Humanities: October 2006 Archive Page

--Stephen Colbert on Blogs (Youtube)

My student Gabby Blanchard posted this on her blog. Hilarious.

Aside from a brief flirtation with Pong, Jenkins never really paid much attention to games until the mid 80's, when he first connected his son's new Nintendo Entertainment System -- and was blown away by what he saw. "Ever since I've been passionate about games," he says. "I want a serious game that engages me the way Super Mario did when I hooked up that computer." --David M. Ewalt --The Serious Business of Serious Games (Forbes.com)

Ewalt is blogging from the Serious Games Summit in Washington D.C.

I attended that conference the last two years, but didn't attend this year, in part because I'm giving a talk at a local conference next week, and in part because I didn't want to miss Halloween (again) with my young children.

Inkshedding was first developed by writing teachers Russ Hunt and Jim Reither in the 1980s. You can find all kinds of information about it online. Of course, as with any popular teaching technique, many different practices now fall under the name of inkshedding, as instructors have personalized it and made it their own.

Dan's version of the technique begins by asking students to spend five minutes writing down their thoughts on the main discussion question for the day. That writing should be what composition teachers call "freewriting" -- i.e., the student writes whatever comes to mind, without anyone making judgments about it or corrections to it. Freewriting's function is to help generate thoughts and ideas, so it's an excellent starting place for discussions of any kind.

In Dan's session, the students finish their five minutes of freewriting and then pass their notebooks to another student. Everyone reads the notebook in front of them and then spends five minutes freewriting in response to the first student's thoughts. That process continues through several iterations, until -- after 20 or 25 minutes -- the students have engaged in an extended dialogue with each other, all on paper, and are ready to start talking about their ideas out loud. --James M. Lang --Shaking Things Up (Chronicle of Higher Education)

I did a little bit of inkshedding myself when I was in Toronto. My variation is to have students do this on their blogs, on their own time before class starts, so that we can jump right into a classroom discussion. Occasionally I will devote class time to blogging, too, which sends an important signal that I find the activity to be important.

Milblogs published by authors with "boots on the ground" received little attention from officials in the early days following the Iraq invasion in 2003, when the phenomenon of blogging was less known. But since then, Pentagon scrutiny has increased.--Xeni Jardin --Under Fire, Soldiers Kill Blogs (Wired)

Public education in America operates on a manufacturing metaphor. Line up the parts, send 'em down the line, inspect them, then ship them out.

The assembly line idea couldn't be more out of synch with the way a wired (and now wireless) teenager deals with information and with other people. They are social in fundamentally different ways than when we were in high school. Yes, there is still peer pressure and acne. But what'snew is what isn't there: Barriers to communication and sharing of information. Technology has reduced and in some instances eliminated the distances and timeframes that defined the way we learned 20 years ago. This is a destabilizing thought for some people. So was rock ?n roll.

The teenagers walking into my classroom have iPods, cell phones (with movies on them) and twitching fingers from constant IMing and video games they play when they are not in class.

So I jumped at the chance to try Making History when it first came out. To their credit, the company behind the game was extremely honest about how to use the game and how not to use it. --David McDivitt --Do Gamers Score Better in School? (Serious Games Source)

Efthimiou sup­posed that the first vam­pire arose Jan. 1, 1600, around the be­gin­ning of a cen­tu­ry dur­ing which some of the first im­por­tant mod­ern writ­ings on vam­pires ap­peared. The re­search­ers es­ti­mat­ed the glob­al pop­u­la­tion at that time, based on his­tor­i­cal re­c­ords, as 537 mil­lion.

As­sum­ing that the vam­pire fed once a month and the vic­tim turned in­to a vam­pire, there would be two vam­pires on Feb. 1, four the next month, and eight the month af­ter that. All hu­mans would be vam­pires with­in 2½ years. --Math vs. vampires: vampires lose (World Science)

I vant to evaluate your eqvations!

