New blog - Tinfoil Yarmulke

My current blog is a set of travel essays and ephemera related to my recent propaganda-tour with Birthright Israel and the two months of Middle East travel that followed.

Tinfoil Yarmulke
www.tinfoilyarmulke.tumblr.com

Cheers!

Silent Mob at HMNH

Running an event at the Harvard Museum of Natural History next Sunday, check it out!

Website: www.silentmob.wordpress.com

Facebook event (join to receive updates)

So hey. For the next week, I'm apparently called Anna and have Elle Woods as my blogger image. Sorry about that. I'm designing a pervasive game for a course, and for the next week I am running a demo version. And stupidly I didn't think to create a new google account before starting a Blogger account for the main character. Whoops.

If you're curious, the demo is based at HarvardiAnna. Feel free to check it out* and let me know your thoughts, though remember that this is a very very early beta that is more a proof-of-concept than anything else. It is an Alternate Reality Game designed to complement Harvard's freshman orientation.

*previously this post said Harvard affiliates could feel free to participate, but I am amending that. If you are or were an undergrad at Harvard, please do give me your thoughts but don't post answers - the puzzles are designed for Harvard neophytes. Thanks!

Today I learned that it's possible to write a cover letter that actually clarifies your interests and plan. I wrote the following in a cover letter yesterday (slightly adapted for posting). I read it over today and realized that it really DOES sum up my current life plan. Can't say that about many cover letters!

I want to educate people to be more awesome. When my classmates at Harvard ask why I'm in grad school for educational media, I blather something about the pedagogical potential of interactivity for reaching students of multiple intelligences. That's true too. But I also just want more cool people to hang out with – even if I have to make them cool myself.

Games are scaffolding. That's an ed school word, but it could very well be a gaming word too. Scaffolding allows students to grok sophisticated ideas by taking them there step by step, so that each stage is a well-supported progression from the previous. Games are scaffolded as well – when you level up, you have proven the ability to tackle harder bosses. When you unlock a new clue, you are biting off a manageable chunk of the meta-puzzle. The naturally scaffolded structure of games and puzzle hunts means that you can use them to make people do all sorts of fun things they wouldn't normally do.

Engaging video games are great and all, but it's far more awesome to appropriate video game mechanics to have fun in Real Life. A pervasive game can be used to encourage exploration in an old fort, critical thinking in a museum, willingness to wander off a trail in the woods, absurd behavior in a public place, and a whole range of other activities that I, in my infinite objectivity, find valuable.

I design games because games help people do cool things they wouldn't do otherwise.

A bit rough, yeah, but that's totally the idea! :)

Today I learned a new Harvard building! You know that building to the right of Lamont? Me neither till today! In all these years, I have not only never been inside that building, or known what it is, but I've never even really registered its existence. So today I walked in and announced my presence to the dude at the desk:

Me: Hi! I've been here five years and have never been in this building. Where am I?
Dude: This is the Houghton rare books library.
Me: Whoa, that exists?
Dude: ...yes.
Me: I mean, I always thought it was just one of those Hollis designations for a particular collection, not an actual physical location.
Dude: Rare books generally need to be stored somewhere secure. And physical.
Me: This makes sense.

Next up: Liz learns to navigate new Lamont floor-numbering, avoids further embarrassing attempts to locate Shakespeare in the government docs stacks.

Micro-travelblogging

Traveling alone and domestically is a perfect opportunity to get hit by a bus while texting a tweet. I'm in Los Angeles for the first time, for truly no good reason, and I've been keeping a running commentary via Twitter. Sporadically updated to here, for those who don't do the twitter thing, is my mini trip told through mini comments.


There is a totally steampunk dude waiting for my flight. Goggles and all. He is kinda cute in that Probably Crazy way.

Perhaps Goggle Guy is flying the plane! That would explain it. Ill know if instead of boarding a 747 they have us board a red dog house.

I only just realized that even though its warm in LA, it is still technically winter and therefore will get dark early. D'oh!

Chasing the sun across the Rockies. :-D

Los Angeles is surrounded by mountains! Who knew?

Ohhhh thats why they call it The Valley. I am a moron.

You can see the Hollywood sign as you fly in! Until you fly under the smog cover anyway.

Just passed an office for Animal Dermatology. Wow LA.

So far, LA bears a striking resemblance to Long Island...

Unimpressed with Santa Monica. Looks like Sheepshead Bay. And the fog is giving me triangle hair.

Day 2

Worst. Pedestrian. City. Ever.

Vitamin D is AWESOME.

Visited the Huntington gardens with a friend I haven't seen in six years. Lovely afternoon! ...now what?

There are pricklies in my finger. This is what I get for feeling up the cacti. This, and a Darwin Award.

Been wandering Pasadena for twenty minutes and still have not found any Mexican take-out. This IS California, right?

First sidewalk star I see, as I step off the bus, is Gloria Swanson. How appropriate. I can go home now I guess.

Hollywood Blvd makes Disney MGM Studios seem exciting.

Just bought shoes at Frederick's of Hollywood. I'm doin' it wrong.

Is there a Raymond Chandler museum in LA? Prob not, same dumb way New Orleans has nothing for Tennessee Williams.

There is an 800 number you can call to ask an operator how to get somewhere on public trans. Why don't we have that?

Saturday

In the hostel courtyard, two french girls are enthusiastically video chatting with friends and a puppy in Paris. This is like a commercial for The Future.

En route to the Getty. The bus infrastructure here is actually fantastic. They just need to make a schematic map and provide free transfers.

LA women make me feel ugly, but I am receiving a higher than usual rate of compliments from strangers. Culture? Or Blonde-in-Japan effect?

