Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

Estray Bonajour is Escravos de Jo

2010-03-19T05:01:00.000-04:00

This just in:

Estray Bonajour:

Is actually

Escravos de J�"

See this for the full story.

Turtle Racing at your local bar and zoo

2010-03-18T05:01:00.000-04:00

Wikipedia informs us that Turtle Racing that is "a popular event in the Central United States which is usually held at county fairs or picnics in which turtles are placed in the center of a circle by children and are allowed to walk around until one of them crosses out of the circle."

The neat ones at Neatorama recently posted an article about the aforementioned semi-sport having purportedly become "a trend in metropolitan bars like Bucky�s Grill and Pub in Indianapolis." As a newly converted semi-Hoosier, I was especially intrigued to learn that such goings on actually go in locally, at Bucky's Bar and Grill.

My subsequent Internet searches, however, led me inexorably to this video, which was taken, not at Bucky's, but at Brennans Pub in Marina Del Rey, CA, nigh onto my former Redondo Beach stomping grounds (I sigh for the stomps of yesteryear). An illustrative, and preternaturally exciting video, nonetheless.

from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

Some children's games from China

2010-03-17T05:01:00.001-04:00

Our new collection of some children's games from China.

One of my favorites:

Nestle a Person

Players are divided into groups of two, which are scattered on the playground. Make sure there is a distance between the groups. Players in each group stand in a line. One group volunteers to be the runner and the chaser. The game begins with the chaser trying to catch the runner. Both the runner and the chaser must run along outside of the play groups. The runner can join one of the groups at any time, either in the front or at the back. Once the runner has joined one of the groups, the person at the other end of the group must start to run as the new runner, and the chaser continues to try to catch the runner. Once the runner is caught before joining one of the groups, the runner and the chaser switch roles.

Courtesy of Dr. Tong Liu , PhD, Professor of Early Childhood Education, Hebei University, China; Post doctoral fellow of Yale Child Study Center, U.S.A

from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

Mini Weapons of Mass Destruction - a new resource for cubicle warfare

2010-03-16T05:01:00.002-04:00

If I could travel back in time and give my early adolescent self a gift of potentiation and portends of power, it would be a copy of John Austin's Mini Weapons of Mass Destruction. If I were my father, on the other hand, I'd take that book away from me in a most timely and uncompromising manner, hide it in a place where only I could find it, and read it from cover to cover.

On yet another hand, my going on 8-, going on 21-year old granddaughter loves this book.

Mini Weapons of Mass Destruction contains 241 pages of detailed, painstakingly illustrated instructions for making (and here I read from the table of contents) launchers and bows, slingshots, darts, catapults, combustion shooters (combustion shooters!), minibombs and claymore mines, and, finally, concealing books and targets.

Did I mention combustion shooters? Like the famous match rocket which you can make out of paper or wooden matches, with nothing more than aluminum foil, a needle or pin, a medium binder clip (Austin loves those binder clips), a toothpick and a large paper clip? O, there are warnings. "Eye protection and a safe firing range are musts" declares the ever-pragmatic Austin. "Match rocketry is not an exact science," he cautions, "misfires and modifications will be needed to find the perfect balance." Match rockets! How inexorably cool is that?

There are two things that make Mini Weapons of Mass Destruction such a fun read: 1) every "weapon" is made out of common household objects, and 2) the instructions are exceptionally clear and well-illustrated. OK. There are three things: 3) the sheer ingenuity of the designs. It's the very kind of book MacGuyver might have read during his training course. For fun. Of course.

Want more? Visit John's site. Learn a little about him. Print out a few targets. Get instructions for building more. Meditate on the nuances of "implements of spitball warfare."

from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

Kites in the rubble

2010-03-15T05:01:00.003-04:00

Lawrence Downs of the New York Times describes how children in Haiti make out of sticks and scrap plastic:

"The Haitian boy�s kite starts with thin sticks � woody reeds or straight twigs scraped smooth with a razor blade and cut to equal length, about eight inches. These are lashed in the middle to make stars of six or eight points, sometimes more. Thin plastic, ideally the wispy kind from dry-cleaning bags, is stretched over the frame and secured with thread. Rag strips are knotted for the tail, then tied with thread to two of the star�s lower points: a Y with a long, long stem. More thread is tied to the kite�s taut chest, the rest spooled on a can or bottle."

