one world as seen from this angle

Tinkering Studio, a Single Point of Huge Inspiration

2011-11-28T11:56:00.004-05:00

Mike and Karen (and their whole team of course) at the Tinkering Studio are a constant source of tinkspiration.

Here are my favorite quotes from a new article about the studio:
- "What's so great about the Tinkering Studio is that you are having a conversation with the materials"
- "Here, the philosophy is that whatever you come up with on your own is truly valuable, and the important thing is to take charge of your path."
- "thinking with their hands"
- "I love my job every day. I'm a cog for artistic direction. The people who work here are really good at what they do. They take their work seriously, but not themselves."
- "I try to shy away from things where I already know the end result"

The Full Article

Beautiful Drawdio Remix

2011-09-13T01:04:00.006-04:00

By Fernando a.k.a. "resistor"

Including headphone out jack and 3d CAD of circuit design.

See Pictures Here

UC Santa Cruz Radio Interview

2011-07-10T11:44:00.003-04:00

I met Nada at TEDx Santa Cruz. She runs a radio show about art and games, two separate segments. She asked if I could talk about both, and I thought sure why not. The radio station, like most of the campus, is nestled in the redwoods in some foothills overlooking the pacific ocean -- pretty much an unbelievable campus situation, complete with wild deer that aren't too skiddish. Her and her cohost interviewed me for an hour, and they were very sweet. I recommend the 2nd half as I heard from listeners that was the most interesting half.
KZSC 88.1 Interview

Jodi Made Us Matching Pants/Hat

2011-05-04T11:40:00.005-04:00

One sweater, two new garments. Cashmere. Jodi has a song she made up called "If You Have a Husband." The basic format is, "If You Have a Husband Hmmm Hmmm Hmmm Hmmm, [insert something nice you do for him here] Hmmm Hmmm Hmmm Hmmm" where the "Hmmm's" are punctuated at the beginning by a kissing sound. For example: "If you have a husband, give him lots of kisses, take him to the movies, buy him cashmere hats." The "Buy him cashmere hats" became a staple line of the song because I loved the cashmere hat Jodi had bought for me at Boomerangs (used clothes store) a couple years back. But we couldn't find it anywhere recently. So she got an old cashmere sweater and made me a new hat which I love (the color!). Then she took what was left and made an adjustable size pair of baby pants for Oak.

More pix here

Google Science Fair Video Featuring Lifelong Kindergarten

2011-03-24T22:27:00.003-04:00

Google Science fair is in full swing. Google visited my lab to make a video advocating science fairs featuring my advisor, two of my labmates, and myself. Here it is:

RADical Design for LEARNING

2011-02-17T07:56:00.010-05:00

For the past 10 years my collaborators and I have been getting dangerously stoked about radical education philosophers. Finally we, The Beginner's Mind Collective, are holding a formal MIT class, for credit (and grades), on the topic of "Radical Design for Learning." The premise is that we're at the end of a the dark ages of learning. There's a trend toward being disgusted with traditional/industrial schooling models, and now is the perfect time to experiment with redesigning learning experiences as we know them. The great news is people already are, and there are many learning saints to look up to who came before us: Ivan Illich, Maria Montessori, John Taylor Gatto, John Holt, Grace Llewellyn, Larry Harvey, Rudolf Steiner etc. They've collectively created Not Back to School Camp, Waldorf Schools, Burning Man, and much more.

The first assignment in the class is to design your own grading system. We take all the illegitimate "power" we have over the students and hand it directly to them to do with as they wish (want to assign yourself an A arbitrarily? Great! Want your friend to assign you a letter grade based on how much you grow? Okay! Now let's move on with the real learning). From there we meet with the direct students of our learning saints for discussion.

We open class by singing a song about revolution, "Go Back to the Mountain Turn the World Around." Then we have a minute of silence. Our first activity was to share our best and worst learning experiences with each other, and then try to distill insight from each of our experiences to start to create a list of guidelines we call the Folk Wisdom of Learning Experiences.

Since it's also an Action Laboratory, we undergo various learning experiences ourselves: Awareness Exercises with local artist Jeff Lieberman (host of Discovery's Time Warp show), Sufi Dances, Technology Workshops with the original creators of Scratch, Design Blocks, and Mod Kit for Arduino, etc.

Finally, each person designs a learning experience of their own, for themselves or for others. One option is like an art class where you paint a picture in the style of a famous artist, so you might create a manipulable in the style of Montessori and leave it on a playground to see what people do with it. Another option is to take your own direction: throw a party for 36 hours with platforms hanging from your loft ceiling -- the catch? No one can touch the ground for 36 hours. (Is that a learning experience? What are people learning?) Design a tour of the city that highlights the wealth-poverty disparity and offer it along side the traditional tours. Make a seed bombing handbook, and try it out with people. Anything goes! As long as you try something out that you are personally stoked about and as long as it's experimental enough that it might fail, and try it more than once (iteration!).

Here is the webpage for the course: http://radlearning.org.
We do all of our discussions on this Facebook Group, so feel free to join the group and discuss the media (readings, videos, etc.) even if you're not enrolled in the course. If there's enough popular demand we will try to get an online component going.
And for goodness sake watch the 3 minute Movie Trailer.

Our first class was on Tuesday, and we were excited by the diversity of people in attendance (and overwhelmed by 34 people, more than 3 times the number we can handle). One student was formerly part of Il Sistema, one from MIT Business School with a background in Peace Corps, MIT lecturers, undergrads, grads, dropouts, everything! The first class was also attended by the leader of MIT Media Lab's Lifelong Kindergarten, founders of Sprout Community Center, and a Not Back to School Camp long-time senior counselor.

A New Standard

2010-12-11T04:40:00.002-05:00

Provoked by yesterday's lunch meeting with LLK, Barry Fishman, and Marlene Scardamalia, I had a dream about a new set of standards. I know there's a huge literature about standards, and I don't know what it says, but I think that if we're going to have serious and meaningfully testable standards we've got to move out of the dark ages of the silly testing of tiny byproducts of real learning. Hundreds of years ago the U.S. constitution (among others), whether you love it or not, was written in a style that the most modern of any widely enacted public education standards in our country could quiver standing next to, with it's reflexivity, self-modifiability, and forward thinking of balancing power with power and power with rights (for white men everywhere!)

