Humanities: April 2005 Archive Page

He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it -- namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain. If he had been a great and wise philosopher, like the writer of this book, he would now have comprehended that Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and that Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do. And this would help him to understand why constructing artificial flowers or performing on a tread-mill is work, while rolling ten-pins or climbing Mont Blanc is only amusement. --Samuel Clemens --The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

I recently mentioned playing "The Obedience Game" instead of watching TV. Mike Arnzen asked for the rules.

The game itself isn't all that complex. It's like Simon Says, without the potentially confusing part about having to say "Simon Says" first.

So, a typical session of The Obedience Game involves commands such as "sing a song," "go stand against the wall," "recite a poem," "hug your sister," "jump up and down five times," and "say three nice things about Mommy."

I might occasionally slip in some tasks such as "Practice your recital piece" or "Put away three pink toys," and healthy routines and good behavior become part of an enjoyable communal activity, not a terrible chore. (Hence the quotation from Tom Sawyer).

What really makes it fun for the kids, however, is that they get a turn to order Daddy around, too. Carolyn, who turned three this month, particularly enjoys the sense of power.

Peter is also starting to experiment with practical requests, such as last night, when it was his turn, but he was tired of the game, so his command to me was "Play hide and seek."

The game developed when Peter was a toddler out on the playground. I learned that, if I periodically called him over for no reason other than to give him a hug and tell him he was good, he was far more likely to listen to me when I needed to redirect his behavior.

When we're waiting in line in the grocery store or at the DMV, invoking The Obedience Game is usually good for about ten or fifteen minutes. Sometimes Carolyn will request it herself. I try not gloat at the expressions of strangers who marvel at how much my kids enjoy taking orders.

On the other hand, when he's feeling particularly obstreperous (a word he's known since he was three), the boy has gotten pretty good at passive resistance, minimal compliance, and various forms of psychological warfare ("I wish Mommy were in charge today.") (And yes, he actually did use the subjunctive "were" instead of "was.")

None of these dedicated reporters and editors is paid for their efforts. In fact, most of them don’t know the first thing about professional journalism. All however are as passionate about their craft as the top earners at the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, Fox News or the BBC. What’s more, they’re convinced they can offer better journalism than anything professional news organizations currently supply; one stripped of all bias, covering areas long ago neglected by a mainstream media and produced by thousands of committed citizen correspondents all over the world. This is the dream of Wikinews.

Objectivity, no political agenda and the puritanical pursuit of truth? Surely that’s a pipedream? It’s certainly not a historical trait of American media. Yet if the lessons of the last year have taught us anything, it is that we dismiss citizen journalism at our peril.

[...]

“We were both kinda addicted to Star Wars Galaxies,” explains Ilya a little defensively. “I would travel [in the game] and claim I was with the press so they shouldn’t shoot me. But they still did.”

It’s not being glib to say that Ilya’s Star Wars Galaxy experience translates well to Wikinews. All the interactive and community skills that today’s 20-somethings have learned online provide the underpinning of this new participatory media. And given all the time and effort Ilya spent “practicising” being a journalist – learning style guides and how to structure a news story, who’s to say he’s any less equipped to start plying the trade than many journalism graduates? --Matthew Yeomans
--The Birth of WikiNews (Citrizens Kane)

Professors see the world in terms of experts and students: "We are smart; you are dumb." That's the Infantile American Principle in a nutshell. Now go play with your toys and don't bother me. --David Gelernter --The 'We're Smart, You're Dumb' Principle (LA Times (will expire))

The article is really a critique of Democratic philosophy, but I thought I'd post this quote about professors as a reminder that I should stay humble.

I don't agree that professors should behave this way, but because our job regularly places us in the front of a room of bright people who nod and write down things that we say, it's important to remember the artificiality of the situation. I mean, if civilization collapses, and we're all scrambling for food, who's going to care that there's a typographical error on the last non-radioactive can of soup? I sure won't. So let's keep things in perspective.

Gelernter himself is a professor, so he's not just lobbing missiles randomly.

A gauzy Skein of Propylene --
That sways with slightest Breath --
This bag holds smocks -- and Bread and Milk
But -- in its folds -- lies Death.
It sways and puffs -- this Thistledown, Balloonlike in its joy --
Each tiny mouth a perfect fit -- This bag is not a toy.

-- Emily Dickinson --Rewrite some banal instructions in the style of some famous writer (Washington Post)

Not. From an oldie-but-goodie Washington Post Style Invitational. (Via So you want to start blogging...)

The game scene is resorting to faddish ideas from years ago to try to appear original. I'm surprised they haven't come out with Pet Rock software yet.

None of this will save a doomed industry. The business is going to attempt to sustain growth and creativity by making game players buy newer and newer machines. Computer gaming has always been sustained by never-ending improvements in resolution and realism. But once we get to photorealism, what is going to sustain growth?

That time is drawing near. We are already getting pre-hype for the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 2, as well as the new Nintendo. All this will do is make the visuals more lifelike and the blood and gore more realistic and nauseating. While the kids who are used to this "progress" may not be put off by it, newcomers may be repulsed and skip these new generations of machines altogether.

