Current_Events: December 2003 Archive Page

The inventor of the world wide web, Tim Berners-Lee, has been awarded a knighthood for his pioneering work. --Web's Inventor Gets a Knighthood (BBC)

Definitely one of the good guys. If he had tried to keep control over his invention, of course it wouldn't have worked, since the web depends upon the contributions of thousands and millions of user-authors.

Patrice Moore, 43, had apparently been standing up when the books, catalogs, mail and newspapers swamped him on Saturday. Firefighters and neighbors rescued Moore on Monday afternoon and he was hospitalized in stable condition Tuesday morning with leg injuries. --Man Trapped Under Mountain of Books, Papers (CNN/AP)

Note to self: find a sturdy box and insert all the papers students didn't pick up last term. Mark box for recycling at the end of next term. Reuse same box at end of next term, so a mound doesn't start to grow. (What to do with all the abandoned 3-ring binders?)

The Return of the King (but only after 25 minutes of infernal movie trailers)Jerz's LIteracy Weblog)

My parents came to visit for a few days, so Leigh and I skipped out to see The Return of the King at a matinee. (We saw The Two Towers separately last year.) (*Spoilers*)

Of course any cuts are painful; and I was particularly sad not to see Christopher Lee and Brad Dourif in this one (they play Saruman and Wormtongue; I knew their scene had been filmed but cut). For TTT, I was a little annoyed that Faramir (the "good" brother of Boromir) was made to take the hobbits away from their mission, but I didn't notice any similar damage in this movie.

The aerial shot showing the singal fires leading from Minas Tirith to where Aragorn sits gloomily on Theoden's front porch was stunning. During the battle at Minas Tirith, when Legolas is swinging around one of the huge elephant creatures, I couldn't help but think of Luke Skywalker and the Imperial Walker, but the comic value of Legolas dismounting from the trunk and landing right in front of Gimli was well done. (I thought some of the Gimli humor in The Two Towers was excessive.)

I don't get out to see movies much... we bought a ticket for the 11:45 showing, but it was 12:10 when the movie actually started. Twenty-five minutes of trailers? For a movie that was already three hours long? I found it infuriating.

But what can I do? I'm not exactly a regular movie-goer... other than a family outing to Jonah: A VeggieTales Movie, the only movies I've seen in the past few years have been Star Wars and Lord of the Rings.

PETA: Mad Cow with a Side of Green OnionsJerz's Literacy Weblog)

I notice that PETA has lost no time in capitalizing on the mad cow disease to advocate its vegetarian position... but I don't recall PETA having much to say about the green onion scare! (Google turns up plenty of PETA recipies that use green onions, though).

Inspired by a post on Sugarpacket.

Some legal experts said that posting documents detailing the criminal charges against the 45-year-old entertainer was a breakthrough for public access. Others countered that it would undermine the spirit of the law and court proceedings, creating even more of a circus-like atmosphere. --Sue Zeidler --Jackson Web Site Unites, Divides Legal Profession (Yahoo/Reuters)

I've blogged about Jackson's defense website, so it seems only fair to link to this article, which mentions the prosecution's site and also comments on the trend towards online access to legal documents.

I can also bake JUST as much as I like. OK, so I like baking a little more than strictly needed, and who really needs seven types of cookies these days, but it's fun! And some traditions, like the ginger-bread house, have become too important to ignore. --Torill Mortensen --Christmas Eve (Thinking with My Fingers)

Simply reading Torill's Christmas preparations makes me exhausted! But the food sure looks good.

"Embedded," as in the reporters assigned to accompany military units during the war, beat out "blog" and "SARS (news - web sites)" as the top word of 2003, Web site yourDictionary.com (http://www.yourdictionary.com) said...."Shock-and-awe," the phrase the U.S. military used to describe the type of campaign it would wage in Iraq, topped other Iraq-related terms like "rush to war," "weapons of mass destruction" and "spider-hole" as the top phrase of 2003. --Web Site Picks Year's Most Deeply Embedded Word (Reuters/Yahoo)

Interesting... but should "spider-hole" really count as a phrase? I'd call that a single hyphenated word. If it remains in use, it may very well eventually drop the hyphen and turn into "spiderhole". I don't think a dictionary of the future will contain the word "shockandawe" or "rushtowar", so "spider-hole" seems to be in a different class here.

