Humanities: February 2004 Archive Page

Dog Canto

        Outside... il conformista
                walk milkbone
                                        roll-over
                                        il conformista
        Sit! sit!
                il conformista
        Paw! paw!
                il conformista
                                roll-over il conformista...
        Good doggy.
        Good good doggy.
                                Fidelius.

Brian Stefans --Il Conformista (Poem for a Dog) (Free Space Comix: The Blog)

A poem that uses only words that a (particular) dog understands. Found via GrandTextAuto.

The ability of players to interact with games has fundamentally changed them, Lowood said. Computer games, once seen as commercial products or a one-way communication between designer and player, are now seen as a much more open kind of medium that people can contribute to in other ways, he said. "So much of the content of a game is now generated by players. Games have become a platform that people can use creatively. As a medium, computer games offer many different opportunities for people to express themselves -- including artistic expression and political expression." -- Barbara Palmer --Computer games under sociological microscope in Cantor exhibit  (Stanford University)

I've followed Henry Lowood's work from afar -- his exhibit sounds fantastic. Wish I could see it.

Most non-arcade games that retain a rabid fan base years after they've become technically obsolote fall into one of two categories. They have a obsessively complex world that's been built up around them (Nethack, say, or tabletop roleplaying games), or they have a simple rule set with much greater depth in the gameplay and strategy than you'd expect on first glance (games like M.U.L.E., or the boardgames that many of my friends adore). Text adventure games don't really fit either of these categories, quite. As a classic piece of criticism and theory puts it, their goal is to avoid crimes against mimesis. They are telling a story (with puzzles, most likely), and it is the goal of the author to never once induce the player to think about the artifice and contraints of the system used to tell it.

A new type of game has sprung up in the past few years. Call it unfiction or alternative reality gaming -- the idea is that a narrative is strung together on the Internet (and possibly even to a limited extent in the physical world) which participants can unpack using exactly the same research tools and conspiracy-minded obsession over detail that they would for a real-life mystery.

-- Steve Cook --Interactive Fictions (Snarkout)

A usefully-linked summary of the history of interactive fiction, including the current IF revival.

BTW, the winners of the 2003 XYZZY Awards have been announced.

At Home

What do the marketing droids think the audience that comes to see Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" will want to spend money on? What previews will I have to sit through?

I stayed home with the kids while my wife went to see an afternoon showing. Soon it will be my turn. She suggests I go early, to get a good seat. I charge up my PDA before I go.

In the Lobby

The few benches in the lobby are occupied by pods of teens on this Friday night. The line for The Passion is obvious -- few boxes of popcorn or JuJubes are being consumed there. People in this line aren't just hanging out. They look older than your typical movie crowd, though the only movies I've seen in theatres for years have been Star Wars and Lord of the Rings, so maybe I'm just used to seeing younger crowds. Up ahead, a kid with spiked hair and multiple ear piercings chats with a couple in their thirties; another kid has a baseball cap, but is wearing it with the brim forwards -- a rare sight these days.

A table off to one side has a display sponsored by the mall's Christian store. I can pick up a free Gospel of John if I want to know, "What is Truth?" My ticket stub is worth $8 off the soundtrack to The Passion.

The Catholic tradition has a long history of putting special devotional emphasis on the physical sufferings endured by a very human Christ. The sorrowful mysteries of the rosary and the narrative content of the Stations of the Cross are contemporary examples. In the middle ages, the faithful were encouraged to meditate upon artistic interpretations of the events leading up to the crucifixion; these devotions, which nurtured a vivid religious imagination, included narrative material that is not scriptural, such as the miraculous appearance of the image appearing on Veronica's cloth when she wiped Christ's face.

Still in the Lobby

While most media attention has focused on the movie's alleged anti-semitism (a charge dismissed by Maia Morgenstern, the Jewish actress who plays Mary), I've been personally more interested in the way some Protestant churches are responding to what may be their first real encounter with this particular tradition in Catholic devotion.

Informed by a version of the Bible that presents a prohibition against the making of graven images as one of the Ten Commandments (the Bible doesn?t actually number the commandments individually; what is in the King James Bible a stand-alone prohibition of the making of images under any circumstances is considered by Catholics to be a continuation of the first commandment, a warning against the worship of false gods).

The Catholic theological emphasis on the Body of Christ leads to the artistic attention paid to the Crucifixion. Note to self: before posting to blog, copy and paste something here about Affective Piety.

Religious devotion which encourages the faithful to meditate deeply upon the physical and emotional sufferings of holy figures is called "affective piety." ... In their private chambers, using a picture, a statue, or spoken prayers to feed their spiritual imagination, the devout entered into the suffering of Christ, a martyr or some other holy figure with a psychological totality that we today would probably describe as a very extreme form of method acting.

Many modern Christians may be tempted to dismiss or ridicule such devotional practices, yet these same critics may have no problem with the idea of responding with powerful emotion to contemporary religious music or extemporaneous spoken prayer. Meanwhile secular culture provides many opportunities for people to cry over the imaginary troubles of soap opera characters, or to cheer or curse a televised sporting event.

-- "Religious, Political, Economic and Artistic Contexts of the York Corpus Christi Play"

Protestant churches emphasize the Word of God, and prefer their artwork to be more cheerful -- a cross in a Protestant church represents the Resurrection - Christ is no longer on the cross. The Biblical emphasis placed upon Mary in the Passion narrative has also been an historically sore spot. I'm curious as to how Gibson will use Mary in this film.

The lobby is packed now, and the noise level suggests that whatever somberness I detected when I first got here is gone. A forward push begins -- people who have been facing every which way and milling about all take a half step towards the bowtie-wearing ticket kid. But according to flashing overhead signs, all the other shows that start at 9:30 (in two minutes) are seating now , but we are asked to remain n the lobby.

Remember, everyone, the last shall be first. We wait -- locked together in a kind of gel that oozes forwards.

I haven't gotten around to cutting me hair in several months... but as I look at the shaggy manes and thick eyeglass frames on the ushers I have to wonder.... is 70s hair back?