Here's a first attempt at a list of 10 new standards that can reign down on school children everywhere:
1. The ability to recognize whether a test is evaluating far-reaching contextualized skill sets derived from lived experience and involving the ability to accomplish real world goals that represent a broad spectrum of human activity, and the tandem ability to effectively refute and refuse a test that does not meet this rigorous condition.
2. The ability to work with people who have navigated the learning landscape previously to identify personal motivators, unique to each individual, and choose a pathway through the learning landscape that coincides with a high level of personal motivational learning that discards the idea of retention in favor of transformation and journey.
3. The ability to learn new real (note: real means not simulated) systems and languages in unfamiliar real situations, and the ability to revitalize and maintain an old real system in a known real situation over long periods of time, sometimes under conditions necessitating vast collaborations in the context of variously sized organizations.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.

I left 4 through 10 blank for others to fill in.

Let the teaching to the test begin!

Oak Sol Silver has a middle name.

2010-11-15T12:10:00.009-05:00

In case you haven't already met Oak, he's a baby boy born at 11:59pm (procrastination style), 9 pounds (american style) at the end of October. Here is some media about him:
Newborn Pix
http://www.flickr.com/photos/49822796@N00/sets/72157625277185748/
Video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuEaVOT8kIk

1-2 Weeks Old
Pix
http://www.flickr.com/photos/49822796@N00/sets/7215762 5378869500/
Video - beau and rachel's song
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxRiVIwvCI0

Middle Name
We just decided on his middle name after 2 weeks of watching for signs.

What is Sol?

According to babynames.com
Sol is a boy's name who's origin is Hebrew and means "Peace", or it's Spanish and means "Sun", and is a form of "Solomon" who was a king known for his wisdom.

According to thinkbabynames.com:
The boy's name Sol \sol\ is a variant of Saul (Hebrew) and Solomon (Hebrew), and the meaning of Sol is "prayed for; peace". Sol is a somewhat common first name for men (#1050 out of 1220) ... (1990 U.S. Census) Displayed below is the baby name popularity trend for the boy name Sol.

According to Jay and Jodi, Sol is "Saul," "Sun," "Soul," "Solomon," and/or "Peace"

Saul: Sol is a form of Jay's middle name "Saul" which is also Jay's great grandpa's name who migrated as a stow away on a ship from Latvia around the turn of the century.
Sun: Sol is Spanish for sun. Jodi felt like Oak was a sun inside her belly.
Peace: As a variant of Shalom, Sol means "Peace"
Solomon: Representing wisdom, as in the king
Soul: The homophonous meaning of Sol is "Soul" or essence or spirit

Pronounciation
You can pronounce it however you want (really!), and we will love it! Jodi and I will usually (for now) pronounce the "o" sound like "oa" as in "boat" or "mole" like the spanish pronunciation. However, I'm sure some of our Jewish relatives will pronounce the "o" sound like "aw" as in "awesome" and thus like the Hebrew pronunciation, and we will do this sometimes too.

Yay, Oak Sol Silver!

Top 10 Toys for The Creative Scientific Thinker

2010-10-10T07:58:00.011-04:00

Jay Silver's Christmas Recommendations for the creative scientific thinker for 2010:

(In no particular order, except the order of my thinking)

1) EyeClops or any lens (but Eyeclops is seriously amazing in terms of modern lenses), binoculars, night vision, see through crystals.

2) A cheap but fully functional stethescope or any other listening device (this is just a good but cheap example, not anything special)

3) Airzooka or a Dyson Fan or anything that provides interesting gas flow situations (but these two are especially intriguing)

4) Ultra Bubbles . I once bought these but don't know where you can buy them now. You can build things with them, decorate with them, and play games with them, plus whatever you can do with traditional bubbles.

5) Dominoes (just one of many good examples) or anything that can be used to set up elaborate machinery without any training (think rube goldberg but more readily accessible). This category also includes marble machine supplies (the guy who made these now works at Exploratorium). I just think dominoes provide so many opportunities for thinking about flow, digital systems, directional branching, etc., and all so visceral. Honestly I also think this is the category that Scratch fits into and it's free. Dominoes and marbles can be procured for free or near free often times.

6) Any kind of persistence of vision toy (this one is a DIY kit)

7) Some nice tree climbing gear (good when paired with a magnifying glass or pocket microscope)

8) Anything that transforms sensory experience especially while letting you build inventions. Drawdio is a great example of this, as are other things built by Jay Silver and Eric Rosenbaum (many of which are free like glow doodle and singing fingers)

9) Any Klutz book by Pat Murphy. Right now there are 3: Invasion of the Bristle Bots , Bang Splat Kablooey , and Flying Machines

10) Any real "professional" sound sampler (or a high quality toy one). Sample Toy is the best one for your money, but there are so many out there.

Diary of Lonely Man (Filmed at Sunseed)

2010-10-07T12:18:00.004-04:00

This short 3-minute movie was filmed at my Dad's store in Cocoa Beach, FL. It's a non-profit cooperative health food store with a health and wellness center attached.

Come on Pregz Lady Just Bust a Move

2010-08-18T17:58:00.006-04:00

So I'm at my wife's midwife's house, and her son is playing Young MC on his pickup truck stereo, and I'm like what that is some good old school shit. So later that day I jump on groove shark and start jamming out some Young MC, and Jodi starts dancing. So I pull out my camera and this is what happened. Shot in 5 minutes. Edited in 45 minutes.

Singing Fingers

2010-08-15T21:36:00.006-04:00

SingingFingers.com

Singing Fingers Lets You Finger Paint with Sound

Make a sound while moving your finger to record a sound-drawing. Touch the drawing you just made to play the sound back: forward, backward, sideways, or any way. That's it! Singing Fingers lets you see music, hear colors, and re-see everyday sounds for the beautiful playground that they are. Singing Fingers lowers the floor to let beginners play with sound as if it was finger paint, and raises the roof by letting advanced DJs break out of the grooves of the records into a world where sounds take any shape you give them. Your own fingers are like the needles that play the sounds back. Just like records and tape recorders were breakthroughs in simplicity and power, Singing Fingers has no complex buttons, menus, or rules. One simple medium, one simple touch of the finger, millions of possibilities.

How it Works
While you drag your finger across the screen, your voice or any other sounds nearby are turned into colors on the musical canvas. The pitch of the sound is translated into a color, while the loudness of the sound determines the size. If you start on a blank white space you are recording. If you start on a colored space you are replaying. Use up to five fingers to play back many sounds at the same time, forwards, backwards or sideways.

Making Instruments, Telling Stories, Performing, Exploring, and Drawing Pictures
Tap the keys of a piano or sing a scale while dragging your finger on the screen, and you'll have just drawn your first playable musical instrument. Tell a story while drawing the story on the screen. Explore a sound in the world, like rain or thunder, visually and see what it sounds like forwards and backwards. Use your voice as the "paint" to draw a picture. Laughter and yelling gives dozens of colors, while whistling a note can give you a specific color.

