Changes

Happy civic holiday Albertans!

Unfortunately, because of your holiday, I'm still waiting to hear where we're going to live... but hopefully we'll figure it out soon! I haven't blogged much about moving because there's not much to say. We don't know where we're going, and there's not much I can do other than put things in boxes until I know where we're going. At that point, I have a huge list! Every day I think of another thing to add to it, which is a bit scary just because it is getting a bit long, particularly if our move will require crossing an international border, but I try not to think about it and just concentrate on putting stuff in boxes... I guess that summer job I had two years ago was good practice...

Rafting on the Bow

The other week while I was in Calgary, we drove across a bridge spanning the Bow River, and both of us caught our breath noticing everyone floating down the river.

Now that's a way to spend a Sunday afternoon! Drive one car down to the weir and park it - drive the other one up to Bowness Park, pull out the raft and let yourself drift downstream till you reach the first car. Such a fabulous way to spend an afternoon!


It's impossible to wear a watch or worry about the time, because you're at the mercy of the current. Sure, you take an oar, but it's not for propelling. You only dig it out if you get stuck in one of the shallow parts.

I've discovered that this seems to be a uniquely Calgarian thing to do. There's lots of other cities with rivers running through them, but very few that seem to have developed a river floating culture.

Of course Calgary takes it and makes it big with the annual Bow River Raft Race, which gives you some idea of what it's like when there are several other rafters on the river. You definitely don't want to forget the supersoaker at home!

Blogging in academia

This time, the shoe's on the other foot.

Certainly the blog has been a political force for several years already - I won't say since it's inception, since the earliest blogs usually focused on a filtering function - surfing the web for interesting items then linking to them - but the usenet group's politics has spilled over into the blog format for quite a while now. Guess it just goes to show how the ivory tower invades every aspect of academia that the political power of the blog is just now being felt.

Dog days of August

I am hiding in my house for the rest of the day. My weather page says:

Excessive heat warning in effect until 8 PM EDT this evening...
Heat advisory in effect from 11 am to 5 PM EDT Thursday...

Besides, there's still lots to be packed.

Ohio bound

I'm heading off to Ohio for a wedding tomorrow. When I first heard of the wedding, I was very excited to hear the news... oddly, I found out about it in the exact same spot as I'd heard about another wedding two years before. Strange coincidence that.

I'm nervous about this wedding. I've been asked to play piano for it. When I first agreed, I thought I knew what I was getting myself into, but a lot of details have changed, and now I'm a little nervous about it. I'll be on a keyboard, not a piano, which I know will sound different - I'm just hoping it's one of those high quality boards that sounds pretty close.

I'm also playing two more songs than I originally thought, and accompanying a singer, which I've never done before, so I'm a bit nervous about the newness of that experience. We haven't practiced together yet - we'll get the chance the day before the wedding - so I'm just hoping we both are on the same page re: pacing etc. The singer sent me a copy of the music she's working from, so at least we don't have to worry about transposition or instrument differences with the music we're each working from.

I've also got a head cold. It actually feels a bit better today, but yesterday I was so fuzzy headed I was really butchering the songs as I was practicing. I'm going downstairs to practice now - I hope today's practicing goes better. I'm also really hoping the head cold clears for the wedding and flight. Both will be miserable affairs if it doesn't.

The law can be fun!

I considered law school briefly as an undergraduate, but didn't think I had what it takes to succeed. Apparently, it's not quite as difficult as I thought it was...

I usually don't read legal judgements, but this one (link to pdf) is just too funny. A couple of excerpts:

Before proceeding further, the Court notes that this case involves two extremely likable lawyers, who have together delivered some of the most amateurish pleadings ever to cross the hallowed causeway into Galveston, an effort which leads the Court to surmise but one plausible explanation. Both attorneys have obviously entered into a secret pact--complete with hats, handshakes and cryptic words--to draft their pleadings entirely in crayon on the back sides of gravy-stained paper place mats, in the hope that the Court would be so charmed by their child-like efforts that their utter dearth of legal authorities in their briefing would go unnoticed.

After this remarkably long walk on a short legal pier, having received no useful guidance whatever from either party, the Court has endeavored, primarily based upon its affection for both counsel, but also out of its own sense of morbid curiosity, to resolve what it perceived to be the legal issue presented. Despite the waste of perfectly good crayon seen in both parties' briefing (and the inexplicable odor of wet dog emanating from such) the Court believes it has satisfactorily resolved this matter. Defendant's Motion for Summary Judgment is GRANTED.

