Validation and Ripples

So I was sitting out on the dock of the Charles River in Boston's esplanade (highly recommended) talking with my friend Jeff Lieberman. We were talking about the ripples from the boat that rode by a half mile away on the absolute other side of the river. They came in as small waves under our feet a couple minutes after the boat went by. But what we were talking about was how much these ripples are put out by all of our boats as we sail around our daily lives. We're not used to seeing or looking for these ripples, but they are there, everywhere. So this morning in pops Star Simpson to tell me about how we're going to swing this next Media Lab Tea (mini party thing) by forming the Yummi'ness Foundation and by making food and drinks that will make everyone in the lab feel alive (fresh juice, chai tea, nutritional yeast tofu on toothpicks...). Right so here I am telling you this story, and now you're watching the ripples go through you and maybe even into someone else? To top it off she show me this 16 minute video. "It's like Cafe Gratitude," she says. Well here it is. "Watch the first 2 minutes," she said, and so I say the same to you.





Note: I did not make this video or have any thing to do with it except watching it and passing it on.

Walking Through Walls... & Le Nature's

So today I get two beautiful little emails. The first one was from Brad Simpson about a dream with me in it. The funny thing was that at the same time he was having the dream he wrote me about, I was writing a generals proposal to do more or less what he was dreaming I was doing. Here's his dream email:

you can teach anything!

i had a totally amazing dream that you knew how to walk through walls, and the wall did this crazy ripple effect when you walked through them. and then you succesfully taught me and alec resnick how to do it as well. the trick was to put your fingertips on the wall first, and wait until the wall would "let" you pass in, it would start to sort of give way. thanks for teaching me how to walk through walls.

Meanwhile, I was at Joy Labs writing about how things like walls are more than just walls and if we can learn to see them the right way anything is possible with them. I was writing my goals for the next few years and how to accomplish them. I wrote them as notes to prepare myself to write a proposal for my generals exams. Here's the notes I wrote to myself while he was dreaming (at the same time):

GOAL
Obtaining Limitless Vision: Learning to see every day life without limiting the possibilities of what we and our friends can become. This allows people to create their own world any way they imagine it and think of themselves as limitless and wonderful beings.

MISSION
I want to help people learn to see the limitless possibilities of their everyday life. This means thinking without preconceived notions about what something is. These somethings include: your friends, trash, pencils, grandpa, trees, fridge food, rain, cats, t-shirts, play-dough, etc.

In "Last Child in the Woods," Louv says the loose components of nature itself are the world's biggest toolkit. I say Modern Nature has supplanted archetypal notions of nature. Modern Nature is both urban nature and personal nature. Urban nature includes wild and manmade. Personal means your hyperlocal environment is your actual real nature, not some picture of a mountain (unless that's where you live).

THESIS
I plan to persue this in my PhD thesis by creating rituals, techniques, and tools for re'seeing and re'imagining the possibilities in our everyday lives. I will narrow the contexts to small and practical domains, like Drawdio does by only allowing musical notes as the output, while taking anything in your modern nature environment as the input.

GENERALS
For my generals, I would like to study how people make their view of the world (education/constructivism/constructionism/unschooling) with Mitch, how the everyday world can be transformed into textiles and interactive components can be woven in the fabric of life with Leah, and _______________ with ______________ (currently talking with Edith Ackerman and Nicholaes Roosevelt)

I thought this was a beautiful coincidence and it gave me a lot of confidence that I was on the right track. Around the same time I got a really interesting email about Le Nature's. I asked the author if I could share it and he said yes. I can't believe how much drama there is around this topic and that appreciation and information about what I wrote about Le Nature's continues to role in years later. Here's the letter about Le Nature's:

Hi Jay,

I was doing a search on breaking news about LeNature's and their scumbag management when I ran across your posting on ASS Water (funny as hell and very weird, all at the same time). Just thought you'd enjoy knowing that the former president, Greg Podlucky, and his henchmen are being indicted for their actions while at the helm of that shill of a company to the tune of $806 million.

