Official Google Blog. And in related news, Yahoo! Drops $350m on Zimbra; an Open Source, Enterprise RIA. Looks like we are likely to see a three-corner fight soon — Microsoft Office vs. Google Office vs. Yahoo! Office.

Another fun Simpson video:

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

First, I read Chillycraps’ Pinging Party post and found the official recording of the live Ping.sg webcast on Ustream:
.

This recording, however is almost three hours long! :-p So, here’s a quick guide to this video:

• 0:00 NTT and Rinaz warming up the camera, people streaming in, testing on stage…
• 39:00 Award Presentation begins with MCs Brendan and Rinaz.
• 45:00 Most Entertaining Blog: Chillycraps
• 51:15 Most Interactive Blog: EastCoastLife
• 58:00 Most Insightful Blog: Cobalt Paladin (entertaining video around 62:00)
• 71:00 Best Photoblog: Keropok Man
• 81:00 Best Blog Design: Veron
• 88:30 Most Controversial Post: EastCoastLife
• 97:35 Most Entertaining Post: EastCoastLife
• 103:42 Most Insightful Post: dk99
• 115: Best Citizen Journalist Post: dk99
• 120:30 Post of The Year: EastCoastLife
• 125:30 Blog Of The Year: Veron (Suddenly, there was no sound!)
• 131:00 How Ping.sg Got Started (Haha! Uzyn used the word “Web 2.0″ to describe Ping.sg!)

Next, read Chillycraps’ What the Fish post and found two amusing video recordings by Rinaz:

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1. Fishes! (Technology: Reactrix)

Chinese version （中文版）:

English version （英文版）:

“Did You Know? Shift Happens – Globalization & the Information Age”
《你知道吗？环球与资讯的转变》
Created by: Karl Fisch (apparently a high school teacher/admin in the USA)
Modified by: Scott McLeod; Content remixed from: David Warlick, Thomas Friedman (”The World is Flat”), Ian Jukes, Ray Kurzweil (dubbed “the best person to predict the future of AI” by Bill Gates) and others; Music: “The Last of the Mohicans” (1992)

Thanks, Lucifer Chu. (谢谢你,朱學恆。)

Now, my 9otta 9et 9oals (aka “9 Worthy 9oals Before I Expire”) are:

1. Complete a PhD program in educational psychology with a world-class professor.
2. Make a positive difference in the lives of the youths in my family and within my church so that they in turn would make a positive difference in the lives of others.
3. Be actively involved in non-profit work for the less fortunate in Asia, e.g. like what Beth Kanter is doing for Cambodia.
4. Establish a successful learning media business headquartered in Singapore with outreach to various parts of Asia.
5. Publish and maintain a very special never-ending “book” that’s a favorite among discerning audience.
6. Spend a few months traveling around (and living in) some of my favorite spots on earth, e.g. the Holy Land, some of the most beautiful islands in Greece; Tuscany and Umbria in Italy; major mountains and rivers of China; hot springs of Japan, the Little Portion Hermitage in Arkansas, USA.
7. Go up in a hot-air balloon, skydive, then scuba dive and finally sleep under the stars — all within a day or two.
8. Spend an afternoon hanging out with John Michael Talbot.
9. Leave a memorable and valuable legacy for my loved ones.

.

TAGTIME: I am tagging these 9eek 9als whom I’ve met so far, either physically (in Singapore) or virtually (via the blogosphere): Beth Kanter (Beth’s Blo9), EastCoastLife, Estee (9eek 9oddess), Nicole (The 9al), Raine (Ar9onaut Aura), Rinaz (Marina’s Blo99ariffic), Su Yuen (Striving to achieve one 9oal at a time!), Tstar (A Replacement to Writin9?) and Veron (9raphics desi9ner at Splarkette.net)

Note: The idea of this meme is to list five to ten goals that you’d like to achieve in your lifetime no matter how outrageous and share them with the world. Then tag others to do the same.