If that doesn't flatten the market, the never-ending need to satisfy the demanding full-time game-player should do it. --John C. Dvorak --Doom 4: End of the Game Industry?  (PC Mag.com)

Predictably, Dvorak's getting trashed by twitch-thumbed gamers on Slashdot, but Dvorak's curmudgeonly demeanor is only endearing to a point.

Telling ourselves we have "so much" to do and that it is "so hard" and that we'll "never get done" is conterproductive. Instead of talking about these things we should just haul off and do them!

And don't let friends that don't get this concept to drag you down with them. Let them list their tribulations, if they must, but tell them you're sure they'll get it done and that they'll be fine. Because they will. And so will you; but you are much better off not trying to play "anything-you-have-I-have-it-worse" game. That isn't getting anyone anywhere. --Karissa Kilgore --We're all working hard... comparatively.... (New Media Journalism @ Seton Hill University)

I've had Karissa as a student in several classes. Like everyone else at school this week, she's facing a mountain of work.

Her positive attitude is refreshing and welcome.

Adams had a knack for describing thorny space-time problems and then squeezing them until they sprayed out juicy absurdity. The novels could be silly -- Adams was a comedy writer -- but they also made dark sport of humans' self-importance. We look pretty small, he constantly reminded us, against the backdrop of a nearly infinite galaxy. --Jason Silverman --One Thumb Up for Hitchhiker  (Wired)

A while ago I blogged a review that trashed the movie, so it only seems fair to blog a more positive one. I still think I'll pass on this one.

Professors, in general, have the luxury of appearing moderate and open to competing ideas, but insecure students often research the opinions of faculty members to ensure that they will be on the correct side of any apparently open dialogue. The powerless seize on small expressions of political opinion from the powerful and embrace these views even more radically in order to prove their loyalty and worthiness.

Of course, most of us probably didn't recognize that we were latecomers to the grad-school pyramid scheme. Theory with a capital T grew up with the expansion of graduate programs and the adjunctification of higher education during the last 30 years. It was a ticket to success for a charmed circle of insiders: a few people at elite institutions with the connections and advance knowledge to get in and out of the game before the general rush. The language of theory -- carefully deployed in the world of academic hiring and publication -- still functions in ways that suggest the sub rosa communications of Ivy League clubmen in the world of investment banking.

By the turn of the millennium, however, the jargon-laden writing was on the wall. Shoeshine boys were talking about Jacques Derrida. You could buy books on Theory at Wal-Mart with a six-pack of Zima and an "Indigo Girls" T-shirt.

And now it seems like everyone is rushing to get out with what's left of their devalued stock. Famous scholars such as Henry Louis Gates, Homi Bhabha, and Terry Eagleton have announced that "theory is dead." Of course, at this late date, it's as if our leaders have emerged from months of concentrated thought to announce that Jefferson Starship is no longer on the cutting edge of popular music. --"Thomas H. Benton" --Life After the Death of Theory (Chronicle)

I had the very same alienating experience with one particular theory class at the University of Virginia, though I also remember some very productive courses with E.D. "Cultural Literacy" Hirsch and Arthur "Shakespeare" Kirsch, among others.

In Hirsch's class, a history of critical theory, there were two philosophy students who frequently arrived about 10 minutes late, walked all the way across the lecture hall to their seat right next to the instructor's desk, and dominated the post-lecture Q & A sessions by arguing philosophical points with Hirsch. Once I actually went up to Hirsch after class and asked that he not let those students dominate the discussion, though in retrospect I'm sure that if I had simply raised my hand to ask a good question, he'd have gladly called on me. I was such a putz.

Kirsch's class was very much in demand. As a culling technique, he required students to write a 10-page paper every other week. What a way to ensure a dedicated student roster!

At Toronto, I got a good grip on a first-semester course, "History of the English Language," and also took a course on bibliography (which was more than research -- it was also an introduction to the history of books). I loved those classes, and I remember that they shook up some of my classmates. These were Ph.D. students who confessed they didn't know the difference between an article and a preposition. A bibliography course is even more necessary now. At the time, most of the grad students probably remember switching from writing papers long-hand to composing them on the computer, but that's probably not the case today.

My dissertation adviser, F. J. Marker, characterized me as a "theory refugee." Fortunately for me, he was a theater historian with a joint appointment to the English department, so that wasn't a problem to him.

Among my classmates, there were plenty instances of posturing and tunnel vision. As an American who had lived in Virginia all his life, I found myself in an interesting position in a class on Southern American lit, being offered at a Canadian institution.

One fellow, with steely blue eyes and long, flowing Jesus hair, got very excited about Foucault. He could "do theory" like there was no tomorrow. Years later, he told me that a library worker had cleared out his library carrel, throwing out a draft of his dissertation in the process. He said something about filing a lawsuit against that employee and the university. (Didn't he keep a backup? Hadn't he ever heard "Jesus Saves"?)

Another guy was planning to do a computer-assisted textual analysis of The Canterbury Tales (Or was it Paradise Lost?). I thought it was a cool idea, and at the time I was working on a computer project involving medieval drama. While my fiancée did end up joining me in Toronto, I had left behind a big network of friends in Virginia, and I was very lonely that first year in Toronto all by myself. So, one day after class, I asked this guy if he wanted to go out for coffee. He thought about it, then said he had some work to do instead. I later saw him in the library, reading. I never spoke to him again.