In the Theatre

The first preview is a spoof of Caddyshack that turns out to be a American Express commercial. The audience laughs.

Next is a Coke commercial with a racecar theme.

Next is the movie chain?s computer-animated ?branding? intro.

At 9:45 is the touchy-feely "don't download movies because you'll hurt a stunt guy's feeling" promo.

And the movie previews begin. Yawn.

The historical horse-race adventure Hidalgo.

Robert Redford as the kidnapped half of an older couple in The Clearing.

It?s 9:51 now. Patience is a virtue, but this sucks.

Two Brothers (an animal adventure).

Miracle (the Disney movie about the US Olympics hockey team, back when the Russians were the Evil Empire).

Madison (something about boat racing in a blue-collar town).

Okay, so that?s sports, old love in a pinch, heartwarming animal adventure, more sports, and more sports. That?s how Hollywood is marketing to the audience for The Passion. All the promos try to be intense (really, how intense can a heartwarming movie about brotherly love in animals be?), but they appear to be marketing The Passion as an action film. Go figure.

9:57

After 27 minutes of what I didn?t pay to see, what I paid to see starts.Watch One Hour With Me?In the Lobby: Waiting for Mel Gibson?s ?The Passion of The Christ?Jerz's Literacy Weblog)

I wrote this on my PDA on Friday, Feb 27, but didn't get it online until after midnight. I'll blog about the movie itself soon...

Let's assume that you have a brilliant Idea. Let's say a sitcom about a group of different people living under the same roof. Or a story about a police unit who dedicate their lives to solving crimes. Or maybe some other equally original idea that demonstrates how creative and innovative sort of a person you are.

Now, let's continue by assuming that you'd want to make it as a virtual series with a staff of writers and producers and you want to release scripts in regular intervals.

This is all very nice and all, but you might not have an idea as to how to do it. Well, this is where I tell you one way of doing it. --T. Henrik Anttonen
--A Beginners Guide to Starting Virtual Series (Voice Over)

An interesting article about organizing a team of writers to produce scripts for a non-existent TV series. Writing is hard work; some of those who wanted to do it for fun gave up when they looked at the schedule. But whether you are hoping to hone your skills for a shot at a professional job, or you simply have a passion for using words to create, an exercise like this would be a tremendous experience.

I used to participate in a collaborative epistolatory science fiction epic, at the suggestion of my high school friend Gilbert Stack. We started off writing letters to each other in-character, but I started supplying one- or two-page fictional treatments to contextualize the letters (sometimes showing what the character chose NOT to put in the letter), and soon some of us were writing mock newspapers and scripts. Steve Spishak (a Medievalist and the drummer for the cheesy 80s cover band "Gonzo's Nose") wrote an entry in blank verse... I still remember one of the lines... "This churlish syntax burns my English tongue" (spoken as a blank verse aside, but referring to an unpleasant prose interaction with a minor character). Another friend, Christine Heath, and my brother, John Jerz, were also regular contributors. I also remember contributions from Chris Park, Carol Johnson, Sarah McLeod... This was in the late 80s, and we did it all through snail mail. I still have several thick 3-ring binders, and I keep telling myself that some day I'll turn my corner of that universe into an interactive fiction game.

While our interactive literary work doesn't quite have the style of existing as tattoos or stickers, it really helped focus my writing energies in a way that I wouldn't have been able to do if I were merely writing for myself, without any sense of an audience or people who were sometimes writing against what I wanted to happen in our shared fictional universe. I kept an encyclopedia of technology and culture and a timeline; I think someone else created a map showing travel routes and distances. God, was I a geek... but I really loved it. My old files simply called this "MAIL Game."

The point of my nostalgic trip: I am so glad that, when I was young and frequently bored, I spent enough time away from the TV and the joystick to create something that meant something to me and my friends. I wouldn't have the time to start something like that today. Of course, I write all the time, in my blog, in e-mail, in the margins of student papers... but I've been feeling the draw of creative writing again. I'm kicking around an idea for a somewhat quirky academic paper, but I'm also hoping that I'll get back into writing interactive fiction.

Games Galore

Two interesting Slashdot threads... one is "Gaming Academia Gets More Mainstream Press", a response to the recent NY Times article on the upcoming Princeton conference, and another is discussion of Magic Words: Interactive Fiction in the 21st Century, a beautiful nine-part article on interactive fiction, featuring interviews with Emily Short, Stephen Granade, Andrew Plotkin, Adam Cadre, and IF Competition winners Dan Rapivinto & Star Foster.

Update: I just noticed that The Onion has a favorable review of Nick Montfort's Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction. (The link will expire soon.)

We and our colleagues at The Princeton Review have spent many years training students to take the SAT II, and have carefully analyzed the College Board's essay-grading criteria. To receive a high score a student should write a long essay of three or more paragraphs, with each paragraph containing topic and concluding sentences and at least one sentence that includes the words "for example." Whenever possible the student should use polysyllabic words where shorter, clearer words would suffice. The SAT essay will not be a place to take rhetorical chances. Flair will win no points; the highest-scoring essays will be earnest, long-winded, and predictable.

To illustrate how the essays on the "new" SAT will be scored, The Princeton Review has composed some typical essay questions, provided answers from several well-known authors, and applied the College Board's grading criteria to their writing. --John Katzman, Andy Lutz and Erik Olson --Would Shakespeare Get Into Swarthmore?  (The Atlantic)

How would Shakespeare, Gertrude Stein, and The Unabomber fare on the essay portion of the new SAT? The authors want to make the point that "real" writing is nothing like the writing that the SAT encourages. Fair enough -- but if you think the SAT is designed to test who is a great Elizabethan dramatist, then you are already confused.

In defense of the SAT (I can hardly believe I just wrote that), only Shakespeare's example could be considered self-contained, but it is not a timed academic essay, so naturally it fails when you apply the wrong rubric to it. All the others appear to be excerpts from longer works. Kaczynski's piece began as a student paper; lacking formal training and peer-review, he continued to write at the student level, so it is little surprise that his excerpt fares well.

