Shirley Jackson og wikipedia.

Dette er et plot summary fra Wikipedia af bogen 'we have always lived in castles', tror jeg. Der er vist en diskusion, en akademisk diskusion (i den dobbelte betydning af både virkelig at være akademisk og ligegyldig.) der handler om wikipedias unøjagtighed og måske mere generelt om nettets tendenser til at udflade, bl.a. fakta. Som sagt er diskusionen ligegyldig. Der sker hvad der sker og hvis man vil have noget at sige der til, må man skabe noget. Man skaber noget ved at være bagrstræberisk, men det har visse tendser til at afmontere sig selv igen, det man har skabt.
Nå men der er i hvert fald et punkt hvor Wikipedia nogen gange er mange gange mere suverænt end et hvilket som helst opslagsværk, det være et leksikon, eller mere specefikke bøger om forskellige emner og det er i plot opsurmeringer. Wikipedia er den perfekte blanding af saglighed og lidenskab. Der er i nogle af dem en sjælden evne til at kondensere ikke bare handlingens ydre træk, men også handlingens kondeseren af sig selv. Denne opsumering(nedenfor) er et eksempel. Den formår på ret godt tid, at skrue de forskellige elementer ind i hinanden, på en måde så den faktisk også opsurmere historiens bevægelse og ikke bare dens elementer. Det lyder fint, er sikkert ret ligegyldigt, men en vældig nydelse at læse ikke desto mindre.

Plot summary

The people in the village have always hated us.

The novel, narrated in first-person by 18-year-old Mary Katherine "Merricat" Blackwood, tells the story of the Blackwood family. A careful reading of the opening paragraphs reveals that the majority of this novel is a flashback.

Merricat, her elder sister Constance, and their ailing uncle Julian live in isolation from the nearby village. Constance has not left their home in six years, going no farther than her large garden and seeing only a select few family friends. Uncle Julian, slightly demented and confined to a wheelchair, obsessively writes and re-writes notes for an autobiography, while Constance cares for him. Through Uncle Julian's ramblings the reader begins to understand what has happened to the remainder of the Blackwood family: six years ago, both the Blackwood parents, an aunt (Julian's wife), and a younger brother were murdered — poisoned with arsenic, mixed into the family sugar and sprinkled onto blackberries at dinner. Julian, though poisoned, survived; Merricat, having been sent to bed without dinner as a punishment for an unspecified misdeed, avoided the arsenic, and Constance, who did not put sugar on her berries, was arrested for and eventually acquitted of the crime. The people of the village believe that Constance has gotten away with murder (her first action on learning of the family's illnesses was to scrub the sugar bowl), and the family is ostracized, leading Constance to become something of an agoraphobe. Nevertheless, the three Blackwoods have grown accustomed to their isolation, and lead a quiet, happy existence. Merricat is the family's sole contact with the outside world, walking into the village twice a week and carrying home groceries and library books, often followed by groups of the village children, who taunt her with a singsong chant:

Merricat, said Connie, would you like a cup of tea?
Oh no, said Merricat, you'll poison me.
Merricat, said Connie, would you like to go to sleep?
Down in the boneyard ten feet deep!

Merricat is a strange young woman, fiercely protective of her sister, prone to daydreaming and a fierce believer in sympathetic magic. As the major action unfolds, she begins to feel that a dangerous change is approaching; her response is to reassure herself of the various magical safeguards she has placed around their home, including a box of silver dollars buried near the creek and a book nailed to a tree. After discovering that the book has fallen down, Merricat becomes convinced that danger is imminent. Before she can warn Constance, a long-absent cousin, Charles, appears for a visit.

It is immediately apparent to the reader that Charles is pursuing the Blackwood fortune, which is locked in a safe in the house. Charles quickly befriends the vulnerable Constance. Merricat perceives Charles as a demon, and tries various magical means to exorcise him from their lives. Tension grows as Charles is increasingly rude to Merricat and impatient of Julian's foibles, ignoring or dismissing the old man rather than treating him with the gentle courtesy Constance has always shown. In an angry outburst between Charles and Julian, the level of the old man's dementia is revealed when he claims he has only one living niece: Mary Katherine, he believes, "died in an orphanage, of neglect" during Constance's trial.

In the course of her efforts to drive Charles away, Merricat breaks things and fills his bed with dirt and dead leaves. When Charles insists she be punished, Merricat demands, "Punish me?... You mean, send me to bed without my dinner?" She flees to an abandoned summerhouse on the property and loses herself in a fantasy in which all her deceased family members obey her every whim. She returns for dinner, but when Constance sends her upstairs to wash her hands, Merricat pushes Charles' still-lit pipe into a wastebasket filled with newspapers. The pipe sets fire to the family home, destroying much of the upper portion of the house. The villagers arrive to put out the fire, but, in a wave of long-repressed hatred for the Blackwoods, break into the remaining rooms and destroy them, chanting their children's taunting rhyme. In the course of the fire, Julian dies of what is implied to be a heart attack, and Charles shows his true colors, attempting to take the family safe (unsuccessfully, as is revealed later). Merricat and Constance flee for safety into the woods. Constance confesses for the first time that she always knew Merricat poisoned the family; Merricat readily admits to the deed, saying that she put the poison in the sugar bowl because she knew Constance would not take sugar.

