Crowdsourcing the History of Electricity

When comic writer Matthew Inman, known online as The Oatmeal, joked about Nikola Tesla—he was serious.

So serious that in 2012 he partnered with The Tesla Science Center at Wardenclyffe to buy the late Tesla’s incomplete laboratory, Wardenclyffe Tower, through a crowdsourcing campaign on indiegogo.

The joke began on theoatmeal.com with an illustrated piece entitled, “Why Nikola Tesla was the greatest geek who ever lived.”

The piece argued that the Serbian-American scientist, Nikola Tesla, was the main reason that the world is currently (pun intended) powered by electricity. It points out that many people today think of Thomas Edison first when they think of the man who harnessed electricity.

The piece goes further to say that Tesla actually did Edison’s dirty work, but was never paid for his efforts. It credits Tesla as being the innovator behind neon lighting, the electric motor, and wireless communications— not Edison.

Inman’s passionate opinion of Tesla humorously bleeds through the entirety of the article while casting doubt and disdain toward Edison.

In 2013 Inman took that passion to indiegogo.com, a crowdsourcing site, and created a project called, “Let’s Build a Goddamn Tesla Museum.” The project asked the public to donate money to help “…buy back Nikola Tesla’s old laboratory, known as the Wardenclyffe Tower, and eventually turn it into a museum.”

The crowdsourcing effort raised more than $1 million in just nine days. From August 15 to September 29, the duration of the project, a total of $1,370,461 was raised to purchase the property. The original goal was $850,000.

Today, the Tesla Science Center at Wardenclyffe is an industrial cleanup site. The TSC website states:

“For safety reasons and to protect its historical integrity, TSC will keep the site closed for the foreseeable future, except for scheduled work and for occasional events. However, visitors can see the Tesla statue from New York 25A, behind which one can see the large octagonal foundation of Tesla’s former transmission tower and the brick laboratory building designed by Stanford White.”

Obviously there is no museum, yet, on the grounds. But a statue of Nikola Tesla was donated by the Serbian government in 2013, and proudly stands on the property where Tesla once worked.

A success? In the making…

This crowdsourcing project varied from the ‘Free the Files’ project in many ways. First, it required no man power. Inman simply asked for money and used his celebrity status to reach a large number of people.

Free the Files was more of a merit based project, concerned with the civil liberties of the people of the United States and actually started as something else, altogether.

In the Next Stop Design example, likely participants were already users of the system the government was attempting to improve. Participants were asked to offer ideas instead of money. They submitted designs they felt would improve the transportation infrastructure in their area.

In this sense it was a collection of ideas instead of money.

Public Lecture by Kenneth Warren

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On March 26, I covered a lecture by Kenneth Warren, Professor at the University of Chicago. Warren spoke about William Gardner Smith’s 1963 novel, The Stone Face, in a speech entitled, “A Common Disaster and One Long Memory: William Gardner Smith’s The Stone Face and the Problem of Solidarity.”

Coverage of the event done on coveritlive.com.

“Warren’s lecture will focus on Smith’s 1961 novel, which depicts the 1961 massacre of Algerian immigrants by the Paris police. The Stone Face, Warren argues, examines the grounds of solidarity between Algerians in Paris and African Americans in the Jim Crow South, and explores the tensions between African American literature as an imaginative practice and anti-colonialism as a political project.

Kenneth Warren is the Fairfax M. Cone Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago and a leading scholar of nineteenth- and twentieth-century American and African American literature. His books and essays have been influential since the early 1990s, and his most recent book, What Was African American Literature? (Harvard University Press, 2011), was as widely discussed as any recent work of literary criticism.”

—From the University of Tennessee

How Twitter Influence Understanding in Ferguson

Read how social media influence national reaction to Michael Brown’s death in Ferguson, MO on my Storify post here!

Image Courtesy of: http://www.geeksandcleats.com/2015/01/black-lives-matter-banner-hung-atop-stanford-law-school-photo/

Paula Korsakas Podcast

Korsakas is a Program Manager of the Sport for Human Development Program at the Sports Center of the University of São Paulo. She works as an advocate in the Sport for Social Change Network and serves as an expert leading training programs and seminars for sports practitioners interested in harnessing the power of sport to combat gender inequality and encourage female empowerment in this field.

Paula Korsaka Podcast

Making a Newspaper: Paper.li

Paper.li is a content curation service that allows users to create their own newspaper by choosing seemingly any topics that exist on the internet—essentially any topics that exist—and present fresh material to readers daily based on those topics.

Paper.li allows users to name their own newspapers and then search out the content they want to share in the publication. After the topics have been chosen, users are able to create a unique design for their newspaper. Fonts, color schemes, and basic presentation options help the user make the site unique.

Because I work for a distilling company, I chose moonshine and distilling as a topic for my Paper.li newspaper.

After the page has been designed the website organizes relevant articles and presents the curated information in a fashion similar to mainstream online news websites.

