cqu in sydney

I'm writing this post from my desk on the sixth floor of the international campus of cqu in Sydney. I'm here for the week developing three courses that will form the new Graduate Certificate of TEFL. I'm working with Dr Alison Owens. The initial work was done over the phone before Xmas, so it has been great to actually get down to Sydney, to meet Alison in person, and to work with her.

The campus itself is wonderful. It has several thousand international students and now is exam time for many of those. The staff have been incredibly friendly and I thank them for their kindness.

Personally, it has been interesting to be back in Sydney after six years away. The inner-city has changed a lot but friends are just the same.

apology and proper acknowledgement

I just received this comment on angie cat flickr.

Reuters) - A pair of human skeletons lie in an eternal embrace at an Neolithic archaeological dig site near Mantova, Italy, in this photo released February 6, 2007. (Enrico Pajello/Handout/Reuters)

Next time do not forget to give credits to the author!!!
Posted 41 minutes ago. ( permalink | delete )

I apologise for not acknowledging the photographer correctly and never meant to suggest that I had taken the photo. in my original post on my blog I acknowledged that the photo was taken from a reuters posting on yahoo although the photographer was not cited in the yahoo acount that i read.

and on it goes

I just did a yahoo search. 2,610,000 sites for eternal embrace. makes my 298 hits on angie cat flickr seem miniscule. still, I find the phenomeon interesting, especially since my ad hoc posting yesterday now sees me playing some small part in the run around of the world of this info. now you new literacy folk out there - is this a meme?

more thoughts on eternal embrace

last night I posted the pic - eternal embrace (see post below). to do that I had to copy the pic from Reuters, post it on my angie cat flickr account and then blog it. this morning I clicked on the pic post to find that 146 people had looked at the pic and some had commented on it. later in the day I checked to find that over 200 people had looked at the pic on my flickr account. by this arvo it was around 250 people. I hadn't tagged my flickr pic in any way but perhaps the words "eternal embrace" were enough for people to find the pic through a search.

the post experience affirmed for me how marvellous on-line technology is. imagine all those people finding that pic on my angie cat account on flickr, apart from its original source at yahoo,and some people taking the time to comment.

I've been thinking some about the pic since I blogged it, particularly because of my interest in social interaction. I don't know anything about how social interaction has changed over time, however i find it interesting to see how people on-line have responded to the pic. Most immediately, comments on the pic on my flickr site provide accounts of how people understand the pic and respond to it. these posts provide insight into people's sense making here and now about something that occurred a very long time ago.

eternal embrace

how poignant was the pic on yahoo of the skeletons found in Italy. who where these two? how did they come to be buried in this way? and how did they manage to hold their embrace as they died?