Connecticut
Post posts about what is happening in the State of Connecticut.
Fiona to Interview State Comptroller Candidate Kevin Lembo
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sun, 10/24/2010 - 09:10For the past two and a half years, my daughter Fiona and I have done an Internet based radio show using BlogTalkRadio. She was about six and a half years old when we started and now we have over a hundred recordings of the two of us talking together on Sunday evenings.
Our typical shows have been about what she has done over the past week. Visits to Papa’s house, trips to orchards or to pick pumpkins, playing with puppies; the stuff of childhood. Yet on various occasions Fiona has interviewed special guests. Last November, Fiona interviewed Connecticut Gubernatorial Candidate Dan Malloy. She was born in Stamford when Dan was mayor there and they had a good chat. I wrote about the interview back then in a blog post, Fiona Interviews CT Gubernatorial Hopeful Dan Malloy on Internet Radio Show. It provides a summary of the discussion and some context on other people she has interviewed.
She has also interviewed State Representatives and candidates for that office. This April, Fiona interviewed Connecticut Secretary of State Candidate Denise Merrill. Both Denise and Dan are on the ballot this November.
At a discussion between bloggers and State Comptroller Candidate Kevin Lembo, I asked Kevin if he would be interested in being on Fiona’s show. With just a few weeks left before election day, I wasn’t sure we would be able to get him on as a candidate and was prepared to have him as a guest sometime after the election. However, the campaign has managed to make time for him to call this evening.
As I’ve explained to candidates, if they can explain what the job is and why they think they would be good at it to a nine year old interviewer, they are probably more than sufficiently prepared to speak with other members of the press and public that might be having difficulties grasping what the campaign is all about.
So, I hope that you consider tuning in this evening at 6:30 PM, U.S. Eastern Daylight Time to here Fiona interview Kevin Lembo.
At the end of the introduction of the show each week, I say, “I encourage all parents to find time to talk with their kids, perhaps even recording the discussions or, as we do, sharing them on BlogTalkRadio.” I was glad to hear people from PodcampCT talking about doing that very thing, so I also hope that over the coming weeks, I can highlight shows similar to Fiona’s and encourage you to listen to them as well.
How Many U.S. Senate Candidates in Connecticut Can You Name?
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 10/19/2010 - 13:22Even people outside of Connecticut may well have heard of the U.S. Senate race between Richard Blumenthal and Linda McMahon. However, even a lot of people in Connecticut haven’t heard of the two other candidates on the ballot, John Mertens and Warren Mosler.
People interested in hearing a Free and Equal U.S. Senate Debate can attend Wednesday, October 20, 2010 from 8:30 – 9:30 p.m. EDT in the Student Union Ballroom (Room 330) at the University of Connecticut, Storrs Campus. The event will also be streamed live on the Free and Equal website. Blumenthal and McMahon have both been invited to attend but have not yet responded.
The real hardcore politicos in Connecticut may even have heard of Brian K Hill. Mr. Hill is running a fairly serious campaign as a write-in candidate. Connecticut law requires that people interested in running as a write-in candidate must apply to the Secretary of State’s office at least two weeks before the election. The deadline for applying is today, October 19th.
A quick check of the Secretary of the State’s list of U.S. Senate Write-In Candidates reveals several more people.
Jeff Russell is running as a write-in Green candidate. Todd Vachon is the chair of The Socialist Party of Connecticut and is running as a write-in candidate.
Carl Vassar is running as a Libertarian write-in candidate. He ran as a write-in candidate for U.S. Senate back in 2006 and for other seats in the past. Dave Olszta is also running as a write-in candidate as is John Traceski who has run in other elections as a Christian Center Party candidate.
There are also assorted write-in candidates for Governor, Congress, and state legislative offices. Do you know who is running where you live?
Cider Stories
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sun, 10/17/2010 - 21:49Today, we started a new batch of hard cider. It is my tenth batch of hard cider and slowly I’m getting a better feel for the craft. At its simplest, hard cider making is very easy. Get a carboy full of cider, throw in some yeast, put a vapor lock on it and let it sit for about two or three weeks. Then, rack off the cider into bottles and when you are ready, drink them.
Then, you start getting into the details. Do you want to just use the natural yeast in the cider, or do you want to add specific types of yeasts? You can never be sure what you’ll get if you use the natural yeast, so I’ve always used some fine yeast from a brew store. My first batch used champagne yeast. This yeast eats up as much sugar as it can and results in strong dry ciders very much like a white wine. It isn’t the sort of cider that I’m interested in, so I’ve ended up mostly using ale yeasts. With them, I’ve gotten some nice ciders similar to English ciders.
