What is shaping up as one of the most unique and cutting edge art exhibits that Worcester has ever seen touches down this Saturday night with the opening reception of POP Euphoria! Support the local arts scene as well as local charities while browsing unique and original works of art, you just might find something for that hard to shop for person on your holiday list.

POP Euphoria! is an international art exhibition featuring contemporary illustration, pop art, comics, vinyl toys, street art + much more. Worcester has never seen anything like this before - art coming together from around the world; explosive, inventive, progressive + unique!

Opening: Saturday, Dec 6th from 6 -9pm @ the Aurora Gallery/ ARTSWorcester 660 Main St. Worcester, MA 01610

Featuring: Adam West’s Batman cowl from the 1966 TV series, KAIJU BIG BATTEL installation compete with 6′ monster + tiny city, japanese paper crane hats, an entire 32 page PHANTOM comic by Paul Ryan from Sweden, silkscreens by Alexei Vella, paintings by The Venture Brother’s background artist Liz Artinian, figures from Adult Swim’s ROBOT CHICKEN by Dr. Mego, prints by Matt Furie, art by cult-favorite Jim Mahfood and much more.

You can check out the show’s official site: http://www.moduslotus.com/ and the blog http://moduslotus/blogspot.com for more!

There will be gorgeous show catalogs for sale, featuring highlights from the show as well as an artist directory. Pick one up!! They are limited editions, beautifully designed and printed souvenirs of the show. Net proceeds go to Toys for Tots + Sherry’s House!

The show will be a drop-off point for Toys for Tots - bring a toy and buy some art! Prices for the art are incredibly reasonable, this is one of the least expensive, most exciting shows AW has ever done.

If you can’t get out to the opening on Saturday night the Aurora Galley is open Tuesdays and Saturdays from 1:00pm to 4:00pm and Wednesday, Thursday and Friday 10:00am to 4:00pm. The Modus Lotus show runs from December 6, 2008 thru January 17, 2009.

Are you wondering where to go cut down your own locally grown Christmas Tree? Well, here's a quick list of places to check out:

There they are. 5 Central Massachusetts locations to find a cut-your-own tree and some holiday fun.

Photo Credit: reid.gilman

It was impressive to watch our teen-aged grandsons balance a plateful of a Thanksgiving dinner that couldn’t be beat while texting with friends who were likely doing the same. It was impressive and, for some of the adults in the room, kinda creepy. The kids weren’t talking on the phones, but they weren’t fully in the room, either. Such is the power of social technologies to make non-participants feel old and out of place.

Between texting, instant messenging, and social sites, such as Facebook and MySpace, kids can disaapear easily, even if they stay in the room. It’s neither all bad nor all good.

A recent article in Slashdot points to a MacArthur Foundation study that concludes, in brief, that online gaming, social networking, and related activities are important not only because they teach valuable skills that young people will need, but that these activities are an essential form of socializing, collaborative problem-solving, and discovery. (Here’s a two-page summary (pdf) of the report; here’s the full report: Digital Youth Research - Final Report.)

The middle-aged and older folks who clawed their way into email are often surprised to find that people who are, say, under 30 rarely use email. Again, they’re preferring to use text messages or SMS-based equivalents such as instant messaging and Twitter.

Not only are American youth embracing these new technologies, but other countries are moving even faster. In Brazil, only about 10% of the people have Internet access, but nearly 40% have mobile phones.  As a result. a Brazilian NGO, Rede Jovem, created Mobile YouthNet, a project that reaches young people through SMS on their mobile phones with local opportunities and information about what is going on in their communities.

Facebook, once the exclusive province of college students, is growing in popularity among the parents of the college-aged. For example, in preparation for our Thanksgiving dinners, I checked our grandsons’ Facebook pages (and the pages of their cousins) to jump-start the f2f conversations we’d have while balancing dinner plates on our knees.

Another /. article reminds us of Edsger Dijkstra’s hand-written essay, On the Cruelty of Really Teaching Computer Science, written 20 years ago. In the essay, Dijkstra introduces the notion of radical novelty, change that’s so profound that it breaks the metaphors that we usually employ to help us understand change. Because we, as adults, are not able to grasp the amount and rate of change, we throttle the educational system to speed that’s comfortable for us and nearly useless for the students.

The concept of radical novelties is of contemporary significance because, while we are ill-prepared to cope with them, science and technology have now shown themselves expert at inflicting them upon us….The universities will continue to lack the courage to teach hard science. They will continue to misguide the students, and each next stage of infantilization of the curriculum will be hailed as educational progress.