I feel like a hypocrite as I write this, but a student to whom I was polite and respectful seemed to get the idea that we were soulmates. She spouted theory left and right, interspersed with the occasional unthinking anti-American remark (which seemed almost obligatory in Canada at the time). For instance, when some text we were discussing featured rather violent and sexual language, this student noted that the author lived in such-and-such a town, and that near the town was an American military base, so it made sense to her that the author had picked up that language from the U.S. soldiers. Every couple weeks, she would call me up and share with me her latest outrages and department gossip. I was always polite, but never reciprocated. After several years, she stopped calling.

One student from Europe launched a whole interpretation of a story (written by a black author) on the premise that one family was white and another was black, and that the white family was oppressing the black one. When I pointed out that the mother of the "white" family used the "n" word to describe her own son, my fellow student paused, blinked, then suggested that the "white" mother was just demonstrating her racism by using a racial epithet against her son. When I pointed out several dialectical similarities between the way the two families talked, and when I showed how both families spoke in a completely different way from a group of characters who are described in the text as being white, he stuck to his guns. He was so interested in defending his interpretation that, when I asked him whether it was at all possible -- under any circumstances -- to use dialect to identify the race of a character in fiction, he said "no." So much for textual criticism.

The one time I made a sudden connection over a literary text was a complete accident. In one of my classes, we were about to discuss some W. H. Auden poetry. I think I was scheduled to be the "respondent" to a paper written by another student. A few days before the class period, I saw her in the halls and said, "Do you want to go to the lounge and talk about Auden?"

The woman did a double-take, then flashed a confused smile.

I realized she wasn't who I thought she was. "Whoops, My mistake," I sputtered.

She was still smiling.

"I think I just accidentally hit on you, didn't I?"

She laughed. "I was about to say, 'yes!'"

Looking back, I am a bit saddened that I spent so little time talking about literature, and so much time fretting over my own shaky grasp of theory. It was a love of books and writing that led me to grad school. Between classes in my first year or so, I read a list of books on my own, so that I could pass a series of written tests. I also studied -- alone -- for a German test. Maybe I just remember it that way, because talking about the literature wasn't hard, but reading, making sense of, and then talking about the theory was a challenge. I suppose we needed to spend that time practicing our ability to "do criticism."

I enjoy spending time with the grad students and other young professionals I've met via blogs or via CCCC meetings, since they are so literate in the theory of their fields. Reading Mike Vitia or Clancy Ratliff reminds me of the best things I took away from my graduate seminars. (Hmm... it looks like Clancy has been goofing off a bit lately, but that's okay -- she deserves it.)

For decades, we've worked under the assumption that mass culture follows a path declining steadily toward lowest-common-denominator standards, presumably because the ''masses'' want dumb, simple pleasures and big media companies try to give the masses what they want. But as that ''24'' episode suggests, the exact opposite is happening: the culture is getting more cognitively demanding, not less. To make sense of an episode of ''24,'' you have to integrate far more information than you would have a few decades ago watching a comparable show. Beneath the violence and the ethnic stereotypes, another trend appears: to keep up with entertainment like ''24,'' you have to pay attention, make inferences, track shifting social relationships. This is what I call the Sleeper Curve: the most debased forms of mass diversion -- video games and violent television dramas and juvenile sitcoms -- turn out to be nutritional after all.

I believe that the Sleeper Curve is the single most important new force altering the mental development of young people today, and I believe it is largely a force for good: enhancing our cognitive faculties, not dumbing them down. And yet you almost never hear this story in popular accounts of today's media. --Steven Johnson --Watching TV Makes You Smarter (NY Times (will expire))

Just in time for TV Turn-off Week.

Johnson introduces daytime soap operas late in this article, after describing the narrative thread of Hill Street Blues. But that show, along with Dallas and others of a similar ilk, were billed as "nighttime soaps," so Johnson's decision to withhold that bit of information creates the appearance of a complexity that doesn't really need to be there. Of course, that's the choice of the author -- what are you going to withhold as part of the payoff, what will you give away in order to tease your audience.

The Love Boat featured two or three plots that dealt with visiting passengers, one of which typically involved one member of the recurring cast, and if memory serves, there was also a comic subplot dealing with the crew. But M*A*S*H (1971-1983) was a half-hour show that featured two or sometimes three plots happening at once, all designed to give the strong cast of supporting characters something to do (especially in later years, as the show got less farcical and more dramatically experimental).

Johnson's book, from which this article is an excerpt, will doubtless cover more ground. I'm not so sure that passively consuming television is the same thing as reading, but as Johnson notes, some of the best TV on today brings with it a plethora of fan websites and other forms of interacting with the primary narrative. I'll withhold my final judgement until I've read more, but I'm looking forward to it.

It's cute that those friends think the academic job search is anything at all like other job searches, in which you have a reasonable hope of living in a region you find desirable and getting work commensurate with your qualifications. They don't realize how someone intelligent, competent, and disciplined enough to earn a Ph.D. can be utterly desperate, forced to apply for every job advertised and to take anything offered. --Jonathan Malesic --No Longer a Desperado (Chronicle)

For some reason, a good chunk of the freshmen in my Intro to Literary Study class are talking about grad school this year. I want to be encouraging, but also realistic. What Malesic says about a religous studies Ph.D. applies equally well to an English Ph.D.