Feeling Like a Dad at ChristmasJerz's Literacy Weblog)

Last night, Peter sang in the children's choir for Christmas Eve mass. I nodded and smiled poudly at him whenever he caught my eye. His baby sister Carolyn spotted him after about twenty minutes, and kept shouting "Peter! Peter" and clapping and going "Yay!" whenever the choir finished a song. Since we were sitting near the choir, amongst a crowd of other proud parents wanting to sit near their children, her antics were mostly met with tolerant smiles.

At one point, in the middle of a solemn part of the service, I saw Peter rubbing his eyes, blinking back horrified tears. I "excused me" my way through the crowded church and between the rows of children to ask Peter what was wrong... he had dropped his songsheet, the one the choir director had given him at the first rehearsal, and told him to hold onto. An older boy who had memorized the songs agreed to let Peter have his songsheet, and disaster was averted. After the service, the father of another child in the choir recognized me as the one who had swooped in to save a crying child. "You were a good dad today," he said.

The other day, choir rehearsal was cancelled because (according to one of the many SUV-driving women who were moving through the parking lot at the time) choir director/organist's mother died. Peter felt very sad. so I suggested he draw a card for her. ("It's supposed to be heart," he said, handing me a vaguely circular design.) We left the card on the organ.

I got up early this morning because Santa never seems to have time to stick around and assemble all the toys he brought.

No time for serious blogging today, just a few little observations I wanted to jot down. I hope you're having a pleasant holiday, yourself!

Bureau of Labor Statistics data indicates that, as of Nov. 30, women represent 50.6 percent of the 48 million employees in management, professional and related occupations. --More U.S. Women Crack Glass Ceiling (Washington Times/UPI)

Women are much more likely to go to college than men; they tend to study harder, get higher grades, have fewer drug problems, are more likely to seek help from their professors, etc.

I'm blogging this in part so I can find it again the next time I get a freshman paper with a thesis that goes something like, "This one literary work, in which a female character faces oppression, proves that all women are oppressed in every possible way, and because that sucks, sexual discrimination should therefore be stopped immediately."

Some people may say "It's about time men got a taste of what it's like," but that's hardly fair to the generation of boys who are growing up in a very different world from the one their grandfathers and great-grandfathers ruled -- a new world which many of their fathers helped bring about.

My parents had a fairly traditional division of labor until my early teens, when my father's neck injury forced him to retire on disability and my mother went back to work.

My wife stays home with the children full-time, and she is home-schooling Peter in kindergarten this year. Because she breast-fed she did the vast majority of the late-night baby-walking; she also does the the children's laundry (which includes deciding what they are going to wear each day, apparently because I have no sense of style, which I won't deny). So that's all fairly traditional in terms of gender roles, but I do all the dishes (we tell the baby not to play with the dishwasher because it is "daddy's") and give all the baths, and when I am not at work I make about half the meals and do nearly all the diapers. Leigh does do all the bills, but she generally does that sort of paperwork in the evenings while I'm getting the children ready for bed. It also means she controls the finances, which is fine with me; it's a bit embarassing having to ask her for cash so I can buy my $1.80 plate of salad in the cafeteria a few times a week -- at least Nora Helmer and Lucy Ricardo got allowances. (But if I'd been interested in money I'd have never been an English major in the first place.)

Anyway, I've blogged on boys in school before.

"A hole in the ground, like any other structurally engineered design, is just an artifact of human technology," said Will Whitfoot, mayor of the town of Michel Delving and a spokesman for the hole-dwelling community of Hobbiton. "Like any tool or technological artifact, it has no moral imperative per se, but performs strictly according to the needs of its user." --Hussein Capture Unfairly Stigmatizes Holes, Say Hobbits (Watley Review)

Perfectly silly.