"Games are big, big objects," said Barry Atkins, who teaches in the English department at Manchester Metropolitan University in England. "The days when you could play a couple of hours of Myst and write about it are over." | Dr. Atkins admitted that he didn't finish Half-Life before writing about it in his 2003 book, "More Than a Game: The Computer Game as Fictional Form," (Manchester University Press), and only later realized he was two minutes from the shocking plot reversal at the end when he stopped. "I am very nervous that I got it wrong," he said. --Michael Erard --The Ivy-Covered Console (New York Times)

I knew this article was coming because the author e-mailed me late Tuesday in order to ask whether I knew anything more about Mary Ann Buckles, who wrote her 1985 Ph.D. thesis on "Adventure." (I tried tracking her down a few years ago, and found someone who thought she might be a relative, but I didn't go further than that.)

This is an excellent article... the author notes that Espen Aarseth, whose book Cybertext is a seminal work in studying games as games (rather than as kinds of literature or film) is only 38. Erard really manages to capture the newness and multidisciplinarity of the field with the following description of next week's Princeton conference ("Form, Culture and Video Game Criticism"):

A lawyer, a journalist, a composer, two professors, two lecturers and six graduate students will present papers with titles like "Musical Byproducts of Atari 2600 Games" and "But Our Princess Is in Another Castle: Towards a 'Close-Playing' of Super Mario Brothers."

It's very exciting to be part of such a young field (though I count three professors on the videogame conference program, not two).

My job description, as a generalist at a small liberal arts school, rather than a specialist at a research institution, simply doesn't leave room for the kind of intense research that I was able to do as a grad student (oh, those 16-hour days in the library). My dean didn't actually burst out laughing when I mentioned a desire to get a course release so I could play more computer games, or funding to purchase a game console and some of the latest titles -- which would, of course, be part of the new media lab, and which I would let students check out, for academic use. ;)

I used to do a much better job keeping up with interactive fiction, but I find that this year I'm so busy that I'm waiting for the XYZZY Awards to be announced, so that I can catch up on the winners I haven't played yet. Fortunately I found CliFrotz, which lets me play Z-machine games on my new PDA, so I've been working on some of the multiply-nominated games already.

U.S. Secretary of Education Rod Paige today [Feb. 23] issued the following apology for his remarks about the NEA.

"It was an inappropriate choice of words to describe the obstructionist scare tactics the NEA's Washington lobbyists have employed against No Child Left Behind's historic education reforms. I also said, as I have repeatedly, that our nation's teachers, who have dedicated their lives to service in the classroom, are the real soldiers of democracy, whereas the NEA's high-priced Washington lobbyists have made no secret that they will fight against bringing real, rock-solid improvements in the way we educate all our children regardless of skin color, accent or where they live. But, as one who grew up on the receiving end of insensitive remarks, I should have chosen my words better."

--Secretary Paige Issues Apology for Comment about NEA (US Department of Education)

A few days ago, the Drudge Report's coverage of this story (about a Bush official calling the leaders of a large teachers' union "terrorists") featured an item noting that potential Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry once called Texas Republicans "legislative terrorists." It's not hard to find examples of politicians going overboard with their metaphors, but Kerry's attack on fellow politicians was just business as usual; for the Bush appointee to pick on underpaid and overworked teachers seems downright mean. Kerry would be wise to stay out of this fray, because it's already another black eye for Bush.

I'm actually blogging this mostly because of the rhetoric involved.

While Paige finally admits he "should have chosen [his] words better," he only does so after bringing our attention to the "the obstructionist scare tactics" the NEA's leaders have brought against the "historic reforms" proposed by the Bush administration. Paige also calls attention to his own racial and cultural background -- which complicates issues for those who prefer their enemies in the White House to be uniformly white, male, privileged, and conservative. Paige's statement tries to direct the attack at the NEA leadership, not the millions of (voting) members who compose the NEA -- but I'm sure the NEA's leaders aren't going to throw up their arms and say, "The jig is up -- Paige has discovered that we don't really have the interests of students or rank-and-file NEA members in mind when we visit Washington." The road leads ever on.

Hint to Paige and anybody else who has ever had to do damage control: if you want to look sincere while apologizing, a quivering lip and wavering voice is nice, but when you're through with the emoting, don't spend even more time defending yourself and re-phrasing the very attack for which you are supposedly apologizing. I'm reminded of Bill Clinton's 1998 speech in which he admitted that he "misled people, including even my wife," which I thought was an excellent speech until he brought up the investigations into his financial affairs. (Clinton should have taken the high road, and let his supporters continue attacking Ken Starr. But that's a different story.)

I just noticed Mike Arnzen has blogged a bit on the incident over at Pedablogue.

--Netstore USA (opengroup.com)

Buy my book, Technology in American Drama, 1920-1950... Priced at just $197.70! Outside of the US, that's $216.60, or about a dollar a page! Order now!

Sheesh! At that price, with the royalties I've earned so far, I could buy THREE WHOLE COPIES! Oh, wait, they already charged me for the advance copies I purchased, I guess I could buy just two more copies.

Thanks for the so-disturbing-you-just-have-to-laugh link, Rosemary. (It's much cheaper at Amazon, but if you ask your local university library to buy a copy, they'll be able to get it for less, and more people will get to read it.)

Below the Sinkhole You are about 75 feet into the cave. There is a dim light at the east of the passage. There is a methamphetamine lab here! >EXAMINE LAB Nothing extravagant ? about average for this area. You see some cookware, solvents, and acids. Looks like someone has just finished cooking. >_

--There is a methamphetamine lab here! (Bowling Green Daily News)

OK, for those who don't get it -- this news story about a meth lab found in a cave made me think of the classic game "Colossal Cave Adventure," which I'm researching in prepraration for a conference in a few weeks.

"He had a maturity beyond his age." -- security guard Jason Armstrong --Man dies in 11-storey fall (Ottawa Sun)

The quote above is applied to a university student who accidentally hurled himself over a balcony. The student was an engineering major, who apparently wasn't clear on the concept of momentum, as he charged a balcony railing in order to spit farther than his friends. It's little surprise to learn that alcohol was involved.