Downs notes the extreme hardships of survival, and then drifts, like the kites he describes, into poetry:

"One way to resist is to fly. The kite makers dance through the camps with rubbery exuberance, trailed by younger children, all lost in the moment, the most important in the world. Kites battle kites, their makers yanking their lines to cut each other�s, as the kites whirl and spin. When one kite wins, the jubilation is explosive. It�s one of the few signs of joy you see in Haiti, entirely handmade."

photo by Lawrence Downes

via Boing Boing

from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

Laughter Games Workshop at the American Laughter Yoga Conference

2010-03-12T05:01:00.001-05:00

It is official. The two days following the Fifth Annual All America Laughter Games Yoga conference in Albuquerque - August 30 and 31 - will be devoted to an intensive Laughter Games Workshop. Here's the write-up:

"Join funsmith Bernie DeKoven for this special 2 days intensive, highly instructional, ultra-pragmatic and profoundly fun laughter training where you will explore and expand your own sense of fun to enrich and bring a new level of vitality to your own life and that of the people you work with. This event is open to and beneficial for all, and even more so for Laughter Yoga professionals who wish to take their practice to the next level. "

from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

Baseball in the streets and hallways, basketball in the bathroom, golf in the gutter, and dinner table Olympics

2010-03-11T05:01:00.002-05:00

Interested in reading a PDF file of the keynote presentation I'm giving today at the 36th Annual International Conference of The Association for the Study of Play (TASP) and the 25th Anniversary Conference of The American Association for the Child�s Right to Play (IPA/USA)? Hmmm?

Here it more or less is: Baseball in the streets and hallways, basketball in the bathroom, golf in the gutter, and dinner table Olympics

from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

Urban Iditarod 2010 - San Francisco

2010-03-10T05:01:00.001-05:00

"In the Alaskan Iditarod, more than sixty dog sled teams race across the frozen tundra from Anchorage to Nome. In our urban version, teams of dogs? lead by a musher will pull their sleds (shopping carts) through some of San Francisco's most touristed areas. These teams of barking humans must negotiate through the unrelenting and unforgiving dangers of San Francisco's urban frontier. As an incentive to run, dogs and mushers alike will have several "rest stops" to replenish lost fluids and discuss tales of mayhem. The course is over three miles, so dogs and mushers alike need to be ready and able to run their tails off." (Laughing Squid)

Play, performance, creativity, meaningless competition. What more could one ask?

via Laughing Squid

from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

If you're happy, or didn't know that you are...

2010-03-09T05:01:00.000-05:00

It's an advertisement. You probably won't understand the words or be especially interested in what is being advertised. It probably won't make you happy. But, in all likelihood, it will make you laugh, which is clearly the next best thing.

via Presurfer

from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

Irish Road Bowling

2010-03-08T05:01:00.001-05:00

According to Wikipedia, "Irish road bowling (Irish: B�l an bh�thair) is an ancient sport." Yet I can't help find it reminiscent, in concept if not in spirit, to, of course, Urban Golf, and in a similar vein: Free Form Frisbee Golf, Ice Golfing, eXtreme Croquet and ilk of like similarity.

Not sure if it's an improvement. But it is clearly a predecessor.

via MetaFilter

from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

The Department of Fun Studies

2010-03-05T09:00:00.000-05:00

Let's imagine a Department of Fun Studies. As long as we're imagining it, let's imagine that it's in a well-established university of significant academic standing and accredited stuffiness. Now let's imagine their course offering.