I get inappropriately emotional when i visit museums alone. I just welled up at a photograph of workers erecting Eiffel's tower.

Also if you have never looked closely at Dorothea Lange's Migrant Worker, you should.

Just ran into someone from Uchoir. World = ridic.

Went to the Magic Castle. And guess what guys?? MAGIC IS REAL.

Sunday

DISNEYLAND DISNEYLAND DISNEYLAND DISNEYLAND

Monday

Disneyland recap: DISNEYLAND IS AMAZING. Sure, it's more cramped than DisneyWorld, but the Indiana Jones ride makes my life. <3>

More importantly, how do you get to be an Imagineer? Do you have to already be one of those other things that end with "-gineer"?

All the birds sing words and the flowers croon!

Tuesday

I have 14 hours left in Los Angeles. What should I do? Because hanging around Chris's apartment is looking tempting...

At the Getty Villa, where they are so flummoxed to have a pedestrian visitor that the parking attendant had to call security to check what to do about me.

I am not so much hiking as i am clambering. Or perhaps "aerobic trespassing."

Using a display laptop in Office Max like a homeless person.

This In 'n' Out thing really is pretty okay.

London, day 1

12 February 2009, 16:30

Today is the bicentennial of the birth of Charles Darwin, and I am sitting in Westminster Abbey, waiting for a ceremony in his honor. I think this is nine kinds of awesome. But it is bloody COLD.

My hostel in London is just down the block from Southwark Cathedral, home of the John Harvard Chapel and a particularly sparsely attended RCS tour concert in 2006. After arriving from the airport and checking in, I popped in to Southwark to see if there were any visiting choirs I could go support, but sadly, there are none. Unless their pubmen are slacking. I gave a hello to the Harvard chapel and got trapped in a noonday prayer. At least I didn't get trapped in the dressing room this time...

I walked along the bank of the Thames for the next few hours. I love listening to people talk as they walk past - there's so much variety in British accents! Even within the London accent. I can't place the accents, of course, though I'd like to pull a Higgins and write out speech patterns in IPA, but at least it is in my ear well enough now that I can hear the variance.

I spent a couple hours at the Tate Modern, which is my favorite modern art museum. Granted, I'm only comparing it to MOMA, but I can only enjoy MOMA ironically. Outside, a street musician was playing Bolero on a steel drum, and if you bear in mind that Bolero's sole reason for existence is as an exercise in orchestration, you'll gather the silliness of the arrangement for solo steel drum.

After a couple hours at the Tate (favorite piece: Roy Lichtenstein's vamp on Monet's haystacks), I continued down the embankment till I hit the London Eye, the big ferris wheel. Now, I'd meant to do my Doctor Who tourism all in one set, but hey, there I was. So I ran across the bridge to the Parliament side and stood by the Royal Air Force memorial and imagined that the blue-ish smudges on the pavement were from the TARDIS. ::shame::

13 Feb 2009, 15:00

Evensong was lovely, and afterwards we huddled around Darwin's grave for a wreath-laying and some words. From there, I was expecting a public forum on Darwin and (vs.) God, so I made my way through the cloister to the event.

At the door, a vicar was checking names on a list. Odd. My name wasn't on any list, but he let me in anyway. At the next door I was handed a glass of wine. Also odd. With a little investigation I determined that this was actually a book launch, invite only, and the debate I had in mind was actually in May. Ah well, might as well enjoy a book launch!

I had a lovely chat with an archivist of Darwin's letters. The whole evolution/creationism divide that stirs up so many emotions in the States is, apparently, quite unknown in the UK. The book being launched, "Darwin and God", was the first on the subject to be printed in the UK. She asked me why the fuss that's risen at home in the last few decades, and I could only guess at the causes. Reaction to increasing secularization of public life? Political rise of the Christian right? An exceedingly potent production of Inherit the Wind? Or perhaps Americans really are, on this as well as a host of other issues, rather a bit stupid.

A waiter came around intermittently, re-filling wine glasses, and I had to actually keep a close count this time, as I had the rare occasion to invoke my "# of drinks < # of hours slept out of previous 48" rule. A good rule, and a rule that should probably go without saying, but on such occasions it can be quite necessary.

However, the rule only works to prevent disaster - it is not an efficient safeguard against standard issue poor-decision-making. And, oh, did I make a poor decision.

You see, I accidentally went to a musical. How does one accidentally see a musical? Let me tell you how one accidentally sees a musical. One accidentally sees a musical by walking through the theater district. Alone. At 7:30. With nowhere else to be. Tipsy. That's how you accidentally see a musical.

It was Dirty Dancing: The Musical.

I have seen some pretty bad theater in my time. I don't mind bad theater - I mean, I DO, in that it is a frustrating loss of time and money, but often you can learn as much from seeing it done wrong as from seeing it done right. And Dirty Dancing really is a promising candidate for musicalization, whatever your feelings on the film itself. Cult following + strong clear emotions + intrinsincally theatrical subject matter + period setting = musical.

However. Dirty Dancing: The Musical was not a musical.

There were no original songs. But it wasn't a jukebox musical either. Convention would be to put contemporary popular tunes into the mouths of the characters, but Baby and Johnnie never sang. So they danced their emotions, right? Well, they did dance... to the songs in the movie soundtrack... but they never danced outside the "we're practicing for a performance" context. And yet, it had a musical book. This was a libretto that someone wrote before finding a composer and lyricist, and then decided that composers and lyricsists are totes overrated, and staged it without 'em. Dirty Dancing : The Musical is a musical. Just someone forgot to write the songs.

I left shortly after intermission.