Ouch! Despite the legalese, it's worth reading for passages like this.

I suppose if this professor thing doesn't work out, I could go into law instead... at least I'd have the sense to use markers and construction paper...

Back

I'm exhausted. I sit here trying to put together my thoughts, but the only one that keeps running through my head is "I'm exhausted" The trouble with going to Calgary is that we know enough people that anything short of a week means we're out all day... and most of the nights!

It's not even that there's that many people to see - just that there are too many to see them all in only a couple of days. I missed meeting up with one really good friend just because she was busy and we were busy and by the time we could've got together, I had no more time left. I'm very sorry I didn't get to talk to her. I really wish I had. But it didn't work out.

So I regret not seeing her, and sit here with a brain full of fuzzy cotton (sis, I'm thinking of your dream now too!) trying to think of something intelligent to say. Good thing teaching this morning was the same ol' same ol' otherwise I would've been lost.

Travelling so far, especially from one country to another always does amaze me though. As we rode home from the airport, I couldn't help but notice how different that ride felt from the one to the airport in Calgary. Even the air smells different here. I'm sure much of it is just my awareness that things are different, but each place still feels distinctly different.

But perhaps I should wait to blog something intelligent when I'm actually feeling more intelligent!

Barely blogging

This time tomorrow I'll be somewhere over... Montana, maybe? En route to Calgary, at any rate. Blogging will be even briefer than it has been lately. Too much life getting in the way.

We're checking out jobs, seeing old friends, and seeing oldest daughter in her new element, which I'm totally looking forward to! I know it's only been a couple of weeks, but it's been so weird to think she's living somewhere else, I haven't got my head wrapped round it yet. Hopefully we'll get to see everyone that we want to see, even if only briefly. One friend I haven't seen for the four years we've been gone. We've had virtual coffee... you know, where we're both drinking coffee while IM-ing, but it's not the same. So we'll have f2f coffee, which I'm really looking foward to.

But I guess I'll have to tell you all about it when I get back.

Huh?

There's something highly ironic about writing the following comment on a student paper discussing the importance of clear communication between medical professionals:

This is unclear here – is it the PTs who are using new procedures, or the doctors who are performing new procedures? You need to clarify who’s doing what here and who needs to communicate more clearly.

Ahh... Mr. Bulwer-Lytton's spirit strikes again

I love reading this list every year!

The winner is:

Detective Bart Lasiter was in his office studying the light from his one small window falling on his super burrito when the door swung open to reveal a woman whose body said you've had your last burrito for a while, whose face said angels did exist, and whose eyes said she could make you dig your own grave and lick the shovel clean.
Jim Guigli
Carmichael, CA

I've got to admire the skill of the entrants... or perhaps some of these are genuine attempts at opening lines!? The annual Bulwer-Lytton contest provides some fabulous entries. The winner was typical of Bulwer-Lytton, but several of the runners-up and dishonorable mentions were more flexible with the form. I realized as I was reading through them that I needed to put down my coffee cup or risk shorting out my keyboard!

Some of my favorites?

"I know what you're thinking, punk," hissed Wordy Harry to his new editor, "you're thinking, 'Did he use six superfluous adjectives or only five?' - and to tell the truth, I forgot myself in all this excitement; but being as this is English, the most powerful language in the world, whose subtle nuances will blow your head clean off, you've got to ask yourself one question: 'Do I feel loquacious?' - well do you, punk?"
Stuart Vasepuru
Edinburgh, Scotland

Lisa moved like a cat, not the kind of cat that moves with a slinky grace but more like the kind that always falls off the book shelf when he's washing himself and then gets all mad at you like it's your fault (which it wasn't although it probably was kind of mean to laugh at him like that), although on the bright side, she hardly ever attacked Ricky's toes in his sleep.
Debra Allen
Wichita Falls, TX

Sex with Rachel after she turned fifty was like driving the last-place team on the last day of the Iditarod Dog Sled Race, the point no longer the ride but the finish, the difficulty not the speed but keeping all the parts moving in the right direction, not to mention all that irritating barking.
Dan Winters
Los Altos Hills, CA

It was just another day at the office aboard "StarCruise" until David spotted a tiny speck in his passenger window, approaching from the direction of the Masai Nebula and making a right angle with bisector of the isosceles formed if you joined Bendy's Star, Planet Anet, and White Hole 14437-5A, but sighed peacefully as it turned out to be the reflection of the fluorescent light swinging loose above Captain Mudlove's head.
Talha bin Hamid
Karachi, Pakistan