It automatically chooses articles to highlight and separates the content into categories like; videos, photos, leisure, business, etc.

The user gets to play the role of editor if he/she is not satisfied with the content that appears on the homepage. By clicking the edit button in the top, right corner the user is given the opportunity to refresh the content or simply reposition the content already on the page.

The user can also change the content of their Paper.li site any time by choosing new topics for Paper.li to pull from. The user can also add or remove places for Paper.li to search for material.

In the free version of the site the user can update the material on their newspaper once a day. The update can be done either manually or the user can set a schedule and the material will automatically be updated.

Users can also promote their own page through newsletters and posts on social media.

Paper.li is a user friendly way to curate materials for an online website. Here is a link to my simple newspaper created on Paper.li

Site review: nytimes.com

The New York Times website is one of the most credible and consistent news websites in the industry.

Upon initial review of the site, it is apparent that the Times takes pride in a formal and proportional appearance. The fonts on the homepage are consistent throughout the site. The articles are arranged proportionally to their perceived importance or particular section.

A look at Tuesday’s homepage, just after 1 p.m.

At the top of the homepage, the sections of the newspaper are listed. To access any of the sections, the reader needs only to click on the word and they will be taken to the desired section.

Hyperlinks for sections at the top of the homepage.

One of the first things a visitor to the site will see is a large photograph, video, or chart in the center of the screen. The art is usually associated with the featured article at that time of day.

Featured article at 1:38 p.m. about housing at a California school.

Down the left side of the page are the headlines and sub headers for the most important stories of the day. Usually it is a mix of national and international stories of some significance. Editorial pieces are usually featured at the top right of the page.

Below there is a section called “Watching” that gives small updates (usually one or two sentences) from important news events. The column is refreshed constantly and keeps the reader abreast of important developments through the day.

The site does not seem overwhelmed by advertisements. It allows the reader to enjoy the news content on the site without being overly solicited.

The stories, especially features, usually have video, photos, or interactive graphs to give the reader more insight into the topic being covered. The videos are pooled further down into a video section. The quality of art is almost always top notch.

Screenshot of the video section at nytimes.com

In summary, the operators of the website seemingly make significant efforts to ensure that the content on the site is easily accessible and that the content is free of errors. It is a highly professional endeavor that adds credibility to the product.

Pakistani students find comfort, understanding in East Tennessee

“Atif Khan (left) and Sidra Fatima (right) came to Maryville College the U.S. State Department of State’s Global Undergraduate Exchange Program in Euroasia & Central Asia (UGRAD). They say the thing they miss most about Pakistan is the food.

Before coming to East Tennessee this year, Atif Khan had never left the rural mountains where he was born, and Sidra Fatima, who is blind, had never traveled abroad. But when asked what they missed most about their native country of Pakistan, they quickly — and clearly — answered: the food.

“I talk to my family every day, and they are happy I am having such a positive experience in such a good environment.” Fatima said. “But food is the only thing I miss.”

Fatima and Khan are exchange students at Maryville College. They came to East Tennessee through the U.S. Department of State’s Global Undergraduate Exchange Program in Euroasia & Central Asia, a highly competitive scholarship program designed to provide cross-cultural education and understanding.

Governmental relations between Pakistan and the United States have not always been amicable in recent years, reaching a low point in 2011, the year terrorist leader Osama bin Laden was found and killed in Pakistan.

Khan and Fatima agree that programs like the one that brought them to the U.S. are crucial to help improve relations between the two countries.

“If the Pakistani people had any negative stereotype about Americans, it is wrong,” said Khan, a medical student at Khyber Medical College in Peshawar. “I have observed that the people of the U.S. are really innocent. This program should really be promoted to increase mutual understanding.”

Fatima, an international studies major, said that some Americans hold negative, and often unfounded, opinions about Pakistani people, as well.

“They think all Pakistanis are terrorists,” she said, in jest. “But the program is a form of public diplomacy and it is really good. The relationships between the governments might not be great but the people-to-people relationships are really nice.”

Before coming to America, Khan and Fatima had a limited perspective of America. Most of what they knew, or thought they knew, was transmitted to them through films.

“In movies I would see violence and action, but here everyone is really helpful, very polite, and they are always there to help you,” Khan said. “If you need help they will be helpful.”

Fatima needed special assistance when she arrived because of her disability. She agreed with Khan that Americans, specifically the individuals at Maryville College, were kind and willing to be of service.

“The biggest surprise was the way people treated me with my disability,” she said. “In my country the majority of people do not know how to act with a person with a disability, any kind of disability. People’s attitude and awareness here really surprised me.”

For Khan, the only similarity between East Tennessee and FATA — the Federally Administered Tribal Areas in Pakistan where he is from — is the presence of mountains. FATA is in northwest Pakistan, near the border of Afghanistan. It is characterized by its mountainous terrain; accented by small basins or valleys, and dotted with villages and farms.

