Culture: March 2004 Archive Page

Mike Vitia Blogs the 4Cs (Vitia)

Mike Vitia has a good series of blog entries covering several sessions at the 4Cs, including the great panel by Terra, Charlie, and Clancy, of which Mike had this provocative, if vague, observation: "Most of us know that the theories of Landow and Negroponte lie broken and useless: how, then, might we begin to build rigorous theoretical models that help us to account for the phenomena described by Terra, Charlie, and Clancy?"

My "Computer Connection" section (in a distant corner of the main exhibition hall) was more interactive than I had expected, so I didn't get to cover all my material -- notably this list of "good practices" for using blogs in the classroom. Since a "real" weblog is a license to write whatever and whenever you want, an instructor who assigns the topic, frequency, or length of blog entries (in order to facilitate grading) violates the spirit that draws voluntary bloggers to their avocation.

The "forced blogging paradigm" is the resistance that results when even voluntary bloggers feel hampered by the imposition of academic rules and standards. It's also the resistance that results when students who don't really want to blog at all are forced to do so. Here are a few strategies I've found helpful.

In Class, Refer to Student Blogs. In the minute or two before class starts, I sometimes chat with students about the content of their blogs. Of course, the best bloggers will tend to get the most attention, and the result is that the infrequent bloggers will feel marginalized. That'sthe way it is in the blogosphere outside of academia, but it makes good pedagogical sense to recognize the achievements of less committed bloggers, too.

When asking a student to repeat for the class the contents of a particularly good blog entry that I feel might be useful in sparking a discussion, I find that students sometimes need their memory jogged if they are expected to talk about something they blogged in the wee hours of the morning or maybe a couple days ago. Calling the blog entry upon on the screen, saying a few words about why it seemed significant to you, and then inviting the student to click through their weblog seems to be a good strategy.

Begin Oral Presentations from Blogs. I ask my students to blog their notes for their oral presentations. In my upper-level course, peer pressure encourages students not to identify this kind of forced blogging as an assignment -- students just casually mention a thought that occurred to them while reading Plato, and then launch into their subject from there. Since I encourage them to link to their sources, it's easier to encourage them to emphasize their own ideas, rather than spend most of their oral presentation summarizing what they find on SparkNotes or other curiousity-killing "study guide" websites.

Give Flexible ?Forced Blogging? Assignments. Requiring students to post X comments of length Y every week may force some middle-of-the-road students to write a little longer, a little more frequently; but it will also encourage the Type-A students to stop when they have reached the magic number. That can kill the dynamic of a weblog, which feeds off of the feverish productivity of the A-listers. I might also ask students to write a short response to the assigned text, but give them the option of blogging it (if they have a lot to say and want to make it public) or just hand it to me on paper. Even if only or two students blogs a reaction essay, those will probably be at least mildly interesting.

Blog During Class. Not all the time? but whenever the site is sagging a bit, asking all students to blog for 15 minutes can help perk things up. Sometimes I suggest that they post only comments that contain questions for their peers, rather than create new entries. Responding to the 'Forced Blogging' Paradigm: Good Practices for Weblogs in the ClassroomCCCC 04)

While my suggested prompts regarding John Donne's Holy Sonnets and The Secret Life of Bees sit ignored, during the time I was giving my presentation on blogging at the 4Cs, and while I show the audience the SHU blog, I see that debate is currently raging on the subject of athletics at Seton Hill University.

Blogging puts students in the driver's seat. There's a great community of bloggers at SHU. The ride can be bumpy -- particularly if some students feel left out or attacked. But sometimes, the best thing an instructor can do is sit back and trust the students. They'll work this out, and they'll do it through writing.. what more can a writing instuctor ask?

A mattress and box springs stacked near a curb catch the professor's eye. There is some scrap metal on top of the mattress, along with a few sticks of discarded lumber. He reaches into his pocket and retrieves the small, round magnet attached to his key chain. "This," he says, "is a scrounger's most important tool." If the magnet is attracted to the metal, then it's probably iron and therefore not worth grabbing. Iron isn't worth much at the scrap yard. If the magnet is not attracted, then the metal might be aluminum, a more sought-after commodity. The magnet likes the metal, and so we leave it behind. --Thomas Bartlett explores the recycled and only occasionally stinky life of "punkass anarchist" professor Jeff Ferrell.