Cross-Sensory Creative Thinking
When you holler out and move your finger around on the screen, Singing Fingers turns the sounds into a concrete visual object. By transforming the pitch of the sound to a color and smearing it across the screen, people can learn to "see music" and "hear colors." What is sometimes referred to as "synesthesia" or "cross sensory thinking" becomes an everyday part of playing with sounds. One of the goals of the people behind Singing Fingers is to help people to see the invisible and re-see the everyday world as the beautiful playground that life is.

The Next Evolution of Sound Recording and Remixing
A long time ago, only advanced technicians with handmade machines could record sounds. Exciting advancements like record players and tape recorders meant more people could play and record sounds, while cultural revolutions like scratching records and making summer mix tapes meant more people were mixing and remixing music. Computers have opened up many new ways to play with sounds, but none have been as huge a leap for people's expressiveness as we would hope for: iPods let you play music, complex software lets you mix it together, and simple programs let you record sounds, but where is the big leap forward? We see Singing Fingers as a step toward the next big cultural transformation, putting all the power of recording, playing back, and remixing, literally at the tip of the finger for the most improvisational, fluid, sound interface we could come up with. Singing Fingers lowers the floor to let children play with sound as if it was finger paint, and raises the roof by letting advanced DJs break out of the grooves of the records into a world where sounds take any shape you give them and your fingers are like the needles that play the sounds back, with as fine control as your hand will allow. The scratching of records, the recording of tapes, the visualization of the graphics equalizer, and the remixing power of computers, in one little app that takes seconds to learn and years to master.

Interface Simplicity
Just like record players and tape recorders were simple and powerful new ways to work with sounds, Singing Fingers simply gives you a blank page. To manipulate sounds you only need your fingers to smear them onto the page and to play them back. No complex buttons, menus, or rules. In fact, to record, play back, and remix sounds there are zero buttons or menus (the buttons are only for file manipulation: saving, loading, and getting a new one). One simple medium, one simple touch of the finger, millions of possibilities.

By Eric Rosenbaum and Jay Silver at MIT Media Lab.

Real Sugar, and the Ants Know It

2010-08-15T19:45:00.004-04:00

The Can Reads
PEPSI -- Throwback: Made with Real Sugar, Limited Time Only

So I've been going on and off drinking different sodas over the last several years (just went off, hooray!), and I started to become very aware of the exact ingredients including, for example, the exact milligramage of caffeine, and the type of sugar. For example take a 12 oz can of Coke or Pepsi as a unit of caffeine (aka the most common upper in the world). Then a coffee is 4 units, a black tea is 2 units, a green tea is 1 unit, and mountain dew is 1.5 units. Mug Rootbeer will net you zero units, and Barq's just over a half. Redbull is 2 and a half, and here's some you might be surprised by: mellow yellow is the same as mountain dew, A&W Cream Soda is just less than 1 while sunkist orange is just more than 1 (wtf?). (By the way 1 unit of coffeind is about 35mg of caffeine.)

So what about sugar? Well I started looking to drink sodas without high fructose corn syrup, looking instead for sugar. This concept is maddening. I'm trying to avoid eating unhealthy food by looking for sugar? Cause sugar is more healthy than another ingredient? Holy shit. So I find myself being thankful for "Mexican Coke" in the glass bottle at Mexican restaurants (I love glass, and it uses "real sugar"). And today I see this Pepsi (in the picture) left out in the courtyard at the dorm I take care of. Coke moved on from "real sugar" in 1980, so it's been quite a while. So for a limited time only, you can drink some Pepsi products without the high fructose corn syrup. Then its back to Jones and Izzy's or if you're at a real hippy spot China Cola and Spritzers (ok and let's not forget juice and water).

Well, I'm glad to be off the soda train for now, but I'm baffled by the lack of real food options in my world. Right now, I feel great -- just finished a fine all american dinner of tofu, squash, peas, and cornbread. Here's to eating for feeling good today which is usually aligned with eating for longevity but much more relevant.

The Master Cleanser -- Living on Lemons

2010-03-17T19:53:00.002-04:00

Note: this is a meta commentary on a text called the Master Cleanse by Stanley Burroughs which explains how to fast on maple syrup and lemons for 10 days or more at a time. I wrote this in response to a friend who is starting next week (I'll be joining him).

JAY'S GUIDED TOUR THROUGH THE MASTER CLEANSER
ok so here is the original source in all its absolutist glory
http://www.healthandlight.com/mastercleanse.pdf
i highly recommend buying the book it's extremely affordable. i have bought many copies. i think it's worth reading the whole thing, but i'll go through play by play what i think are the most essential parts pasting all the essential text into this email:

while the whole text is clearly a masterpiece, there are some parts that are more important than others. i'd say if people only wanted to know the bare essentials i'd say it's the recipe that starts at the bottom of page 10
-------------------- start --------------------
HOW TO MAKE IT?
2 Tablespoons lemon or limejuice (approx. 1⁄2 lemon) 2 Tablespoons genuine maple syrup (Not maple flavored sugar syrup) 1/10 Teaspoon cayenne pepper (red pepper) or to taste 8 oz water, room temperature Combine the juice, maple syrup, and cayenne pepper in a 10 oz glass jar w/lid and fill with the water. Shake it up and drink. (Cold water may be used if preferred.) Use fresh (organic) lemons or limes only, never canned lemon or limejuice nor frozen lemonade or frozen juice.
-------------------- end ------------------------

then for people who can handle a little more info and want to start to know what else is needed there is the other stuff you should eat starting at the bottom of page 12 and onto page 13