I discovered an abandoned deposit in my company owned by one of our Outer Rim customers who died along with his entire family as a result of an landspeeder crash. He actually deposited this funds amounting to IC12,000,000,000.00 (Twelve billion Imperial Credits), for safe keeping in my company here in Mos Eisley. Company file records shows that the funds was actually for a project our late costumer wanted to start in the near future (a multi million Dollar Spice plant in Kessel), before his sudden and untimely death. As such since his death none of his relations or next-of-kin has come forward to lay claims for this property as the heir, this is the basically the reason why I have contacted you. My company cannot release the roperty unless someone applies for claim as the next-of-kin to the deceased as indicated in our operating guidelines. --PRIVATE AND URGENT (The Darth Side)

Amusing comment posted to Darth Vader's blog. ("Tomorrow I may strangle General Veers.")

Professor Ernesto wants to talk about plagiarism in student papers. Floor open.
Questions: Is there really a problem here? (Smythe)
Professor Ernesto: What?s the percentage of student work that?s suspect? Really, that high? Why don?t we just castrate their damn laptops? That?s obviously where it?s coming from.
Professor Dale notes that the act of appropriation may sometimes be an homage.
Professor Ernesto grabs Professor Dale?s briefcase and shakes out all the papers. Yells, ?This is an act of appropriation, not an homage!?
Professor Dale threatens to deconstruct Professor Ernesto.
The chair brings the meeting to order again. Directs task force of Professors Dale and Ernesto to look jointly into student plagiarism. --David Galef --Last Week?s English Department Meeting (Inside Higher Ed)

We've got an English faculty meeting tomorrow...

"Their parents posted 'Baby on Board' signs in their cars. They have been protected as children. Their free time was replaced by organized activities and structured programs. They have a high need for achievement and attention," said Xavier spokeswoman Kelly Leon.

She said this generation prefers learning from hands-on experience, craves technology-generated education, and feels comfortable working in teams.

"Millennial students do not learn in the traditional ways of 50, 30 or even 10 years ago," said Xavier President Michael Graham. "We need to adapt our campus to their needs and changing times." --'Smart' classrooms, ritzy dorms lure 'Millennials' (Cincinnati.com)

Via Joanne Jacobs.

Our time here may be fleeting ("Out, out brief candle!") but footnotes are not supposed to be. When online citations extinguish, every discipline is befouled, because replication, at the heart of the research process, becomes difficult without stable archiving, which libraries used to provide.

It was called a book shelf, as in Shakespeare's day. --Michael Bugeja --Such Stuff as Footnotes Are Made On (Inside Higher Ed)

Your Linguistic Profile:

55% General American English

30% Yankee

10% Upper Midwestern

5% Dixie

0% Midwestern

What Kind of American English Do You Speak?

--What Kind of American English Do You Speak?

PR is not dishonest. Not quite. In fact, the reason the best PR firms are so effective is precisely that they aren't dishonest. They give reporters genuinely valuable information. A good PR firm won't bug reporters just because the client tells them to; they've worked hard to build their credibility with reporters, and they don't want to destroy it by feeding them mere propaganda.

If anyone is dishonest, it's the reporters. The main reason PR firms exist is that reporters are lazy. Or, to put it more nicely, overworked. Really they ought to be out there digging up stories for themselves. But it's so tempting to sit in their offices and let PR firms bring the stories to them. After all, they know good PR firms won't lie to them.

A good flatterer doesn't lie, but tells his victim selective truths (what a nice color your eyes are). Good PR firms use the same strategy: they give reporters stories that are true, but whose truth favors their clients.

[...]

We estimated, based on some fairly informal math, that there were about 5000 stores on the Web. We got one paper to print this number, which seemed neutral enough. But once this "fact" was out there in print, we could quote it to other publications, and claim that with 1000 users we had 20% of the online store market. --Paul Graham --The Submarine (PaulGraham.com)

In the interests of teaching kids not to be gluttons, CTW has transformed Cookie Monster into just another monster who happens to like cookies. His trademark song, "C is for Cookie" has been changed to "A Cookie Is a Sometimes Food." And this is a complete and total reversal of Cookie Monster's ontology, his telos, his raison d'etre, his essential Cookie-Monster-ness.