The goose waddled slowly, heavily, across the road, exactly the way my mother-in-law would if she were a goose.
Mary Montiel
Wichita, KS

Twas brillig, and the toves were not just slithy, they were stinking drunk.
Richard A. Polunsky
Houston TX

Her romance ended, not a quick separation but like the gradually fading white dot on one of those old black-and-white vacuum tube TVs when it's turned off; and she was glad, because she felt uneasy in his arms and required as many adjustments to the "horizontal hold" and "vertical hold" as when she would stay up late watching scary shows like "Twilight Zone" and "Outer Limits" long ago.
Charles Wells
Albuquereque, NM

I saw her from across the room and knew I had to meet her, not because of her ample bosom, or her full lips, or her beautiful creamy skin, or the way her hair was twisted into a nice tight bun, or the buttoned-up blouse that begged to be torn off her body, or the skirt that was perhaps a size too small, but because she was my kid's teacher and I was here for the parent-teacher conference.
Lori Yates
Kezier, OR

I don't know what's worse, the packing or the moving

We still don't know for sure where we'll be in a month. All I know is that we'll be somewhere else, so it all has to get packed. Packing is always a longer, more tiring, and dirtier job than you ever think it will be when you start. It's not like I move my bookshelves every few months to clean behind them... they sure can accumulate dust bunnies back there, that's for sure!

Keeping a sense of humor helps - over the dozens of times I've moved, I can vouch for everyone one of these:

Murphy's Laws of Moving
By: Sheila Moss

1. No matter how many boxes you have, you will never have enough.

2. The more your friends promise to help, the more likely it is they will be deathly ill or out of town the weekend you are moving.

3. Whatever it is that you need, it is always in the bottom of a box that has already been taped shut.

4. Now that you are moving and no longer need it, you will always find something you have been looking for for years.

5. The tape, the scissors, the markers and the screwdriver all know how to play hide ‘n’ seek.

6. The thing that gets broken will always be an irreplaceable antique heirloom - never something cheap that you didn't like anyway.

7. Regardless of long the drought has been going on, it will always rain on moving day.

8. You will always lose your checkbook, your car keys, the remote control or the telephone.

9. If you stay up all night packing to be ready for the movers, they will be late.

10. No matter how large the new place is, it will shrink before you move in.

Trivia(l) movies

Who would've known?

Apparently, a group of Northeastern students made a pretty good movie. At least, Campus MovieFest seems to think it was a great idea. Apparently,

A film created by five students from Northeastern University for Campus MovieFest, the world's largest student film festival, was selected as one of sixteen films to air at the International Grand Finale at the Atlanta Film Festival.

The movie, called Tangent, is actually kinda interesting. Some of the aesthetic choices seem a bit cliched, but it is kinda neat to recognize local places (I swear I've parked in that exact same parking spot as the one featured in the parking garage scene!)

Speaking of interesting movies, I also watched The Calcium Kid today. I was surprised during channel surfing to see Orlando Bloom in it, and assumed it was an early film of his. But then I recognized Rafe Spall (from Shaun of the Dead, of course, I recognized him!) and later Billie Piper from Dr. Who, and went to check the credits. 2004. After LOTR. I must say, it was an interesting choice for Bloom, and a role he performed fairly well, given the slightly shallow nature of the script.

It's a mockumentary. If the title reminds you of The Karate Kid, it should. And they shamelessly riff on Rocky. But it was time well spent. Might even be worth throwing on your Netflix or Blockbuster account... not too high mind you, but it was an amusing way to spend a couple of hours. Perhaps you too will be amused.

No name post

My creativity has ebbed with my energy, thus no post title... the post itself might not be much better...

Oldest daughter should be arriving at her destination soon. We woke at 3:30 am to get her to the airport on time. She actually had three friends show up to accompany her in the limo - yes, she had a gift certificate for a free limo ride to the airport. They gave them to all the students who were leaving to go to school - how nice! First time I've ever been in a limo. Very nice. I could get used to it. Then again, my parents always did tell me I had expensive tastes... I've just never had the budget to indulge them!

Firecracker fiends were setting off squealers and poppers till long after midnight though. Very little sleep = lack of creativity.

I did cry. But just a little. She did too. Even while she was telling me not to. It's kinda nice to know she'll miss me at the same time as I'm missing her.

I also discovered that it is only the Dunkin Donuts near my school that are open at 6 am - ugh!