Upon returning to their ruined home, Constance and Merricat proceed to salvage what is left of their belongings, close off those rooms too damaged to use, and start their lives anew in the little space left to them: hardly more than the kitchen and cellar. The house, now without a roof, resembles a castle "turreted and open to the sky". Merricat tells Constance they are now living "on the moon." The villagers, awakening at last to a sense of guilt, begin to treat the two sisters as mysterious creatures to be placated with offerings of food left on their doorstep. The story ends with Merricat observing, "Oh, Constance...we are so happy."

Kortlægning.

Niklas Luhmann’s 1956 index card wiki

by Eric Franklin on December 4, 2008

I was reading the FT Weekend Magazine on a flight back from Frankfurt this weekend and came upon a fascinating closing piece about German sociologist Niklas Luhmann, and his use of index cards to map out complex series of thought. I have heard repeatedly of Vladimir Nabokov’s system of using index cards to plot his novels by exploring various juxtapositions and settling on an order for his carded prose but what I liked most about Luhmann’s system was that it was a rigorous mapping of a thought process, something I hadn’t heard of before.
6 Nabokov index cards from "Look at the Harlequins," part of the "Nabokov Under Glass" exhibit at the NY Public Library

What Luhmann did was number each card:

If an entry got the number 57/12, for example, and took up more space than one card would allow, the second card would be 57/13. But if an observation within that first card led to a separate branch of thought, the index card would get the number 57/12a – which could run on to 57/12b.

Luhmann used the index cards to map out and develop ideas, thoughts and theories. He wound up with labels as long as 21/3d26g53 – the number of a card discussing his academic rival, Jürgen Habermas.

The claim was that this numbered system of cards allowed Luhmann “to think about society in non-linear and non-hierarchical ways.” The beauty of this system is that it allowed him to link up disparate areas of thought, via a mechanism that resembled an early, and very non-communal, wiki. Whenever Luhmann needed to refer to a thought or string of logic, he could short-hand it by inserting the referring number.

I, for one, think this would be a great project for somebody to put online at some point. I’d love to see the index cards and view the hyper-links between them.

Læring ha ha ha, læring og bygning.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sckY7cmmkOU

En video af Gever Tulley. Hans kursus hænger selvfølgelig sammen med Papert og Logo programmering. Gennemgangen går sådan her 1) De går væk fra præfabrikerede materialer. 2) De går væk fra opskrifter. Denne udvikling er baseret på hvad der fungere, hvor de får de bedste resultater. Pointen han når frem til er, at den bedste læring er en læring hvor børn ikke kender resultatet på forhånd. Den anden pointe han kommer med, den følger direkte fra den første er; skab et meningsfuldt miljø og læring vil komme af sig selv.

Begge disse pointer har dybe metafysiske implikationer (hvis man må sige sådan noget). De handler bege om involvering i verden og de handler begge om en åbning af verden. Det som man som uddanner og tænker må forstå, hvis man vil tænke disse koncepter i forhold til hvad der foregår i skoler og undervisning i det hele taget (universitetet er åbenlyst med her og vi kan endda med rette tale om, at de er dem der mindst har forstået, især forestillingen om, at man skal have et meningsfuldt sted at lære) så må man huske på, at også de traditionelle måder at lære på, er omgang med verden. Pointen drejer sig nærmere om, at de enten ikke selv ved det, benægter det, eller forsøger at afmontere en åben verden, dvs. afmontere, at den viden der produceres går 'amok'. Modsætningen er altså ikke at disse børn lærer ved at omgås verden, det gør alle børn, modsætningen er påstanden om, at det er denne omgang med verden der rent faktisk er forudsætningen for læring og at det er godt for børn, hvis de for det første er i miljøer der hævder et levende miljø netop fordi en del, en stor og central del af videns produktion (forhold til viden) er, at skabe miljøer, skabe omgange med verden. Opskrifter, forudgivede materialer og forudgivede mål er alle sammen fine nok, men en nødvendig del af videns produktion er, at kunne skabe sådanne ting selv og det er ganske enkelt en forkert indgang til problemet hvis man forestiller sig, at de kan adskilles... eller lad os hellere sige, de adskilles ikke og netop derfor er der virkelig ingen grund til, at forsøge at adskille dem.