--The Emperor of Scrounge: A tenured professor becomes a Dumpster diver (Chronicle)

Just in case my current SHU gig doesn't work out, it's good to explore the alternatives.

A new poll suggests fears that "The Passion of the Christ" would trigger anti-Semitism were unwarranted.... A leader of Jews for Jesus considers "The Passion of the Christ" a Godsend for Jewish evangelism.... The Vatican said Pope John Paul II has met with Jim Caviezel, the actor who portrays Jesus in "The Passion of the Christ."... "60 Minutes" curmudgeon Andy Rooney's commentary about "The Passion of the Christ" has prompted a record number of angry letters and emails. --Short News Items and Archives on 'The Passion of Christ' (Click2Houston.com)

These were the men who broke out of Nazi Germany's supposedly escape-proof camp Stalag Luft III on a moonless night in March 1944, creating one of World War II's most enduring legends and inspiring a classic war film.

The Great Escape itself was 60 years ago but Squadron Leader Jimmy James, one of the 76 who escaped through the tunnel code-named Harry, clearly remembers the moments as he waited underground to scramble to freedom.

--Soldiers Relive WWII Great Escape 60 Years On (Reuters)

Ordinarily I don't like war movies, but this is definitely one of my favorites.

I think it's odd that Reuters filed it under "entertainment," but that's just my opinon.

The link will expire soon...

On a platform before a crowd of curious onlookers, the scientists eagerly ripped open a box of CDs containing data from a newly released million-second-long exposure taken by two cameras onboard the Hubble telescope, and struggled to transfer the data to nearby computers as they answered a multitude of questions shouted out by reporters and middle-school students.

So began Science Live: The Race to Decode the Hubble Ultra Deep Field Image at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

--Michelle Delio --See Astrophysicists in Captivity  (Wired)

Odd... According to the museum website, this is "an unprecedented opportunity to watch competitive space science in action, as teams of astrophysicists from the American Museum of Natural History, Columbia University, and Stony Brook University race to decode strange space objects revealed in a newly released Hubble Space Telescope image."

I wonder... if this is supposed to get kids interested in science, will they be bored when they realize that "real" science doesn't offer this kind of artificial adrenaline injection? What if a "Bill Nye the Literature Guy" dressed up in a funny costume and pretended to do literary research in front of a camera, with a modest budget for special effects and gallons of caffeine for the editors to use when they stitch the show together?

Oh, well... maybe that's what poetry slams are...

The first student chooses State University. Immediately, word spreads across campus, and high-fives are exchanged all around. "She's a fine young woman," exclaims a top university official. "And what stats! A 1520 on the SAT. A 4.0 GPA, including several advanced placement courses. She will boost the status of our chemistry department in a way that no one has for years!"

At the crosstown rival, they're stunned. "We did all we could to recruit her," says a professor, who asks not to be identified. "We flew her in on a private jet. Took her to the finest restaurants. You can't win 'em all."

Next to sign is another blue-chip prospect. Not just someone with the usual high GPA and SAT score. This one also has had six years of Arabic and an internship in the Middle East.

"We got him!" cries the chief recruiter for a top Ivy League school as soon as the student states his intentions.

[...]

On and on, the announcements come. Reporters scramble for quotes from family members. The sought-after students make brief remarks on how difficult their choices were.

Meanwhile, high school athletes go to after-school workouts as usual, dreaming, naively, that the public and media will one day place as much importance on throwing a football as on the skills that made these other students the center of attention. --Mike Revzin --If the limos were for high scores (SAT not football) (CS Monitor)

A student e-mailed me this link and suggested that I post it. Done.

You've probably seen, heard or even used the term "spamming" to refer to the act of sending unsolicited commercial email (UCE), or "spam" to refer to the UCE itself. Following is our position on the relationship between UCE and our trademark SPAM.... Let's face it. Today's teens and young adults are more computer savvy than ever, and the next generations will be even more so. Children will be exposed to the slang term "spam" to describe UCE well before being exposed to our famous product SPAM. Ultimately, we are trying to avoid the day when the consuming public asks, "Why would Hormel Foods name its product after junk e-mail?" --Spam and the Internet (Spam.com)

I can't say I'm alarmed by the notion that children will be exposed to e-spam before they taste SPAM, but this article is remarkably free of the administrative and legalistic bluster that one usually associates with companies offended by misuse of their trademarks. A tip of the hat to Hormel -- this article makes me more sympathetic to a different victim of the spam onslaught. (But the lounge-lizard music on the SPAM home page has got to go.) (Found via KairosNews.)

