Citizen Kane: famous film transition from a photograph to real life
"Another transition takes us to the same three men, this time reflected in the window of the Chronicle, Kane's major rival (Circulation 495,000). 'I know you're tired, Gentlemen... Kane begins, suggesting the men have come straight from the offices of the Inquirer after spending all night getting the paper out. The scene not only illustrates Kane's tireless ambition, but provides a seamless transition from the humble beginnings of the Inquirer to the day, six years later, when Kane has managed to poach the entire reporting staff captured in a photograph prominently positioned in the window of the Chronicle on that first night. The camera slowly dollies in on the reporters as Bernstein tells Kane it took the Chronicle twenty years to gather such a highly respected staff. 'Twenty years?' says Kane, 'Wells' - and suddenly, as the sentence Kane speaks spans six years, the reporters are no longer still images in a photograph but moving, breathing people - 'six years ago I looked at a picture of the world's greatest newspapermen. I felt like a kid in front of a candy store.' Kane himself then enters from the left, looking prosperous and confident..."
(Movie Movie)
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
Cultivating Communities: shifting from a material to a people-focused society
"The context of Cultivating Communities is the transition towards a sustainable society. Because of several environmental issues this is one of the biggest challenges that our and future generations are facing. I am convinced that this implies a shift from a material-focused society to a people-focused society. During my PhD research I will explore how design can enable people to become part of this transition. Experimenting with designing scenarios executed as creative contexts, engaging toolkits and community platforms will be a central part of the research. I believe that scenarios can be powerful instruments in enabling people to contribute to sustainable development. The potential of these enabling scenarios will be tested during the cultivating communities project. The goal of this project is to develop an education toolkit and platform focused on sustainable development for elementary schools. Together with some local schools in Limburg (Belgium), I will develop a sustainable scenario around several vegetable-like characters."
(Ben Hagenaars)
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
The Metaphor of Time as Space
"Many students of language are astounded by the fact that there are languages which lack tense. This confusion results from the fact that they do not realize that time is a semantic construct and tense is a linguistic one. All languages have ways of speaking about time, a semantic construct. Not all languages have linguistic markers of time, tense. Languages that lack tense, use time words to signal events that take place in the past, present, or future. With the passage of time, these time words become attached to verbs and the resulting conflation is known as tense. English has only two tenses: the present and the past. The future occurs as a time construct, but not as a linguistic one. In order to talk about the future in English, one must use a construction that employs the model will."
(Robert N. St. Clair, University of Louisville)
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
Better Place Australia: zero emissions driving
"Better Place Australia is part of a global company dedicated to zero emissions driving. We will enable the mass adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) in Australia by providing the infrastructure and services that make it easy, affordable and attractive for motorists to adopt and drive electric vehicles.
The key barriers to the mass adoption of EVs in Australia, and globally, have been 'range anxiety', the cost and risk of battery purchase and the impact of EV charging on the electricity grid.
To overcome 'range anxiety' - the fear of EV drivers that their battery will run out of power - Better Place provides a personal charge spot at home, access to a network of charge spots at work and in public, access to 'instant recharge' through battery swap stations and in-car services to help drivers know when and where to recharge.
The system of battery swapping also helps overcome the cost and risk of battery purchase. The driver's subscription to Better Place covers use of a battery and the ability to swap and go at any swap station. Rather than pay upfront, drivers pay a monthly fee which covers their battery use. Better Place manages the risk and performance of the pool of batteries by tracking their capability and use through the battery swap stations.
Better Place manages the impact of EV charging on the electricity grid by using software that coordinates the charge spots so that the charging needs of customers are met within network capacity constraints. . This helps make the electricity grid more efficient and significantly reduces the need for additional generation, transmission and distribution infrastructure."
(Better Place, 2010)
CONTRIBUTOR
Lindsay QuennellSHARE
The Backpacker: A Liminal Experience
"The backpacker experience is usually characterized as a self imposed transition or rite of passage from adolescence to adulthood, and occurs in the time between the end of formal education and the beginning of full time employment. In the case of more mature backpackers, the experience commonly occurs in other transition periods during life course such as marriage breakdown, 'mid-life' crisis or career transition. Either way the experience is a liminal one, forming a transitional experience between the end of one part of life and the beginning of another. This liminality also suggests a disconnection from conventional principles of experience within the bounds of everyday life, which make certain behaviours like risk-taking, uncertainty and adventure available to the backpacker more so than other tourist groups."
(Dr Barbara Adkins & Eryn Grant)
[2] Adkins, Barbara A. and Grant, Eryn L. (2007) Backpackers as a community of strangers: the interaction order of an online backpacker notice board. Qualitative Sociology Review, 3(2).
CONTRIBUTOR
Barbara AdkinsSHARE