Of course, so to speak, there'd be extensive programs for design students - especially for those who are planning a career in game or toy or theme park design. And programs for people who design for the Internet, because fun is basically what's keeping it going. And for architecture students - after all, if people are in them by choice, buildings need to be as fun as they are functional. And landscape architects, because they plan play spaces and pleasure places. And shopping mall designers, and even hospital designers - because studies have shown the value of looking at a hospital as a healing environment.

And certainly teachers would need to study fun, because they're dealing with kids, and kids tend not to do things unless they are fun, or they are forced to do them. And things that kids are forced to do tend not to stay with them for very long. Curriculum designers, naturally. Parents, too, could use an extended study in fun, for their kids, of course, but for the whole family, themselves, included. And retired people, because when you are old enough fun becomes once again ever so clearly what life is for.

It seems to me that students of the political sciences, government and law enforcement would also want to have a solid background in fun. See, the things people do for fun are not always so wonderful. There's the oddly named "practical joke." There's gambling, drinking, doing drugs, fighting, even killing for fun. There are "powerful" people who exercise their power by abusing the people they have power over, and who, for the most part, are also having great fun doing it. Not "good" fun. Not the kind of fun to which we have so assiduously, whole-heartedly and whole-bodidly have devoted our lives. But fun, nevertheless. And hence of significant enough political relevance to merit a course or several, or lifetime study.

So the idea of a Department of Fun Studies is something to be taken seriously for a variety of highly academically relevant reasons. At its best, it's the secret to a good life. It is the prime motivator - what we do whenever we are allowed to do, or do secretly when we're not. What we do whenever we're not forced to do something else. At it's darkest, it's the cause of so much pain and suffering - what makes us keep hurting ourselves and each other, even when it doesn't pay.

And, now that we're imagining all this, let's imagine that you'd like to submit a course proposal of your own. Here. On this blog. As a comment to this post. For the fun of it.

from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

Pointless Games Central

2010-03-04T05:01:00.000-05:00

Pointless Games are games in which you either don't keep score (hence "pointless") or are so much fun to play that winning is besides the point.

I have written about this particular kind of game ever since I discovered the words to describe it. I devoted a webpage to it, wrote about in a Knol, compiled it into a PDF, and even an entire ning (amazing that this last sentence actually makes sense to most of you).

Though webpage, Knol, and PDF are all game-and-glee-filled and of significant value for anyone who wants to bring a little more fun into the world, it's the ning that I want to invite especially you to. Because of all the manifestations of this idea, the ning is the one in which you can most easily and directly participate.

Hence, this post.

from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

The Cardboard Box inducted in the National Toy Hall of Fame

2010-03-03T05:01:00.000-05:00

In 2005, the National Toy Hall of Fame inducted the cardboard box.

�I think every adult has had that disillusioning experience of picking what they think is a wonderful toy for a child, and then finding the kid playing with the box,� said chief curator Christopher Bensch. �It�s that empty box full of possibilities that the kids can sense and the adults don�t always see.�

The same, of course, can be said of your local household trash can.

via the profoundly astounding Craig Conley and Futility Closet

from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

Go for the bronze!

2010-03-02T05:01:00.000-05:00

According to this article:

"Research by three U.S. academics, who analyzed heat-of-the-moment reactions, medal-stand temperament and interviews of Olympians, shows that bronze-medal winners, on average, are happier with their finishes than silver medalists. Take silver, and you tend to fixate on the near miss. Score bronze, and you are thankful you were not shut out altogether."

Why? you might ask.

"When you come in second," said Thomas Gilovich, chairman of Cornell's psychology department and one of the study's co-authors, "it's the most natural thing in the world to look upward. 'I got the silver and that's what it is, but what is it not? It's not the gold.'"

Therefore?

Winning, apparently, isn't the only thing.

via Neatorama

from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

"Journeys on the Playful Path" - to be presented at the 5th Annual, All America 2010 Laughter Yoga Conference

2010-03-01T05:01:00.001-05:00

Laughter Yoga, according to this definition from The American School of Laughter Yoga, is:

"...a deceptively simple yet very powerful and potentially even life-changing form of exercise that anybody can do, anytime, anywhere. Its core premise is that your body can and knows how to laugh, regardless of what your mind has to say. In short: Laughter Yoga is a body-mind approach to laughter, not something mind-body. The distinction is very important. Here you do not need to have a sense of humor, know jokes or even be happy. Laughter Yoga invites you to 'fake it' until it becomes real."