What does it mean for Democrats to be agitating over Web communications, which in my view fall under the province of free speech? It's a civil liberties issue. We can say that what Foley was doing was utterly inappropriate, professionally irresponsible, and in bad taste, but why were liberals fomenting a scandal day after day after day over words being used? And why didn't Democrats notice that they were drifting into an area which has been the province of the right wing -- that is, the attempt to gain authoritarian control over interpersonal communications on the Web? It's very worrisome and yet more proof that the Democrats have lost their way. --Camille Paglia --Salon Interview: Camille Paglia (Salon)

I had to start skimming after I found this quote, but I think most of the world probably gets about 20% of anything Paglia says. Even the headline writer for this interview couldn't come up with anything specific to highlight.

She really lost me when she analyzed President Bush's vocal patterns and concluded that there's something in the tone of Bush's voice that leads her to expect the US is in the process of launching another major military assault.

Still, her comments about the Democratic reaction to the Foley incident are spot on.

Somewhere in the stream of perfectly-formed academic sentences that gush from her mouth, there are always numerous challenging points that are definitely worth considering.

Webb's novels disturbingly and consistently -- indeed, almost uniformly -- portray women as servile, subordinate, inept, incompetent, promiscuous, perverted, or some combination of these. In novel after novel, Webb assigns his female characters base, negative characteristics. In thousands of pages of fiction penned by Webb, there are few if any strong, admirable women or positive female role models. -- Press release issued by Sen. George Allen (R-Va), regarding the writing of his Democratic challenger, Jim Webb. --Allen's Revenge: Exploses Underage Sex Scenes in Opponent's Novels (Drudge Report)

The page on the Drudge Report will probably expire eventually, but by then there will likely be other pages that cover the same content.

Should a candidate's published fiction be used against him in a political debate? Does the artistic accomplishment of an author (or vocalist, or actor, or supermodel, or zucchini-juggler) lend that person's political views any added intellectual weight?

Does your answer depend on whether the author in question falls on your side of the political fence or on the other side?

A new, meticulously researched book of quotations attempts to set the record straight on those beloved phrases that have crept into everyday use as signs of wisdom and wit, including Sigmund Freud's sage advice that "sometimes a cigar is just a cigar." (He didn't quite say that, although his biographer thinks he would have approved of the idea.)

"The Yale Book of Quotations" has a simple thesis: famous quotes are often misquoted and misattributed. Sometimes they are never said at all but are, instead, little fictions that have forged their way into public consciousness.

Take, for example, "Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead," a rallying cry supposedly uttered by Farragut during the American Civil War battle of Mobile Bay on August 5, 1864.

According to Fred R. Shapiro, a Yale librarian and editor of "The Yale Book of Quotations," it was a comment either never said or at least never heard on the day of battle. The first appearance of a partial version of the phrase came in a book published in 1878 but reports from the day of the battle never mention the phrase. --Arthur Spiegelman reviews The Yale Book of Quotations --New book takes humbug out of quotations (Yahoo! | Reuters (will expire))

At first Nihal and I were slightly wary of each other and then I told him I wondered if an ageing Radio 4 presenter could learn "street". He humoured me and gave me a lesson.

I flatter myself that I have a reasonably good ear for language. I reckoned I could get away with a bit of "Hey, man? how ya doin?" But, no, it doesn't work like that. Street language is inventive and rich. Even a greeting in street is a complex business. "There's a million ways of not saying anything," says Nihal. "Two people could walk up and say: 'What's happenin? Cool, man. What's goin' on with you? Good? All good? Things are running? Peace. Safe'."

Peace means "I'm outa here" (it's a long story) and safe means "We're safe with each other"; there's no animosity. By contrast Nihal told me that if you want to insult someone in street you might call him "chief". No one seems quite sure why. Of course there is a well-known dark side to contemporary street rap. But the point of this intriguing language, according to Nihal, is "to separate me from you". He told me: "It's like Latin in the church. Knowledge is power." In fact, the moment older people do know is the moment the language dies. "Bling is a classic example," says Nihal. "As soon as you hear commissioning editors at Channel 4 using it it's dead."

Meanwhile, our language continues to be taken over by pseudo-management speak that is itself in danger of becoming meaningless. Take the world of charity, previously known as the voluntary sector. It is now, gradually, changing its name to the Third Sector. Older volunteers are "totally exasperated" not just with the alien language but with what it represents: the transformation of their charity from the kitchen table and the rattling tin to the computer terminal and the huge mailshots. They don't believe it helps them provide a better service.

