On Wed, May 27, 2009 at 8:52 AM, kirby urner<kirby.urner@gmail.com> wrote: << SNIP >>
OK, time for my first meeting of the day... I have this "neolithic math" component in our place based curriculum. We keep going back to this "cave man" setting, but lo and behold their inner circle know quite a bit about world geography and navigation, per recent scholarship (anyway Sumerians were "cave men" and calling it "neolithic" is maybe more marketing than literal -- it's not "prehistoric", not literally).
Sumerians were *not* cave men, meant to say. We've had lots of cave men on TV ever since the Geiko commercials, not all of you in USA TV bubble I realize (it's an intense bubble, actually a foam). Having Conan the Barbarian types transplanted to a civilized context, seeing therapists and stuff, is a long-running humorous thread in popular culture, right up there with "future civilized" forced to live in the past or our present. Some of you may be following my proposals to have a Python User Group on television, with an inevitable Mickey Mouse Club vibe, though without conscious copying. That's why I was taking that "let them sue, good publicity" line on the PSF list, regarding the Pinoy User Group use of a "mouse ears" motif, which I think was somewhat unintentional on their part: http://www.flickr.com/photos/17157315@N00/3544467917/ Use of cartoon characters in an intellectual property context was also one of my themes at Gothenberg Europython (the last one in that city), as you'll see from my slides (pictures of TinTin, Donald Duck, plus a complete replica of some USA gas station, straight out of eXistenZ one might think, but in Liseberg). Kirby