Culture CacheJerz's Literacy Weblog)

Part of: Princeton Video Game Conference reflections.

"Culture" was in the title of the conference, but it was only obliquely discussed, as in Peter Bell's "Hidden play," an analysis of handheld gaming culture (as compared to cultural responses to the Sony Walkman); and Greg Lastowka's "Virtual crimes," which ponders the legal ramifications of actions that have economic consequences in the real world (as evidenced by the eBay auctions of cyberspace goods and services), unlike the social transgressions examined by sociologists working in MUDs and MOOs. I felt Tevis Thompson's hymn to the action of jumping in "Tevis Thompson / But our princess is in another castle: towards a 'close-playing' of 'Super Mario Bros.'" was very useful to me, particularly since since Joust was the last jumping game that I really enjoyed). My own paper dealt, in part, with the manner in which the culture of the Cave Research Foundation (the organization through Will Crowther explored the real Colossal Cave) influenced "Colossal Cave Adventure," though in the time I had, I only managed to touch indirectly on how caving may have affected the history of game design.

Examining the '10%' MemeJerz's Literacy Weblog)

Many of my students are thinking and talking about the gay marriage issue. Johanna Dreyfuss mentioned the "10%" statistic, citing the Kinsey report, via http://www.socal-glide.org/statistics.html.

I've encountered this statistic in student papers before, so I know that Kinsey didn't actually claim that 10% of the population was gay. According to The Kinsey Institiute, "10% of males were more or less exclusively homosexual and 8% of males were exclusively homosexual for at least three years between the ages of 16 and 55. For females, Kinsey reported a range of 2-6% for more or less exclusively homosexual experience/response."

That's not the same thing as saying 10% of the population is gay, but it's much less quotable. Just like a student who has already written a research paper that defends his or her position, any advocacy groups looking for statistics to support their views will emphasize the evidence that supports their position best, and often completely ignore evidence that calls their convictions into question.

I haven't read any of the Kinsey reports, but I am aware of the controversy over his research methods. In one study, he measured the number of ograsms that juvenile male subjects have during a timed period -- and this study included children from age 14 to 5 months. One of Kinsey's former associates says the research included collecting information from trained volunteers who had experience. Or, to give the same statement a shocking "spin" -- that is, they worked over an extended period of time with pedophiles who used stopwatches to observe "partners" as young as 5 months.

Dr. Judith Reiseman writes,

Kinsey fathered not only the sexual revolution, as Hugh Hefner and others have said, but the homosexual revolution as well. Harry Hay gave Kinsey that credit when Hay read in 1948 that Kinsey found "10%" of the male population homosexual. Following the successful path of the Black Civil Rights movement, Hay, a long-time communist organizer, said 10% was a political force which could be melded into a "sexual minority" only seeking "minority rights." With Kinsey as the wind in his sails, Hay formed the Mattachine Society.

But 26% (1,400) of Kinsey's alleged 5,300 white male subjects were already "sex offenders."[34] As far as the data can be established, an additional 25% were incarcerated prisoners; some numbers were big city "pimps," "hold-up men," "thieves;" roughly 4% were male prostitutes as well as sundry other criminals; and some hundreds of homosexual activists at various "gay bars" and other haunts from coast to coast.[35] This group of social outcasts and deviants were then redefined by the Kinsey team as representing your average "Joe College." With adequate press and university publicity, the people believed what they were told by our respectable scientists, that mass sexual perversion was common nationwide-so our sex education and our laws must be changed to reflect Kinsey's "reality." -- Kinsey and the Homosexual Revolution

So... regardless of whether you agree that people found in gay bars are "social outcasts and deviants," the study of 5300 white males included 26% who were "sexual offenders" and 25% who were "incarcerated prisoners".

I'd have to read the study myself to determine whether Kisney would count a prisoner who is serving a jail term of three years, and who is raped by his fellow-prisoners on one occasion, would count as having sexual experiences that are "more or less exclusively homosexual" during that three-year period.