Afternote 27-04-2007: I had my doubts when trying to respond to this meme because this almost looks like a “cheap” exchange of links. However, upon second thoughts, I find some value in writing and therefore rethinking goals that are worth pursuing for me AS WELL AS in reading about the goals of people that I’ve befriended in the blogosphere. So, here it is.

Asia Social Media Directory is “non-competitive” in the sense that all Singaporean bloggers and social media activists are still encouraged to add relevant info on their sites on the Singapore Social Media Directory. However all, including those from Singapore, are welcome to join the Asia Social Media Directory Frappr map:

WHY AM I DOING THIS? Basically, I want to reach out to a much wider audience, especially people in Asia. Currently, about 50% of my visitors are coming from Singapore. Too few are from the rest of Asia.

However, there is no Asian directory available on the Internet right now (at least not one that I could find on the Internet via a Google search) that is:

• “Unconditional”: All bloggers and social media activists in Asia are most welcome to join and list their blogs and/or social media sites there without having to add a reciprocal badge/link to the directory from their sites.
• Community-managed: Anyone can add themselves in without being screened first. (Of course, if abuse occurs then abusers will be barred.)

In addition, I also plan to read more Asian blogs and start providing insights and roundups on how free/open-source/social technologies are being used in Asian business and education. Reasons include:

• More and more, Singapore is being used by westerners (Europeans, Americans, Canadians, etc.) as a springboard to Asia, and by easterners (Asians) as a stepping stone to the English-speaking countries.
• Over 50% Internet users will be Asians soon

So, would Asia Social Media Directory and my finetuned focus be of interest/value to you, my readers?

This is a new design challenge in this age of information anxiety and abundance of meaning. More and more people, myself included, are doing many things at the same time. However, decades of research (and common sense) have indicated that the quality of one’s output and depth of thought deteriorate as one attends to ever more tasks. For example:

• “We are under the impression that we have this brain that can do more than it often can,” says René Marois, neuroscientist and director of the Human Information Processing Laboratory at Vanderbilt University, quoted in a recent NYTimes piece about how multi-taskers max out their brains, creating neural network bottlenecks and causing confusion and mistakes (thanks, Susan Mernit).
• When people try to perform two or more related tasks either at the same time or alternating rapidly between them, errors go way up, and it takes far longer–often double the time or more–to get the jobs done than if they were done sequentially, says David E. Meyer, director of the Brain, Cognition and Action Laboratory at the University of Michigan: “The toll in terms of slowdown is extremely large–amazingly so.” (thanks, DeedsDoing 2006)
• “Kids that are instant messaging while doing homework, playing games online and watching TV, I predict, aren’t going to do well in the long run,” says Jordan Grafman, chief of the cognitive neuroscience section at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, quoted in a CNN report last year.

IN MY EXPERIENCE FOR EXAMPLE: During Nexus 2007 last Saturday, I found myself switching among three screens on my laptop most of the time. We were using Twitter.com for message sending, Campfirenow for chatting, and Nexus Live/Interactive to view Twitter messages from everyone. I could barely pay attention to the speakers/panel on the stage. Probably listened to only half the words. One possible way to reduce distraction could be better to replace Campfirenow with a shoutbox hooked onto Twitter via its API, the way Uzyn managed to hook Ping.sg shouts into pingsg_shouts on Twitter. Open Tweetbar on the sidebar and everyone would have two less screens to distract their attention — in other words, Let everyone look at just ONE screen.

Recently, Bjorn Lee twittered: “i have ADD, maybe i shld enrol in that china camp where they reform internet addicts.. oops, thats called NS in spore.” (ADD stands for Attention Deficit Disorder here, I think.)

What other solutions are there? Listen to former Microsoft VP Linda Stone perhaps (thanks, Mike Rohde):

“Continous Partial Attention (CPA) is different than multi-tasking, where the motivation is productivity: giving equal attention to many activities. CPA’s motivation is being a live node on the network, gaining meaning from the network, being ready for new opportunities at any moment…”

“But this always on, anytime, anywhere, anyplace era has has created an artificial sense of constant crisis. The adrenalized fight or flight mechanism kicks in. It’s great when we’re being chased by tigers. How many of those 500 emails a day is a tiger? Or are they mostly mice? Is everything really such an emergency? Our way of using the current set of technologies would have us believe it is.”