------------------------- start -----------------------------
HELPING THE CLEANSING ALONG
As this is a cleansing diet, the more you can assist Nature to eliminate poisons, the better. IF YOUR SYSTEM FEELS UPSET, IT IS BECAUSE YOU ARE NOT HAVING SUFFICIENT ELIMINATION. Avoid this possibility by following the directions completely. Above all, be sure you have two, three, or more movements a day. This may seem unnecessary not eating solid food, but it is Nature’s way of eliminating the waste it has loosened from the various cells and organs in the body.
They must leave the body some way. It would be just the same as sweeping the floor around and around and never removing the dirt from the house if the wastes were not passed out. The better the elimination, the more rapid will be the results.
A LAXATIVE HERB TEA is found to be the best helper for most persons. It is a good practice to take a good laxative herb tea right from the beginning— the last thing at night and first thing in the morning. There are several good laxative teas. They are best taken in a liquid form. Buy them in your health food store.
ANOTHER CLEANSING AID: INTERNAL SALT WATER BATHING
As it is necessary to bathe the outside of our bodies, so it is with the inside. Do not take enemas or colonics at any time during the cleansing diet or afterwards. They are unnecessary and can be extremely harmful.
There is a much superior method of cleansing the colonic tract without the harmful effects of customary colonics and enemas. This method will cleanse the entire digestive tract while the colonics and enemas will only reach the colon or a small part of it. Colonics can be expensive while our salt-water method is not.
DIRECTIONS: Prepare a full quart of lukewarm water and add two level (rounded for the Canadian quart) teaspoons of sea salt. Do not use ordinary iodized salt, as it will not work properly. Drink the entire quart of salt and water first thing in the morning. This must be taken on an empty stomach. The salt and water will not separate but will stay intact and quickly and thoroughly wash the entire tract in about one hour. Several eliminations will likely occur. The salt water has the same specific gravity as the blood, hence the kidneys cannot pick up the water and the blood cannot pick up the salt. This may be taken as often as needed for proper washing of the entire digestive system.
If the salt water does not work the first time, try adding a little more or a little less salt until the proper balance is found; or possible take extra water with or without salt. This often increases the activity. Remember, it can do no harm at any time. The colon needs a good washing, but do it the natural way— the salt water way.
It is quite advisable to take the herb laxative tea at night to loosen, then the salt water each morning to wash it out. If for some reason the salt water cannot be taken in the morning, then the herb laxative tea must be taken night and morning.
------------------------ end ----------------------------

From there on there is some other important information, in my opinion in the following order
- how to break the fast starting on page 15
--------------------------- start --------------------------
HOW TO BREAK THE LEMONADE DIET
Coming off the lemonade diet properly is highly important— please follow the directions very carefully. After living in a semi-tropical and tropical climate for many years, I find that people have increasingly turned to a raw fruit, nut, and vegetable diet. Following is the schedule for people who normally follow such a natural vegetarian diet:
FIRST AND SECOND DAY AFTER DIET:
Several 8 oz. Glasses of fresh orange juice as desired during the day. The orange juice prepares the digestive system to properly digest and assimilate regular food. Drink it slowly. If there has been any digestive difficulty prior to or during the change over, extra water may be taken with the orange juice.
THIRD DAY:
Orange juice in the morning. Raw fruit for lunch. Fruit or raw vegetable salad at night. You are now ready to eat normally.
--------------------------- end ---------------------------

- how much does one drink on page 12
----------------------------- start ---------------------
HOW MUCH DOES ONE DRINK?
Take from six to twelve glasses of the lemonade daily during the waking period. As you get hungry just have another glass of lemonade. NO OTHER FOOD SHOULD BE TAKEN DURING THE FULL PERIOD OF THE DIET. As this is a complete balance of minerals and vitamins, one does not suffer the pangs of hunger. Do not use vitamin pills.
All solid food is turned into a liquid state before the blood can carry it to the cells. The lemonade is already a food in liquid form.
For those who are overweight, less maple syrup may be taken. For those underweight, more maple syrup may be taken. For those who are underweight and worried about losing more weight, REMEMBER, the only things you can possible lose are mucus; waste, and disease. Healthy tissue will not be eliminated. Many people who need to gain weight actually do so near the end of the diet period. Never vary the amount of lemon juice per glass. About six glasses of lemonade a day is enough for those wishing to reduce. Extra water may be taken as desired.
------------------------------ end --------------------------

- will it make me feel bad or week on page 15
------------------------- start -------------------------
WILL IT MAKE ME FEEL BAD OR WEAK?
In the cleansing process, some people experience a tremendous stirring up and may even feel worse for several days. It is not the lemonade that causes the trouble, but what the lemonade stirs up in the system that causes our dizziness and other disturbances. Vomiting may occur under certain conditions; increased pain may be felt in the various joints of the body; dizziness may develop on certain days.
If weakness develops at any time, it is the result of poisons circulating through the blood stream rather than a lack of food or vitamins. This diet gives a person all the vitamins, food, and energy necessary for the full ten days or longer in a liquid form. Rest and take it a little easier if you have to –although most people can go about their regular business without difficulty. Keep right on with the diet; don’t give up or “cheat”by eating a little food or you may destroy the benefits.
Even though the lemon is an acid fruit, it becomes alkaline as it is digested and assimilated. It is, in fact, ourbestaidtowardproperalkalinebalance. Thereisnodangerof“toomuchacid.”
Alcoholics, smokers, and other drug addicts will receive untold benefits from this diet. The chemical changes and the cleansing have a way of removing the craving and the many probably deficiencies. Thus the desire for the unnatural types of stimulants and depressants disappears. The usual cravings experienced and suffered in breaking away from drugs, alcohol, and tobacco no longer present themselves during and after this diet.
It is truly a wonderful feeling to be free from slavery to these many habit-forming and devitalizing elements of modern living. Coffee, tea, and various cola drinks, as habit-forming beverages, also lose their appeal through the marvels of the lemonade diet.
--------------------------------------- end --------------------------

Everything else is pretty awesome, but if you read those sections then you will know the fundamentals.

And a few of my own comments on top of it to keep up with the times:

- There's still no cane sugar juice readily available in most of the U.S. as the author says. So it's probably still maple syrup for most of us. One thing that's changed since the book was written is that there's no longer grade "C" maple syrup just two grades of B, the second of which is what used to be called grade C. I prefer organic syrup for my own use, but it's not strictly necessary since pesticides aren't a big factor in the production of maple syrup.
- One of the best herbal laxitive teas I've seen people use for this diet that's been on the market for decades is "smooth move" though anything is fine as long as it's not processed and is plant based. That's what I'll use.
- Notice "organic lemons"
- He doesn't cover water, so he must have not thought it was too important, but I would tend away from any tap water with a large amount of fluoride or especially chlorine in it. But the author never mentions this. I'll be using spring water. (don't use distilled cause it lacks minerals, try filtered if you don't want spring).

Awesome!
Jay

On Wed, Mar 17, 2010 at 2:58 PM, ryan

Hey man,

Doug I are gearing up for a Master Cleanse starting next
week. Just dropping you a line in case you or anyone else wants to
joint in. Some of the online guides recommended using a laxative tea
once a day or so... have you taken in anything besides the Lemon Juice
in the past?

See you in the Future.

Ryan

Visual Frequency Identifier (VFID)

2010-01-26T06:46:00.003-05:00

I'd like to coin a new phrase today: Visual Frequency Identifier (VFID)

It's when you use the color of an object to identify the object. It eliminates the need to embed any special chip in the object (as needed in RFID). And, it's very easy for people to read the VFID of an object. It doesn't uniquely identify objects, but it does let you use any item you have laying around as a token. So if you have a bag of m&m's, you have a full set of computer readable tokens that can be used as input to a system.