The reporter is walking a fine line in writing a story that won't be offensive to grieving relatives, but still highlights the ironies that will probably make this guy a Darwin Award winner.

Part of Maloney's job is to evaluate books on the sleeper list and decide whether they go to the bargain basement sale or get a second chance.

"It's a really hard thing to get rid of a book," Maloney said. "A big, big consideration for us is just space. Our juvenile fiction shelves are packed right now. There comes a time when you have to say 'goodbye."'.... For the 800 hardcover juvenile fiction books on Maloney's list, the odds aren't good. Maloney estimates about 80 percent will wind up downstairs for bargain hunters. --Librarians struggle to let go of lonely books (AP/Mankatopa Free Press)

Ahh! I always thought libraries were like museums. Quick, run to the library you remember from your childhood... somebody, look in Patrick Henry library in Vienna, Va., or the Fairfax County Public Library... are those dog-eared copies of Lester Del Rey's classic science fiction still there? What about Encyclopedia Brown, or the Henry Reed Detective Agency? Or the wonderful books about astronomy, that paint Jupiter with no rings and about 12 moons? Is there still a copy of Freud's Interpretation of Dreams, which I checked out on one of my first forays from the Juvenile section to the Adult stacks, and is the page still folded down in the section that describes "Typical Dreams"?

According to the article, "Sometimes, all it takes to save a book from being discarded is a single person's desire to read it."

Via Waterloo Library Blog.

Two different things seem to have happened at the same place and time, according to the "spin" placed on two different reports from competing local papers.

Post-Gazette to seek wage concessions (Tribune-Review, reporting on its competition)
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette is gushing red ink, prompting workers to vote today on wage and benefits concessions designed to save the newspaper from insolvency, union officials said Sunday during a special meeting.

Vote on contract adjustments by PG unions (Post-Gazette, reporting on itself)
Leaders of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's 1,100 unionized employees urged the workers yesterday to approve contract adjustments that would help the company avoid a projected loss of $6.5 million in 2004.A Tale of Two LeadsTrib-Review/Post-Gazette)

Thanks for the links, Jess T.

Interesting comparison of stories... the Post-Gazette competes with the Trib-Review, so according to the Trib it is "gushing red ink". The Post-Gazette, reporting on itself, emphasizes the sacrifices its union employees are willing to make.

Competition is good for the public, because it keeps journalists on their toes and makes them accountable for their little mistakes (I presume that the Post-Gazette, which calls its owners "Block Communications Inc" is probably right, and the Trib, which calls the company "Blade Communications Co." is probably wrong) and biases (such as the Post-Gazette's privileging of the union leaders' plea to the rank-and-file union members).

When I was an undergrad at U.Va., there were two competing daily student papers, the Cavalier Daily (or rather the "Cavalier Five-Day-A-Week-And-Weekly-During-The-Summer) and the University Journal (which was three days a week during my freshman year and gradually worked up to five). A few years after I graduated, I learned the UJ went under, which was really too bad. Reading someone else's version of the story you covered, or seeing the photo someone else took at the same event, is really a great learning experience, even if it is sometimes humbling.

I remember when I used to cover city council meetings and other dry stuff for a local radio station, if three things happened that night and I write radio stories on two of them, no matter what, the next day at noon, the local paper would be out on the stands, and the third thing -- the thing that I didn't cover -- would be in the headlines. Being a very green intern, I was convinced that my news sense was completely wrong -- until the wiser, saner folks at the radio station pointed out that the newspaper was trying to reach the very same audience that listened to our radio station on the way to work in the morning.

Oh, I should note that the city desk editor of the local paper was married to the news director of my radio station; they were extremely professional about their work, and would try to scoop each other all the time. Once I worked hard on a 20-year anniversary story (on the destruction caused by Hurricane Camille), and had produced a half dozen stories, one or two minutes long; they were scheduled to run, one per day, in the week leading up to the actual anniversary. The local paper published a beautiful, in-depth report the weekend before the anniversary, which pretty much exhausted everyone's interest in the subject. Each of my little jobbies looked pathetic and lame, limping along five or six days after everyone had already clipped out the paper's big spread and saved it in their scrapbooks.

I can still taste the beer.

I say this is a whole new kind of tired not because of the physical effects of my hangover. Believe me, that's not new at all. What's new is that I'm tired of this kind of tired. I'm tired of being fuzzy for the first half of each day. I'm tired of feeling like hell and looking out at a class full of students, wondering how I'll be able to pull off a lecture. I'm tired of a routine of drinking that I no longer enjoy, but feel compelled to do anyway. And I'm tired of throwing away my career a pint at a time.

At this point, you're probably thinking that this essay is another self-indulgent litany bred by our current culture of confession. And that's fine. Maybe it is. But there's a point to what I'm saying that bears directly upon the world of academe. --"James Waite" --Hung Over Again (Chronicle)

I don't know what I think about this article... it certainly got my heart pounding, but someone who can write so eloquently about his problem, yet who still feels helpless about it, is probably in some degree of denial.

Seton Hill University doesn't have a reputation as a party school, which is something that attracted me to it... it's hard to do my job when the students come to class hungover or drunk -- and if that does happen here at SHU, the students are discreet enough that it hasn't yet disrupted my classroom.

But this article examines what happens when the professor is the one going through the day in a haze. I personally don't drink; I never did in college because I was too busy, and I don't now because I'm too busy. But I have gone to class sick and sleep-deprived -- sometimes from cleaning up baby vomit (good excuse) and sometimes from becoming obsessed about a software bug (bad excuse). I really miss programming, but I really haven't had time for it at all (especially now that scholarship in both weblogs and game studies has taken off -- there's too much for me to keep up on).

As for the hungover professor, I think some students would jokingly say, "Well, as long as he gives As, that's fine with me," but "Waite" admits his ability to teach is suffering. Hmm... maybe the next time I'm really ill, I'll call in sick. I tell myself that if I cancel a class, both the students and I will have even more stress trying to catch up. And with two small kids at home, it's often more relaxing for me to come in to the office -- but maybe that's just the workaholic in me making excuses.