And learn from Jakob Nielsen (thanks, Beth):

1. Don’t check your email all the time. Set aside special breaks between bigger projects to handle email. Don’t let email interrupt your projects, and don’t let the computer dictate your priorities.
2. Don’t use “reply to all” when responding to email. Abide by the good old “need to know” principle… send follow-up messages only to those people who will actually benefit from the reply.
3. Write informative subject lines for your email messages. Assume that the recipient is too busy to open messages with lame titles like “hi.”
4. Create a special email address for personal messages and newsletters. Only check this account once per day.
5. Write short.
6. Avoid IM (instant messaging) unless real-time interaction will truly add value to the communication. A one-minute interruption of your colleagues will cost them ten minutes of productivity as they reestablish their mental context and get back into “flow.” Only the most important messages are worth 1,000 percent in overhead costs.
7. Answer common customer questions on your website using clear and concise language. This will save your customers a lot of time — thus making you popular — and will keep them from pestering you with time-consuming phone calls and emails.
8. User test your intranet. Clean it up so that employees can find stuff faster, and make the intranet homepage their entry point for keeping up on company news and events.
9. Don’t circulate internal email to all employees; instead put the information on the intranet where people can find it when they need it. (This obviously assumes that you’ve fixed the intranet’s usability.)
10. Establish a company culture in which it’s okay not to respond to email immediately. This frees employees from the pressure of incessantly checking email and lets them get more work done.

Finally, run 5 miles or do a spin class like Beth does. She explained:

“For some reason, vigorous cardio exercise helps clear out the information anxiety Maybe it is the just the stepping away from the reflected light dancing across my eyes coming from the monitor.”

Related Posts:

• Web of Mass Distraction I

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!”

(Found this on CESBloggers.com who in turn references SlashDot.)

SECOND, the Podcast Awards for 2006 are out. Among the winners are three Catholic podcasts:

• People’s Choice: MuggleCast
• Best Produced: The Signal
• Best Podcast Directory: iTunes
• Best Mobile Podcast: Catholic Insider (Catholic obviously)
• Business: Manager Tools
• Comedy: Distored View
• Cultural/Arts: Anime Pulse
• Education: Tips from the Top Floor
• Entertainment: Pottercast
• Gaming: Podtacular
• General: Rosary Army (Catholic)
• Movies/Films: The Signal (again!)
• PodSafe Music: AccidentHash
• Political: Free Talk Live
• Religion Inspiration: Daily Breakfast (Catholic)
• Technology/ Science: DiggNation
• Travel: Mouse Tunes

According to the designers, this instrument is intended to be:

• collaborative: several performers (locally or remotely)
• intuitive: zero manual, zero instructions
• sonically challenging and interesting
• learnable and masterable, even by children
• suitable for novice and advanced electronic music (i.e. installations and concerts)

Note: Found this video because someone from Harro left a note on the shoutbox on one of my websites. So I checked out his/her website. It happened to be Harro Channels which has a link to ping.sg, a community meta blog for Singapore bloggers. There was a listing of popular posts. So, I clicked on the topmost one… and voila!

Key Features (extracted from the Zoho Notebook site itself):

• Intuitive user interface with white boarding and custom layout capability
• Quick “add” buttons for adding text, graphics, photos, audio, video, RSS feeds and documents
• Combine and add Notebook pages from other applications such as Zoho Writer and Zoho Sheet
• “Content level” sharing and versioning providing fine grain control of what is shared with others
• Firefox and IE plug-ins for instant web clipping
• Real-time, simultaneous editing and sharing of content
• Skype integration for instant chat and IP telephony

What would you do, and why? Just tick one of the options/boxes below. You can also add a new option (by clicking here (scroll to the bottom to enter a new and preferred option — remember to click the box to cast your vote!), or add a comment (by clicking the “Discuss this Poll” link below).