Then, there is the question of whether or not to add sugars to make a stronger cider. Many people like to add brown sugar. Many of our batches have been without any added sugars. I’ve liked the way they’ve came out. However, we have also experimented with adding maple syrup. We add about half a cup of maple syrup per gallon of cider. We’ve made some great hard ciders that way, and our preferred cider is probably made with ale yeast and maple syrup.
With our basic approach pretty standardized, it is time to start exploring finer points. Last year for Christmas, my wife Kim bought me a hydrometer. This year, I’ve been measuring the specific gravity of the fresh cider when I start and the hard cider when I’m done. The first batch started at about 1.052 and ended up at about .998. To some of that, we added two cups of maple syrup which raised it back to 1.019. We let it work a little longer and ended up at 1.012 when we bottled it. This is a sweeter cider than we usually make and we expect it will have some nice fizz to it.
Besides thinking about the specific gravity, I’m now paying attention to when it is fermented and the apples used. The first batch started in mid September, and we had some warm days. It fermented quickly, eating up most of the sugar. The apples were a combination of Honeycrisps, Macintoshes, and Gala. The fresh cider had a light sweet applely taste. When it came time for the second fermentation, there wasn’t much yeast left and it didn’t work as much. We deliberated whether to bottle it, or let the second fermentation go for another week or two. In the end, we decided on a sweeter, more fizzy cider.
I’ve just racked off the second batch to its second fermentation. This batch was also at 1.052 specific gravity. It was made up of Macintosh and Macoun apples. My wife really likes Macouns and we’ve decided to do this as a straight batch with no added sugars.
The third batch which we just started is a combination of Empire, Macintosh and Macoun apples. As we get later into the year, the sugar content is creeping up and this batch started at a specific gravity of 1.056. The days are getting cooler and it may take longer to ferment. A new experiment for this batch is using the yeast and some of the cider from the previous batch as a starter for this batch. The idea is similar to how people would make sourdough and always keep some for starter for the next batch of sourdough bread.
We will watch how this cider ferments. We will taste it when we rack it off from the first fermentation to the second and decide whether to add sugars, whether to bottle it while it is still a little sweet, and other things to try and create the story of this cider batch. Then, it will be time for another batch.
The Self at the Intersection of Podcamps and Group Psychotherapy #PCCT #AGPA
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sun, 10/17/2010 - 11:42Note: This blog post started as a message to a mailing list of Group Psychotherapists and has been adapted.
Yesterday was PodcampCT, an unconference about podcasting and social media that I helped organize. It was also the fourth anniversary of my first message on Twitter. I spent the day talking with many people, face to face, about the role of social media in their lives. In one of the discussions, I even brought up the line I often quote from one of the keynotes at the American Group Psychotherapy Association (AGPA) annual conference in Washington, "The self exists at the intersection of our internal neural networks and our external social networks."
It seems to me that there is something important in the idea of thinking about the types of relationships that we have as a result of online social networks. As I write this, I have 1,775 Facebook friends, 3,128 followers on Twitter where I am following 2,910 people. When I have time I try to read at least 300 different blogs a day, and get at least one blog post written each day. The stream of incoming emails is endless and many go unread.
Yes, the self exists at the intersection of our internal neural networks and our external social networks, and for me, that is a very busy intersection.
The British Anthropologist Robin Dunbar, has proposed a theoretical limit to the number of people that we can maintain stable social relationships. The work was based on studies of limits to group sizes and Dunbar suggests is based on the size of the neo-cortex. The exact number varies, but is typically presented as around 150, although Dunbar's work does also explore tribes in the 500-2500 member range.
Are my connections online more tribal than an indication of stable social relationship? Or, has online technology given us the ability to maintain multiple groups of stable social relationships? e.g. In writing this message, I'm stepping into the Group Psychotherapy group of stable social relationships after spending yesterday in the Connecticut Social Media
Enthusiasts group of stable social relationships?
What does all of this do to my 'self'. Is it more fractured? Is it richer? Some combination of both? How does this relate to people coming into small therapeutic groups? How are they changing and what is changing about what they bring into a group?
On top of this, what role does machine mediation take place. I was struck by a journal entry where the writer talked about calling people on the phone instead of contacting them via email. Later, in the entry she spoke about how Facebook has produced a new form of relating to people through a machine. This really struck me. Calling someone on a telephone is also relating to them through a machine. Actually, through a collection of machines, and these days, more and more of the machines involved in transmitting the audio signal from one telephone to another are computers.
Last month, there was an interesting article on NPR about functional connectivity MRIs. They are being used to better understand what is going on with autistic children. Instead of measuring the brain size of children, researchers have been focusing on the connections in the brain. The broadcast spoke about how some connections grow and others are pruned away as brains grow, but that process seems to get delayed for children with autism and some other developmental disorders.