My students got what little energy I had this morning, which is reassuring, because if I had to teach at this moment, I'd have nothing.

I just missed a lucrative summer job offer by ten minutes. If I'd gotten home ten minutes earlier, I could have at least considered whether or not to take it. As is, the point is moot - the position is filled now. Too bad. I would've liked the choice.

What little energy still remained this afternoon was used up emailing my landlord and telling her that "no, I am not willing to move half my household items to a storage facility for a month, then go and pick them up again, just so that the house looks larger without so much furniture in it" sheesh! I know she wants to sell the place as soon as possible after we leave, but it's still my living space in the meantime.

Less than 24 hours

Less than a day till oldest daughter will be living in another country.

WOW.

I'm experiencing several emotions, anxiety/sadness/stress, but I don't think it's really sunk in yet. I haven't had much time to really sit back and think about it because I've been busy harassing her to finish packing up all her stuff before she goes. She's taking two HUGE suitcases! (I hope our bathroom scale is accurate because they're almost at the weight limit) The rest we'll ship to her wherever she'll be in fall... *sigh* that sounds sooo familiar!

I'm sure tomorrow will feel different. Right now, I'm just hoping I'm awake enough to accompany her to the airport at 4 am. I'm not much of a morning person...

I'm a big believer in prevention

When I worked loss prevention, we stressed methods of preventing shoplifting rather than detecting it... mostly by making shoppers aware that someone was watching.

When it comes to students and plagiarism, if Turnitin makes them aware someone's watching and reduces the temptation to cheat, I'm all for it too.

Overall, I'm satisfied with the software and plan to continue to use it. It does give quite a few false positives, but a teacher with half a brain can figure out that those aren't plagiarism. When it discovers that my student wrote "Langston Hughes wrote 'A Negro Speaks of Rivers' in 1921..." and a student at a high school in Ohio wrote the exact same sentence, I know enough to realize this is coincidence. It's not exactly great writing, but it's functional and there aren't many other ways of saying the same thing.

I also selected the option to ignore quoted material, since that just identified all the quotes in the paper. I really didn't need it to do that for me.

Now my students papers are part of that huge database of papers they run all the new submissions against. I wonder what they'll make of the student who submitted a paper that started out talking about Frost but ended with a narrative of how the speaker met the love of his life in an Outback Steakhouse restaurant? It's a hoot! It almost rivals "Don't be Panic"... which is still in my mind the best student paper ever! When I get depressed about what my students are doing, all I do is play the video and it makes me feel so much better! (thanks to rlt for the reminder)

The "doctor" and the doctor

I can't help but be amused that Kevin Warwick at University of Reading has created a robotic dalek... I giggle.

Warwick is the guy who implanted a chip into his forearm in an effort to begin developing real world applications of cybernetic implants. The most unusual thing I've read that he has suggested is the possibility of implants in different people communicating with each other. Apparently his wife has volunteered to have herself implanted as well and they're going to try to communicate through the implants via computer. It all sounds very interesting. I wonder if he'll be talking about it when he visits MIT in September? If I'm here and can scrape together the registration fee, it certainly would be interesting to hear him speak about it!

Smell o vision?

According to this article at New Scientist, a group of researchers in Tokyo have developed a odour recorder capable of recording scents and reproducing them when required. I don't know what all you'd use it for, but it sounds pretty cool!

If I had one of those, I could attach the smell of a maple leaf.. or maybe beer... or just a good old barbeque... in celebration of a Happy Canada Day!

I'm exhausted

Yes, if you look at the post time, it's 11:45. a.m. It's not today that's exhausted me, but the last week... month... maybe even year...

Sandy's farewell/graduation/belated birthday party was this weekend, which went off with only a few hitches. A forecast of thundershowers meant we brought everyone back to our place - thank god a few people didn't end up coming! - and splitting people into two "shifts" (because she had 50 people on the guest list... if you've ever seen our place, you know it can't accommodate anywhere near that many people!)

Of course, not a drop of rain fell the whole time, let along thundershowers.

The shifts idea was a bit stressful because it meant it felt like two parties in a row. It also meant I did none of the huge pile of marking I had to do once it was all over, so I spent Sunday marking papers... and Monday actually... which put me in a right rotten mood when I walked into the final exam I gave yesterday.

Being bombarded by five students who all had different requests (and didn't come by my office but waited till I walked into the exam room) most of which were either a) minor, or b) left till much too late, didn't help the matter either.

