Quantum Forest logs are written by Luis A. Apiolaza in Christchurch, New Zealand and powered by TextPattern.

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Armchair comparative linguistics
Published Tuesday July 25, 2006 · Permalink

I started working with a Spanish speaker Ph.D. student. One of the topics of conversation is the (always long) list of things that do not make sense in English if taken in a literal way. For example:

Of course any language has a fair share of inconsistencies, strange turns of phrase or grammatical weirdness. Some classic Spanish cultural issues:

The latter example puts the locus of control on the object not the person, so there is an issue of personal responsability (or lack of it). This used to be a big difference, but English is catching up if not through language but via the legal system. Think of ‘tort law’ and ‘frivolous lawsuits’.

Just another day in language’s terra nulla.

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Thinking about course notes
Published Friday October 21, 2005 · Permalink

Next year I have to prepare thirty two lectures; eight for an introductory class and twenty four for a 400 level elective class. The first will be the only exposure to tree breeding for many people, so I need to prepare a sort of ‘tree breeding survival kit’. The elective class will be taken by Bachellor and Masters (with extra course work) students, so there is much more room to explore topics.

One of the issues when preparing teaching material (and presentations) is what is the right level to pitch it. Kathy Sierra—from Creating Passionate Users—has a very interesting article entitled Reference vs. learning: pick ONE. There she explains that the author has to decide if he is writing a reference book or a learning one. There is no chance of doing both in a single volume, so one has to choose from the beginning to use the appropriate structure and language.

Writing tools

After deciding between reference and learning, the following question is how to write the notes? If I am writing short documents I normally use a word processor (even MSWord will do). However, when I work in large projects—particularly with lots of mathematics—I try to use something like LATEX. If there are no maths I may use a Wiki like PmWiki. This choice does not matter at all when working solo, but what happens when I try to collaborate with other authors (a pretty common situation)? We keep sending MSWord files back and forth, but there is always a lag, because there is no way of simultaneously work in documents and proper versioning in Word. Or we… well, there is no alternative because my collaborators are no LATEX or Wiki savvy.

While looking at Kathy’s article I followed a link to Jesse James Garret’s site, which in turn pointed to O’Reilly Radar, which linked to Writely’s site. Writely and Writeboard are two examples1 of ‘web-based collaborative writing tools’. Both tools play with the same concept: let’s adapt the Wiki idea and have text documents in a web server, which can be edited by several people using some sort of markup simpler than HTML. Many wikis already have versioning systems embedded. Throw permissions on top of the mix, a simple interface, a bunch of buzzwords (say AJAX and Web 2.0) and we have the new ‘web-based collaborative writing tools’.

I have tried both systems and I feel much more comfortable with Writely. Why? Writeboard requires using the Textile markup for formatting the document. I love Textile—I am using it for writing this log entry—but my colleagues are unfamiliar with it. However, they know how to use the icons in Writely, because they use similar icons in MSWord. In addition, I can not keep a list of documents in Writeboard unless I get an account in Backpack, which is an extra hassle. Finally, it is possible to import MSWord files into Writely, which is a bonus.

I will write the notes for the first eight lectures in Writely and see if I can get some friends to make comments and modify the notes. My own little experiment, if you want.

1 I also came across Zoho Writer, but I have not had a chance to test it.

del.icio.us tags: teaching collaboration writing.

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Pen, tablet, heaven and hell are all in thee
Published Tuesday October 4, 2005 · Permalink

Another bombing, another massacre. More killing and maiming innocent people in the name of religion, politics, big ideas or small ones.

Flashback: twelve years of Catholic school listening about good and evil, some times as abstract concepts, some times personified in strange caricatures. Then in 1982 I came across The Rubaiyat, by Omar Khayyam and read:

Pen, tablet, heaven and hell I looked to see
Above the skies, from all eternity;
At last the master sage instructed me,
‘Pen, tablet, heaven and hell are all in thee’.

There are a few bad people amongst us, walking with hell inside them. As John Quiggin pointed out, this is a time for solidarity with Indonesian people.

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Baffle me too
Published Wednesday September 21, 2005 · Permalink

I was reading Things that baffle me posted by Gail Armstrong, mostly nodding in agreement, but sometimes completely disagreeing. So, I came up with my own list of baffling things.

Furry toilet seat covers, instant coffee, instant juice—in fact almost anything ‘instant’, Chihuahua dogs, drug addictions, people using ‘affect’ instead of ‘effect’ (or vice versa), email spam, $1,000 shoes, car stereos more expensive than my car, bad wine, rich kid environmentalism, totalitarian ideologies, beer + ice, people who misspell my name (L-U-I-S, easy), mimes, one-ply toilet paper, fat women in hipsters, rap, hip-hop and related music.

Things that baffle her but do not baffle me: trigonometry, black & white photos in art books, and socks + sandals (that I love).

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Weasel words and elections
Published Tuesday September 20, 2005 · Permalink

When reading the newspaper and driving around this little island, one comes across many times with ‘best practice’ (mostly in the news) and ‘Save X’ or ‘No to Y’ (mostly in bumber stickers). They come often enough to become worn down clichés.

Best practice does not necessarily mean ‘good practice’. As an example, until not long ago corporal punishment was considered best practice from a pedagogical point of view. Now it is neither considered best nor good, but an abhorrent practice. When used in environmental discussion, best practice is a catch all phrase (normally used by government) that really means we think it is good, it is done in other places and nobody has complained too much about it.

Have you ever wondered how come that there are so many things that need to be ‘saved’? Saved from what or from who? No is a very interesting word, because it means opposition and negation and it does not propose anything. If I say NO to something it seems that I do not need to be pro anything. I have met quite a few people in the environmental discussion in Tasmania that oppose forestry activity not necessarily because of the environmental effects—which are much more marked in agriculture, for example—but because is conducted by big corporations (as oppossed to many farmers). When asked ‘How would you provide all the goods and services without corporations?’ they produce very wek responses, because they have not thought the issue through, because they are against X rather than pro Y.

And going back to past elections and weasels

I have to acknowledge that I voted for Mark Latham in the 2004 federal election. In spite of Latham’s lack of coherence and a pathetic forest policy, I could not bring myself to stomach the Liberals’ policies towards refugees. As it should be clear to the reader by now, Labor and Latham had their bottoms kicked.

Back to almost the present, last week the ABC broadcasted Andrew Denton’s ‘Enough Rope’ program, after a short lived legal battle with News Limited. In the interview Latham showed to be a real psycho: he was accusing almost everybody else of acting like, mmh, Mark Latham. As Matthew 7:3 said ‘Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?’ or—if you are a King James person—‘And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?’ or—to add a Spanish touch—‘viendo la paja en el ojo ajeno pero no la viga en el propio’.

He showed complete disregard for his party colleagues, particularly Kim Beazley, the current leader of the opposition. What I find disturbing is not that he despises politicians (don’t we all do?) but that knowing the status of the party, the moral quality of his colleagues and the lack of conviction in their policies he still decided to present himself as potential prime minister material supported by that kind of people. Note to self: do not ever forget the level of stupidity reigning in the Labor party.

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