THEN I found Paul Allison wondering aloud in a “Teachers Teaching Teachers” post:

…perhaps those of us using digital photography, podcasts, Google maps,webcasts, wikis, video, del.icio.us, tags, blogs, Bloglines, Google Reader, online word processors, digital stories and poetry, and other Web 2.0 technologies need our own department, our own discipline, our own field of study… “Web Studies” would address new literacies that are not presently being taught in the traditional, core subjects. Web Studies needs to become more central in schools… I’m wondering if I’m still an English teacher. Probably not.

Checking out the comments section, I found Tom Hoffman’s response (“It’s All English”) in his Tuttle SVC blog.

Initially, I shared Paul Allison’s sentiments. However, suddenly, it seems obvious. It’s NOT about English, Math or Web Studies anymore. Just look at the graphic above again.

Most users will never need to leave Google. What an amazing pool of spontaneously generated data this would be for researchers!

By the way, I created the diagram above using Gliffy, another exciting free tool on the Web. And yes, collaborative editing is possible. There’s versioning too. A word of caution though: Remember to save and exit from Gliffy often. It hung my system just now.

Curious about who’s listening to podcasts in general, or do you need to know who your particular audience is so that you can attract the right sponsors? The panel fields questions such as: Who are the listeners in categories of age, education, gender, and location? How much are podcasts being used for learning? How much for corporate purposes? These panelists discuss the latest metrics on who’s listening and who’s producing podcasts, plus offer creative ways of getting to the numbers behind your podcast.

Curiously, the MIT guy chose to call this “Assist Sketch Understanding System and Operation”. I believe this is a revised version of the Physics Illustrator that I was exploring a month or two ago. The software is basically “a motion simulator for the Tablet PC”:

Bring your drawings to life with the Physics Illustrator, Simply draw two-dimensional bodies, connect them in various ways and apply forces, then watch as animation makes the bodies move, collide, and interact.

(See also HOW TO: Use Physics Illustrator on non-tablet PC.)

In Downes’ words:

“The drawing depicts the often unnoticed assumptions that inform our understanding of groups, inform our sometimes slavish devotion to groups, and shows how these contrast with my own understanding of how interaction ought to occur, in networks. It’s not just a web theory (though it is that), it is a theory about life and society in general.”

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.

ACTUALLY, none of us got the right answer, although I did come quite close (the answer is in the Dutton & Aron link above, just scroll to the middle of the page). The Capilano story was one of many concrete examples (and experiments) which Professor Henck Schmidt used during a talk at Republic Polytechnic yesterday, to illustrate six key principles of learning and teaching, namely:

• Learning is basically construction of meaning, e.g. coherent theories about the world.
• Activation of prior knowledge facilitates the subsequent processing of new information.
• Elaboration of knowledge at the time of learning enhances subsequent retrieval. E.g. use of paired assocation.
• Organization of Knowledge: E.g. “Do you remember where you were and what you were doing when news on 911 broke out?” (Note: Actually, I kinda puzzled by this illustration. Didn’t get to clarify my doubts though.
• Contextual Dependence: Matching context facilitates recall.
• Intrinsic Interest: External rewards does not steer the learning, in fact it may reduce intrinsic interest and make the subject matter studied less interesting.

We (the audience), including many instructional designers from various IHLs in Singapore, were asked many interesting questions in order to trigger more questions and activate critical thinking. Truly gratified to have attended a talk by a man who models what he teaches. And to leave with an adrenaline rush…

According to Nielsen BuzzMetrics, Consumer-Generated Media (CGM) encompasses the millions of consumer-generated comments, opinions and personal experiences posted in publicly available online sources (such as blogs, message boards, forums, Usenet newsgroups, discussions and forums on large email portals, online opinion/review sites and online feedback/complaint sites) on a wide range of issues, topics, products and brands, using media such as photos, images, videos, even podcasts and webcasts… and who knows what’s next? In other words, “CGM is also referred to as Online Consumer Word-of-Mouth or Online Consumer Buzz.”

Why is CGM important?