Students take note: asking your teacher if you can convert the class to pass/fail moments before the final exam begins, is not under ANY circumstances cool.

Most of the marking was for that course I took over last week. I'd taught the same course last year, so I figured it wouldn't be hard, but I hadn't figured on the first instructor not only using strange assignments I'd never seen before, but also requiring that the students follow a draconian report style that requires them to force their material into a format that doesn't work well for every report. I learnt yesterday that my approach of 'do what works best for your project' was a shock (albeit a pleasant ones for those who discussed it with me) that they've had to adjust to. So despite my efforts to make the transition as seamless as possible, just my pedagogical style has meant the students have had to change course. I'm hoping based on the response from the few I've talked to that it will work out in the long run, but it's still been rough.

On top of all this, we want to get a family portait done (before my family disperses to all ends of the globe... well, okay, North America... for the summer) and we're moving, though we don't know where to yet. All we know is that my handsome partner in crime will be getting a new job now that he's graduated, and we're gonna try to 'move on up' at the same time. All I know is that I need to leave this place by mid August. Thank goodness! It's been nice and all while we've been here, but it really is a cramped space and we're hoping to gain a bit more square footage wherever we go so that it doesn't feel like we're just moving the stuff around in an endless circle trying to make room for various activities.

This whole year has been busy for us though. With two graduations in the house, the studying that goes into those, finishing my exams, trying to put together a prospectus and dissertation committee, preparing oldest daughter for transition to another country, teaching a lit course (fun! but LOTS of extra work), and everything else with everyone else, it's been a very full year.

When the kids were born, I thought the sleep deprivation was bad, but the exhaustion of keeping up with and track of teenagers rivals it... or maybe I'm just older... either way, it's been a ride this year!

We need to plan ourselves a vacation!

They say something about laughter and medicine?

** Annual English Teachers' awards for best student metaphors/analogies found in actual student papers:


Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.

His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.

He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.

She grew on him like she was a colony of E. Coli, and he was room-temperature Canadian beef.

She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.

Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.

He was as tall as a six-foot, three-inch tree.

The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because of his wife's infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge-free ATM machine.

The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn't.

From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you're on vacation in another city and Jeopardy comes on at 7:00 p.m. instead of 7:30.

The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.

Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35 mph.

John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.

He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant, and she was the East River.

Even in his last years, Granddad had a mind like a steel trap, only one that had been left out so long, it had rusted shut.

Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do.

The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law George. But unlike George, this plan just might work.

The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.

He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame, maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.

The ballerina rose gracefully en pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.

It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with power tools.

He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.

Take a break from the ordinary

Sounds like a travel ad: "Take a break from the ordinary" but there really is nothing like a break from the usual routine to shake you up and make you realize that your life has been rather ordinary for the last while. Ordinary isn't a bad thing, it's just really easy to slip into it without knowing.

Sometimes I treasure ordinariness (for example, after our hectic and stressful cross country move I was almost cried with joy at the end of a day when I realized it was the first time I hadn't felt homesick all day). But sometimes it just starts to make you dull. You do the same thing over and over again until you don't even notice that you're not growing and learning anymore.

Today I think I must have done some growing, or at least should have, because it wasn't an ordinary day.

I suppose it actually began on Thursday afternoon. As I was teaching the poetry class, I saw one of the writing program directors in the hall. I assumed he was there to talk to my colleague across the hall, but he waved me out of my classroom. I suppose I was more curious than anything, so I met with him. He asked me if I would take over a class right away. I said I had to consult with my family, but would call him the next day and I did to say I'd do it. They seemed pretty desperate to cover this class, and I'd taught the same one last summer, so I figured it'd be pretty easy.

He told me they were replacing the existing teacher because she'd failed to attend the last three classes. When I found out two days later who it was, I was surprised, because I knew this instructor (mostly by reputation) and she didn't seem like a flake. There might be other adjectives for her, but flake is never one I've heard applied in her situation.

So I walked into the classroom this morning and got the students to start telling me about the course. Strange way to begin a relationship with a group of students, and I felt slightly less authoritative than normal because I had to rely on them to tell me what they were doing.

The class is behind by a good bit, and the students are going to have to work steadily through the remainder to make up for it. I'm trying to figure out how to keep it from feeling like punishment for their teacher bailing on them.

Then I had a very relaxing and highly enjoyable dinner/writing discussion with friends. I realized that I've been relaxing far too little lately, because the enforced relaxation of just sitting around seemed strange at first. But I did get used to it, and boy did it feel good!