Validation and Ripples

2009-10-04T13:34:00.004-04:00

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

2009-09-30T21:52:00.003-04:00

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

2009-07-08T22:29:00.004-04:00

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?

2009-06-24T09:31:00.004-04:00

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

2009-03-11T18:14:00.002-04:00

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)

2009-03-05T12:20:00.005-05:00

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?

2009-02-12T15:14:00.011-05:00

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)

2009-01-14T08:37:00.010-05:00

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...

2008-12-17T11:16:00.009-05:00

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"

2008-11-18T20:24:00.005-05:00

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

2008-07-23T10:14:00.016-04:00

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

2008-05-29T10:38:00.003-04:00

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

2008-04-04T11:44:00.005-04:00

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

2008-03-28T15:38:00.002-04:00

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

2008-03-26T11:41:00.007-04:00

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

2008-01-25T18:16:00.000-05:00

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

2007-12-17T13:19:00.001-05:00

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

2007-11-30T00:36:00.001-05:00

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

2007-11-02T10:26:00.000-04:00

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

2007-10-30T23:16:00.001-04:00

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

2007-10-23T23:21:00.000-04:00

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

2007-09-29T18:39:00.000-04:00

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...

2007-09-15T23:56:00.001-04:00

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

LLK Homepage

"Ain't Got Time for Problems"

2007-07-20T09:15:00.000-04:00

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)

2007-06-05T09:34:00.000-04:00

(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

2007-05-03T12:26:00.000-04:00

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

2007-05-02T09:33:00.001-04:00

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

2007-04-20T04:19:00.000-04:00

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

2007-03-30T10:08:00.000-04:00

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

2007-03-01T08:36:00.000-05:00

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.

7 people, 1 car, 10^23 ice particles

2007-02-19T14:02:00.000-05:00

We used the local wild life as indicators for where the good sledding hills were -- we followed some naive looking kids with their sleds. We tested to see if the "snowball effect" really works, and we had a round of sled jousting between me and Romie.

See all the sledding pictures

Participants: Jay, Jodi, Seth, Romie (aka Ryan), Maya, Nadav, Hui

Novartis, Stop It

2007-02-14T16:45:00.000-05:00

Today, valentine's day, we presented the CEO of Novartis with the Broken Heart Award for greed in response to Novartis' legal move to stop Indians from getting AIDS medicine. The legal issue involves a patent, but practically speaking it's an issue of life versus corporate profit. Check out the video.

Flickr photos are posted here

After we got home from the demonstration, I immediately edited the video and posted it on You Tube. An organizer from Philadelphia called me and helped me revise the video. Same day I posted a second version, and this version, along with the still photos, went out to press right away. So far I only know of one site that has reposted the video, fightglobalaids.org. Some people were pretty surprised to learn that I filmed it on a Canon digital still camera and edited it in Movie Maker. I don't like to use fancy tools if they slow me down. Gotta get the video up and running.

Workshops in Guadalajara

2007-01-14T21:14:00.000-05:00

I've been facilitating some workshops using digital building blocks as well as a new programming language that lets you create interactive art, stories, and games by snapping together lego-like bricks on screen. I just finished documenting the workshops in Guadalajara in video format. In just a few hours the participants created some pretty awesome projects.

Here's the Videos I made

Pico Crickets day 2:
Download High Quality

Scratch day 2:
Download High Quality

Pico Crickets day 1:
Download High Quality

A Dystopic Technology for TISC

2006-12-09T00:07:00.001-05:00

TISC is a class I'm taking and stands for Technology Information and Social Control. I was assigned to create a dystopic technology. This was really challenging for me. I started to think about it and it felt like even the brainstorming process was manifesting negativity concretely. I didn't want to be a part of the assignment. In the end I compromised the reality of the assignment by making a bit of a gag game. I learned a lot about the relationships between dystopia and the world I live in.

How I Feel When I Drive

2006-12-01T14:09:00.000-05:00

How do you feel when you drive?

Moon-Lapse

2006-11-29T21:28:00.000-05:00

I am taking this class where we are assigned to observe the moon. Very intersting class that I call "The Having of Wonderful Ideas." It's the first class I ever took at Harvard, and it's by Eleanor Duckworth who is roughly of the Piaget lineage. I decided to turn the lens on the moon since I can't draw so well.

See Moon-Lapse Sequences Here

The world is a triangle

2006-11-19T09:27:00.000-05:00

The world may be flatter than it used to be in terms of business or travel, but I still see it as round. Whenever I talk to tech support on the phone I always wonder where they are from and what their lives are like (and I ask them) since most companies outsource to countries far away. I was getting help from an AOL tech online for my dad's computer, and the guy was using a curious form of English so I asked where he was from and the answer was terrifying:
-----------
9:14:40 AM Tofueater - may i inquire as to where you are from?

9:15:13 AM AOLTechMPS - When you initiate a Live Help session with the Technical Department, you are connected to a consultant working in one of several locations. This process allows us to minimize delays in responding to your needs and allows us to work around the clock.

9:15:23 AM AOLTechMPS For security reasons, AOL has a policy of not disclosing our member support locations. Thank you for your understanding that I cannot release that information.

9:15:30 AM AOLTechMPS - Is there anything else I can assist you with at this time?

9:15:41 AM Tofueater - you mean you can't even tell me what half of the globe you are on?

9:16:40 AM AOLTechMPS - For security reasons, I am unable to disclose the information. I hope you understand :)
------------------------
Not only is she dehumanized in name, but it would seem that she is unable to discuss anything remotely personal at all. Perhaps I should have asked what types of books she liked or whether she supported the war on terror.

Bexley Dodgeball: 2 da Finals

2006-11-10T02:24:00.000-05:00

Bexley dodgeball is a passtime that includes such traditions as tight spandex, pushups with feet on the wall, wheelchairs, 2 foot wide bling, dancing, babies, and a whole lot of shenanigans. Today we won the game that puts us in the finals.

Here are lots of pictures:
Bexley Dodgeball Pictures

Here are a few pictures:

Le Nature's Workers, Speak Up!

2006-11-09T00:39:00.000-05:00

Workers, comment about your experiences with Le Nature's now.

Note: If you'd like some background and history on how this whole thing got started, see here -- Le Nature's stands AGAINST FREE SPEECH

My condolences to the people who's sweat and labor held up this company while it crumbled from the top down. Some of your fellow coworkers have already spoken up about their experiences. Whether you worked for Le Nature's or with Le Nature's, I invite you, as a worker, to express yourself here. You can do so anonymously. Whether you have good or bad things to say, you can speak up here without fearing.