The narrowness of our view of technology results in an educational system that trains students poorly for jobs that won’t probably won’t even exist, leaving our kids on the street corner, ready for a world that has passed them by.

kthxbai

The Coats for Kids program provides the necessary winter outerwear to enable children in Worcester to come to school each day ready to learn. It all started 20 years ago as the brainchild of Paula Harrity, runs the Volunteer Office at the Worcester Public Schools. Her efforts are now supported by The Junior League of Worcester and the Worcester Educational Development Foundation (see below for more information about these organizations).

Over the past 20 years, Coats for Kids has provided approximately 25,000 new coats to children in need.

The Worcester Junior League initially joined forces with Paula Harrity as the fiscal agent for the project. Later, their involvement expanded to include a more hands-on roll: shopping, bagging and delivering coats.

This year the effort was joined by the Worcester Educational Development Foundation. They have taken on the fiscal responsibility for the project. The Junior League continues to raise funds, shop, bag and deliver coats.

About the organizations:

The Junior League of Worcester is a local non-profit - organization of women, committed to promoting voluntarism, developing the potential of women, and improving communities through the effective action and leadership of trained volunteers.

The Worcester Educational Development Foundation (WEDF), was founded in 2005 to help support programs and facilities benefiting the students and teachers of the Worcester Public School System.

Would you like to help?

The Coats for Kids project accepts monetary donations throughout the year. Whether large or small, all contributions are greatly appreciated and tax deductible.

Please make check payable to WEDF/Coats for Kids and mail to:

c/o JLW

42 Whitman Road

Worcester, MA 01609
Junior League of Worcester, Coats for Kids page

Resources include contact information, thank you cards from some of the children who have received coats, lists of sponsors and a place to make an online donation.

Other ways to support the Worcester Public Schools:

Visit the Worcester Public Schools online to see a list of supplies needed or to find out how to volunteer.

Photo Credit: Christina Roberts

Whenever we got to talking about computers or the Internet, my father liked to remind me that, when he was a kid, radio didn’t exist. We got him a cell phone that he never used. One of his last purchases before he died a couple of years ago was an LCD TV. He bought it not for the improved picture quality, but because he could get the sound loud enough so that he could hear it without using up his hearing aid batteries.

He was a clever guy, Huck was. He built lots of interesting things from houses to boats to log splitters and stuff in between. The simplicity of the stuff that he build belies the amount of work and thought, what he called pondering, to make it simple.

Sometimes, necessity trumped subtlety. He needed to do some welding inside the camp. The welding machine was in the parking area by the boathouse and there was no easy way to bring it close enough so he could use the regular cables. He didn’t have (and didn’t want to buy) extra-long cables. So, he found some barbed wire from the old fence that marked the back boundary of the camp, hooked it up, and went to work. The barbed wire glowed red-hot, but he got the work done. Some 60 years later, you can still see the scorch marks on the window sill where the barbed wire came into the camp.

As clever as he was, however, he worked with things that he could see. The trend toward miniaturization, which began in the 50s with the advent of the transistor, made it difficult to know what was going on. Even though the magic of invisible radio waves was involved, you could see how an old radio worked by following the circuits and looking at the tubes. No longer. Wires disappeared into smaller and smaller chips and eventually reached the level of incomprehensibility.

In the 1970s, Ken Olsen, then CEO of Digital Equipment Corp., remarked that one of their latest systems was so complex that that no one person could understand the whole system. And, we’ve never turned back.

Before long, stuff became so complex that you reached that situation that Douglas Adams described, “If you try and take a cat apart to see how it works, the first thing you have in your hands is a non-working cat.”

Last summer, we needed some repairs on a cast-iron ladder. I brought the ladder to Paul at Queen Lake Auto Repair. Paul does lots of different stuff, mostly car repairs, but also some welding, the mode of the old shade tree mechanic. When I arrived, he was splitting firewood and didn’t mind taking a break. We got to talking about his work. He said that he spent as much time in front of his computer as he did with his head under the hood, tracking down repair manuals for newer cars to learning diagnostic codes for the cars’ computers. Another guy showed up and we spent the next while talking about printers and Google and wireless networks. There was too much for one person to learn and apply; you had to keep going back to the computer to look stuff up.

Our cars and gadgets do have a lot more features, cost proportionally much less than they used, and, in most cases, last longer. We sacrifice some independence when we rely on such complex gear and we get a lot in return. Most of the time.