What particularly struck me was about how autistic brains do not function as well because of abnormal retained connections all over the place. Does this say something about how we should be managing our social networks? Was the writer of the journal entry who was unsubscribing to many of her mailing lists on to something important?
I have not unsubcribed from many of the mailing lists that I am on, but I am selective about which emails I read and how closely I read them. I still read the Group Psychotherapy list fairly closely, but often with a little bit of a delay. I often simply glance at the title or author of emails on other lists before simply deleting them, and if I find the percentage of interesting emails I'm getting on some list drops below a specific threshhold, I unsubscribe. I have multiple email addresses and go for long periods without checking some of the email accounts.
Yes, I do believe the self exists at the intersection of our internal neural networks and our external social networks. Online social media has made that intersection very busy for many of us. Changes in technology will cause this to continue to evolve and our means of handling this and what it does to our 'selves' need to evolve as well.
Thoughts? Comments?
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PodcampCT : The Edge Between Knowing and Not-Knowing - #PCCT
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 10/16/2010 - 06:46Years ago, I read a fascinating paper entitled Our Best Work Happens When We Don't Know What We're Doing. It had been presented at the 1999 International Society for the Psychoanalytic Study of Organizations and talked about how “learning involves working at the edge between knowing and not-knowing”.
It seems like this paper provides a useful framework for understanding Podcamps. First, I should make it clear that it is not about trying to do something that you don’t know how to do. Any attempt by me at brain surgery would be unlikely to be some of my best work. Instead, the paper talks about “the edge between knowing and not-knowing”. I should also note that it has been years since I’ve read that paper, so my thoughts may have drifted from some of the original ideas in the paper.
To me, a good podcamp exists on the edge between knowing and not-knowing. It is important to know how to create an environment where people can learn. Podcamps grow out of the open space technology and unconference traditions where learning comes out of treating everyone as an equal and focusing on facilitated discussions instead of presentations.
I write this blog post a couple hours before PodcampCT starts. We still do not have a set agenda. We won’t have a set agenda until after people have checked in and shared there ideas for the sessions to cover. Even then, there will be a bit of flexibility in the agenda. Yesterday, I wrote some initial thoughts about a possible PodcampCT agenda, but the real agenda will form as the people gather, and the list of people attending continues to change as new people register. Even over night, new people registered, and I expect we’ll have people registering at the door.
One person contacted the PodcampCT organizers writing
I'm being asked to pay $25 and maybe more to receive, well, nothing specific, but it'll be about social media. Do I have that right?
The schedule lists time slots, but no definite topics to be covered...
I'm used to implied contracts – when I sit down at a restaurant table I expect to be served food, and I commit to paying for what I order. But I'm a little stuck on this implied contract: if I give you my $25 what, exactly, will I receive beyond the opportunity to interact with other people who also paid the $25 and want to receive some value for it?
Is this kind of transaction a "new normal" for online business: give me money and you'll get, well, something, probably?
The writer received several replies pointing out that, no, they don’t have it right. Participants will received some very specific information about social media. Definite topics about social media will be explored. The issue is that people don’t know the exact details of what specific topics will be covered. The conference itself exists at the edge of knowing and not-knowing.
As an aside, when I pay my $25 at a restaurant, I often sit at the edge of knowing and not-knowing. Yes, I could go to the same restaurant everyday and order the same clams and linguini. Assuming the same chef is there with the same ingredients, I can be pretty sure about what I’ll get. However, I like try new restaurants and new dishes. I like to experience something new, and learn more about what I like and don’t like. The same applies to Podcamp, except that it is a potluck where everyone brings their favorite dishes.
I do not know what I am going to learn today. If I knew it already, I’d probably have already learned it and would get less out of Podcamp. Instead, I am going with the expectation of learning something I don’t already know.
I know a fair amount about location specific social media. I’ll check-in on Foursquare when I get there. I might check in on some other systems as well. I know that some bright people will be there who know a lot more about location specific social media than I do. I hope to sit with them and others seeking to learn from one another and discover something I don’t know about location specific social media.
I also know a fair amount about the use of barcodes in social media. I’ve written a fair amount about QR Codes. I am hoping to sit down in a session talking about QR Codes. I suspect I won’t learn much that I don’t know about QR Codes already, but I expect that some people will ask questions, most likely about use cases, that will cause me to learn something new about how QR Codes can be used.
I know the framework of the schedule, four sessions, probably between five and seven concurrent tracks, with time for networking during coffee, lunch and afterwards for drinks. I don’t know what the group of people who gather will end up thinking is important and I hope to learn something from that as well.
On one level, I know exactly what I’m doing today. I’m going to Podcamp, a chance to learn about social media. On the other hand, I don’t know what I’ll be doing. I’ll be hanging out on the edge of knowing and not-knowing about social media. I’ll be moving that edge for myself and I’m pretty excited to be going.