This language is also entering our schools. Instead of simply teaching, teachers are now being invited to make a "personalised learning offer" to children. It's more than just a dreary piece of business-speak. It implies that a child is a client or a customer, the figure to whom the "offer" is made. The children, in turn, are invited to be "co-investors with the state in their own education". --John Humphreys --We will soon be lost for words (Telegraph)

Help! Trapped in a text adventure!
- Marc Laidlaw

Machine. Unexpectedly, I'd invented a time
- Alan Moore

Dinosaurs return. Want their oil back.
- David Brin

Cryonics: Disney thawed. Mickey gnawed. Omigawd.
- Eileen Gunn

MUD avatars rebel: virtual Independence Day.
- Paul Di Filippo

Leia: "Baby's yours." Luke: "Bad news?"
- Steven Meretzky --Very Short Stories: 33 writers. 5 designers. 6-word science fiction. (Wired)

Cool idea. Which are your favorites?

--Wishes (Despair, inc :( )

"You want feel-good and heartwarming, right?" Scorsese said. "I can do that. Or I can do casual violence with no strings attached. You know I can. What else you want? Kung-fu wire-work? Mentally disabled guy? Boring Robert Redford-style fishing movie? Just tell me what to do, I'll do it. Done. End of story. Give me my Oscar and I'm out of here. Poof." --Martin Scorsese's Next Film To Be Three Hours Of Begging For Oscar (The Onion (Satire))

A place to read? How many students come to scholastic grief because they never find one? Last year the daughter of a friend flunked out of a huge state university because, she claimed, she could never actually read anywhere. The dorm room? Her roommates were all fun and games. The library? Far too noisy. In effect, the girl fell victim to the energies of a text-messaged, i-Poded and above all cell-phoned American culture. --Terry Ceasar --A Place to Read (Inside Higher Ed)

I just left WoW permanently. I was a leader in one of the largest and most respected guilds in the world, a well-equipped and well-versed mage, and considered myself to have many close friends in my guild. Why did I leave? Simple: Blizzard has created an alternate universe where we don't have to be ourselves when we don't want to be. From my vantage point as a guild decision maker, I've seen it destroy more families and friendships and take a huge toll on individuals than any drug on the market today, and that means a lot coming from an ex-club DJ. -- The View From the Top (Soul Kerfluffle)

I have so far resisted multiplayer online games, simply because the demands of a job and family make mowing the lawn, showering, and sleeping challenging enough. I typically save my game-playing time for the summer breaks, and even then only play after the kids are in bed. I am conscious that I am missing a huge part of online culture, but quite frankly there is so much culture out there, all the time, that one has to be selective.

Of course, I speak as someone who has spent hours and hours using Google Sketchup to designing an imaginary monument that I might possibly use in a puzzle in a text-adventure game that I've been working on since 1999. But I digress.

Obsessions are fine, as long as you can turn them off when you have to. The author of this piece couldn't, so it's a good thing he finally stopped.

If I wanted to meet people, I wouldn't be sitting on my ass filling out a MySpace profile. So I skip that and move on to Interests. Exhaustive lists of interests are a major feature of MySpace pages, which is odd because very few of them include "reading other people's exhaustive lists of interests." I put down a few of my passions (cabin fever, eyeglass wipes, people and animals named "Esmerelda"...) and move on to the trial by fire: musical interests.

Frankly, I can't afford to list anything. You know the part in The Hobbit where Smaug the dragon accidentally reveals a vulnerable patch on his chest and subsequently gets shot down like a fire-breathing partridge? Revealing your favorite bands is kind of like that, only not incredibly nerdy. --Lore Sjöberg --MySpace Avoidance Fails Miserably (Wired)

Scholars in all fields continue to gain preferment because they are "productive" (the academic euphemism for obsessive), and students continue to emulate them. Future investment bankers pull all-nighters delving into subjects that they will never need to know about again, and years later, at reunions, they recall the intensity of the experience with something close to disbelief--and, often, passionate nostalgia. The university has never been a sleek, efficient corporation. It's more like the military, an organization at once radically modern and steeped in color and tradition. And it's not at all easy to say how much of the mystique could be stripped away without harming the whole institution. --Anthony Grafton reviews Academic Charisma and the Origins of the Research University by William Clark. --The Nutty Professors: The history of academic charisma. (New Yorker)

I was sick in bed with a virus on Saturday and most of Sunday, so I spent Monday and Tuesday of fall break marking papers (he said feverishly).