First, consumers place far more trust in their fellow consumers than they do in traditional marketers and advertisers, according to research… Secondly, CGM is prolific and increasingly easy and inexpensive to create… [Finally,] because CGM data is easy to find on search engines, marketers and advertisers no longer “control” the message or the medium.

20 Oct 2005: Students in University of Washington get class lectures on demand, thanks to podcasts. (uweek.org)

3 Nov 2005: The “Stanford on iTunes” debut in late October marked the first time a university made audio content from lectures, interviews, commencement speeches and the like publicly available through a system like the iTunes Music Store. (CNet News.com)

24 Feb 2006: Students in the School of Psychology at University of Wales, Bangor, are now able to gain access to Podcast lectures . (iPod in Education)

5 May 2006: IT Sligo has become one of the first third-level institutions in Ireland to deploy video podcasts of lectures to online engineering students, allowing them to view their lecturers using their iPod, mobile phone or any MP3 player with a video display. (siliconrepublic.com)

26 May 2006: A microbiology lecturer at a West Yorkshire university, has abolished traditional lectures in favour of podcasts. Students will access the podcasts via MP3 players, phones or computers, and ask questions via text messages, to be answered in the lecturer’s blog. (BBC News)

“FIVE BLIND PEOPLE were walking down a path. They stumbled upon something that none of them had ever experienced before, an educational simulation. They each tried to describe it to the others.

“It is a class. People sit down and learn important ideas,” said the first.
“I don’t think so,” said the second. “It’s a computer game. It moves quickly, it involves a mouse, and requires my complete attention.”
“No,” said a third, “It can be used with a class, but it’s more like a book. It can be sold anywhere in the world. It is scalable–hundreds of thousands can engage it at the same time.”
“What are you talking about?” asked the fourth. “It is like a pill. It is a compact package of intellectual property that improves quality of life.”
“I beg to differ,” said the fifth. “It is more like a gym. It requires the users to work hard and sweat and put in hours to tone themselves.”

AM REMINDED of the Education Pill metaphor that A/P Hoadley used in a seminar two months ago. “Assuming that an Education Pill is possible,” he had said. “How would we evaluate it? How would we discover it? How would we manufacture it? What other questions arise?”

After spending some time discussing in small groups, we discussed as a class. Issues brought up included:

• Outright rejection. Idea of pill seems like idea of education as transmission. Generalizing from bad examples?
• Diagnostic (Problem) issues. Education vs. learning? What are the goals of education? What needs to get evaluated? What’s the best thing to do? Intervention, treatment or description? What are the things worth intervening in?
• Treatment issues. Differences between causes and symptoms? Does one pill fit all? Customization to suit individual differences? Side effects? “This cough syrup tastes bad!” Dependency (addiction to pills)? Multiple intelligences issues: scoping how much one pill can do. Same vs. different pills (e.g. one for Math, one for Biology). Differences between fixing a problem and speeding development. How do you know what the relevant covariates are? What is expecting too much of a pill? Is learning about physiology or not?
• Control, Social and/or Political (power) issues. Who gets to control access or administer the pill? Discount pills (reverse effects)? What if you got the wrong pills?! Entropy — Changing the evolutionary pressure on mankind (changing to Japanese?)

It occured to me then: “Actually, we are already using an Education Pill very extensively in Singapore. It is ‘tutoring’. Almost everyone has taken this ‘tutoring’ pill, some more some less — at different levels and with different potencies. RP is also taking an Education Pill. That is, Problem-Based Learning (PBL). This teaching strategy is being used throughout the whole campus, for all subjects at all levels for all students. Does this one pill really fit all?”

(See also What Is Truth? and Figures of Speech. Try the Metaphorically Speaking quiz.)

Although many of these folks may never grace the pages of the high-gloss pubs, they will most certainly be keeping an independent eye on those who do. As we’ve all witnessed, this is already happening. Both Dan Rather and CNN news chief Eason Jordon were handed their walking papers after being busted by bloggers.

(2007-03-01 note: The AlwaysOn link above is now broken. See The 2006 AO 100 instead.)