Some workers have already said:

"if you only knew what went on there - they have just scratched the surface"

"What Podlucky did with fraud was just the tip of the iceberg when it came to his employees. Constant email threats and abusing his authority to make it clear his political choice was your choice. Even as far as having his secretary call homes of his employees anonymously to see who they were voting for. I do feel bad for the workers under the upper management who slaved under him to make a living, but this is a long deserving end to him. I hope he sees time."

"your an asshole..you know this leaves 200 families with out an income..all your doing is getting your rocks off about podlucky"

"these are mean spirited people who took pleasure in making the people in their employ by constantly threatining to fire them and going out of their way to be mean"

"It was a very bizarre work environment"

"I worked in their IT Dept (i.e Computer Fag Dept)"

"From day one, we knew something was strange about the way they conducted themselves."

Note: emphasis added by author

Please add your own comments, and invite your coworkers to do the same. If you're not a worker but still want to make a comment please go here.

Crossdressing Party

2006-11-05T00:05:00.000-05:00

Every year at my dorm they have a crossdressing party. Last year one student dressed up as a pregnant, somewhat homely, woman. It's pretty festive.

le nature's to go bankrupt soon

2006-11-02T21:27:00.001-05:00

Le Nature's filed for Chapter 7 Protection today (this indicates bankruptcy is near).
Barry G. writes: Le Nautre's is going to "file for Bankruptcy and that it appears the Co was after all fraudulent enterprise according to court documents. Their audited statements show about $275mm in revenues but the court appointed custodian says they can only show sales of about $32 million. Bonds went from 100 yesterday to 5 today."

More articles on Le Nature's downfall are at:
pittsburghlive
wsj

I have known that this company had some corrupt people in it for a while now, since people from the company and their lawyers have been harassing me for more than a year. See the review I wrote more than a year ago at

http://www.mit.edu/~sil/lenatures/jaysilver/lenatures.htm

It’s too bad that it took this for people to see the naked emporor through the “tunnel pasteurization” and “pure mountain stream” water.

halloween: you, ewe, 'u', and a gypsy

2006-10-29T01:56:00.000-05:00

I really wanted to be something meta for Halloween. I wanted my costume to change for each person. I decided to be "you". So I put a mirror on my face as a mask. But just in case that wasn't rediculous enough I dressed up my body as a "ewe" (female sheep). To clue people in I wrote 'U' on my forehead. So I was you from top to bottom. Jodi was a really mean looking gypsy.

Jodi's Tassle Turning

2006-10-23T16:21:00.001-04:00

We moved to Boston just over two years ago. Jodi hadn't decided to come with me until just a couple months before the move. She didn't know what school she would go to, and we didn't know how we would afford living or her tuition. Everything came through and I can't believe I just saw her pregraduation ceremony a couple days ago. What a girl!

See More Pictures

Remember: Spam Kills

2006-10-23T04:23:00.000-04:00

So tonight was the biggest spam war of the semester at MIT thus far. It all started with a boy who lost his frat sweatshirt or something. Anyway, in the name of mocumentary silliness and instantaneous video production, I filmed some Bexley kids dramatizing the spam war. The script was written for us in the emails, and the rest is just ridiculousness. We slapped it up on the spam war 30 minutes later.

Remember: Spam Kills (The Movie) Filmed and Produced at MIT in 20 minutes

Quacktastic Homebrewed Music Vid

2006-10-13T00:01:00.000-04:00

I made a music video tonight with Will at Bexley. It's a Squirrel Nut Zippers song originally. Check it out:

Music Video (wmv ~11MB)

New Scratch character

2006-10-09T20:58:00.000-04:00

So I've been doing these photo shoots to get new characters for Scratch, a programming language my group is working on. Scratch is a programming language that is easy to start off in right away and in which you can do a number of different kinds of things relatively easily. You program by snapping together lego-like building blocks.

See the new photos

File Sharing by Hand

2006-10-04T02:22:00.000-04:00

Today I walked around uploading songs to people by handing them pieces of paper. The sheets of paper had encoded songs printed on them. Esentially we were file sharing face to face, breaking copyright law. Read my whole article here:

File Sharing by Hand

antiwater - i solved a $M problem

2006-09-29T10:44:00.000-04:00

You know how they have those problems in math that people will offer you a million dollars if you can solve them? Well I think I just solved one of them. You know how when you're in the bathroom and someone's in the shower and then they throw water at you over the curtain? And you know how you look around frantically for the perfect anti-water to throw back at them over the curtain? But you can't throw regular water back at them cause they're already wet. So you might think you could throw ice water at them and that kind of works if they're taking a warm shower. But it's not the perfect anti-water to throw. You might think you can reach in and tickle the person, or if your shower curtain is really dirty you could push the shower curtain in at them if they're easily grossed out. But that's not the perfect antiwater either. So you feel stuck. What can you do? I think it must be one of those million dollar problems. Well this morning I found the answer. Jodi threw water at me over the curtain, and I teared off some pieces of toilet paper, big long ones, and threw them over the curtain. It clogged up the drain and she was sooOOOooOoo mad. And, toilet paper is dry, so it's the perfect antiwater. I think though, maybe, that it's only one antiwater in a space of antiwaters, so I await your other antiwater ideas.

Car smashes store in wyoming

2006-08-17T14:34:00.000-04:00

Driving down us 14 in wyoming a minivan smashed right through the front of a small store front.

My first and only fan

2006-08-03T20:08:00.000-04:00

So im at pepperdine and i walk into a room where a lecture had just finished and this kid is like "holy crap are u jay silverman"? Turns out he had stumbled upon my website years ago he's been reading it and knows everything about me. So i hereby declare dustin my first (and only) fan. I felt line me like a celebrity but only with one person.

Chantal's CD Reconnaissance Mission Movie

2006-08-03T13:15:00.000-04:00

So Kyle has had Chantal's CDs for a long time. When I told her on the phone that I was going to visit Kyle before visiting her, she decided to send me on a dangerous and wily mission to ninja the CDs while he was in the bathroom. The movie that follows is a dramatic reinactment of the events that transpired.

CD Ninja MOVIE (20 MB wmv)

Audio blabber about age appropriateness

2006-07-29T21:35:00.000-04:00

cancer is CELLFish

2006-07-20T09:08:00.000-04:00

I was reading this book by Satyananda Saraswati. It starts talking about cancer, and goes into the normal stuff that we all know about how cancer starts with a cell gone wild, multiplying, hogging up all the nutrients, and being careless with its wastes. Then it says something pretty profound:

"Cancer starts when a single wayward cell begins to live for itself alone."