“Our community is more congested,” Khan said. “Here there is so much more distance between houses. But in FATA they are kind of attached to each other.”

For Fatima, conversely, coming to Maryville was a serene experience. She is from Lahore in northeast Pakistan, a city with more than 7 million people.

“The biggest difference is that Lahore is a big city and Maryville is a small city,” she said.

Both Khan and Fatima have traveled since coming to the U.S. Fatima went to Nashville and is hoping to go to New York City, a place Khan recently spent three days.

“I think they were the best days of my life,” he said. “It is such a lively city, so full of tourists.”

Both Khan and Fatima plan to return to the United States after visiting home in Pakistan in December.

Territorial disputes common, often violent

One of the biggest issues countries quarrel over is territory, said Krista Wiegand, professor of political science at the University of Tennessee.

“When people want access to the territory, they do not just want to own the territory, they want to have political control over it,” Wiegand said to students Tuesday morning at the Howard Baker, Jr. Center.

According to Wiegand, there are many reasons for states to have disagreements, but disputes over territory often lead to violence.

“Countries always have disputes over trade, for example, but they never go to war over trade,” said Wiegand.

Territory is important to countries for several reasons. For some countries, land is important because of resources. For other countries land, is important because of its symbolic value.

“Whether it’s for economic purposes or strategic purposes, land is important,” Wiegand said. “The Persian Gulf is very sensitive for the shipment of oil, and also for identity reasons, for nationalism.”

According to Wiegand, some states, and groups within states, will adopt extreme measures to acquire or maintain possession of certain tracts of land.

“People will go to immense expense for this purpose, including suicide bombing,” she said. “The example you are most familiar with is the Israel and Palestine conflict. It’s all about territory; it’s about homeland, connection to the territory.”

Wiegand said that these disputes are common in the world today. However, not all of them are disputes over land, and not all of them are violent.

“There are 194 countries in the world, and there are currently about 75 territorial disputes, if you can believe it,” she said.

The high number of disputes, however, does not mean that every country in the world is involved in a dispute, according to Wiegand.

“There are a lot of disputes that have multiple countries involved,” she said. “China is involved in a number of disputes, for example.”

Wiegand said that often a third party mediator settles these disputes, but it usually happens after the dispute turns violent.

“They try to address it before it gets bad or with peacekeeping forces after,” she said. “It’s very hard to prevent a conflict and the UN does not have any authority to get involved.”

Wiegand is a fellow at the Howard Baker, Jr. Center for Public Policy at UT. She is the author of two books, one entitled “Enduring Territorial Disputes: Strategies of Bargaining Coercive Diplomacy and Settlement.”

UT students get lesson in ethics, accuracy from Romanian professor

Journalists have a duty to report honestly and accurately, said professor Brândușa Armanca to a journalism class Oct. 29 at the University of Tennessee.

“In our profession we are obliged to verify [information]. People don’t care, they believe or don’t believe something,” said Armanca, a professor of journalism at “Aurel Vlaicu” State University of Arad in Romania.

Armanca presented three videos to the class that contained examples of false news reports presented to the public as truth.

In the first example, three Hungarian students created a fake research institute and claimed to find a tribe in Africa with Hungarian roots. As a result, several media outlets covered the story and distributed it.

“They tested how media respects the simple rules; to verify, to be correct, to offer to the public correct and honest news,” Armanca said. “They told a fake story to the public.”

The students’ media experiment was successful and indicative of the way entertainment has become more important than accuracy in news stories, according to Armanca.

“It was quite easy. The Hungarian media, and also some international media, were ashamed by these three students,” she said.

In the current media environment, news outlets are too quick to report on sensational stories without verifying the information, according to Armanca.

“A lot of media believed but did not verify [the information]. It was too nice, too sensational, too interesting to be not real,” she said.

Armanca said that journalists are too often worried about their job status and not worried enough about delivering factual information.

“We as journalists are guilty for this. [There is] too much entertainment. In my country people renounce [food] for entertainment. Who is not in the club does not exist. It is strange, strange times,” Armanca said.

Armanca presented two more videos in which media outlets intentionally fabricated news stories to portray their government as dysfunctional.

“Why did they do this? To demonstrate against a government that is making people suffer,” Armanca said. “This is also manipulation. This kind of manipulation is not allowed for journalists,” she said

For journalism to maintain its relevance, journalists must deliver valid information to the public, Armanca said.

“We need to believe in these rules or, otherwise, I don’t know, maybe our profession will disappear,” she said.

Armanca served as the director of the Romanian Cultural Institute in Budapest from 2006 to 2012. She was also a member of the board of directors of the Romanian Public Television. Her story was featured by “89 Voices,” a web series that documents first hand stories of the fall of communism.

Knox County Commission order audit of Knox County school nutrition office

Knox County Commission ruled Monday to audit Knox County Schools nutrition office, but not without complication.