(Click here to see full-sized mindmap.)

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.”

WHILE BROWSING IN THE LIBRARY two weeks ago, i happened to pick up a book published in 2002 by Diana Laurillard entitled, “Rethinking University Teaching — a framework for the effective use of learning technologies”. Was quite excited when i learnt about Laurillard’s five media forms for supporting active learning. They overlap almost neatly with Nichani’s four Interactive Visual Explainers (2003).

‘NARRATIVE’ is the same in both, ‘Interactive’ is equivalent to ‘Explorative’ and ‘Adaptive’ to ‘Simulative’. Laurillard’s ‘Communicative’ and ‘Productive’ are not in Nichani’s classification, but they coincide with the ‘Collaborative’ and ‘Constructive’ in my extrapolation last year (see ‘Industry’ vs. ‘Academia’ III).

Just now, during a lunchtime talk, when the manager of the eLearning Competency Centre mentioned Dr Ruth Clark’s Four Learning Architectures, my curiosity was piqued. Other than the different names, ‘Receptive’, ‘Directive’, ‘Explorative’ and ‘Guided Discovery’ seem to be identical to Nichani’s ‘Narrative’, ‘Instructive’, ‘Explorative’ and ‘Simulative’!

Just whose classification came first? Did one know about the other’s work? Or is this a case of great minds think alike?

i began to search for information on Clark and her work. Found a number of interesting things, among them: Clark’s learning architectures have been adopted by Cisco in its learning objects model. Clark also has a book entitled E-Learning and the Science of Instruction: Proven guidelines for consumers and designers of multimedia learning. Must borrow this book soon.

These days, as i continued working on the InfoGraphics Design projects for my part-time studies, different theories are beginning to fall into place as in a jigsaw puzzle. Gagne’s Nine Instructional Events (1985), Keller’s ARCS model (1987), Lave & Wenger’s situated learning (1991), Clark’s architectures (2000), Nichani’s explainers (2003), Laurillard’s media forms (2002), Miller’s Cognitve Load theory (1956), Merrill’s Component Display Theory (1983), Reigeluth’s Elaboration Theory (1983), Horton’s layering tactics (2000) and Wurman’s chunking tactics (2001).

After so many wild goose chases, the trail is finally getting hot!

Excited that Information Design was finally introduced to e-learning practitioners, and Maish has done it very well, with lots of diverse and interesting examples. Particularly liked revisiting the first two — Charles Joseph Minard’s Mapping Napoleon’s March, 1861 and The New York Times’ From One Hotel Guest Many Infections (SARS) infographic.

Concerned though about a few probable issues: (1) The examples were mostly CBT-like, with little indications of actual information design principles at work (perhaps not enough time), (2) Maish’s focus had been wholly on visual design and nothing on the writing, (3) How are we going to teach this complex stuff to our academic staff (or students) who have very little time and motivation?

Is this a problem of academic theory vs. industry practice again?

LATER, BACK in the office, browsed the Features section of Maish’s elearningpost.com site and found a very neat classification by Maish Nichani and Venkat Rajamanickam called Interactive Visual Explainers (IVE) which postulates that interactivity in an interactive visual explainer can be either (1) narrative, (2) instructive, (3) explorative, or (4) simulative.

Interestingly, with a recent Learning Object competition organised by the e-Learning Competency Centre, the Cisco Learning Object (CLO, a legacy of technical writing and a derivative of Information Mapping) has now become a key reference point for e-learning practitioners in Singapore.

However, when i map what i understand about Bloom’s taxonomy to the IVE classification and the content types in CLO, i see some inadequacies in the two classifications to enable learning of higher order skills in Bloom’s taxonomy:

*E.g., structured discussions, virtual chat, virtual classroom, collaborative mindmapping
**E.g., Jonassen’s mindtools and constructive learning environments (CLEs)

Aha! One up for ‘Academia’?

(See also ‘Industry’ vs. ‘Academia’ and ‘Industry’ vs. ‘Academia’ II.)

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.)