Why am I interested in Podlucky? His dad took over the Jones Brewing Company in Smithton, PA back in the eighties, where my dad had worked for 35 years. He too deceived the government, scammed money, and ran that business into a premature demise. Sound familiar? Greg was actually an officer at Jones for a while, and his own dad fired him!

I'm not surprised that you were threatened by those juveniles, nor am I surprised that justice will eventually be served. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree, boy!

Really enjoyed your posting!

Best regards,
xxxxxx xxxxxx

Yogaville Intermediate Hatha Teachers Training

My training at Yogaville so far has been really positive. We're studying raja and hatha Yoga, including the Bhagavad Gita and lots of asanas. As always, there's lots of delicous healthy food, really supportive community of people, and a beautiful setting. Practice is regular, 6 days a week, 12 hours per day, and nothing silly like TV. The main Swami leading the course tells amazing jokes! My favorite pose we studied today was camel pose using the wall for support to go deep.

See The Rest of the Pictures


Read an old entry about the first time I visited Yogaville

publications?

I've been trying to figure out which different establishments accept which actions as currency. One big one in academics is publications. But what's a publication?

-Exhibition
-Papers
-Books (kids/howto/philisophical)
-Conferences
-Producatization
-Performances
-Talks
-Other things that are totally out of the norm?

My goal this year was to try some of all of them, which has been a big challenge. I'm still working on it. If you know what you want to do next it's no problem, you just "publish" in the currency they accept. But I can't pick what's next, I can only unfold one step at a time. That's why I'm trying different paths out. I wish I could just pick one, and maybe I'll be able to sometime, but it seems like the only real currency I can offer is to step back and be who I am and let myself do the work that I'm meant to do. In that case I don't know what my "report card" will be, but I imagine it'll shine through.
------

For now I've got a few exhibitions



I've got a few exhibitions going on. This July I'll be showing Drawdio Brush at the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts as part of the Freeze! show. Some doctors will be examining its value as a tool for art therapy.

The mural competition exhibition is starting this July 6th

And the Drawdio Table is still being shown at MITs Wiesner gallery for a few more days.

PowerPoint-B-Gone & Fruity Workshop

I'm at E Tech right now in San Jose. I'm having a good time, and we just finished running a workshop on scratch (article). It was the first Scratch workshop fully loaded with fruit and vegetable craft materials. One of the groups that really took to Scratch was "Play Power", so much so that they incorporated Scratch into their presentation the next day. I video'd their scratch "power point" presentation (it would have been power point if they hadn't switched), and i thought it was informative and got me out of my normal mode for receiving presentations. There were slides with words, lots of pictures, and lots of nonlinearities and live improvised music. I made a short video about it.

Streetfight Interventionism (don't taze me bro)

Don't try this at home... Try it on the street of course!

It all started when me and Elliott ate an awesome veggie burger and fries at 4 burgers and decided to ride our bikes through central square to get home (asking for trouble already I know). Two guys stopped at a red light were fighting, one was out of his car, "Get out of your car dipshit," the other guy had his door open, "get back in your fucking car."

So what can be done but an intervention. Quick examination of the people... intuitive check to see which kind of intervention, and bam I'm on the street on my back flailing my arms and legs around "oh no there can't be a fight, everything's okay, everyone's gonna drive away happy..." and the corvette mustache guy who was out of his car bights and starts laughing, "It wasn't my fault he started it..." Good he has assumed he has to explain himself to me. That means everything will be over soon.

Then a cambridge cop car pulls up. Yay the cops are here to break up the fight, right?
"What the fuck are you doin on the street son?" Now since this is central square he's thinking "on a scale from 0 (no crack) to 100 (all crack) where between 50 and 100 is this guy at?"

"Officer, sir (they love when you say that) there were two guys about to fight and I wanted them to leave peacefully."