At any rate, I hope Waite writes again with an update.

--Star Trek Action Figure Collection (NubiNubsUniverse.com)

The really sad thing: I recognize most of these characters. Okay, the aliens from "Star Trek: The Next Generation" sort of blend into one another, but for the classic series, the episodes have been so firmly imprinted on my brain for decades that I can name most of the characters and episodes without much thought.

The L.A. Times ('free' registration required--thus my extensive quoting) has story about how:

the U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control recently declared that American publishers cannot edit works authored in nations under trade embargoes. Although publishing the articles is legal, editing is a "service" and it is illegal to perform services for embargoed nations, the agency has ruled.

This raises all sorts of questions like does tagging and indexing a blog post count as editing, does reformating an article to fit a house or blog style count as editing? And is a 'service' really a 'service' if no money changes hands? It seems some publishers, including the American Chemical Society, have decided to risk "fines of up to a half-million dollars or jail terms as long as 10 years" by editing scholarly articles they publish. --U.S. Embargos Extended to Editing ArticlesKairosNews/LA Times)

Since the LA Times requires an obnoxious registration, I'm linking to Scott's post on KairosNews instead.

[O]n Feb. 20, 1954 -- President Dwight Eisenhower interrupted his vacation in Palm Springs, Calif., to make a secret nocturnal trip to a nearby Air Force base to meet two extraterrestrial aliens.

Or maybe not. Maybe Ike just went to the dentist. There's some dispute about this. --Peter Carlson --Ike and the alien ambassadors (M$ NBC)

A precious quote, from the author of a book on the political implications of an extraterrestrial presence on Earth: "There's a lot of stuff on the Internet," he says, "and I just went around and pieced it together."

Journalists aren't supposed to editorialize while covering the news, but the use of this quote pretty much says all that one needs to know.

A close second is the following:

Mixson's article "A History of Dwight D. Eisenhower's Oral Health" -- published in the November 1995 issue of the Bulletin of the History of Dentistry -- is the definitive work on Ike's teeth. [Some tooth-related info here.] That may be more than you wanted to know about Ike's dental work. If not, Mixson goes on at some length, quoting a long, lyrical passage written by Fairchild on this troublesome presidential incisor.

Computers and Composition Online is the refereed online companion journal to Computers and Composition: An International Journal, now in its 21st year and published by Elsevier. Our goal is to be a significant online resource for scholar-teachers interested in the impact of new and emerging media upon the teaching of language and literacy in both virtual and face-to-face forums. As part of this goal, we wish to foster a sense of community and collegial sharing of ideas by providing an online space where select features, announcements, and community resources work together to promote a virtual exchange for the latest and best work in the field. --Computers and Composition Online Weblogcandconline.org)

Found via KairosNews. Not a whole lot of action on this site yet... and the mission statement I quoted above reeks of administrativeese. Is this part of an effort by Elsevier (publisher of C&C) to respond to boycotts and other acts of rebellion over the control it wields over academic publishing?

I'm a bit suspicious, but I did contribute a long comment to C&C Online a few minutes ago. Overall I think it's good it's great to see yet another effort to rethink scholarship in light of new technology.

All of this carrying on is fine, but if Spike really wants shows men like to watch, they've missed a few great concepts. Here are ten new programs that appeal to real men:

• The Explosion Show - Every week, the hosts fill some interesting object with black powder and then, well, you get the idea...
  
• Crank Callers - Contestants harass strangers and win prizes
  
• Celebrity Mud Wrestling - The name says it all
  
• Target Practice - Like those hunting shows on the Outdoor channel, except that the big game they're after is the neighbor's lawn ornaments
  
• Psycho Friends Network - Wisecracking comedians staff fortune-telling phone service
  
• Pick-Up Truckers - This is our reality show: Blue collar guys are taken to a real bar and compete to see who can be the first to convince a female patron to come home with them
  
• Mug Shot Makeover - Fashion experts visit the drunk tank with timely grooming advice
  
• Riding Lawnmower Demolition Derby - OK, it's sort of a sport, but it's not on ESPN
  
• Cheer Factor - Adult cheerleader routines are rated by regular guys with number cards
  
• Simian Nightly News - The events of the day are reviewed by chimpanzees dressed in designer suits

Are you listening, Spike?
--Driving the Spike [Scroll down a bit] (Every Fool's Guide to the Universe)

This site seems to archive only by page, so I can't send you to the entry I'm quoting from. It's the one posted at 9:58PM.

"Beauty provoketh thieves sooner than gold." -- Rosalind, As You Like ItAs You LIke It @ Seton Hill UniversityJerz's Literacy Weblog)

I asked students in three of my classes to attend Seton Hill University's production of As You Like It. I thought the casting was very well done. With her hair pulled back in a ponytail, the actress playing Rosalind looked very much like the rustic youth she was pretending to be. In Shakespeare's day, of course, the female parts would all have been performed by boys. In a sense, our SHU production featured a woman pretending to be a boy pretending to be a woman pretending to be a boy.

I do think our Rosalind muffed the line I quoted above -- she emphasized "thieves," giving the line the sense, "Beauty provokes thieves before beauty provokes gold." I would have told her to emphasize "Beauty," giving the line the sense "Thieves are provoked by beauty sooner than gold." The line was a bit of light-hearted banter that leads to the plan to disguise Rosalind as a boy. Another exchange with Celia and later some extended comedy with Audrey and Touchstone riffs on the idea that a woman cannot be both beautiful and honest (and Phebe is further evidence to argue in favor of that idea).

I was reminded of a class discussion on The Canterbury Tales, in which the students couldn't determine whether The Wife of Bath's Tale is feminist or misogynist. In order to prod the discussion along at one point, I noted that the Wife twice mentions that her latest husband beat her, but only the second time does she mention that she started the fight by hitting her husband first. I mentioned that I once heard a statistic that indicated that women are more likely to strike men than men are likely to strike women -- but that when men do strike women, they are far more likely to cause an injury. Julie Young put some effort into investigating the validity of that little factoid, and concludes that, like nearly any fact, it can be used out of context to give the wrong message.