And then?

All I can say is neither Tampa Bay nor Raleigh have naturally occurring ice.

There's something wrong with the universe.

Pity this busy monster

I have these drafts of posts sitting here but feel like I've no time to do them justice... maybe I never will. Instead I give you some e e cummings:

pity this busy monster, manunkind,

not. Progress is a comfortable disease:
your victim (death and life safely beyond)

plays with the bigness of his littleness
--- electrons deify one razorblade
into a mountainrange; lenses extend

unwish through curving wherewhen till unwish
returns on its unself.

A world of made
is not a world of born --- pity poor flesh

and trees, poor stars and stones, but never this
fine specimen of hypermagical

ultraomnipotence. We doctors know

a hopeless case if --- listen: there's a hell
of a good universe next door; let's go

cybernetic versification?

I'm reading a summary of T.S. Eliot's biography (and skimming quickly at that) for Tuesday's class, when I read that he was influenced by the philosophy of Henri Bergson, which gets me thinking about Benedict Anderson's argument that modern time is "empty homogenous time" ... and that gets me googling Bergsonian time, to compare it to, only to find out that Norbert Weiner used it as a model for time as it is experienced by cybernetic organisms, and that it has become a standard of sorts in all kinds [pdf] of cybernetic studies.

See? It all comes back to the robots!

I hate this part of the job

I'm reading the proposals my students posted to Blackboard - which range all over the place from concise, well thought out questions, to vague 'I gotta get some books from the library' kinds of rambles - when I come across one that sends my radar into overdrive.

You see, the proposal sounds... well, it sounds like something a graduate student would write... not something a student who almost failed the midterm would write. Now, I accept that a midterm test which requires the application of learned facts to a problem (scansion) and memorization (match this passage to who wrote it) is a very different thing than typing up something at your leisure. But this proposal was just too slick to sound right.

So I set up the paper as a Turnitin assignment. It's a nifty new (and as I understand, expensive) service that scans papers for "originality" and gives you an "originality" score for the paper. I've never used the feature before, but it strikes me as a much more efficient way to check for overlapping sources than the old google it yourself routine.

I really hate it that I even have to do this.

I also realize that there is some controversy about this product. My alma mater has decided not to adopt it, but their reasoning strikes me as only partly thought out.

Dr. Patterson [Associate VP Student Affairs]also pointed out Turnitin.com can't distinguish between intentional and accidental plagiarism.

"I think it's really hard to determine where it's actual plagiarism--where there's an actual attempt to deceive--and how much of it is lack of information on how to do it properly," she explained.

What their objections ignore is the teacher. Hello? You know, the teacher? The person who has trained for a decade or more to be in the position they're in? I agree that Turnitin could produce false positives. This is partly the objection of a McGill student who challenged that school's use of the service. He objected to Turnitin's mission to "help students take more responsibility for learning, and let teachers focus on teaching." (which is why I'm using it - my time is much too valuable to spend hours googling phrases from papers!):

"That statement is basically saying that students, if given the opportunity, will plagiarize, and they're forced to prove they didn't plagiarize before their paper is even looked at"

But that's where the teacher's intelligence and discretion comes in. Just as in any other case of a plagiarism charge, the teacher needs to present evidence that the plagiarism took place. And the teacher still has the option to confront the student about unintentional plagiarism (and Turnitin has an option that allows you to resubmit a student paper in such a case).

The thing that the opponents at U of C seem to be ignoring is that Turnitin is just one of many tools a teacher will use during their career. Their knowledge of the subject matter, their evaluation of the student's performance outside the case in question, and institutional policies will all come into play in a plagiarism case. They're acting as if a bad score on Turnitin will AUTOMATICALLY translate into a failing grade, no ifs, ands, buts, or maybes. No teacher discretion. If there's no institutional policy that says that's the case, and no institutional mechanism intercepting originality scores before the teacher gets ahold of the paper, then the teacher has the option of examining the paper more closely and ignoring the report, or challenging the student about it at which time the student has the opportunity to respond to the charge.

Yes, in an ideal world, there would be no need for Turnitin. In an ideal world, there would be no need for traffic cops to enforce laws because everyone would obey them. In an ideal world, I could open any email message I receive without fear of damaging my computer.

But this ain't an ideal world. It's the real one. And sometimes, the actions of a few people, spoil it for the rest of us. That's life.