But look out -- Dr. Reiseman is a professor of communication, she is not an expert in human sexuality; her area of expertise is not human sexuality, but how selected details of the Kinsey studies have been publicized by certain advocacy groups, to the point where nowadays few people bother to question them. She is president of "The Institute for Media Education," and she writes books and gives talks on the subject of fraudulent sexuality studies; thus, she's made a career out of debunking Kinsey's research. Those details may affect how you accept the evidence she chooses to present, but you should be equally critical of the way people who support Kinsey's claims present Kinsey's research. (See www.drjudithreisman.org.)

No matter what your position on whatever issue, be skeptical of statistics that you hear someone cite on TV or that you find online. I think supporters of gay marriage should stay far away from the 10% statistic.

The Nietzschean diet, which commands its adherents to eat superhuman amounts of whatever they most fear, is developing a strong following in America. ... "One must strive to eat dangerously as one comes into the Will to Power Oneself Thin," Nietzsche wrote. "What do you fear? By this are you truly Fattened. You must embrace your Fears, as well as your Fat, and learn to Laugh as you consume them, along with Generous Portions of Simple Salad. Remember, as you stare into the lettuce, the lettuce stares also into you." --New Nietzchean Diet Lets You Eat Whatever You Fear Most (The Onion (Satire))

The notion that women want to be with their kids is crucial to the logic of de Marneffe'sargument. With it, she inverts the whole Friedanian case against domesticity. In de Marneffe'sview, it is a mistake to equate staying at home with forgoing an adult identity, because it is precisely in caring for children that an adult identity is forged. (As I write this, my five-year-old twins are marching around the house, naked, singing, ?Ants! Ants! Ants wear underpants!?) She realizes that this notion may strike some as hopelessly regressive; however, she assures us, it is not. --Elizabeth Kolbert --Mother Courage: Kids, Career and Culture (The New Yorker)

Note the hilarious parenthetical aside.

The final paragraph of this review highlights classist assumptions that, according to the author, define the modern women's movement, which seems to include arrangements by which women who want careers outside of the home purchase the services of women to replace them as caregivers and housekeepers. Presumably, these working-class women work, not out of a personal desire, but out of financial necessity.

For many under 30, the host of Comedy Central's "The Daily Show" is, improbably, an important news source.

A poll released earlier this year by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found that 21 percent of people aged 18 to 29 cited "The Daily Show" and "Saturday Night Live" as a place where they regularly learned presidential campaign news.

--Young America's news source: Jon Stewart (CNN)

I blogged this Pew report on the NMJ@SHU site a while ago, but it's interesting to read CNN's response:

Random conversations with nine people, aged 19 to 26, waiting to see a taping of "The Daily Show" last week revealed two who admitted they learned much about the news from the program.

The word "random" downplays the obvious bias involved in interviewing people who like Jon Stewart enough to want to be in his studio audience. A good news editor would be on the lookout for things that might be easily misinterpreted.

I reworked the draft, adding some charts and tables to demonstrate that the program wouldn't require any new dollars. But mostly I substituted abstract nouns for concrete ones, stuffed sentences with nominalizations, and replaced active verbs with passives, violating the rules of writing that students in the M.F.A. program would be expected to follow. --Dennis Baron --New Programs, New Problems (Chronicle)

Note: I added the above links.

I'm not part of Seton Hill's MFA program, but as the "new media journalism" specialist I was hired to take a leadership role in getting the NMJ program off the ground.

Planning for the program was well underway when I was hired, so my role was mostly writing up or otherwise wrangling together syllabi to flesh out the 8 or so new courses in the NMJ curriculum. Two of the courses hit administrative snags that John never fully explained to me, aside from glancing in the direction of the administration building and giving a sad little sigh every time I brought it up. For a sample syllabus on "New Media Aesthetics," I had offered a special topic course on "The Documentary Film" because I thought it would fit better in a journalism program, because I thought it would be easier to explain that course to non-experts, and because it's a genre that interests me; but cinema also fits in with art and communications, so the proposal set up a red flag.

John was very encouraging when I suggested that I supply a version of the syllabus that focused on digital culture instead.

He handled all the final paperwork details for the new slate of courses. As the deadline approached, I sent him an e-mail with about 12 files in different formats, and he filled out all the forms, checking the right boxes and, I presume, providing the right amount of administrativese.