Several SHU bloggers have already written about the play, including some in my "Media Aesthetics" course.

Brendan notes that "Watching Is more Fun Then Reading," a sentiment I've heard before from SHU bloggers. Even so, Allison finds that the middle school children in the audience for a field trip were more attentive than some of her classmates, and writes, "I have no clue how anyone can sleep through shakespeare." Julie observed that "Some things are still funny 400 years in the future. Other things aren't."

Other students who mentioned the production include Amanda, who says she picked out my chuckles over the heads of the crowd of middle-school students who were visiting on a field trip. Sherry (who preferred the play to the book) observes that in the middle of the play "it's like the characters just stumble around the forest rambling," and wonders if all Shakespeare is like that.

I remember my college professor comparing the Forest of Arden scenes to a cocktail party. I prefer to think of the ballroom dance skits in the old Muppet Show -- they would have a quick shot of muppets dancing to a sweeping waltz, and then a two-shot where there would be a quick setup and punchline, followed by a quick cut to more dancing.

The comic presentation of Duke Senior and the flashiness of the contrived happy ending served to underscore the forest scenes as attempting to accomplish just a little bit more than presenting an idealized view of a human society ruled by love -- there were some elements of satire, but not many. Which is fine -- it's a comedy, after all. Humans tormented by love and folly are worth examining too, though humans wracked by guilt and lusting after power usually make better drama.

While blogging this, I was browsing through EbscoHOST in another window, and came across a 1991 article, "Kairos and the Ripeness of Time in 'As You Like It.'" It's by Maurice Hunt, whose article on plagiarism I recently blogged.

Whoops, before I could read much of Maurice's article, a student came by to warn me that the teacher's podium is acting up in the classroom where my next class is about to meet... so I'd better sign off.

The magnitude of these effects is also somewhat alarming. The best estimate of the effect size of exposure to violent video games on aggressive behaviour is about 0.26 (Fig. 2). This is larger than the effect of condom use on decreased HIV risk, the effect of exposure to passive smoke at work and lung cancer, and the effect of calcium intake on bone mass ( [Bushman & Huesmann (2001)]). As a society, we have taken massive and expensive steps to educate the public about these smaller medical effects, but almost none to deal with the larger violent video game effects. --Craig A. Anderson

Update: This link to the table of contents page lets me download PDFs. Your mileage may vary. --An update on the effects of playing violent video games  (Journal of Adolescence)

This is not your usual hand-wringing, scare-mongering article in a parenting magazine.

I hope to see the game-playing public and games researchers consider the implications of this report seriously, and not merely shrug it off as yet another example that, where gaming is concerned, "they" don't "get it".

Of course, those who argue that television shows, music, or books are positively correlated with increased violence (or what have you) risk being labeled a censor. The common refrain from the gaming community -- it's the parents' fault, not the games' fault -- is as much of a cop-out as the parent who prefers to blame games (or some other media, or a peer group).

Is it possible to have discussions of taste and ethics concerning videogames, without either moralizing recklessly, or being recklessly accused of moralizing?

Via TerraNova, where the discussion started out very good but at the moment looks like it has resulted in more of the same old same-old.

After a conversation with Mike Arnzen, I've been on the lookout for scholarly works that are critical of gaming and gaming culture. Here's a good one, according to Reality Panic: "Digital Play: The Interaction of Technology, Culture and Marketing".

[O]bjective achievements in the arts are demonstrable?and if they can be historically established for the arts, then they are even more clearly identifiable for the sciences. These two spheres of human endeavor represent two kinds of potential objectivity: there is as little chance of the human race giving up Homer or the Beethoven symphonies as there is that it will give up the notion that the earth is a sphere. Over time, achievement in the arts and the sciences is seen as not merely an invention of scholarship, a product of fickle fashion, or a general social construction....The fundamental principle of human achievement is expressed by Aristotle in the Nichomachean Ethics and accepted by philosophers since, and more recently even by psychologists: that human beings derive pleasure from the just exercise of their skills and capacities. From crossword puzzles and rock climbing to painting, composing music, playing a musical instrument, or solving equations, Murray says, ?The pursuit of excellence is as natural as the pursuit of happiness.? For the creative geniuses who are the subject of his book, I prefer to say that achieved excellence simply is happiness. --Dennis Dutton reviews Charles Murray's Human Accomplishment --Of Human Accomplishment (New Criterion)

Hmm... achievement for achievement's sake is dangerously close to "art for art's sake". I suppose Murray at some point had to define what he means by "excellence". To excel in cruelty or to escape punishment for a crime is a kind of excellence; I suppose some people might excel at doing nothing. But that's probably straying too far from the book's subject area (which is, after all, about accomplishment, not destruction or avoidance).

Okay... a quick glance at the article reveals that Murray specifies "Transcendental goods" as one of the four qualities for human accomplishment, so that neatly handles my objection. As Dutton puts it, "These values are the true, the good, and the beautiful—the first central to science, the last to art, and the second to both science and art."

Conference ConundrumsJerz's Literacy Weblog)

Hooray... I just heard that I got near-full funding for both Princeton videogame conference (where I'll be presenting a paper on Will Crowther's original "Adventure") and the San Antonio 4C-s (where my paper topic is "Forced Blogging: Students' Emotional Investment in their Academic Weblogs"). Because the 4C's is a long conference in an expensive city, I might not be able to afford to go to the whole thing, but I present early and there's that blasted "stay overnight on a Saturday and get a cheaper airfare," so I'm going to have to wrestle with this one a bit. I'm hoping to share a room with a former colleague from the University of Toronto, but he may have had to book already... we'll see what happens. I've got the next six hours of my day booked absolutely solid...

She asked how I was adjusting to the "difficult" corporate world after coming from the "less stressful" academic world. It was all I could do to keep from bursting out laughing.