So I'm in one of those moods when I feel nostalgic for grad school, where my only responsibility was to do the readings, talk about them in class, and write term papers.

The rosary that retired quarry worker Bernard "Chub" Clark has created in his rural three acre yard near Nokomis is made of old bowling balls and probably weighs close to 1,000 pounds, give or take. --Tony Reid

--1,000-pound rosary sends heavy message: Pray (Herald & Review)

Now that's style. Thanks for the link, Rosemary.

A cartoon version of the life of Pope John Paul II, telling the story of his life and death in animated form, is to be released on DVD by the Vatican.
--Cartoon tribute to Pope John Paul (BBC)

I'm not at all surprised. John Paul II was an expert at reaching out in all media, so this is very fitting. Thanks for the link, Rosemary.

As we sat in the admissions office, waiting to meet with a tardy faculty member, my daughter said she liked the place and could see herself enrolling there. But that quickly changed when the brusque and standoffish young professor arrived, coldly staring down at us and simply saying, "So what do you want to know?"

His responses were terse to the point of being defensive. He seemed to know little about his own program, told us some of the advantages of other colleges that we said we were considering, and seemed intimidated when my daughter shared her work experience with a major company in the field. We quickly concluded that he didn't want to be engaged in this conversation -- he obviously had something much better to do, and in less than five minutes, he was gone. My daughter walked to the car saying that she had gone from liking the place to "no way" wanting to attend there after meeting the professor. --Stephen M. Winzenberg --The Professor's Role in Admissions (Chronicle of Higher Education)

I agree completely that in a small liberal-arts college (SLAC), the perceived approachability and availability of the faculty is very important.

There was one day over the summer when I had three meetings with families scheduled. A few days after I accepted these appointments, my wife asked me to change my office day so that we could do something else as a family. She wasn't very happy when I said no.

So I drove to the office during the summer break to meet with potential students. The first appointment didn't show. The second appointment didn't show. Thankfully, the third did show.

That was a particuarly bad day, but I'd say that at least 1/3 of the time, people don't show, or they show up so late that I can only shake hands with them before my next appointment arrives. So let me add my request... if you're planning to do the college tour with your family and your schedule changes, please let the college know, so that professors like me who've fought with their spouses in order to keep their appointments with you won't be left high and dry.

Reginald Pike's Yael Staav takes us from model to billboard in under 60 seconds in this impressive new spot from Dove.

--Dove - Evolution ('Boards)

A short film that might be very useful for sparking discussion in a class studying the effect of marketing on women's body image. This advertisement is still banking on the power of the beauty myth to sell its product, but it does so in an unusual way.

On Wednesday, Friedman ordered Take-Two to give him a copy of the game, along with providing someone to play the game for him to watch before he made a decision. A Take-Two employee played the game for the judge Thursday afternoon, using a cheat code to go through the game faster.

A game like Bully is designed to take several days to complete. Friedman said he watched the game for two hours. But Thompson, who was present at the viewing, said it was only for one hour.

''You did not see the game,'' Thompson told Friedman at Friday's hearing. ``You don't even know what it was you saw.''

Thompson said he disapproved of a Take-Two employee taking the judge through a game because the employee could have avoided making violent choices. --Bridget Carey --Judge doesn't object to video game `Bully' (Miami Herald)

Thompson has a good point. Watching a game for one or two hours is not the same thing as playing it. No doubt a person who was devoted to getting the game banned could have played the game with the sole purpose of showing the most violent sequences.

Response Options trains students and teachers to "lock onto the attacker's limbs and use their body weight," Browne said. Everyday classroom objects, such as paperbacks and pencils, can become weapons.

