Tom Matrullo begins a post with this:

Walter Benjamin notes that Malebranche called attentiveness “the natural prayer of the soul.”

It goes on from there, but you’ve got your money’s worth with that one line.

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There’s an unsettling post by Black Looks on Amnesty International’s Nigeria: Unheard Voices on violence against women in Nigeria. She writes: “The kind of violence taking place in Nigeria is hardly different from elsewhere but what is different and important is how Nigerian women are dealing with the violence.” Apparently there are a number of programs that provide free access to legal help. She concludes: “Nevertheless, none of these projects or initiatives can be of much use unless victims of violence can access the services and there is a high profile awareness…” [Technorati tag: Nigeria]

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I’m at a conference where an example of blogging is in order. This is it.

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I’ve turned off trackbacks on this site because I’m getting about 100 a day, of which a tiny percentage aren’t spam.

Too bad. Trackbacks address a real need.

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Shel Israel posts a message from Gary Bolles asking for help publicizing the fact that a friend of his, David Koch, has gone missing on a mountain in Vancouver; apparently he missed the tram down and set out to hike it. Gary is worried that the Canadian authorities are giving up their search, and he’s looking for ways to encourage them to continue, including by publicizing David’s plight. Time is short, so if you have any thoughts, you can reach Gary through Shel’s post.

This has ended sadly. My sincere condolences to David’s family. He touched many people.

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In a conversation with Erica George at the Berkman she pointed out that the demographics of Live Journal don’t always represent one’s experience of Live Journal — the demographics say that teenage girls are the largest users, but if you’re a 25 year old, your social group there may not look that way at all.

Which raises an issue about the way the “long tail” is pictured. Clay’s charts are accurate depictions of his data, but they have a mythic power that’s misleading: The long tail looks like, well, a long tail when in fact it’s a fractal curlicue of relationships. It’s more like a squirrel’s tail than a monkey’s. When marketing folks don’t understand that, they confuse the long tail with an opportunity to do one-to-one marketing, treating each person as a “market of one,” instead of seeing that the ones are in conversation with other ones. [Technorati tags: LongTail shirky blogs EverythingIsMiscellaneous]

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Today I found out why I make two backups every night. It’s because, sure as snow gets in your boots, when you really really need a backup, one of them is going to turn out to be corrupt.

Fanaticism has its rewards.

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I’m on a 7am flight to NYC on Friday and will spend the day visiting possible publishers of my book. I will be delivering fully dressed geese and money clips as mementos. That’s how things get done in the big city, my friend!

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According to The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) in March of this year, supplemented by eMarketer, 93% of instructional rooms in public schools have Internet access, a serious rise from just 64% in 1999 and only 3% in 1994. And, the number of schools with broadband connectivity has risen to 95% in 2003.

…The report also determines that as Net connectivity rises in the public school system, the ratio of students to instructional computers has declined. In 1998, the ratio was 12-to-1, but by 2003 that ratio was 4-to-4.

Center for Media Research

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I went to Steve Johnson’s book signing event at the Harvard Bookstore tonight. (I’ve blogged about his book here.) He talked engagingly for 30 minutes and then took questions. So, I asked: While some books clearly count as art, could the same ever happen to some video games? He replied that, yes, he thought so, but it wasn’t going to be via narrative. It will be more like architecture, he said, in which the aesthetic value has to do with building complex and beautiful places. He thinks The Sims and Sim City by Wil Wright approach that degree of aesthetic quality already. He also points out that it took a hundred years for Dickens to be appreciated as more than a writer of entertainments. (I’m still not convinced about Dickens, but bought Little Dorrit while I was there on Steve’s recommendation.)

There’s no doubt that video games (e.g., Myst) can be pretty. But beautiful? The truly remarkable thing is that we don’t even know where to look. As Steve says, the first game we’re willing to call art may be architecturally beautiful, but I think it might instead be narrative. Or some mix that hasn’t been discovered yet. We may well argue as fiercely about whether it’s a game as about whether it’s art.

That’s what makes this such a wonderful time: Our ignorance is so thorough and our capacity to be surprised is so deep.

[Technorati tags: SteveJohnson games ebigfy]

By the way, it turns out that Steve is the next speaker in the series that brought me to Naples and Capri. Lucky students, lucky Steve!

And one of the grad students, Gianluca Baccanico, has just launched his own English-language blog where he is going to explore the ideas in the book he;s writing.

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