Considering how little return American students get on their books during "Book Buyback" at the end of the semester, I wondered if Iraqi students could use these donations instead? --Mike Arnzen --Gun and Pencil: Book Buyback for Baghdad? (Pedablogue)

A reflection on the CS Monitor's report on the state of higher education in Iraq. Now there are some professors whose problems really make me feel like a whiner.

Me: Okay, okay, Jerz...enough procrastinating, and get back to those papers.

Me: Just one more blog entry? Pleeease?

Me: No!

Me: Then can I at least run that errand to the business office?

Me: Okay... but no stopping off at the cafeteria.

Me: Aw.....

A Florida man claiming to be selling tickets to a Christmas show took $10 each from hundreds of school children then splurged on wine, sunglasses and movies.... David Lee Ellisor collected money from students at schools all around Miami for a "once in a lifetime" Christmas show that never took place. --How the Grinch Stole... (Yahoo/Reuters)

He's innocent until proven guilty, of course... but if Ellisor shows up in the next town selling band instruments and uniforms, be suspicious.

"Ladies and gentlemen, we got him." (The Australian)
"Ladies and gentlemen -- we got him." (Time)
"Ladies and gentlemen: we got him." (Washington Times)
"Ladies and gentlemen... we got him." (ic Wales)
--Ladies and gentlemen [?] we got him. (Google News)

Interesting how the various news agencies are punctuating this catchphrase, which will probably soon be as overused as the "road map" metaphor in stories about Israel and Palestine.

This will give the news organizations something else to do besides stoking the public's fears about the flu.

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Nov. 28 (UPI) -- Thousands of Iraqis took to Baghdad's streets Friday condemning terrorism and urging a halt to political violence. '

[OK... so far, so good.]

The demonstrators shouted "death to terrorists"...

[Gaak! This sounds like a bad MadTV skit. Were these demonstrators paying attention to the supposed purpose of their event? Or are Iraqi political demonstrations just naturally dripping with ironic metacommentary?] --Iraqis Demonstrate Against Violence (UPI/Washington Times)

Found via Drudge.

"We want to find out what your working conditions are, anything that we can do to help you," Otwell tells the young women at the factory. He speaks in English slowly, for the benefit of an Arabic translator, who then turns to an Arabic-speaking sign-language translator to sign Otwell's questions to the seamstresses. | The girls' hands start flying as they tell Otwell about their hated boss. --Tara Copp --Iraq behind the cameras: a different reality (Knox Studio/Scripps Howard)

The angle of this story is that TV cameras cover the bombings and the protests, but don't cover the everyday progress that shows that parts of Iraq are improving, with the help of the U.S. forces. Regardless of the political context, I found this linguistic viginette oddly touching.

Citing the prior week's ABC broadcast of "Living with Michael Jackson," the controversial Martin Bashir documentary, the school official lodged allegations of "general neglect by mother and sexual abuse by 'an entertainer,'" according to the summary memo.... [P]ublished reports have indicated that the older boy was taunted by classmates after the documentary aired on ABC's "20/20" newsmagazine. During the February 6 program, the child was seen holding hands with Jackson and resting his head against the singer's shoulder. Jackson told Bashir that he had slept with many children unrelated to him, but insisted, "It's not sexual, we're going to sleep. I tuck them in...It's very charming, it's very sweet." In a clear reference to fallout from the Bashir documentary, the boy's mother told investigators that "she believed the media had taken everything out of context," according to the memo, which summarizes the DCFS child abuse investigation. --Michael Jackson Bombshell: Police, Child Welfare Probers Concluded Sex Charges 'Unfounded' (The Smoking Gun)

Since I did blog about the accusations, it's only fair that I blog this bit of info as well. Looks like the mother's invovlement in the case is very complicated; the Jackson team now has a potential motive for why false charges might be brought against Jackson.

Oh the snow outside's delightful.
My stacks of papers to mark are frightful.
For the students who want to know:

Days to go, days to go, days to go...Stacks and Stacks of Papers to GradeJerz's Literacy Weblog)

Dear Students,

The last week of classes is always an emotional time for me. I love you all, and miss you already. I hope you are enjoying the snow.