Let's see: I'm only working five days a week. At night, I am not furiously preparing a lecture for the next day. And I actually enjoy weekends without the nagging feeling that I should be working on more revisions and resubmissions. Yeah, I think I've adjusted just fine, thanks. --Robin Moriarty --Finding Nonacademic Work Overseas (Chronicle)

I'm actually quite happy as a college professor, but there were brief moments during the dot-com craze when I wondered why I didn't feel compelled to head for Silicon Valley and see what happens. Actually, the fact that my wife doesn't want to live anywhere near the San Andreas Fault pretty much solved that career crisis, but it was still interesting to daydream, and it's somehow comforting to remind myself that I'm not the only academic who brings home bookbacks bulging with homework. For me tonight, it's about a four-inch stack of papers to grade, a teaching demonstration, and about 20 e-mails connected to a research project that just hit a major setback. Such is the life of an eternal student.

I can't wait until Spring Break -- when I can really get caught up on my work.

With the media opera R.U.R., we want to appreciate the Czech author Karel Capek (Czechia's Goethe) and his importance for the European cultural expression. It is he who in R.U.R. used for the first time the expression robot, derivated of the Russian word "robota" = work. R.U.R. is a classic of science fiction literature and has nothing lost of its formative influence. The latest example is Stephen Spielberg's movie A.I. – Artificial Intelligence which has obviously taken scenes from Capek's play, however keeps quiet about it's source. Central Europe is the "cradle" of the robots and not USA, even if their movie industry want to make us believe that by thousands of pictures.
--R.U.R. OperaMedia Archiv Praque)

Just got this in an e-mail from the Media Archiv Praque, probably because I have a website devoted to the play R.U.R (Rossum's Universal Robots).

Some have at first for wits, then poets pass'd,
Turn'd critics next, and prov'd plain fools at last;
Some neither can for wits nor critics pass,
As heavy mules are neither horse nor ass.
Those half-learn'd witlings, num'rous in our isle
As half-form'd insects on the banks of Nile;
Unfinish'd things, one knows not what to call,
Their generation's so equivocal:
To tell 'em, would a hundred tongues require,
Or one vain wit's, that might a hundred tire.
Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
Part I, Part II, Part III --An Essay on Criticism (Representative Poetry Online)

I think it's probably safe to guess what Alexander Pope would think of blogging. Bear in mind, though, that he was writing this at the ripe old age of 20.

The artist is the creator of beautiful things. To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim. The critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things.

The highest as the lowest form of criticism is a mode of autobiography. Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault.

Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only beauty.

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.

The nineteenth century dislike of realism is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass.

The nineteenth century dislike of romanticism is the rage of Caliban not seeing his own face in a glass. The moral life of man forms part of the subject-matter of the artist, but the morality of art consists in the perfect use of an imperfect medium. No artist desires to prove anything. Even things that are true can be proved. No artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style. No artist is ever morbid. The artist can express everything. Thought and language are to the artist instruments of an art. Vice and virtue are to the artist materials for an art. From the point of view of form, the type of all the arts is the art of the musician. From the point of view of feeling, the actor's craft is the type. All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril. Those who read the symbol do so at their peril. It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors. Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex, and vital. When critics disagree, the artist is in accord with himself. We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely.

All art is quite useless.

OSCAR WILDE

--Preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray (Project Gutenberg)

Note... Wilde doesn't offer any pithy judgements on those who find beautiful meanings in ugly things (according to Wilde, they would be corrupt but charming) or who find ugly meanings in ugly things (I assume Wilde finds them uncultivated, but does that make them barbarians or simply pragmatists?).

I've been involved in the discussion of a proposed new design for Seton Hill University's website, so I've turned to Oscar Wilde to help me understand the mindset of those who prefer their designs beautiful but useless. While it's possible to test a design for useability, it's not possible to test it for beauty.

Some of the new questions in a very young field: How do you judge a game? As you would a novel? Should we think up a whole new vocabulary for evaluating games? What do the social dynamics of online worlds — those massively multiplayer games — tell us about human behavior?

In Copenhagen, Denmark, the IT University has established the Center of Computer Games Research, which just graduated its first Ph.D., Jesper Juul.

Juul appears to be the first person anywhere to ever get his doctorate exclusively in video game studies. His dissertation "Half-Real: Video Games Between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds" seeks to define what video games are, and how academics ought to go about studying them.

"There is an interesting naughtiness in taking something that many people consider unimportant and frivolous and then creating very detailed theory about it," Juul said. But, he added: "I would say that video games merit much more analysis than novels or movies simply because they are less understood." --Nick Wadhams --Academics get serious about video games (Mercury News/AP)

It's not news that academics have been studying computer games, but it is news that the study of computer games is developing into a scholarly field of its own (rather than being situated within existing fields, such as literature, cinema, artificial intelligence, and so forth).

Besides Juul, this article also mentions Janet Murray, Espen Aarseth, Henry Jenkins, and Gonzalo Frasca. It also mentions next month's Princeton conference on Form, Culture, and Videogame Criticism.

Assumption, though, is too mild a word when it comes to the belief in mental health. The taken-for-granted-ness of this idea ranks with God, romantic love, the nuclear family, the goodness of free markets and the wickedness of Communism. For most people, suggesting that mental health might not exist would be like telling the kind of people who read blogs that they could have a meaningful life without the World Wide Web. The reality of mental health gives those of us without it a motivation to keep embracing pain because it builds character, it is part of the healing process, it will make us better people. --John Spurlock --The Myth of Mental Health (The Blue Monkey Review)

The "you have a right to be healthy" meme certainly works against the Church's "human suffering is part of a divine plan" meme, the latter being an important part of a religious outlook that invites the contemplation of Christ's suffering.

Modern society doesn't have many universally accepted rituals for the preservation of order in our lives, but for those who practice the morning jog, the AA session, Friday night poker, or even the communal viewing of a popular TV show (I used to love watching "COPS," which plays out a metanarrative of restoring virtue and honor) -- these rituals serve much the same function.