"What two guys?" The guys are sitting there in the cars right next to me.

"These two guys (without gesture) who were fighting, and I just wanted to distr..."

"Get the hell out of here! You're in the middle of the road."

"No you don't understa....."

"Are you talking back to me? Go!!!!!" (super mad!)

I answered his question by going. Meanwhile Elliott is still thinking "Should I chime in here with this hat I'm wearing (a joker hat with 20 crazy puffballs on the end of it) or is me talking just going to make things worse?"

And we were off and 20 minute later I'm at the lab just in time to write it down while it's fresh, fries still only 1/4 digested and paining my stomach. Sorry I didn't remember to take a picture.

What makes up our experience?

video and picture of me and Logan just before he died

You know when you are in a new place with new friends and new feelings and a new culture, and you almost can't remember what the last place you lived felt like? You can remember a few things about it, like what the air smelled like, but you forget other aspects, like what the slang and dialect were and more importantly how that slang made you feel or what it enabled or made impossible. Well, a few years back when I lived in Cocoa Beach a close friend of mine overdosed, and I made a webpage where people could post their memories. Today, someone posted on that webpage, and just reading it brought back so many aspects of what it felt like to be living and breathing and intertwined with Cocoa Beach and the mangroves and the people and the drugs and the ocean and the music. It's a slice of that life, and not one I always appreciate. It brought back a web of memories of living in a small beach town on 13th street, next door to Sean O'Hare, playing with Logan.

Sean Volland says:
i had a dejavoodoo the other day when i pulled up to 13th street to check the waves. so much has changed.its ohares street and we used to be best friends, and now arch enemies, but so goes cocoa beach, but the flashback was of say 93-94'ish, and bowman and logan were dangling there on the old boardwalk, b4 all of the storms and rebeaching, and they were punk teens on the verge of degbauchery, yet still golden hearted and harmless, just wound like balin wire, and we all know that im the advocate surfer for smoking cigs, and as usual, i was puffing a dirt, and they both approached me cautiosly as kids like them did in those days, and bowman said nothing, but logan winked at me and said, " hey col. can i get a cig off ya", and just as quick said, " dont tell my dad", so i gave him one, and bonehead was just carousing, spacing, no balls to ask for one himself, so i said, "hey kid, u want a dirt too or what", and he acknowledged, i obliged, and it was all cool. a step had been taken by groms, just as a decade before, i had asked billy atkinson and mcmillen for a bong hit as a teen, and although this is no grandoise story of mentorship, nor tuteledge of our youth, its the truth, and its the way it was, and still should be, and maybe we wouldnt be burying so many of our young hero's if we just treated them more like equals and men. i miss u lotion, i loved u dearly, and im so blessed that ive seen bowman grow up to be the best surfer intown on any board,(while slatz isnt around), and to be a good man and a gr8 father, and i know 99% of this town hates me and rightfully so, but im so real, im so here, and i so love cocoa beach, as did logan, bob, d. codgen, bruce, and all the others we have lost. GOD BLESS this shitty lil town. sean "da col." volland

Thinking about all of this makes me reflect on all the aspects of my current life that make up the flesh of my experience. What words are used daily? What activities? What is the attitude of the people who surround me? What tools do we use? What world are we creating for ourselves? This last one being the most important point: that we can create the experience we want by choosing and also realizing and reifying the landscape of a sweet great joyful awesome loving experience in every moment. And so I will. I will. I will.