(You can read more about my adventures in Laughter Yoga here).

If you plan to be in Albuquerque, New Mexico, August 25-31, 2010, and you are a practitioner or leader of Hasya (a.k.a. Laughter) Yoga, maybe we'll get to see each other. You'll most definitely get a chance to meet me. I'll be your Sunday keynote. I'll also be your Monday and Tuesday special, intensive, all-inclusive, highly instructional, ultra-pragmatic, profoundly fun, after-conference seminar leader. More about that, later.

from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

Quote for the day

2010-02-26T05:01:00.000-05:00

"When we were children we were errant enough to wish to be birds for the day but there's nothing easier to lose than playfulness."

- Jim Harrison in True North

via Skoobwoman

from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

Junkyard Sports continues

2010-02-25T05:01:00.001-05:00

I've been working on my keynote for The Association for the Study of Play and International Playground Association conference. I was looking around to see if there were any excerpts from my Junkyard Sports book still online. I came across this article on Fredericksburg.com - inspired, apparently, by an article I wrote for Kidscoop.

It's a collection of ideas for Junkyard Sports, contributed by elementary school kids.

Here's one:

Do you like soda? Well, drink a whole can of soda, crush the can, get out some brooms and play "Soda Can Hockey." You play this game by going to a cement or blacktop area, and take a piece of chalk to draw a very large rectangle. Put the can in the middle of the rectangle and then form two teams. The goal is to use your broom to push the can across your opponent's line for a goal. That is how you take some junk and make a junkyard sport.

--Clair Huffine, fourth grade

Mary Walter Elementary School,

Ms. Baker's class

I am delighted beyond measure to have found this. It is exactly the kind of thing I would hope would result from my work.

It is success.

from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

Beyond Cat's Cradle

2010-02-24T05:10:00.000-05:00

O, sure, there's Cat's Cradle, the two-person, cooperative string-figure game of deserved renown. But there are also solitaire versions that are played, apparently, wherever people have string and fingers.

The Five-Pointed Star that adorns this post is one of a multitude of Navaho string figures (this site includes videos showing how each of the collection is made - which is much, much easier to follow than the written instructions). Equally available to your Web-probing fingers you will find, for example, this collection of The Ancient Art of Hawaiian String Figures as well as the Arctic String Figure Project, and the even more culture-spanning International String Finger Association (ISFA).

Many of the figures shown in these collections, even when augmented by carefully made instructional videos, are challenging enough to make you cry. But they are all and each an invitation to fun, as well as pathway to the play of other cultures.

Before you tie yourself in knots, however, you'd do well to start with this Kids Guide to Easy String Fingers with Video Clips, you betcha.

from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

From throwaway to stay and play

2010-02-23T05:01:00.000-05:00

This tire swing was built on the ruins of what was supposed to be an elevated train.

It's like a deep pocket park, as it were, built out of scrap, on a scrap of land that nobody wanted. Transformed into an invitation to play.

It's called the "Ghost Train" park. Designed and built by Basurama. Basura being Spanish for "trash."

Let us play close attention.

via Boing Boing

from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

Spoofing - a game of lots, military style

2010-02-22T05:55:00.000-05:00

Spoofing, according to Robert L. Vaessen, is a military version of the game of Lots. I quote, at length:

Each participant begins with three coins. The coins are held behind the participants back. The participant selects 0 - 3 coins and places them in their game hand. That hand is closed into a tight fist (to prevent contestant peeking and coin rattling). The remaining coins are held in the off hand.

The game hand is then thrust forward in front of the participant. The off hand remains behind the back with the unused coins (if any). After each participant has selected a number of coins, and everyone has their game hand out front, the guessing commences.