Above is a picture of the stacks of papers I have to mark before I will have your final grades calculated. I received most of these Thursday and Friday morning, and only brought home for the weekend what I could fit in one shoulder bag.

I can understand your enthusiasm for knowing what your grades will be going into the final exam, but no, I don't have your grades ready yet.

"We realized the only way we could improve on the original is if the Cylons could have sex," quipped co-executive producer David Eick at Tuesday night's Los Angeles premiere. The chrome-domed "walking toasters" from the original TV series are succeeded by -- well, really hot blond chicks, who infiltrate human society to engineer its doom. --Xeni Jardin --Alien Sex! Bombs! Robots! Pathos!  (Wired)

The original Battlestar Galactica, corny and 8pm family-friendly as it was, managed to push a few barriers by making one of the leads, Cassiopia, a prostitute (er.... that is, a "sociolator"). All that added a layer of adult subject matter that (when the writers bothered to address it) complicated the relationship between the womanizing Starbuck and the professionally detached Cassie; but the complexity goes right over the head of my five-year-old when we watch the reruns together. I'm pretty sure I don't want to snuggle down on the futon with my son to watch "a jaw dropper of a scene that blends Cylon eroticism with equal parts pants-wetting apocalyptic terror and blast-tacular deep-space warfare."

OK, he'd love the "blast-tacular deep-space warfare." And it certainly sounds like this miniseries has something going for it.

I don't want to sound like the whiners who, when the Batman movies started coming out, lamented the absence of the "Biff" "Pow!" "Blam!" animation that censored out all the fistfights and thus made the TV series acceptable for the kiddies. And this is all pretty much immaterial -- I don't have cable TV and thus won't watch the new show anyway.

Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Straczynski told fans on a message board that he's working on a follow-up to the popular SF series, according to a report on the Dark Horizons Web site. Straczynski remained coy about the project, saying only that he'd have more news next month. --New Babylon 5 project? (Sci-Fi Wire)

I haven't really followed any TV show since B5 ended its run. JMS has said numerous times that he was going to wait until after the Star Wars series was complete, so that he could build upon all the new technology that would be developed.

I'm personally hoping to see the Telepath War (which was clearly set up in the original TV series, alluded to in the short-lived follow-up Crusade, and firmly established as part of the B5 timeline in various books, some of which at one time in the past I actually had time to read). I'd love to see the return of Walter Koenig as the so-evil-you-love-to-watch-him Bester.

Jorn Barger, editor of Robot Wisdom, is missing. He resides in Socorro, New Mexico, and was last seen there by his housemate in very early October. Most if not all of his possessions, including his ID card, are still at his residence. --Eric Wagoner

Update: According to poster "cedar" on Metafilter: "I called the Sorocco PD at (505)835-1883 requesting any information they might have. Officer Richard Lopez returned my call immediately and let me know that Mr. Barger was not considered missing or in danger." Glad to hear it.

Update, 5 Dec: In "Jorn Barger has Left the Building," Wired offers a wrap-up that includes reaction from Barger's sister, but otherwise depends heavily on links to Metafilter. --Where is Jorn Barger?EricWagoner.com)

I've been on the receiving end of some of Jorn's scorn (though I'm sure I was only a momentary blip on his radar). I'm also aware that because of the pro-Palestine angle of his linkage he has been accused of anti-Semitism. Still, I only reluctantly removed Robot Wisdom from my blogroll when he stopped updating it regularly. His contributions to cyberspace are significant (he coined the term "weblog," for instance). Certainly any private citizen has the right to disappear from public view if he or she so chooses, but this sounds very strange.

About a week ago, I thought about writing a rather sad blog entry about the sad state of some excellent blogs, such as John S. Rhodes's Webword (hasn't been updated in since September), and Elwyn Jenkins's Microdoc News (activity across all of Microdoc's blogs has dropped drastically) and, of course, Barger's Robot Wisdom. For some reason I never got around to writing that entry, but let me try a bit now.

Rhodes and Jenkins had hopes of using their blogs to elevate their profile and thus attract business.