Photo of me last week


Update!
Sean Volland posted a response to this post (above) on Logan's website. Here is his response reposted
-------------------
im not sure i know jay silver, but he posted my comments on logan on his blog page, which being computer wetawded, i know lil' about, but he posted a video of logan jamming, playing air guitar, driving down s. a1a, and it was sooooooo real, and soooooo logan, and now im balling, snivelling, and really comprehending what loss really is. GOD BLESS U ALL!!!!! ill truly miss this place, as i miss logan, codgen, dr. al, sterling, foster, devon, valuzzi, my grandma, and anyothers i cant quite put my shrivelled mind on currently! reflection is a bitch, especially if u r sean volland, but 2 u all, tell someone how much u love them today; send an enemy a nice email or a card; hug someone u care about, apologize if if u didnt think u were wrong, becuz time is so short and we r all one another has. sorry 2 ramble, just way emotional right now, and thank u mr. jay silver, cuz that video made and ruined my day, and quite possibly changed my life. yall be good, 2 yourselves, and those u love, and those u dont even know, cuz one never knows where u will find, need, or lose a true friend. sean volland

My Dad with a gun (well sort of)

I'd like to start with an old picture of my dad. This is at his old party house way back in the day by the lake. The officer on duty was making out with chicks at the party, so my dad slipped on the officer's belt with loaded gun and started goofing around. Ahhhh the old days.


And now a recent article on my dad in the "The Beachside Resident" in a section called "20 questions"
Page 1:

Page2:

Page 3:

Page 4:


(You'll need to click the images to enlarge them)

Snow Tracking...

or Grownup Hide & Seek (at least we like to call it that)

This is the story of tracking a wildabeast (Jodi) through the snow. I highly recommend this as an awesomely exciting and contemplatively inward seeking game.

We went up to Vermont for the weekend to a friend's (Eric R) cabin.


If we looked out to the south there was a snowy field and some hills which we affectionately called "the show" (as in televisions many "shows"). It was a reality show.


The highlight for me was tracking down Jodi. She left 2 hours before I did with handwarmers in her boots (the night before was single digit (F) coldness.
(here she's getting suited up)


Then me and Eric left to try to track her down. At first we caught her tracks, but then they split in two direcitons. We weren't sure which to follow cause one of the set of tracks looked too big (but still human) and one set looked about the right size. But we ultimately decided to follow the bigger ones cause they jutted off the path which seemed like something Jodi would do. They turned out to be the wrong ones, but they crossed another pair of Jodi's tracks in the forrest. This turned out to be a real time-saver since we essentially shortcutted her circuitous route. Her tracks stopped at the stream but picked up on the other side so we crossed on a log.
(this is later after we found Jodi, but the same log)



There were lots of bunny tracks, deer tracks, and others,


and even some debatable moose tracks. We kept following the the Jodi-tracks and didn't lose her scent again. We saw some of her butt prints where she sat down too. We caught up to her after one hour (we were running for part of the time). She was sitting under a tree.


We laid under the trees for a while telling stories of the hunt from both points of view (she was watching us the whole time we were tracking her) and listening to the silence interspersed with hints of wild life.


The night before was the brightest full moon in years and years and as I listened to the noisy quiet I thought of how distinct my moon shadow was on the white snow the night before.

On the way back we walked over thin ice on the stream. I made it, but Eric fell through. The last thing I remember is "Ahhhh my foot is freezing cold, I can't feel it!!!!!!"

Drawdio: Turn Almost Anything into a "Theremin"

There's a whole set of new ways to use the Drawdio circuit now. Thought it would be time for a little update. Also, I never told the story of how it was invented. Here's the video that explains my current thinking on how Drawdio could be used:


Watch High Quality at Vimeo

Imagine you could draw musical instruments on normal paper with any pencil (cheap circuit thumb-tacked on) and then play them with your finger. The Drawdio circuit-craft lets you MacGuyver your everyday objects into musical instruments: paintbrushes, macaroni, trees, grandpa, even the kitchen sink...

One day I bought a "harmonium" kit at the street market in Bangalore. I hacksawed the keyboard off to make the first ever Drawdio circuit. We played with it at a local school in the slums using plants, water, our foreheads, etc. My friend told me graphite would work too. Meditating on it, I realized the Drawdio circuit should be literally attached to a pencil to "draw audio," and that's where the name came from: Draw + Audio.