These are the people in my neighborhood

2006-07-18T18:13:00.000-04:00

I went on a daylong miniretreat with my group at school - Life Long Kindergarten. I put pictures of them up so you can see what they look like.

Pictures of the people in LLK

Free Schools and Free Tools

2006-07-18T08:18:00.001-04:00

I've been spending time thinking about and building creative learning tools. One question I ask when I'm making a learning tool is, "How much guidance should I build in to the tool?" I'm finding that this is a design question without an exact answer. Every tool has some suggestions in it - a hammer guides you towards hitting things, while a nail gun specifically suggests that you should shoot nails into things. You can prepare a wide range of foods with a chef's knife, while a garlic mincer is much more directed and even more effecient. Which tool should you give someone?

When I visited a free school this spring, I found they had a world that might be useful to borrow from when I think about my learning tools.

Me and a couple Media Labbers drove out to a visit day and took a tour.

LISTEN TO THE AUDIO TOUR I COMPILED (3 minute mp3)

They didn't have any classes, nobody got any grades, there were no grade levels, and there was no required curriculum. But there were things like a music room with guitars and other instruments, a computer room, a reading room with books on every subject, and a group of adults that were available if their expertise was needed. So how much guidance was built into the school? It seemed only enough to support the students' ideas as they blossomed. That's a careful balance, because too much guidance and you'll end up with a group who doesn't have space to follow their own ideas, while too little guidance will leave a group without the nurturing it needs for new ideas to emerge. Free tools are kind of like free schools - you have to take your project in your own direction, but once you get going the functionality you need is there to help your project grow.

A good cook might make use of a chef's knife and a garlic mincer. So how can we make tools that are useful, but without limiting what can be cooked up?

Worry about your problem sets

2006-07-11T10:59:00.000-04:00

Well i guess i obviously have to be worried at all times about something in life right? (i got this in the mail from mit medical) I'd like to get a piece of mail that says "take a deep breath relax and dont worry at all"

Vibes, logic, intuition, and ways of seeing

2006-07-11T08:33:00.001-04:00

Note: If you're a normally functioning person, there's no need to read this.

This realization keeps coming up in every day life. It's about ways of seeing things. For example, one way of seeing is to form a logical framework for the world by choosing some axioms and applying them. Let's say you arrive home, and you walk into your house. The door was unlocked. As you walk in the door handle feels a little slimy and you step on something crunchy. Your subconcious sees a blood splatter on the wall and that some items are disshoveled. To see the situation logically you might say

"I know something isn't right here, because I remember locking the door and sweeping the floor, I don't remember the door handle ever having felt this way in the past (and my palms aren't sweaty or greasy so it's not my palms), and I'm getting some visual cues even though I can't pin them down that something's out of place."

Using a cognitive process of fact checking and logical discrimination you can see the situation. Imagine that another person walks into the same house and just says "I'm getting bad vibes." What is going on in this second person's head?

Is it the same process of thought that went on in the first person's head? Is it the same conclusion?

I look forward to hearing your thoughts on this. I'd say that the conclusions is very similar. The thought process, if you can call it that in the second case, is different. The second person is using intuition. I would say that a lot of the same thoughts are going on. The intuitive process still notices the door's unlocked, still feels something strange and sees something strange. But rather than thinking it through, there's some combination of bodily memory, noncognitive processes, and whatever that pulls together to notice something's wrong. To even analyze it like this defies the nature of the process. The thought process for intuition is perhaps not exclusively a "thought" process. You might say the thoughts are distributed throughout the body using body memory. You might call it a gut reaction. But you might not call it anything and just learn to use it from time to time. The language that falls out of it, say "good vibes" for example, isn't cognitive in nature, but it's still useful in getting through life. It makes mistakes sometimes, but so does logic when you forget to include certain aspects. Intuition doesn't always give you the same information as a logical framework, but it can be much more effecient (or even more human) in its expression - "bad vibes" how compact. I'm not arguing to use intuition exclusively or even predominantly. I'm just trying to figure out why it has more of a place in my life now and how others who were logically trained might glean some insight from what I've been noticing. If you encounter some new object, it's helpful to take a look from a few different angles. You'll even see people sort of coking their head and moving left and right to take a look at something. Well I can see a lot more angles than I used to be able to, or maybe I'm just becoming more aware of how to use the angles.

Employee owned grocery in trenton

2006-07-07T11:52:00.000-04:00

Lots of organic

Pedro's africa shop at south o.t. Border

2006-06-08T15:35:00.000-04:00

These flags will in perfect with my traditional african mask. South of the Border is this tourist trap on northern border of South Carolina. We were so bored on our drive that we had a lot of fun there.

Interstate Bike Riding

2006-06-08T13:27:00.000-04:00

I think it's illegal to ride your bike on the interstate, which is pretty rediculous. Kudos man

Alt 17 in south cacalacky

2006-06-08T12:18:00.000-04:00

Got off I-95 cause i couldn't take the interstate any more. Now i'm riding by churches and corn fields. Interstates are "non places". We stopped at a rundown gas station. It was bad vibes all the way around. To go with the vibes they had more flavors of mad dog 20/20 than I knew even existed. Then in the coolers were single sipup packs of kool aid and a sign that I saw through the cracked glass of one cooler door said "sam's cola 3 for $1.2T" which I couldn't figure out if they meant $1.27 or literally "a dollar twen T".

On our way

2006-06-08T07:18:00.000-04:00

Camped at blythe island park in ga. On our way to yogaville.

My new movie about food - watch

2006-06-07T03:00:00.000-04:00

Here is the latest draft of my new movie - "Where does my food come from?"

Where does my food come from? (.MP4 60MB)

Robot Competition - I couldn't take it

2006-05-17T22:33:00.000-04:00

So I took 40 seconds of video during a break, and here's that VIDEO REMIXED AS MY INTERPRETATION OF THE EVENT (Click here to watch the video).

...So I went to the MIT robot competition tonight. Lots of Bexley homies were competing. One of them, Orian made it to the final 2, and lost in an aggressive match. While I was watching the announcer talk, someone noticed my face was really red. It was true. I felt terrible. The language they were using was full of "hey little kid with the big head, get out of the way or we'll outsource you" and "we're training students to start their own companies or work for a company." Actually when the announcer said that I shouted out "what if they don't want to do either of those two?" First he pretended to be sappy and sympathetic, then he said, "seriously though, our design processes are just as useful if they want to go on to design financial algorithms and make money." I know it's silly, but the language is so loaded, and it reminds me of my former life in EECS. They even had 3 different kinds of balls that the robots could pick up: graduate, engineering, and humanities balls. The humanities balls were worth the least points (I'm not kidding these were the official names). So the competition was really fun, but I had a hard time listening to the language because of the point of view it represents.