Rhodes worked hard to create Webword as a community focused around usability issues, and though I seem to remember his site being ranked #2 in Google searches on usability, it may have been chilly in the long shadow of Jakob Nielsen. During the dot-com boom, when so much money was being spent on poor web designs, I really enjoyed the usability evangelization (and commiseration) that went on in the comments fields. Rhodes deputized some loyal community members to help run Webword. With my recent job change from technical writing to new media journalism, I'm not spending as much time on usability issues, which makes sense because the journalism majors that I educate will probably not be expected to design the websites for which they write. (I do still teach usability in "Writing for the Internet," but since I no longer require students to design web pages for real-world clients, usability is less central to my pedagogy nowadays. Had I stayed in technical writing, or moved to a different school as a technical writer, I would have felt Webword's absence more acutely.)

Jenkins created maybe a dozen or more weblogs with slightly different themes; his aggressive appearance on the blogosphere generated some flak:

"In short, Mr. Jenkins' vaporous content is well on its way to earning him a place on most of the A-list blogrolls. From there he'll be able to make a lot of money from blogging. And Google, no doubt, will make a lot of money by inserting ads on the bloggers' pages. The only people who suffer will be those who try to use Google to find meaningful content." -- from How Bloggers Game Google, from Google-Watch (a site that is as critical of Google as Elwyn is laudatory; one of Jenkins's several content clusters includes the study of Google)

The basic principle of starting a whole bunch of blogs in order to learn what kind of an audience you attract and then figuring out how to make a living serving that audience sounds like a perfectly reasonable strategy; yet I always found it hard to glimpse the "real" Elwyn in his blog (even Elwyn's personal blog is sparse). Now, the spam comments collect on the otherwise inactive ProBlog, a group blog that he and others started as a reaction to Andrew Orlowski's periodic and vitriolic attacks on the blogosphere.

I wouldn't put my own online efforts in the same entrepreneurial categories as Rhodes or Jenkins... personally, I'm delighted that my position as a new media journalism faculty member gives me the excuse to continue blogging, while also permitting me to teach the occasional literature course, in an environment that seems willing to encourage my own creative new media efforts (chiefly in interactive fiction, but blogging is becoming more and more of a creative outlet for me).

As I contemplate grading weblog portfolios, I am once again buoyed by my own enthusiasm about weblogs as vehicles for personal expression, to help students trace their intellectual development, and to get them to experience the pleasures and responsibilities of publishing their ideas in a public forum, where real people can contact them and disagree or agree (as the case may be). Of course, there is always a certain percentage of students who simply can't get intellectually involved in the subject matter, and for whom any assignment is tedious and unrewarding. I don't see weblogs magically helping the disinterested and uninvolved students, but I do see the brightest students and the students in the solid center responding positively to their blogging experience.

It's been an interesting and very rewarding nine months bringing a bit of entertainment to bloggers (and blog lovers). I'd like to thank especially all those people who donated money or their valuable time, those who became premium subscribers, those who worked on cool toys which made use of the fledgling API and all those who could be found on the forums and IRC channel. You turned a silly fun idea of a mad monkey coder in London into something worthy of the attention by thousands of bloggers and the press. --Seyed Razavi --Blogshares -- Closed Down (Blogshares.com)

That's too bad. Blogshares was a fantasy stock market that used incoming links as its form of currency. I also found it a good tool for tracking people who had linked to me, and (even better) a simple way to gauge the relative importance of blogs. But obviously the site required too much maintenance and brought in too little reveune. Thanks for the fun, Seyed!

"Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns - the ones we don't know we don't know." -- "Fooot in Mouth" winner US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld --Donald Rumsfeld 'honoured' for confusing comments (Plain English Campaign)

When I first read the "unknown unknowns" statement, I thought it was definitely too confusing for a sound bite, but important in that it demonstrates that the known and the unknown are much more complex than a "memorize what the teacher says and spit it back on the quiz" education leads us to believe. Rumsfeld wasn't babbling or struggling with the language. Granted, he could have probably made his point better with a venn diagram.