Personal Notes

• Oldest daughter received first acceptance letter in the mail yesterday - there was much rejoicing! It isn't her first choice, but she's in and grandparents are less than an hour away for visits/support etc.
  
  We discovered a glitch in communication between countries when one of the other schools sent a rejection letter last week, saying she didn't have the basic requirements. Problem was just that the requirement went by a different name here, so we sent off explanatory letters to them and everyone else hoping that solves the problem.
  
  
• Hubby is writing Canadian licensing exam this weekend. I would've loved to go with him, but he flew out about four hours before youngest daughter came home from D.C. and one of us had to be here to pick her up and drive her home.
  
  
• Youngest daughter had a great time in D.C. - unlike here, the weather was hot and sunny the whole time. It was probably the first time she's been away without another family member around, so it was a good growing experience.
  
  
• Oldest daughter had made arrangements for room and board with a friend over the summer, so was beginning her job search based on these arrangements. Now, suddenly, the family may need to move and if they are in a smaller place, they will not have room for her and we'll have to make alternate arrangements. It's not so much that we have to change plans, but that we have to change them at the last minute.
  
  
• I am far too sentimental. I sorted some old receipts this weekend, and some of the receipts reminded me of places or people who I'd been with when I'd made the purchase. I found myself feeling a bit nostalgic about the times/places those receipts represented. Usually you'd expect photographs to trigger fond memories, not receipts - goes to show how anal I am about keeping them I guess [in all fairness though, I've been audited by Student Finance twice during my student years and by Revenue Canada three times in my life - twice during the time we've lived out of country and those receipts have saved me a world of grief when that happens]

Just a matter of degree?

A good journalistic sense will sometimes compel a writer to sensationalize a subject - create an eye catching headline, or start off with a sensational first sentence, or even a ridiculous cartoon. Just like this article, "Among the Transhumanists: Cyborgs, self-mutilators and the Future of our Race" from Slate does.

The second paragraph asks the question: Why do we shrug at botox, liposuction, and circumcision? but get grossed out by guys like Lizardman? What seems at first a rhetorical question actually becomes a way of mocking transhumanists for being just too "weird", essentially too idealistic or irrational "incoherent" and just plain "creepy"

The article ends on a derisive note, dismissing even the mildest claims to the betterment of the human race (and isn't this what countless doctors, philosophers, educators, philanthropists etc. have been doing for ages already?) by presenting them alongside the most outrageous.

But when you think of it,
the difference between lizardman's brow ridge implants and a buttock implant really aren't that different. Both are cosmetic modifications that change the shape of the body by inserting an implant below the skin/muscle.

I understand that on one level it's about societal notions of beauty, the acceptance of female body modification for those aims and a host of other social factors, but once you peel all that away, seems to me it's really just a matter of degree.

Up Down Up Down

On Tuesday, I began the following rant:

I just had one of the worst teaching days ever! Yes, I know I said that only about a month ago, but this one was worse!

What made it worse was not so much the actual class, even though the students were woefully unprepared for class itself, but the fact that this was the day my supervisor was sitting in on class. It felt like I was pulling teeth to get them to talk (and I know someone who pulls teeth and he makes it sound easier than this was) Then there were the several times when I felt awkward, out of control, and like I was talking a different language - one the students themselves didn't speak.... which I suppose is what I was doing, since I was talking poetry language, and they hadn't even read the poems I was talking about!

I couldn't figure it out at first. I thought maybe I was more nervous than usual because my supervisor was there (even though I only felt marginally nervous by the time class started) and that's why class seemed to be limping along, but then at one point I just stopped and asked how many hadn't read the poems. Half the class admitted to it, which means that probably 3/4 of them didn't actually read.

We didn't even have anything due today. What are they going to be like on the day the paper's due?

I despair.

And today?

Today was better. Not stellar. But soooo much better than Tuesday. Either the students who hadn't read the material masked it better, or they actually had read it.

Maybe it was me. I was so disgusted with the class on Tuesday that when I walked into the classroom, all I could think about is how much I really didn't want to be there and how unfair it was that the students could skip class whenever they didn't want to go, but the teacher can't. And then the first thing I get from them is that some of them couldn't figure out how to find the online source. Hello?! We've been downloading stuff for weeks! Does this mean you haven't downloaded anything? Or that you've forgotten everything you know about downloading?

It's a good thing no one sits in the front row because otherwise they would've heard me grind my teeth when I turned to the board to write a few notes.

But then things changed. The students started talking. One particularly brilliant one gave such a concise and descriptive summary of the first reading, that all I said was 'great! that sums it up' and moved on.