DIY: Make it. Remix it. Play it.

See it on BoingBoing

Update on Our Domestic Ecosystem

So much happening in my home ecosystem. Let's get started!
I can't believe a neon yellow mushroom popped up in my palm tree. It's totally a volunteer. It looks a little washed out in the picture, but it was a deeply saturated yellow.


Yesterday it had its cap down like an ubrella. This morning it raised its cap to almost flat.


This awesome mousy wandered into our green acrylic mouse trap. She was lured by chocolate and flax seed cracker. We let her go with one last survival meal under a bush.


Round two, ding! Another awesome round of fighting between our Cryptolaemus Montrouzieri (or "mealy bug destroyers") and our mealy bugs. Check out the baby mealy bug right behind the monsterous destroyer

Man let's hear it for the Cryptolaemus again, they're so cute!


The jade's looking healthier now that we moved it to the south facing window. I thought there was a spider egg sack in the dirt, but it was only styrofoam'ish soil-stuffs. But I did see our pet spider crawling on it the day before.


Even though it doesn't really count since it was outside my window... look at this massive organism that came from the direction of the Charles River right after the fireworks were over on July 4th. Sitting by the window watching this superorganism walk by for an hour made us feel like we were in a parade, but instead of us moving the crowd moved.


but even though these guys are outside the window, I do officially consider them to be part of our home. After a hiatus for the winter, the wasps are back building their nest again on our window. Any votes for this year's signage? (last year's signage said !!!WARNING!!! Please don't wash this window, it contains our experimental nest of hornets, we love them, thank you)


Sorry to all the life forms that didn't get a shoutout this time, maybe if you do something cute you can be included next time.

UPDATE!
Suggestion taken from Todd Eddie in the comments:


another update!! by popular request... a video of the mealy bug destroyers

ok2touch on BoingBoing TV

The opening clip has Beau beatboxing while wearing ok2touch, and the interview starts at 2:38 (2 minutes and 38 seconds in)
I'm finishing up some new human-touch technologies that are derived from ok2touch called puddlejumper and healing touch. they'll be ready soon.

mealy bug destroyers

Here's my Cambridge, MA dorm living room.

Whenever possible I try to increase the jungle-ness of it. Over the last year I've been doing battle with mealy bugs. Mealy bugs eat your plants at the joints between leaf and stem, at the main arteries, or just about anywhere else until the plant dies. I've tried everything from soaps to oils to alcohols. I even tried a test spot of systemic pesticides (this is disgusting never try this!).

The other day I ordered some mealy bug destroyers. That's what everyone calls them. They're beetles. They are so cool: they only and always eat mealy bugs. they'll eat aphids if they absolutely have to. they even eat mealy bug honey dew so not only do they eat the bugs but they clean up their mess too. they lay their larvae in mealy bug nests, and the larvae actually look like mealy bugs themselves! Here they are going head-to-head on my palm tree


That mealy bug is in the proces of getting eaten.

Here's a couple more of the destroyers roaming around





thank you Mother Nature

Creating Your Own World

This has been a theme with me for a while now: the idea that you can create your own world. The idea that your sphere of influence affects not only how you respond to things that happen, but it also affects how people approach you and interact with you. Here's a recent NPR story (3 minute listen) that illustrates a tiny little example of how you can create experiences with what you bring to the situation. It's a story about how a victim befriended a mugger.

I first concretely verbalized the idea that you can create your own world when I was talking to a friend who took me urban harvesting. He told me that before he had ridden trains he had never heard of anyone who jumped a train and wouldn't assume anyone would do that. But after he started jumping trains it almost started to seem that everyone might be a train jumper. He created a new world for himself in a way where he saw everything in terms of this mode of living. And he posed a question to me: "What other worlds exist out there that I just don't know about yet cause I haven't met the right person yet?"

