Friday, October 24, 2014

The Suits take our coursera SOOC off-line, episode 1

[for the previous installment, click here

The GaTech Suits ban our advert for the Jan 2015 Coursera.org course, after 3 months on the Coursera website, and take our www.coursera.org/chaosbook off-line without informing me. Making it took a week of shooting, reshooting, and editing. I like the final Chesire Cat version for a reason, as a parable for a strange attractor. You can watch the banned video here: Youtu.be/JqaM-y2cBkI, with the caption:
This is an invitation to join our course. Click on [CC] for subtitles. The gadget on the glasses is the home-cooked Google Glass (ie, the mic for the camera). 
I asked by email what the deal is. The Suits took the advertisement down because: "The ghost movements are unacceptable and those videos will need to be reshot. All of these restrictions are made with the experience of the 20 previous Coursera courses that we've produced. The course would be removed from external access until the course is approved for release by the Executive MOOC team and made public after Dr. Baker and his team give their approval."

So, when you have a look on Internet, it's amazing how much stuff there is that does not meet  the Professional Education treshold. Here is this unprofessional Robert Reich's shaky video.


Whoever Dr. Baker of the Supreme MOOC Presidium might be - he's never talked to me or contacted me. So I wrote down the text of the add for the Professional Education, put on The Suit (I dress this way only for funerals, but nobody got the joke), went into their black room, and read the text off the teleprompter. With this version the Suits put the course back on line (after 6 weeks!).

[for the next installment, click here]

Monday, October 06, 2014

Wenches in Chainmail

America and its infinity of subcultures is amazing.

Someone on flickr.com faves a nice portrait by Jim of his ex (245 people have looked at it?), so I check that person's photography. Not public, but the person is into girls with plaster casts; Wenches in Chainmail (a flickr group with 279 members); Adult Baby Girl ("There is something about a beautiful, adult woman securely diapered with her pacifier neatly tucked in her mouth"); ladies wearing casts; and so on.

Why would anyone ... oh, never mind.