If the Cookie Monster is no longer a cookie monster, what is he? Why didn't they just name him "Phil: The Monster Who Sometimes Likes to Eat a Cookie"? --Jonah Goldberg --Let Cookie Monster be Cookie Monster (Townhall.com)

Tradition has it that William Shakespeare was born on 23rd April, three days prior to his baptism recorded at Holy Trinity Church in 1564. The 23rd April is also the date of his death in Stratford aged 52. Shakespeare�s birthday was first celebrated in 1824 with a procession through the streets to Holy Trinity Church, a dinner and a few speeches. Over the years the tradition has grown to include many of the unique features that are still integral to the celebrations today. --Shakespeare's Birthday Celebrations (shakespeare.org.uk)

[A] de-emphasis in the academy in recent years on the formal elements of poetry, in favor of the social, legal, historic, and cultural background to literature, has meant that even doctoral candidates in English need not concern themselves overly with poetic form. Another quick but, I think, telling example: I was serving on a panel of poetry judges, and as the panel proceeded to deliberate, one judge, a university professor and poet, chimed in to say that I and another of our colleagues seemed to be paying a lot of attention to the language in the poems. It was never entirely clear to me what was meant by this statement, but I suspect that the implication was that, in carefully examining a poet’s deployment of words, I had failed to give proper weight to the poet’s biography as it was suggested by the poems. --David Yezzi --The Fortunes of Formalism (New Criterion)

I teach blank verse (iambic pentameter), and required my Intro to Literary Study students to write sonnets. The poets in the class overwhelmingly prefer free verse, but enough "got into" the exercises that I consider the experience a success.

I'm a much better poetry editor than a poet. When I do write verse, it's solely to play with form. That's almost the opposite of the student poets whose feeling gush forth into their keyboards.

Students in my upper-level Media Aesthetics class have started exchanging glances and smirking every time I bring up T.S. Eliot -- a formalist who knew the rules well enough to break them to pieces when he needed to. ("Wallala leialala" anyone?)

I am BOTH a teacher who gets papers from students AND a freelance writer who is receiving solicitations for writing them for students. (If I were truly entrepreneurial, I would design a paper so difficult that students would be likely to turn to professionals for "work for hire," then take their job offers under a pseudonym, and write the papers myself -- which would not only net me some easy $ but also make them oh so very easy to grade. Hah!) --Mike Arnzen --The Work-for-Hire Plagiarist (Pedablogue)

Nogroski presented his results before the entire fifth-grade science community Monday, in partial fulfillment of his seventh-period research project. According to the review panel, which convened in the lunchroom Tuesday, "Otters" was fundamentally flawed by Nogroski's failure to identify a significant research gap.

"When Mike said, 'Otters,' I almost puked," said 11-year-old peer examiner Lacey Swain, taking the lettuce out of her sandwich. "Why would you want to spend a whole page talking about otters?" --Fifth-Grade Science Paper Doesn't Stand Up To Peer Review (The Onion (satire; will expire))

Thanks for the suggestion, Will.

The Wall Street Journal on April 11 wrote that ?despite the occasional controversial article, many of the reader-written sites look more like church bulletin boards than, say, the New York Times.?

Let?s not dismiss church bulletin boards. When I wrote editorials in Omaha, Neb., I watched a Republican candidate win his way into Congress via a campaign conducted mostly on church bulletin boards. I suspect that in the most recent U.S. presidential election, church bulletin boards delivered far more votes than the New York Times did. We should hope that our work rises to the level of influence and inspires the loyalty of a church bulletin board. --Robert Niles -- Printer-friendly version Virtual roundtable: Grassroots journalism leaders discuss the nitty-gritty (Online Journalism Review)

From the intro to a "virtual roundtable" with Mike Noe, Lauren Ward, and Lex Alexander, " some people who actually are making grassroots journalism work for their publications."

Every grader of blue books was once a writer of blue books, so it might help to think about the process from that end.

I remember, with particular shame, a certain undergraduate essay exam of my own for a course in "Modern Moral Philosophy." The professor was Philippa Foot, who must have been in her early 60s at the time. I was wholly convinced by her attempt to renew Aristotelian virtue ethics (I still am), and that was part of the problem.

In answer to her essay question, I parroted her anti-Humean line without really making much of an argument -- as if I were an academic peer chit-chatting or a grad student sucking up. In the margin next to precisely the paragraph where I should have made some substantive argument, she wrote in her strong cursive hand, "But why was Hume wrong here?" and gave me a B or maybe even a B-, along with a note at the end of the exam expressing measured disappointment.

At the time, I was ashamed for having failed to really "do philosophy," as we were taught to say. Now I am ashamed for a different reason. How could I have wasted her time like that?

Professor Foot -- after a good 30 or so years of serious teaching, writing, and thinking, and at 25 years past my present age -- was still correcting the glib meanderings of 19-year-olds. As a student, I owed her more, and as a teacher I wonder whether I will practice the same patience and attention to detail (two of the pedagogical virtues) when I am at that stage of my career.

[...]

I know that the blue book and ballpoint pen are aging technologies, and that the hastily scrawled essay is probably on its way out. But I doubt there is a sound replacement for the requirement of a carefully composed essay on an assigned topic, written in two to three hours, whatever the technology. --Abe Socher --Grading Blues (Chronicle)

When was the last time you stretched your arms, locked your fingers together with palms facing out, and executed a satisfying snap before channeling your energies into a one-on-one encounter? I am not referring to the clicking of a mouse button, which is about as immersive as punching a warm soda from a vending machine. I am referring to your hands poised above the keyboard, your eyes glued to the monitor, and your torso leaning forward in the classic "game player position." Interacting with this game is similar to telling a gorgeous waitress your lips are parched, and her serving you a tall, wet glass filled with cold, fizzling soda and just the right amount of ice. It involves more than your basic senses; it involves your entire self. True, the game is built on convention: exploring pre-rendered environments, collecting items, solving puzzles, and opening new areas of the game, but it also turns convention on its ear while keeping its tongue firmly in cheek. The text parser forces you to interact with the game, pulling you into the solving of puzzles rather than allowing you to click your way to a resolution, the characters help or hinder the outcome of the game, depending on the nature of your interactions, and the carefully constructed game realm is the sum and substance of logic. Yet impregnating the entire concept, including the graphics, sounds, characters, architecture and puzzles, is a genuine sense of humor that is never forced. --Starship Titanic (review) (Adrenaline Vault)

Wonderfully sensual paragraph from a review of this 1998 graphic adventure game.