I too wonder what worlds I have yet to create for myself... And I've found many successes in experimenting with making my world more how I dream it could be. Now I'm off to create!

ok2touch in "2nd Skin" Exploratorium

ok2touch is designed around human-human contact with a special skin-to-skin on-switch. It turns your entire body into a musical instrument -- as well as the body of anyone who touches you. It's also now taken the form of a sling so that the interaction is designed to help people heal through human touch.


2nd Skin is a fashion exhibition at the Exploratorium in San Francisco:
An evening fusing fashion, technology, and art. It takes place on Friday, April 25, 2008 from 7:00-11:00 p.m. at the Exploratorium. Select works on exhibit through September 7, 2008

Come see me in "Seamless" Fashion Show

This Wednesday at the Boston Museum of Science is the Seamless Fashion Show. Here is the press release. My piece is ok2touch. It is all about appropriate physical contact in a day and age where inappropriate physical contact is heavily discouraged, but appropriate and indeed necessary skin-to-skin physical contact between people isn't championed. In India it's normal to see two heterosexual males walking down the street holding hands. On a Boston playground, two children stand face-to-face swinging hands discussing a play-plan. ok2touch allows people to playfully compose music on eachother's skin when one person touches the other person's jacket in an appropriate place such as the arm. The skin-to-skin contact is the magic "on switch".

Urban Explorers - A Case Study

I tease no longer... The case study is now released:

Exploring Urban Nature: Learning to See the Invisible

Here's a sampling/trailer of some of the interviews



I'm really trying to figure out how one becomes a Native in an urban landscape, and how to scaffold people learning to observe, explore, and ultimately "see" the invisible. I'd like to engender an environment where empathy for the landscape (including the people that make up the landscape) can be discovered even in the city. Consider this the start of a dialog, and tell me what you do and don't like about it.

Violent Nature

One of my professors, Chris Csikszentmihalyi, has an art piece showing in L.A. during December. It really inspires me. If you're in the area check it out. Here's more info:
Violent Nature on the Fringe

Novartis Protest Press

The Novartis story has been getting a lot of press lately. For example Dan Rather Reports recently included this video to consider for their report, as well as WLNY-TV55 for their segment called "Changing the World". If you are a member of the press and are looking to remix this video


Then here is the original at high quality with no subtitles:
novartis-protest-video.wmv

Here is a press image pack:
novartis-images.zip

And here is the original video with subtitles (at higher quality than the youtube video):
novartis_subtitles.wmv

Please distribute. I am the original author: No copyright, no DRM, yes freedom.

Do-Good-ism, rebranding capitalism

I have been reminiscing about the word capitalism lately.

Let me break down the word capitalism to the best of my understanding. Not the concept but the word itself. Doesn't -ism mean "we believe in this above all else" or "the root word preceding myself is my doctrine or ideology"? So then capital is the doctrine, ideology, or that which is most important? But capital to my understanding means goods, or to use a less loaded word (perhaps bads?) let's call them things or stuff or items. So then things are my doctrine, or I believe in things above all else? Hmmmmmfffff! *My* world certainly isn't a capitalist one.

Well I have heard our "economy" is turning into a "service economy" (is that true?), so we are transitioning out of an industrial mode of producing goods into a mode of service. Service above all else then? Servicism... like goods but in action. Like doing good. I propose to rebrand capitalism. Isn't that a capitalist style idea?

Let it be heard across the hilltops: servicism and do-good-ism is the new ideology and the new economic mode of functioning.

After all, it's a do-good world
:oP

Drawdio - a video

And soon to come:
Drawdio.com

I've been taking video of people using drawdio for the last few weeks. Here's the compilation. I still don't have video of someone playing a song really well on it, though I've seen it happen. All in good time though.

A song my brother wrote about me

Check out This song that my brother wrote for me:

Variation on a Theme: Progression of a Life

Each part of it is supposed to represent a part of my life. I LOVE IT!!! Enjoy

Life Long Kindergarten...