"We show them they can win," he said. "The fact that someone walks into a classroom with a gun does not make them a god. Five or six seventh-grade kids and a 95-pound art teacher can basically challenge, bring down and immobilize a 200-pound man with a gun." --Jeff Carlton --Texas school tells classes to fight back (AP | Yahoo! (will expire))

Of course, running at an attacker with rounded scissors won't be of much use. Soon parents will be petitioning to let Junior bring a gun to school, for purposes of self-defense.

While their children are in class, parents like Hanlon and Leigh Jerz, of Unity Township, sit and chat.

Jerz's 8-year-old son, Peter, is participating for the first time.

"I thought it would be enjoyable for us to see other home-school children and parents more regularly," Jerz said.

Hanlon said the program offers home-schoolers resources they otherwise wouldn't have -- like access to science labs and a stage for drama classes.

"These are things that are hard to replicate when you're teaching at home," Hanlon said.

Jerz hopes the program will help educate future public school teachers about home-schoolers.

"It's an opportunity to come together in a mutually beneficial way," Jerz said. --Jennifer Reeger --Home-schoolers get taste of classroom (Tribune-Review)

Thanks for the link, Rosemary.

Many a Quaint and Curious Volume of Forgotten Flash (Jerz's Literacy Weblog)

Just a bit of fun with Flash. (My work for chapters 3 & 4 of Flash Journalism.... I'm just barely staying ahead of my students.)

The parser in Adventure is harder to use than most interactive fiction parsers, because this is the first of its type and fairly primitive. This is almost immediately evident when a user makes it to the building. One obvious thing to do would be to input "enter building;" doing so, however, returns the message "That's not something you can enter" (Crowther and Woods). Likewise, one puzzle requires the user to sic a bird they have captured on a snake, but the command "throw bird at snake" does not work. Instead, simply "throw bird" will take care of that problem. Another puzzle requires users to realize that a certain object (a wand) is useful on a certain object (an uncrossable gap) in a certain way (by issuing the command "wave rod," not "use rod"); these are probably not ideas that are immediately thought of by users. Another aporia that exists is the game's geography. As the annotation notes, the game doesn't utilize Euclidian geography: "a north exit from one room to the next doesn't necessarily imply a south exit will return you back to the original room" (Jerz). This makes map-making, a standard interactive fiction tool, somewhat difficult. --The Problem is Choice: Aporia, Epiphany, and Conflict in Interactive Fiction Endings (ENGL 668K: Digital Studies (University of Maryland))

Some good points, but the "enter building" problem is an issue with one particular edition of Adventure -- the Inform port by Nelson (1994), after Ekman and Baggett (1993). It's not accurate to ascribe this particular difficulty to Crowther and Woods. And the original Adventure parser was only built to recognize a noun and a verb (in either order). The Inform environment that enabled the 1994 port permitted the entry of more complex sentences, but the game itself doesn't recognize those complex sentences. since the game was written for a parser that only recognized a noun and a verb. And the practice of mapping an adventure game on an Euclidean plane only became possible after the Adventure genre took hold. Another classic cave-explloration game, Hunt the Wumpus, took place in an icosahedron, if memory serves.

While I'm quibbling with this passage about a digital text I know well, overall I thought this posting did a good job applying Aarseth's concept of ergodic to the chosen examples.

A Florida woman has been awarded $11.3 million in a defamation lawsuit against a Louisiana woman who posted messages on the Internet accusing her of being a "crook," a "con artist" and a "fraud." --Laura Parker --Jury awards $11.3M over defamatory Internet posts (USA Today)

I haven't looked into the details of this case, here is a big difference between saying "I was very disappointed with the results of doing business with Sally Jones of company X, and I'll be taking my business elsewhere," and saying "Sally Jones is incompetent -- nobody should do business with her."

The amount of the award is ridiculously high, but since the defendant doesn't have that kind of money, it's really just symbolic.

Just because you have the power to use the internet to say anything you want does not mean that you should. An American's constitutional right to the freedom of speech does not promise to protect a speaker from the consequences of choosing to exercise that right.

That's cut and paste journalism, taken in large part from Wikipedia - the online encyclopedia to which any member of the public can contribute.