Theater owners are in three different businesses: showing movies; showing advertisements--previews, which must be shown as part of their contract, don't generate any revenue--and selling popcorn and soft drinks. The only business that makes a profit for them is the third, so it makes sense to cater to teenage males, who gobble the most popcorn and slurp the most soda. This demographic is reputed not to give a hoot if the picture is fuzzy and dim, as long as they can see the explosions.

[...]

It's hard to imagine even Wal-Mart imposing the kind of rules that made the Hays Office ridiculous, such as requiring married couples to be depicted sleeping in twin beds. But does freedom always improve art? Or to put it more provocatively, does censorship always hurt it? What is the proper place of public morality in popular art? Is it different from the place of morality in elite art? What is the appropriate standard by which to judge Hollywood movies?

[...]

But like the new censorship, the new technology raises the quality question. The advent of the DVD has paralleled that of the CD. Not only has it influenced the packaging of new material, it has stimulated the re-packaging of old. We may regard with mixed feelings the prospect of buying our favorite childhood TV shows in immaculate-looking boxed sets, but that is only the tip of the marketing iceberg. The DVD is making whole libraries of movies as available and accessible as the paperback made whole libraries of books. Will this help to educate the public about the history of film, thereby developing its taste and improving quality overall? Or will it degrade taste by reducing the experience of watching a movie to something you can do any time, anywhere, on your ever-miniaturizing laptop? (Lawrence of Arabia . . . Coming soon to a video phone near you!)

Granted, it is probably too soon to assess the aesthetic impact of the DVD--not to mention the whole "digital revolution" of which the DVD is but the leading edge. But Epstein's reluctance to address the quality issue also hobbles his attempts to come to grips with the enormous change that stands at the heart of his study: the one that occurred in the late 1940s and early 1950s, when the power in Hollywood shifted away from the moguls who founded the studios and toward the top stars, the top directors, and the agents who perfected that power in the new "art of the deal."

[...]

Speaking of the theater, it might be worth taking a moment to consider how Epstein's mode of analysis would illuminate that realm. The theater industry, if you'll pardon the expression, is a lot older than the movie industry. But think of all the regime changes it has gone through. In ancient Greece, it was part of a religious festival sponsored by aristocratic citizens who competed fiercely for performance spots and prizes. In Rome, it was the plaything of plutocrats, who cared more about the lavish special effects than about the drama (sound familiar?). In ninth-century Europe, plays were performed in church by priests. In Renaissance Italy, there was the elegant proscenium of Aleotti and the funky commedia dell'arte of the streets. In Elizabethan England, the Globe Theater was run as a profit-making venture by entrepreneurial actors and other investors. The French bourgeoisie plunked down good francs to see realistic drama. And in spite of themselves, the Communists gave the world Bertolt Brecht and the post-Revolution Moscow Art Theater. What is the point? To quote one of those entrepreneurial actors, "The play's the thing." Under all of these regimes, the theater has been dominated by a lot of junk. (Even the Globe Theater featured bear-baiting on off nights.) But in most eras, the junk has been punctuated by a few great works, which is why we bother to pay attention at all. --Martha Bayles reviews Edward Jay Epstein's The New Logic of Money and Power in Hollywood --Hollywood Means Business  (The Weekly Standard)

There's even a passage in this review that defends Patrick Stewart as an accomplished stage actor. Bayles knows her stuff.

M: An argument isn't just contradiction.
A: It can be.
M: No it can't. An argument is a connected series of statements intended to establish a proposition.
A: No it isn't.
M: Yes it is! It's not just contradiction.
A: Look, if I argue with you, I must take up a contrary position.
M: Yes, but that's not just saying 'No it isn't.'
A: Yes it is!
M: No it isn't! --The Argument Sketch [Monty Python]

You can’t consider yourself a moral person and at the same time allow the field of education to replace well-designed instruction on tough and important material (what it takes to sustain a democracy, how to read accurately and with deep comprehension) with superficial coverage of dumbed-down subjects.

You can’t spend your life in silence, smiling in a collegial (brain-dead) way, while a thousand schools of education celebrate themselves for being “stewards of America’s children” as they turn out new teachers whose heads are filled with nonsense (“pedagogy”) and who have no idea how--exactly and effectively--to teach anything. --What Got Me Started Was This Kid in a Cub Scout Uniform (EducatioNation)

Strong words.

I don't teach in an ed program, so I'm looking at this from the outside.