This year's group looks like this (see photos)


LLK Homepage

"Ain't Got Time for Problems"

T.F.Willie wrote a new song, so I got together with him to do a music video. We generally operate on one principal -- try to do your videos in one take and on the first try. This way they feel more raw "as if" they're unpolished and real like a live performance. We can't always do it on the first try but this time we did.

Jodi's kindergarten party (for graduation)

(pic taken just after setting up the 4 "stations")

More Pix: Snack Station - Math Station - Reading Station

Jodi just graduated, and as much as she'd love to have an "Engineering PhD" themed party I talked her into a "Kindergarten" party. We will bring sipups and juice boxes. And there were plenty of fun activities.

THE SETUP

Everyone brought
- Their favorite kindergarten snack
- Their favorite book (other toys are allowed too)
- (at the most) ONE stuffy (stuffed animal)

The location was secret, and could only be uncovered by following Jodi in this interactive adventure
http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/jay/8453

THE HAPPS

Seth Frey brought a stuffy that was two stuffies in one, so he kind of cheated but Jodi said it was allowed. Romie didn't get invited (on accident) but he still came (kind of rude no?). Lieb was talking about some philisophical stuff that got Frey to read the Dr. Seuss book to everyone "Did I ever tell you how lucky you are?" Then Frey climbed some trees, shot almonds at people with his sling shot and hid in the bushes. We tried to lure kids over to paint pictures with us. They lingered by the sidewalk chalk and then Mikey said "I don't know what to draw next on my horsee, will you help me? And then they came over only to be called away to a Barmitzfah minutes later. Romie brought the best snack ever - the handisnack pretzel with cheese dip. There were also yogurts, cupcakes, honey cashews, and more sipups than you could ever drink. Romie made an iguana from some new-age extra light clay stuff, and Magic Seth and Cullen came early and read and played "set" at the math station with Pablo. Everyone passed, even the people I didn't mention by name. Check out the snack station picture linked above to see Mikey's over-the-top peanutbutter apple extravaganza

I have a new sister

My brother got married on Sunday. The ceremony was a few minutes long. The whole party/ceremony was awesome right in my dad's back yard.

Yogaville

I went to Yogaville a couple of years ago, and I just read my journal again today. After reading and reflecting on how my life has changed since then, I can see how big of an impact it had on me.

Read Yogaville Journal

I also went to Yogaville a second time for a farm internship, so I hope to write about that sometime soon too.

Logan's Birthday

Today is Logan's Birthday, and I'm missing him a lot. Try to help him get his birthday cake and dodge the tacos in

the Logan Birthday Game:




The new guestbook on Logan's website is now up and running too.

1 Million Feet Under

Here is a perspective on the casualties in the Iraq war. It's in the form of a virtual fishtank.
It is my latest Scratch project.

Click on fish to find out what they represent.

INSPIRATION
This project was inspired by a few things. First, I was reading online about how many casualties there were in the war between USA and Iraq and I was really shocked at how many people had died. Then, a fellow student of mine, Alyssa, made a project called Cherry Blossoms about civilian casualties in Iraq. Also, it's almost tax day in the USA.

EXPLANATION
Each black, white and red fish represents about 30,000 Iraqi casualties. Each red, white, and blue fish represents about 3,000 USA casualties. The numbers are counting from March 2003 to March 2007. The numbers aren't exact, but it gives you the idea.

Scratch is available for you to try

MO-blog MO-daily thoughts

I started off this blog with tons of pictures uploaded from my cellphone. This gave me a chance to organize my daily thoughts, or at least a part of them. But slowly I changed the way I felt about making random comments to myself and my friends. When I posted an important article or update, it didn't seem right to drown it out with a picture of a building. So now there will be two seperate tracks.

MO-blog MO-daily thoughts (jaysmoblog.blogspot.com) will have its own place, and will consist mostly of me uploading photos and videos from my mobile phone.



While this blog will remain the same for more important updates.