Each participant in turn guesses the total number of coins contained in the game hands. The first person to go/guess is usually chosen by rank. RHIP - Rank Has It's Priveleges. The highest ranking person (or eldest if ranks are equal) goes first. After the first round, the person who guessed last in the previous round goes first.

No one may reuse a number. If one person selects '7' as the total, no one else may select '7' for that round. After everyone has guessed a number between zero and the max possible, the coins are revealed.

Everyone opens their game hand, and the coins are totaled. If someone guessed the correct number of coins, that person is out of the game. They now wait until, through process of elimination, one person remains. Snide side-line comments are usually proffered at this point.

The process is repeated, until there is one person left. This may take a while. Given some skill, deception, and a good poker face, the participants may continue 'spoofing' for some time. The last person standing is the 'stuckee'; the person who must go on the soda run (sometimes the loser might have to pay for the drinks as well), mop the floor, perform some errand or undesirable chore.

While the game is typically played to an undesirable end, I have seen it used to determine who gets to leave early, or determine the particpant for some other desirable task. In this version, the last person standing is eliminated completely, and a new round is begun with those who 'spoofed' out. In this case the game continues until there are two contestants. The last person to 'spoof out' is the winner. The last person standing is just another loser.

Rob continues to explain how much a part of his military experience the game became, and how he never found it played in any other circles. He concludes thus:

Spoofing became something of a competition sport at one of my assignments. We kept records of who won how many games. There was even a 'Spoof King' crown. The person with the worst record was humiliated by having to wear the crown while 'spoofing'

Interesting to contemplate the military influences that have molded this game. How it accommodates distinctions of rank, how the winner gets to leave the game and heckle the other players while the losers have to keep playing. I'm quite certain there are more, shall we say, "civilian" ways to play the game. But it's nonetheless instructive to note how games tend to mirror the culture in which they are played.

description of Spoofing is copywritten by Robert L. Vaessen

via Rob's World

from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

Major Fun award-winning Rafael Lozano-Hemmer creates Olympic Light Art

2010-02-19T05:01:00.002-05:00

According to Switched The ten, online user-controlled (yes, really, go ahead and try it while you still can) search lights currently installed on each side of Vancouver's English Bay is the work of none other than Major Fun Award-winner Rafael Lozano-Hemmer!

"Ah!" says I, and also "ha!" How satisfying it is to see a Major Fun award-winner earn something closely equivalent to gold medal Olympic recognition for playfulness.

This opportunity has been a long time coming. Lozano-Hemmer debuted his Vectoral Elevation in Mexico, ten years ago!

(Photo from Rick Hamrick who writes: "It works, Bernie! Not only that, when I submitted my design, it was executed in the predawn sky over Vancouver within about 30 seconds. My cool design (ahem) is attached.")

from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

One-Button games

2010-02-18T05:01:00.000-05:00

You've certainly read my previous posts about games of the one-button variety, and how enamored I have become of said same, given the ease of interface for those of us with less than full access to our various button-pushing extremities. Hence you will almost immediately grok my interest in One-Button Bob - especially how, as you progress from screen to screen, the function of the one button changes. Had I opportunity and inclination to design Lightwaves again, surely such transformations would be gleefully explored.

At any rate and in the interim, I invite you to do your own explorations. Play as many levels as you can. Contemplate the implications. It's for the betterment, don't you know.

via In4mador

from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

Coworking continues

2010-02-17T11:49:00.004-05:00

My interest in the idea of Coworking evolved from my interest in Coplaying. I had been immersed, since 1971, in exploring what I came to understand as "the play community" - the social dynamics of people playing together.

I was living in Silicon Valley (Palo Alto) in 1983. My friend Dave Winer, who was very active in what we later identified as "social computing" (I had met him through his "Living Videotext" online bulletin board) had developed a computer program that called "ThinkTank," an "outline processor." It was a prefect match for how I worked, as a computer game designer. It allowed me to give structure (a very flexible structure) to my designs, to assemble all the interactions between the player and virtual objects with greater and greater detail until I was able to arrive at a comprehensive, clearly organized design document.

