Brandymore Castle

I find the criticisms of Twitter, especially by literate people or authors tiresome. They are so wrapped up in their own cherished conception of what literacy, writing and authorship is, they can't see the creativity and value of Twitter's social sharing mechanism. At its best, Twitter is like the game of telephone. That is where a child tells the child next to them something, then that child tells the next child, and after going through several children, a slightly different story emerges. I believe this is a _good_ thing. What I loved about "retweeting" when I first discovered it on Twitter, was how it was a editorializer's paradise. Tweets in the process of being retweeted simply begged me to rewrite them, reorganize them, expand or comment on the idea, adding my own ideas and thoughts to the original tweet. Perhaps even shifting it entirely into my own framework. I posted my retweet in the glorious knowledge that someone else might take my words and reformulat...

The post print project is thinking about how mobile devices and networked media "could redefine how we do a couple of very basic things: how we tell stories and how we learn ." ( postprintproject.com ) I'm fascinated with this. I believe story telling is bound to the way our brains evolved and isn't really going to change much no matter what technology does. The networked and mobile space we inhabit could change how we learn and use information. I think it already has. I've been reading Jane Austen's novels as Gutenberg etexts on the iphone. The iphone is passable as a reader. I've not got eyestrain yet. I find it hasn't done anything new, but it has restored reading as a regular activity for me. I hate reading at the computer. I'm too lazy to go to the library (I'd have to drive across town to the central library where all the really good books are). Its just too easy to pick up the iphone, download a new book and start reading. That is dif...

People want their life to tell a story. When life diverges from the story they wish it to tell, they become anxious and frustrated. Zen Buddhism teaches desire is the cause if suffering. When we as the fulfillment of the desire us threatened. By avoiding attachment to the story our life tells, we can be free of suffering caused by our life failing to live up its story. We are then able to enjoy our real life, the one that just happens, without requiring it to tell a story. This is the true story of our life. This is not a passive attitude toward life. Life happens to us and we make life happen through what we do and our choices. Life happens, we make things happen, and chance and the cards we are dealt govern our life.

Although I doubt prosecution will do any good, that is not the real question, it is just the only response a failed society has to clean up the mess its made, to lessen the shame of failing to provide a safe learning environment for Phoebe. Stalking, assaulting and verbally abusing an adult is a crime. It ought to be treated seriously when one child commits violence on another. Bullying is a serious violation of human and civil rights of the individual. Those rights do not disappear just because a person is a child. Ensuring the right of an individual to autonomy and safety requires greater vigilance when a child is concerned, because they are less capable of defending their self or even prohibited from self-defense by school rules, which the bully does not care to follow, but the victim must to avoid being doubly victimized, first by the bully and second by the clueless school administrators. The bullied child is often put in a situation with no way out. They are forced by law to atte...