By the way all the Bexley kids were awesome. Will had a wild robot that threw out an arm and slung sucked up all the balls immediately. Orian (from the video) scored the highest score of the night and took everything real slow and chilled.

The Cube - Where I Work

2006-05-17T18:50:00.002-04:00

Here's a picture of my lab

I'm so glad to be in the Life Long Kindergarten group now at the Media Lab. I'll post my projects soon. They involve waterfalls and face DJ'ing.

Why we work more and seem to have less

2006-05-11T10:11:00.000-04:00

We used to just drink coffee right? This is a typical platter of fanciness i saw at starbucks being in there for 3 minutes

German 'Robin Hoods' give poor a taste of the high life

2006-05-09T21:28:00.000-04:00

I feel like there's a really big idea behind this news report:

A GANG of anarchist Robin Hood-style thieves, who dress as superheroes and steal expensive food from exclusive restaurants and delicatessens to give to the poor, are being hunted by police in the German city of Hamburg.

The gang members seemingly take delight in injecting humour into their raids, which rely on sheer numbers and the confusion caused by their presence. After they plundered Kobe beef fillets, champagne and smoked salmon from a gourmet store on the exclusive Elbastrasse, they presented the cashier with a bouquet of flowers before making their getaway.

Whole Story at Scotsman.com

More democratic tv

2006-05-06T13:56:00.000-04:00

Ntwrktruth board up at a local coffee shop. My message appeared in 10 seconds after i texted it to the number on the board

Seth goes head first into some bushes

2006-05-03T01:26:00.000-04:00

So last night was a bit of a mini adventure. I walked through Boston in the rain with Seth. We hopped the fence into a rose garden. We checked out the community garden plots. We went to the 52nd floor of the prudential and had a cup of coffee at top of the hub and danced with the jazz band. Then on the way out in the elevator a girl was cursing up a storm while I egged her on (listen mp3). But most importantly, on the way home, Seth was novice parkouring - he jumped this black iron fence and went head first into some bushes. His legs were sticking up in the air wiggling around. He reached up for help. He scratched his eye, and he lost his hat. I don't know why that's such a highlight.

My 5th day fasting

2006-04-19T08:52:00.000-04:00

Lemon juice maple syrup and cayenne. They call it the master cleanser. I feel great so far.

Update. I just broke my fast with some OJ. The thing about fasting for me is this. Sometimes I'll think "I'm really not happy with this moment right now." And so I'll start planning or thinking about dinner or the next meal and then I'm okay. But when I fast, I am forced to deal with the moment without looking to food (this might be special to me since I feel that I'm especially addicted to food). So I have to love my girlfriend, enjoy my work, etc., and I can't just put off the moment.

It also puts my mind in an unrippled state.

New religion is like new money

2006-04-19T08:48:00.000-04:00

Someone with new spiritual beliefs (like myself) is a lot like someone with new money. It takes a while to learn how to manage. I'm probably proving this right now by blabbing about this thought. I think that (at least starting now) I'm going to take some advice from a friendly Quaker I know: silent worship.

Sitting in on a waldorf teacher training

2006-04-14T16:05:00.000-04:00

Waldorf is some cool shit. Maybe id be a waldorf teacher one day.

I think my kids are trying to kill me

2006-04-11T17:08:00.000-04:00

Bubbles car wash sign in boston

Moving my friend by bike cart

2006-04-09T19:31:00.000-04:00

New hair do for spring

2006-04-05T03:04:00.000-04:00

Jodi discovers a new facial expression

2006-04-02T22:13:00.000-04:00

Jodi says, "Don't put that on the web. I don't want to look ugly cause then people won't like me."

Practicing combat from a young age

2006-04-01T15:10:00.000-05:00

Lucky little guy gets to play "Air Craft Carrier" when he gets home.

New Book "Rainbow Green Live Food Cuisine"

2006-04-01T12:51:00.000-05:00

This book has some really mouth-opening recipes. I never knew how to use nuts and seeds so many ways with the help of my food processor. Looking in to getting a dehydrator.

Where Food From? - Movie Trailer

2006-03-26T10:20:00.001-05:00

I've been working on a movie for a while now. It's finally done. I keep polishing it, but all the main parts are in place. I'll post it to the web soon. Here is the trailer.

Where Does My Food Come From - Trailer (wmv 5MB)

How To Make a Folding Counter

2006-03-18T12:31:00.000-05:00

How I made my folding counter for less than $20

My kitchen was tiny, but I needed more counter space. This is my first decent home improvement project, so I wrote a up a really detailed description of how I did it so that I could learn and so that it would serve as a "how to make a folding counter" guide for others.

READ MORE

Adventures in Yogaville

2006-03-18T12:19:00.000-05:00

Yogaville wasn't how we thought it'd be.
The people who picked us up, one swami and one karma yogi, took us to a delicious Mexican dinner and then we had some frozen custard.
READ MORE

America for Americans - Beau's new recording

2006-02-27T08:51:00.000-05:00

My brother used to play in a punk band called the Trendys. Here is a recent recording of a song he wrote a long time ago as a teen.

America for Americans

Poem about my rights - June Jordan

2006-02-25T00:32:00.000-05:00

Poem about my rights was the first time I believed it when I heard someone say that they will resist white America (or whatever you care to call it) daily and nightly and that "you" better watch out cause it may very well cost you your life - and I actually believed her too. This was 6 years ago when I was being taught about women's rights from my exgirlfriend Margaret who was a women's studies major. Before that I hadn't really heard of women's rights. Weird.

Here's the ending of the poem, but if you wanna read the whole thing first it's here:
Poem about my rights by June Jordan

but let this be unmistakable this poem
is not consent I do not consent
to my mother to my father to the teachers to
the F.B.I to South africa to Bedford-Stuy
to Park Avenue to American Airlines to the hardon
idlers on the corners to the sneaky creeps in
cars
I am not wrong: Wrong is not my name
My name is my own my own my own
and I can't tell you who in the hell set things up like this
but I can tell you that from now on my resistence
my simple and daily and nightly self-determination
my very well cost you your life

Jay dressed up for scratch photo shoot

2006-02-24T15:17:00.000-05:00

We did a photo shoot today to get new characters for our kids'programming language

First try at makeshift water distiller

2006-02-22T18:00:00.000-05:00

Of course this should be solar powered but for today ill do with what i have