Now, as much as I love books, I love computers, too. Computers are fundamentally different from modern books in the same way that printed books are different from monastic Bibles: they are malleable. Time was, a "book" was something produced by many months' labor by a scribe, usually a monk, on some kind of durable and sexy substrate like foetal lambskin. [ILLUMINATED BIBLE] Gutenberg's xerox machine changed all that, changed a book into something that could be simply run off a press in a few minutes' time, on substrate more suitable to ass-wiping than exaltation in a place of honor in the cathedral. The Gutenberg press meant that rather than owning one or two books, a member of the ruling class could amass a library, and that rather than picking only a few subjects from enshrinement in print, a huge variety of subjects could be addressed on paper and handed from person to person. --Cory Doctorow --E-Books: Neither E Nor Books (Craphound)

When the newest cheating scandal surfaces at some prestigious southern university known for its military school style "honor code," the headlines leap across the tabloids like stories on child molestation by alien invaders.

It's almost never suggested that all this might be something other than a disaster for higher education. But that's exactly what I want to argue here. -- Russel Hunt --Four Reasons to be Happy about Internet Plagiarism  (St. Thomas University)

Found via the Plagiarism Resource Site.

--A Scheduled Quiz on As You Like It Sprang (New Media Journalism @ Seton Hill University)

A scheduled quiz on As You Like It sprang
And caught some students unprepar'd today.
Soft-hearted me! I bargained with them thus:
They'll blog in verse (as Shakespeare would have done),
And I will grant them an exten-si-on.

In these movies, priests are suicidal, corrupt and/or lascivious. Nuns are heartless and sadistic.

Before you run to your keyboard: yes, I'm aware of scandals, past and present, involving the church. And yes, some of the films listed above are powerful, important works based on true stories.

But a lot of this stuff is just exploitative garbage. And no other religious group gets bashed with such frequency. Can you imagine a similar number of films with Jewish leaders playing villains and moral weaklings? --Richard Roeper --Join the clubbed: Catholics know pain of being bashed  (Sun Times)

As a young boy, I found it very easy to spot when an actor was not Catholic. When a Catholic makes the sign of the cross (touching the forehead, chest, and then each shoulder), inside your head you are saying "In the name of the (touch head) Father, and of the Son (touch breast), and of the Holy Spirit." Well, in truth probably most of them shorten it to "'Name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit." But there's a little pause when you hold your hand on your chest, before you make the horizontal stroke. When non-Catholics do the sign of the cross, unless they have been coached by someone who knows better, they rush that horizontal motion -- it looks like slashing. So it was always clear to me when an actor was only pretending to be Catholic.

[I recently received the following e-mail... --DGJ]

Dear Sir:

I am presently working on a science fair project for my school. I found your article, Instructions: How to Write for Busy, Grouchy People. I was hoping you could expand on that a little more for me.

I am in the 7th grade. My project this year is attempting to prove that 99% of people fail to read the following directions after being told and read to do so. I was wondering if you could help me document as to why people think they are above having to read instructions? Truly most of the people I have tested have come straight out and said instructions are for idiots, or fools with too much time. Needless to say these fools did not pass the simple task laid out before them.

One of my questions because of the failure rate of this test is: are people so transfixed or gullible to believe they can do anything without reading the how to's first?

I would like to thank you up front for any advice or help you can offer towards my Science fair project. I look forward to hearing your answers to questions and any other responses that may help my research.

Sincerely,

Heather
7th grade

Why people think they are above having to read instructionsJerz's Literacy Weblog)

I was so impressed with the professionalism of Heather's request that (after asking her permission, and after she checked with her parents) I'm posting her question along with my response.

Most of us probably remember more vividly the time we wasted reading instructions that don't help, than the time that we save by reading instructions that really do help. Think about it -- if you are late for an appointment and you are stuck in traffic, you will probably dwell on the miserable experience you are having (because there is nothing else to do). When things are going well, you are free to daydream -- and time flies when you're having fun. While there are some optimists who prefer to accentuate the positive, people who turn to instruction manuals are already having a problem of some sort, so they tend to be grouchy and stressed (and they probably associate those feelings of stress with the action of consulting instructions, making them even more reluctant to consult instructions in the future).

Even though I have taught hundreds of students in technical writing (the kind of professional writing that emphasizes instructions, manuals, and other documents that help people get work done), and I should probably know better, I myself usually try to avoid reading instructions, for all the usual reasons:

1. stopping to get help seems like it will take up more time than it will save
2. I'm too proud and stubborn to admit I don't know what I'm doing
3. I've already put so much time into this that I don't want to give up until I try just one more thing... and one more... and one more.

Researchers call this the "Paradox of the Active User." Even when timed experiments show that people usually save time when they read the instructions first, we tend to get anxious unless we are doing something. Reading instructions feels like doing nothing -- especially when the clock is ticking.

My wife, who is not fond of computers, can't for the life of her remember the three-step procedure that connects her to the Internet (turn on the computer, click the little telephone icon, and click the blue "e" icon). Rather than spend precious mental energy on these steps (or finding the piece of paper on which I wrote them), she prefers to ask me to carry out her online business. Likewise, I have no idea where she keeps stack of bills to be paid or the extra toothpaste. Our specialized behavior works for us, because we know we can rely on each other.

Women typically have more complex and more powerful social networks than men, which may explain why women are more likely to ask for help -- those who work harder on a daily basis maintaining their social networks (by talking on the phone, chatting online, or even passing notes in class) are more likely to be able to depend on that network being there the next time they need help.

I'm going out on a limb here, but I suspect that our brains are hard-wired so that, if we don't feel the source of help will always be around whenever we need it, we prefer to solve problems on our own. Students who are trained to rely on step-by-step instructions can feel lost when they enter college (or the real world) and realize that few problems are as neatly laid out, and few answers are as clear or as universally accepted, as their middle-school or high school textbooks might have suggested. It's well-accepted that people remember things longer, understand them more fully, and feel a greater sense of satisfaction about the work they accomplish when they work things out by themselves. So perhaps generations of human experience has trained us that, in the long run, we really are better off when we solve problems on our own.

While it is annoying not to be able to set the VCR or fix a plumbing problem the right way the first time, truth be told, the consequences of our daily failures don't mount up to much in modern society. The average person is surrounded by a lot of very comp