Here's where freelance journalist Tom Winterbourn took the exact same words and sentences from Wikipedia. --Community Papers Anniversary Lift (ABCTV (Australia) MediaWatch)

An interesting article about a print journalist accused of plagiarizing Wikipedia. Since the article I'm linking to is a transcript of a TV item, it's pretty much useless to read on the web. The title "Community Papers Anniversary Lift" is completely meaningless, perhaps because this story was introduced by an anchor who read a script that was not archived with this story, which is why I had to add my own explanation of what you were reading in order for this excerpt to make any sense.

There are highlighted screenshots and excerpts, but they're not connected to links. Wouldn't it make sense to link to the Wikipedia source and link to the journalist's article, and let readers judge for themselves?

A great example of how not to do online journalism. (Link via Metafilter.)

No longer enthralled with the world of social networking, the 26-year-old graduate student pulled the plug after realizing that a lot of the online friends he accumulated were really just acquaintances. He's also phasing out his profile on Facebook, a popular social networking site that, like others, allows users to create profiles, swap message and share photos - all with the goal of expanding their circle of online friends. --Some Youth Rethink Online Communications (AP (MyWay))

"We are certain that the 16 editors, 417 freelance photographers, and both writers at In Touch will continue to give little Sutton Pierce the attention that a growing child of celebrities requires." --Britney Spears Loses Custody Of Child To In Touch Magazine (The Onion (Satire))

--Timez Attack (BigBrainz)

There are flashcard "games" and is multiplication bingo and multiplication Frogger, and they're all well and good. But this is something else. Watch the video on the home page.

The question, "what can you say when you step off something?" tells you almost everything you need to know about Armstrong: Everyone else on earth was thinking in terms of stepping on something -- the surface of another world -- while the pilot was thinking, and still thinks today, in terms of stepping off something -- a fragile, thin-skinned, dangerous, badass boat nobody had ever flown before. --I'm a Man, Yes I am (Begging to Differ)

I've been looking for a good reason to blog the news about the Australian hobbyist who found Armstrong's missing "a".

But it turns out that even when I try to live an Apple life, that is a pretty lousy experience too. How could that be, you say? The apparent point of Apple's existence is to create a beautiful and polished user experience. Well, it turns out that what Apple does is beautiful and polished *graphic design*. Actually interacting with the system is something else. --Ben Bederson --Switchback: Horrors of a Windows Power-user Trying to Switch to Apple OS X (HCI User Advocate)

>pick up axe

Taken.



>grind axe

You are now grinding your axe.



Seriously, I'm blogging this because I miss the love I used to feel for my Palm PDA and my Dell laptop. I still have a Palm and a Dell, but I don't love them anymore. I just use them.

I will never love the Windows/PC symbiont. (Is that the right word?)

I wanted Bederson to love the Apple, because I want to believe that it's possible to make complex technology that works beautifully and beautifully works.

Link via MGK.

Welcome to the thirteenth edition of the Teaching Carnival where we discuss all things academic, from teaching to college life, from HigherEd policy to graduate school research. Last time, I separated the Two Cultures in a way. This time I want to keep them mixed - both sides of campus often deal with the same issues anyway. There are tons of links, so let's start right away... --Coturnix --Teaching Carnival #13 (Science Blogs)

A Teaching Carnival is a collection of links related to networks of ongoing discussions. I've been involved in one on Turnitin.com and plagairism, but there are tons of discussions I didn't know about, such as the SAT challenge (in which educational bloggers were given a prompt and 20 minutes to write an essay that will be evaluated by volunteers who have graded for the SAT).

The games are now available for downloading. --IFComp 2006

Mmmm.... interactive fiction.

Bryan Louiselle wrote two new songs, "Cellular Fusion" and "Counting on You," ... --Disney retools its 'School' (Variety)

I don't get cable, so I haven't seen the TV version of High School Musical. But it turns out that the two new songs that are part of the stage version were written by someone I knew in high school. Bryan was a senior when I was a sophomore. He played Harold Hill the year I played Mayor Shinn in The Music Man. He was an all-around nice guy. From what I can tell, "Cellular Fusion" seems to be about cell phones. I'll bet his songs rock.