my vedana

Tea-drinking is relaxing, contemplative and oh so British. Really I suppose it is the remains of the days of empire. So, naturally I was concerned to read of trouble in the tea gardens with workers charged of dacoity. This signals a worrying trend in North Bengal’s tea sector.

Back at the ranch I settle for Jasmine Tea (playing it safe, I suppose). Nice and refreshing after reviewing a book proposal that looks at multimodal approaches to teaching writing. An opportunity to mull over the differences between teaching writing through new media (which seems to me to suggest an autonomous skill called writing) and the idea of teaching writing in (or for ) new media, which inevitably involves learning new practices. [Note to self: damn italics, they look ugly- must use something new]

Glocally speaking, I chuckle at Ben Hammersley ranting about Creative Lab’s revisionist etymology of the term ‘podcasting’ (they say: short for Personal On Demand broadcast; he says: this) That’s reported, here. Question is what did Apple intend ‘pod’ to stand for when marketing the original MP3 player? [Note to self: must drink more coffee, smoke cigars etc. etc.]