By that time, I had attended enough meetings to make the connection - an outline processor, projected onto a large-enough screen, could help me facilitate the social dynamics of people working together.

In 1984, Dave popped over my house with one of the first (I think it was number 4) of the new Macintosh computers. He was already at work developing an outline processor for the Macintosh, and I was able to help him understand his "personal productivity tool" in the context of group productivity. This led to a product called MORE, which was also the first program to allow people to develop group presentations.

By 1986 I was using a Macintosh and a computer projector (my first was a Limelight) to facilitate meetings all over the world, at places like Apple Computer and the Stanford Research Institute. I learned a great deal about how people worked together, and especially about how technology could be used to help them work with ideas, together and more productively.

My understanding of the dynamics of the play community was a tremendous help, because I discovered that meetings, like games, had many different levels of rules and interactions, many of which were changing almost as quickly as they were defined. And, like games, when meetings were "good" they tended to be fun. Sometimes very deep fun.

So I began to focus more and more on working together, and how working together could be made more productive, and more fun, through the shared use of technology. This led to my use of the term CoWorking.

According to the - Internet Archive - the 36th online issue of Coworking was published on May 11, 2000. The site was an outgrowth of my work with a method I called "technography" (first instantiation I could find on the Internet Archive - was April 29, 1999, and on 3.4.1999 on Dave Winer's UserLand bulletin board)

A few years later, I met Gerrit Visser - who was passionately collecting and documenting links to the exploding variety of computer enhanced communication and productivity tools. He and I partnered to extend the comprehensiveness of the Coworking concept. And in 2005, Brad Neuberg began using CoWorking to describe a shared physical space, adding a dimension to the CoWorking concept that helped bring it into popular use.

Today, Gerrit and I are delighted to announce that the Coworking.com domain will soon be transferred to people who are continuing to enrich the idea of Coworking, bringing it to new places and practices. (See Gerrit's article here)

from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

Happiness is a by-product

2010-02-17T05:02:00.000-05:00

"I was having a conversation with a writer the other day, and he stated that the best things are always by-products. Happiness is a by-product, and I loved that he said that. You can plot your journey to success or happiness or wealth or whatever it is you�re looking for, but if you�re too focused on the end result, you�re going to miss anything good going on around you. (There�s also the fact that the end result will keep moving if you live like that. Okay, I got a four figure advance, now next time I want twice that, bigger press runs, and a New York Times review, then I will feel successful.) Not that we should all sing songs around the campfire and braid each other�s hair, but there has to be a combination of the two, forward motion and goal planning, but while taking a look at the people around you."

That's "by-product." Not "buy-product."

from Jeff Vandermeer'sAn interview with Jessa Crispin, founder of Bookslut, via Bobulate, via Swiss Miss

from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

Some walking games from Phil Smith

2010-02-16T05:01:00.002-05:00

Gum Galaxy

Where the pavements are covered, like a rash, in chewing gum, use chalk to draw lines to connect the pieces of gum in stellar constellations. Name them in Latin (if you don't know any Latin make it up).

Solo 'Splorin" Exercises
You are Cupid. Match people in the streets.
You are a diver. Explore the city as if it were underwater.
You are a mist. Drift through the city.
You are a fox in human skin.
You are dead and gone to heaven/hell.
The city is under occupation by intelligent microbes, Martian bodysnatchers, mind control rays - you can't tell the resisters from the wholly invaded. Do not attract attention to yourself. Choose routes where the least number of people will see you. Use allets and back paths. Walk calmly through crowds. Show no emotions. Ignore commodities. Hide your hunger.

I found the above from Phil Smith's new book Mythogeography - A Guide to Walking Sideways - Triarchy Press (pp 148-149). I've written about Phil before and even before that. He continues to amaze and confound me with his light-hearted, and often disturbingly profound explorations of the art of walking alone.

This is his site.

(gummy street image from neoneocon)

from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith