The mennonites are coming! The mennonites are coming!

Not really, but I couldn't resist seeing as how it was just the anniversary of that other famous invasion and ride.

But a Mennonite did triumph in the Canada Reads elimination round last week. Miriam Toews - now there's a Mennonite name for you! - won with A Complicated Kindness. I hadn't heard of her or her book before, but she went up against a couple of other writers whose work I've either enjoyed, or have heard praised, so it must be a pretty good book. It certainly sounds interesting... though I'm holding off on non-essential book purchases for the next few months in order to whittle away at what I already have.

The novel is a bildungsroman, which I've been kind of hit or miss about - sometimes I love them and sometimes I loathe them, though with this one, the added twist that the protagonist is growing up in a Mennonite community will not doubt keep my interest when it might threaten to flag.

Just a couple of months ago I listened to another Mennonite author at Boskone of all places, talking about all things science fiction-y. Karl Schroeder's Lady of Mazes is on my wishlist and I'm thinking there might even be a chance that one of his books could end up in the dissertation, if nothing more than just a footnote. But again, I'll hold off getting that one till I've slogged through some of the other ones I still have to get through.

You know, for a group that only has 1.3 million members worldwide (compared to say 75 million Methodists or even 12 million Mormons), there seems to be a lot of prolific writers! Rudy Wiebe, A.E. Van Vogt are two others fiction writers that come to mind... and those are just the Canadian Mennonites. I'm sure there's more, but I've got enough to read right now, so I'll leave it at that.

Democratic Fiction

No, it's not a post about the continuing fiction saga that the Bush administration is pumping out or how un-democratic their actions are - this is a relatively non-political blog after all.

What I'm talking about is this post - The Democratization of Fiction - on a Man!festo blog.

It proposes that

conventional fiction media (prose, film, theater, TV and the rest) are essentially aristocratic in nature: the Artist creates, the audience consumes. Games, contrariwise, allow individual players to participate in the creation of their fictional experience. The developers still shape and constrain that experience, to be sure, but there is no experience without the active engagement of the player; the player may well do something with the construct that the developers had not anticipated; and the ultimate experience is a collaboration in which both sides participate, not something handed down from On High by the Great Artiste. It is, in other words, the antithesis of aristocratic; games are a way for everyman to participate in creating his or her own narrative experience. Games are a democratic artform for a democratic age.

This reminds me of a reading by Steve Himmer I had my students do last term when they were studying weblogs. In it, the writer described the weblog as ergodic literature, a kind of cybertext that is

neither exclusively organic or inorganic, electronic or paper-based, but rather any organization of information that includes a feedback loop, a way for the reader to influence and even orchestrate the production of a text through the process of reading.

The writer of the Man!festo blog proposes that game designers elicit more feedback from players directly, not through their intermediaries of marketers and retailers and sets out to do so. It strikes me that the democracy in a democratic game development platform such as they suggest is less democratic than what Himmer is talking about regarding weblogs. The experience of the blog reader is truly demographic. Not only does the reader have full control of what she reads or how long she spends on any given site or link, but she also has the ability to respond either via commenting functions or by creating and posting her own blog post on any given subject.

Gamers might have the same freedom to create democratic games if the developers find a way of allowing the gamers to actually create those games. If there was a platform like blogger and other hosting programs that allowed gamers to directly respond to their favorite games and even to change them through their interaction, or even to be able to write their own, it might begin to approach the 'democracy' of weblogs. It would be interesting to see - perhaps something built on the model of Machinima (this one uses the settings and characters from the video game The Movies to create a film of one of Bram Stoker's short stories) could accomplish the same kind of democracy that the weblog has.

Having said all that, I think the idea of 'democracy' in video game production and in weblog construction is really two different things. The democracy of video game production proposed by Man!festo is really a better and more direct feedback mechanism, like commenting features on a weblog. I'm not sure how it could ever approach the democracy of blogging because the gap between a gamer's skill level in a given game and her ability to create a game is much larger than the relatively non-existent gap between a blog reader's choice of reading material and her ability to type something in response. There are a lot of experts needed to create a video game whereas any idiot can create a blog... take what you're reading as a case in point!

Driving me ____

I suppose it's the case for most people who set out to teach someone else how to drive that they've been driving long enough that it's difficult to recover the memory of that first experience behind the wheel. I know I can only reconstruct one moment of my first driving experience - it involved trying to stop at an intersection only to fishtail as we approached it - it was February in Saskatchewan after all - and that's about the only thing I can remember.

I find myself wondering what oldest daughter will remember of her first day of driving twenty years from now. I hope it will be a mostly pleasant one.

She did some stuff really well, and she scared me a few times.

I suppose that's par for the course.

We're going to try to go out again in a couple of days... provided the rain holds off. I really don't want to tackle rain for at least a couple more sessions, though if we have to, we have to. Can't be worse than the ice the first time my dad took me out, right? So if you see me f2f and think the grey hairs are showing a bit more... you know why!

Must see TV

British sf & hockey quarterfinals.

Tonight will be one of the few times in the year where I claim the remote as mine and mine alone.

The going and the coming

So the conference was great! The accommodations? Not so great. But I guess you have to take the good with the bad, right? Next year, the conference is here, so that's cool - I shouldn't have to travel very far. And I can sleep in my own bed every night!

btw: If you're ever in Atlanta, DON'T stay at the Atlanta-Hostel on Ponce de Leon. They suck in multiple ways.

The panel I was on worked out much better than I thought. Before I got there, I was thinking it was such an unbalanced and mismatched panel that I couldn't see any way that the papers could have anything in common. But we did - it was small, but we managed to make a link. And what was cool is that I had three different questioners with five questions/comments total! That's way more than I've ever had at a conference before!

I do wonder what the increase in questions means though. Either I'm becoming more incomprehensible and need to clarify (I don't think so) or becoming a more interesting presenter (I hope so). Either way, the session was great!

The worst part about going to conferences is the coming home though... not the coming home to my house and family - that's great! - it's the coming home to a whole bunch of emails, student stuff etc. that I've been ignoring for a week. I suppose I could get technologically connected and do that stuff while I'm at a conference - but I'm usually too busy conferenc-ing to do anything else! Catch-22.

Right back into it

I am back from Atlanta, but neck deep in marking papers. I knew this would happen, and knew it would be horrible. It is. Hopefully I can come up for air by tomorrow.

Lame post

So I was going to blog this morning, but couldn't get blogger to work and now I'm trying to remember what I was going to blog about.

I apparently look like I know things - yes, it's a fabulous act - because I got stopped twice on the way to school this morning for directions. The first one was clearly looking for the detox center at the hospital, so I spoke clearly, repeated what I said, and pointed to landmarks instead of telling her how many more blocks she had to go. I do hope she was able to stay focused long enough to get there. The second I couldn't understand for the life of me, even after asking her to repeat herself. I think she might have wanted to get downtown. I figured it was better to say I didn't know than try to guess what she was trying to say.

I did want to link to this new media artist's webpage: Stelarc. There's a whole lot of stuff on his page - I haven't had near enough time to go through it yet, but his work is very interesting. I learnt about him in the course of a conversation where two people who were familiar with his work were trying to determine whether his work arises because he really wants to be a robot, or as a pose that he has adopted. I want to come back to Stelarc, but if you check the site out, I leave you with the question: pose? or desire to become a cyborg/robot? I have some ideas, but want to look through more of the site before deciding.

I won't be posting much over the next few days. I'm heading off to the PCA conference in Atlanta. The panel I've been assigned isn't the greatest - mostly because it consists of three presenters on two topics, so what I'm discussing is film, and they're discussing the same television show, so I'm really not sure what kind of crowd we'll draw. Keep your fingers crossed that at least a couple of people come to hear my paper!

Benefits of a cultural studies-based dissertation #24

You get to hang out with some very decidedly non-lit people and hear about what's happening in other spires of the ivory tower.

Attended the Race, Pharmacology, and Medical Technology conference at MIT yesterday. Although some of the discussions about the legality of race-based therapeutics were only interesting from a social/general interest perspective, and won't have anything to do with what I'm working on, there were some interesting presentations on race/ethnicity and technology.

There were even cartoons.

A couple of researchers, one at University of London, and another at the University of Strathclyde presented some interesting information on the use of race in medical diagnosis, drug trials, and screening. The most interesting session was the one on historical uses of race - the body of the colonial 'Other', and the use of 'race' in South African blood bank HIV screening - because it becomes so clear when you look at historical uses of race in medical decision making that discussion of BiDil and other similar new pharmaceuticals is not a new conversation.

Of course there were many disagreements about whether new race-based therapeutics are a good thing, in that they save lives and redress inequalities in health care access (particularly in the U.S.), or whether they are a bad thing in the broader context because they simply reify suppositions about the genetic, or 'hardwired' difference between "races". One of the sociologists and a representative from the NAACP in particular went head to head - I know at one point in their exchange I wondered how they were going to get out of this discussion because it seemed to be escalating to a boiling point. They eventually agreed to disagree and that perhaps each meant something different in using the word "consensus" and backed away, but it sure was a different level of dissent than I'm used to seeing in my discipline (service sluts or no service sluts).

I was going to go for one more session this afternoon, but after a morning cheering at a VERY frigid soccer game, I was just too cold to contemplate trucking back out to the bus stop. And after a quick internet surfing session, I realized I could find publications by some of the same presenters online, which I can read in the warmth of my own house. Turns out there's some very interesting work taking place at the University of London in its Social Science Research Unit in conjunction with its Evidence-Based Policy Centre on the efficacy of this kind of socially-relevant yet sensitive development of race-based therapeutics.

This will become more and more important as not just cardiac drugs, but vitamins get in on the game. The website for GenSpec is marketing vitamins specifically targeted at specific "racial" groups (this grouping of course is a whole different set of problems).

How are they marketing vitamins to different groups? Well, marketing is the right word, because that's all it is. Check out the risk factors for Caucasians that the new vitamin will help reduce:

Deficient levels of vitamin D from lack of sunlight and insufficient supplementation are directly related to lower rates of calcium absorption in Caucasians.

The vast majority of Caucasians do not get the daily recommended amount of calcium.

62.4% of Caucasian men and 43% of Caucasian women are plagued with the health risks of being overweight.

Now for Hispanics:

100% of Hispanics tested by the Mayo Clinic had deficient levels of vitamin D, which is directly related to lower calcium absorption.

The vast majority of Hispanics do not get the daily recommended amount of calcium.

And for African Americans:

100% of African-Americans tested by the Mayo Clinic had deficient levels of vitamin D, which is directly related to lower calcium absorption.

89% of African-Americans do not get the daily recommended amount of calcium.

69% of African-American women and 58% of African-American men are plagued with the health risks of being overweight.

Now, I may not be the brightest kid on the block, but even I don't need my biology degree to figure out that there really isn't any difference here. [Note how the wording changes, but the overall message is the same: overweight people who don't get enough calcium and vitamin D can benefit from this. Since vitamin D aids in the absorption of calcium, it is added to milk, a good source of calcium, so low levels of both frequently occur together, and increaing vitamin D increases calcium absorption] Doesn't this advertise for our common inclusion in the species "human" than our differences?

Happy Blogversary to me!

So, three years ago, I started this thing. It wasn't necessarily an auspicious start - that first post - but I didn't really know what I was starting either.

I can't say much has changed.

I still have readers who live very far away who read in order to find out what's going on in my life - though there are actually more of those people now.

I still sometimes use a blog post as a procrastination/relaxation tool. I could use the tv, but I'm not really a big fan of tv, so I blog instead.

I've come to think of blogging as less egotistical, perhaps as a result of enabling comments and hearing back from readers. Entering into a conversation with readers, or other bloggers, makes blogging seem less a case of tooting my own horn, and more like a kind of conversation, albeit a lopsided one.

I did find it interesting to discover which words I use most frequently. Some not so much of a surprise... others, well, I didn't think I talked about them that much.

Mechanical men

This guy is so cool! You can see more pics at techneblog here. There's just so much wonderful detail in this figure. Of course, it's not meant to do anything other than be aesthetically pleasing to the eye, but it's much more beautiful than the Honda Asimo, which is the nicest looking functional robot I've ever seen. Check out the video of the robot running... yes, a robot that can run!
It can also walk up a flight of stairs or bring you your coffee!

You know, I'm looking forward to being able to see more and more of these things. I think Wil Smith's got it all wrong.

Passing

Living in a foreign country, where you don't look like a foreigner, and (for the most part) don't sound like a foreigner, can be a very frustrating experience.

One of the frustrations oldest daughter and I have both been experiencing in the last few months arises from our ability to "pass" in this country. What I mean is that many of the people we encounter, who know she is intending to go to university, make assumptions about the choices we have available and thus continually express surprise at the choices we have made.

The mother of one of her friends simply cannot grasp the idea that oldest daughter (or any of us for that matter) does not qualify for federal (U.S.) student aid. She repeatedly expresses the opinion that oldest daughter should apply to wherever she wants and worry about the funding later because "there's always money to be had". (The fact that their family lives in a much higher tax bracket than we do probably also has something to do with her perception) We've checked. She qualifies for no federal aid... just like I don't. And yes, we checked the state schools too - although she's completed her entire high school education here, she'd be considered international when it comes to the tuition bill.

So she'll go back home, where the tuition is 1/4 to 1/10 the price it is here (and for most of the schools she's applied to, there is an extended family member or friend in the same city to ease the transition).

Her peers and guidance counsellor seem to constantly question the wisdom of this. They also seem to think she's not actually applying because the deadlines for Canadian schools are much later than for the ones here, so she hasn't heard back from any of them yet. Many of her peers have already made decisions about which school they'll go to because they've been receiving letters for months.

I've also had to work to convince people who I know that "no, we can't get funding" because they just can't seem to believe it. I even had one person express surprise that I would want my daughter to go to school back home when there are so many wonderful schools here, the implication being that the quality of education back home couldn't possibly match what we could get here. I tried not to feel insulted. Particularly since I have three degrees from a Canadian university and don't feel like I'm less qualified than my peers who got degrees here.

She gets more frustrated than I do about the school stuff, mostly because she hears this all the time.

I don't hear the school stuff very often, but I do on occasion find that friends - even close ones - forget that I'm a foreigner and don't belong here... not really, anyway. I don't talk with a strange accent (as long as I don't say "about") and my skin color pegs me as Euro-American at least, so I don't stand out, but I do find it surprising that so many people who know me fairly well regularly forget that I am only here as a guest.

It also makes me realize that my cultural heritage - what I see as an essential part of my identity, is not at all apparent to those around me on a regular basis. It's only when I order beer in a restaurant, or mention hockey or some other "Canadian" thing that I give myself away. Most of the time, I can pass for American. I'm not sure I know how to feel about that.

Hoax heaven

I didn't succumb to any April Fools Day hoaxes, but then again, I didn't read the newspaper or listen to a news broadcast (which is where they usually emerge) yesterday, so that's not surprising.

I had fun reading about all the April Fools Day hoaxes on the Top 100 April Fool's Hoaxes of all Time though.

My favorites were:
#1 Swiss Spagetti Harvest
#7 Alabama Changes the Value of Pi
#23 Guiness Mean Time
#36 Discovery of the Bigon
#69 One-Way Highway
#85 Kokomo Police Cut Costs
#89 Asterix Village Found