At Seton Hill, ed students must major in a subject besides education, so when I do teach education majors, they are usually double-majoring in English. On the other hand, one of my classes has a large proportion of education majors who aren't terribly thrilled by the fact that they have to take several English courses (even if they don't plan to teach English). But I take this as a sign that our ed program holds students up to high standards.

Of course, computer games and the machines they run on have changed enormously since Zork first appeared in 1980. But I can't say that the games are any more entertaining.

Playing Zork and some of the other games of the day that were called "interactive fiction" was like reading a "Lord of the Rings" book for the first time. You could be transported to a strange and mystical world and caught up in a powerful and addictive story. --Ric Manning --The magic is back  (Courier Journal)

For the few seconds between the announcement that Ratzinger was named pope, and the announcement of his choice of name, the Wikipedia entry was titled Pope Joseph... I just happened to catch it on the fly (it was changed before I could update it)... --Stephen Downes, in a comment. --How the Community Can Work, Fast (Dan Gillmor on Grassroots Journalism, Etc.)

That's some fast work on the part of the Wikipedians...

OTBs, or "Outside The Boxers," as they call themselves, are unconventional thinkers who believe "there are no stupid ideas," Lessjo says. "We really just wanted to know what would happen if Civil War soldiers fought the crew from 'Star Trek.' You never see that in the movies or TV reruns." --Tim Chitwood --A battle outside the box (Leger-Enquirer)

What happened? The unspoken hierarchy of obsessive-compulsive subcultures was laid bare for all to see.

First the Confederates said they wouldn't associate with "Trekkies," and the Star Trek fans said they preferred "Trekkers." The Confederates all laughed, and "that right there got things off on the wrong foot," Lessjo says.

(Make sure you read the fine print at the end of the article.)

"God forbid, if someone shot the President, which network would you turn to? It will be cable, the Internet--something other than General Hospital being interrupted." --Sam Donaldson, former ABC News anchor --Donaldson: Network News Dead (BroadcastingCable.com)

The school argued a need for it's services by citing lower test scores in Marlborough, Hudson, Maynard and Clinton than in surrounding areas.

Set to open it's doors in the fall to 276 sixth- and seventh- grade students, the charter school plans to expand it's enrollment to 826 students in grades six through 12. --Schools department may join charter school lawsuit (Shrewsbury Chronicle)

Nobody's perfect, but three misuses of "it's" for "its" in two paragraphs suggests somebody doesn't know the rule.
Via Joanne Jacobs.

Google il Papa! (Jerz's Literacy Weblog)

Google hasn't yet started returning meaningful results for "Benedict XVI" in its main search results, though its news service was doing fine right from the start.

At 1:45 EST, I googled the new pope's name, and found plenty of speculation that the next pope after John Paul II would choose that name. Creative works, including a comic book, have used characters with the name Pope Benedict XVI.

At 5:45, the search results were unchanged...




But the difference in GoogleAd options is marked.



Regarding Wikipedia: Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was well-known before he was named pope, so much of the Wikipedians' task was repackaging the material already assembled for Ratzinger, but it's still amazing to see how detailed the Wikipedia article is, just a few hours after the news was announced. (See Wikipedia: Pope Benedict XVI.)

Sorry, we were unable to locate document(s) pertaining to your request.

Did you mean: zirconium instead of kirschenbaum? --This Morning's Lesson in Machine Learning (Or, So Said the Search Engine Unto Me) (MGK)

This is tremendous news... search technology has advanced to the point where a search engine has become aware of Matt Kirschenbaum's strong, metallic character, his tendency to spark and ignite when exposed to the open air, his usefulness as an anti-corrosive in alloys, his whitish-grey lustre, the fact that his atomic number is 40, and the fact that he was discovered by Martin Heinrich Klaproth in 1789.

Sign Your Child Up Today!

Make extra money - or start your son's college fund!
We are currently looking for children in your area! Rent your son out on weekends. You have complete control over your child's schedule. All of our clients are fully screened, and you may screen prospective clients before any transaction takes place. --Rent My Son

The idea is, parents rent their kids out to single guys who want to attract women in the park, or to parents of a socially disadvantaged daughter who needs a date to the prom.

Not really worth one "har," let alone a "har har."

The logo doesn't have anything to do with the supposed business plan, and the pages don't feature a link to the home page in the upper left corner -- that's a very strong online convention, and it shows whoever put together this site was not a pro.

The address given on the "Company Info" page matches the address of several federal and local government groups in San Diego. All the suites or room numbers I've seen for that office building have four numbers, but this company is supposed to be in "Suite 100."

When you click on "Make Reservation/Get Quote," the page reloads, and nothing else happens. Tell me that an online business would let that happen. For fun, I signed up under the name "Amusing Hoax," and predictably got an error message.

One kid's profile reads, "This website lets me practice for acting." That pretty much lets the cat out of the bag -- the person doing the writing is thinking of the website, and the website only. And that's all there is to it.

Of course, the whole idea is ridiculous. It's not really good enough to last in the memepool for very long -- not when there are far more bizarre things happening in the world. The design for "Black People Love Us" is cheesier, but the content is far better. The same goes for "Rent a Negro."

Via Metafilter, where nobody's falling for it.

Okay, can you tell I'm bored? I think I have laundry or something to do now...

The real appeal of the game is seeing Star Wars characters rendered in itty-bitty plastic form. By the end of the game, there are more than 30 different little guys you can be in Free Play mode.

The good guys are cute, but the evil folks are just adorable. Mini-Maul! Sen. Palpateeny! Bite-sized battle droids! --Lore Sjöberg --Lego Star Wars: The Game  (WIred)

Good writing... the game would probably appeal to my son. Check out the captions in the photo gallery, too... "Your Jedi powers allow you to pull apart doors as if they were made out of some sort of plastic interlocking brick toy."

And there is no doubt that there are profits to be made in the reconstruction business. There are massive engineering and supplies contracts ($10 billion to Halliburton in Iraq and Afghanistan alone); "democracy building" has exploded into a $2 billion industry; and times have never been better for public-sector consultants--the private firms that advise governments on selling off their assets, often running government services themselves as subcontractors. (Bearing Point, the favored of these firms in the United States, reported that the revenues for its "public services" division "had quadrupled in just five years," and the profits are huge: $342 million in 2002--a profit margin of 35 percent.)

[...]

As in other reconstruction sites, from Haiti to Iraq, tsunami relief has little to do with recovering what was lost. Although hotels and industry have already started reconstructing on the coast, in Sri Lanka, Thailand, Indonesia and India, governments have passed laws preventing families from rebuilding their oceanfront homes. Hundreds of thousands of people are being forcibly relocated inland, to military style barracks in Aceh and prefab concrete boxes in Thailand. The coast is not being rebuilt as it was--dotted with fishing villages and beaches strewn with handmade nets. Instead, governments, corporations and foreign donors are teaming up to rebuild it as they would like it to be: the beaches as playgrounds for tourists, the oceans as watery mines for corporate fishing fleets, both serviced by privatized airports and highways built on borrowed money.--Naomi Klein --The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (The Nation)

Klein sees, in the global outpouring of support in the wake of December's tsunami, a crass, opportunistic colonialism. Instead of rebuilding the small fishing villages, the money will be used to build industrial fishing farms, and more tourist facilities.

Of course, rebuilding costs money. It's shocking to think of the displaced villagers still huddled in refugee camps after all this time, but Klein is using that emotional image not to draw attention to the villagers' plight, but as ammunition for a political statement.

And there's nothing wrong with that -- this is an opinion piece, not a news story. But I was bothered by Klein's selective use of Condoleezza Rice's January statement: "I do agree that the tsunami was a wonderful opportunity to show not just the U.S. government, but the heart of the American people. And I think it has paid great dividends for us."

Klein trims the quote, writing "Condoleezza Rice sparked a small controversy by describing the tsunami as 'a wonderful opportunity' that 'has paid great dividends for us.'" As Klein puts it, Rice seems to be saying that the tsunami paid great dividends, but grammatically speaking, "opportunity" is just as plausiblly what she was referring to when she said "it". Taking the whole statement in context, I find it obvious that Rice was speaking of the American response to the tsunami, not to the tsunami itself.

Rice's original quotation was easily googlable, and since my expertise is in language, I can easily see what Klein has done to Rice's original statement in order to make her (Klein's) position stronger. But because I'm hardly an expert in international finace or global politics, I don't know what other detials Klein has similarly dressed up to suit her argument.

I found Klein's ethical argument about the nature of the "reconstruction" to be gripping and convincing. I actually started blogging this editorial out of a sense of outrage at the treatment of the tsunami victims. But her conclusion is an attack on Rice, and not a very effective one. It reminds me of the attacks against Bush for insisting that the U.S. government will never stop thinking of new ways to harm our country and our people. Of course, Republicans are just as silly when they act as if Al Gore really claimed to have invented the internet.

Grammar flaming is fun, but it doesn't change minds or solve problems. If you just want to incite your own loyal supporters, then that's another story.

Goodbye, Blogdex (Jerz's Literacy Weblog)

I used to love Blogdex, but today's "most contagious information currently spreading in the weblog community" are measured by a grand total of three links. So I've taken it off my blogroll. (I can't remember the last time I did that.)

The last announcement was posted in October of 2004, and that announcement hasn't been cleared of the spam that has collected there over the past few months.

I'm glad Technorati is still operating, but I do miss Blogdex.

Now, in a breakthrough described as the classical equivalent of finding the holy grail, Oxford University scientists have employed infra-red technology to open up the hoard, known as the Oxyrhynchus Papyri, and with it the prospect that hundreds of lost Greek comedies, tragedies and epic poems will soon be revealed.

In the past four days alone, Oxford's classicists have used it to make a series of astonishing discoveries, including writing by Sophocles, Euripides, Hesiod and other literary giants of the ancient world, lost for millennia. They even believe they are likely to find lost Christian gospels, the originals of which were written around the time of the earliest books of the New Testament. --David Keys and Nicholas Pyke --Decoded at last: the 'classical holy grail' that may rewrite the history of the world (The Independent)

You Get Transported To Another Dimension and Find This Weird Machine In A Maze And Then Some Other Stuff Happens, It's Really Cool --Jacqueline H. Lott --The Stupid Title Comp

What a stupid title for an adventure game.