I wonder if it was the humor of the situation? After all, the second poem we talked about was called "Souvenir de Monsieur Poop"... trying saying that to a class with a straight face!

They did think that Stevie Smith's poem reminded them of Shel Silverstein's, and many of them were fans of his... my kids are fans of his too, which makes me feel so much older than those students now...


On the other hand, I did also only have three quarters of the students there, which might account for why it went as well as it did - the slackers stayed home so they weren't dead weight in the classroom.

Minding someone else's business

A few minutes ago, I was sitting studying, feeling a little tired of all the reading I'd been doing when I hear this very strange thud from outside. Normally, I don't respond to much going on outside unless I'm lying in wait for a delivery truck, or someone is actually banging on part of my house, but the thud I heard was an unusual one.

I couldn't think of anything that would make such a sound.

So I got up and looked out the window - anything for a study break, right?

Imagine my surprise when I see a body at the bottom of the stairs leading to our house!

We ran outside, ferrying towels, first aid kit and umbrellas. I called hubby since he's the one with the most medical training in the house while I called 911.

It was one of our neighbors. I've talked to her only a couple of times. She's retired, used to own a wine store (hence we had something to talk about) and lives about six houses down.

She should be okay. She was able to stand, so her back wasn't hurt. She was very disoriented though, which is why the paramedics hauled her off... that, and she needed stitches to the side of her head and her nose was probably broken.

My willingness to suspend studying for the smallest thing - in this case a thud - worked out for the best this time. She'd fallen down a flight of three stairs, but the stairs are there because the front yard slopes, and it would've been difficult to see her from the street, or anywhere other than our house or the neighbor's (which is empty right now). So if I hadn't gotten up and looked out the window, she could've laid there a long time without anyone noticing.

It kinda feels good to know we could help someone today.

I don't understand

Seeing as two people near to my heart are visiting Washington D.C. in the next month, I was having a conversation about the whitehouse and tours with one of them. She pointed out that there is a very strange list of prohibited items if you take a White House tour (which she unfortunately can't because she's a foreign national).

They include:

handbags, book bags, backpacks, purses, food and beverages of any kind, strollers, cameras, video recorders or any type of recording device, tobacco products, personal grooming items (make-up, hair brush or comb, lip or hand lotions, etc.), any pointed objects (pens, knitting needles, etc.), aerosol containers, guns, ammunition, fireworks, electric stun guns, mace, martial arts weapons/devices, or knives of any size

While the weapons certainly make sense, just as the pointed objects and aerosol containers, I'm not sure what kind of damage a hair brush could do. I've seen some bad hairdos, including that oh-so-brief flirtation with backcombing in the 80s, but really, if someone were to backcomb Mr. Pres's hair, they really couldn't make him look any more ridiculous than this.

Sometimes I think somebody just needs to stop me

I just invited my supervisor to watch me teach on Tuesday.

Why?

I don't KNOW! It seemed like a really good idea at the time...

Bodies or minds?

I've found myself wondering what kinds of connections there might be between robots and artificial intelligence. Are the anxieties and delights of each similar? Do we worry more about AI replacing humans, or robots? Do we worry at all? How do the different performances of robots and artificial intelligence systems affect our view of their relative hostility to human beings?

I found myself thinking about these questions (when I should've been prepping for the poetry class) after I'd looked at the ten coolest robots site posted earlier.

Both artificial intelligence and robots are duplications of humans - each attempts to replicate what humans can do through available technology. Both are also decidedly non-organic, which distinguishes AI and robots from cloning or genetic engineering which uses as its base materials the same stuff human bodies are already made of. So robots and AI skirt the problem of being too much like us because they're not built out of the same materials as us.

(Though to this last point, one could argue that it isn't robots who are becoming like us, but we who are becoming like robots as we increasingly rely on the kinds of materials robots are made out of to create artificial hips, hearts, or cochlear implants)

When I read science fiction (or science fact for that matter) about artificial intelligence and robots, they are relatively indistinguishable in their ability to threaten human beings, but they way in which they do so is distinctly different. I would take The Terminator (the first one) and I, Robot as two films that are representative of the difference between robot threats and AI threats in literature, as well as in the writing of some futurists who think about what our world would like like if when science fiction becomes science fact.

In The Terminator, the AI that builds the terminator machines and threatens to wipe out humanity bases its decision on logic and enacts it through the bodies of the robots it creates. The threat of nuclear war - its primary mode of attack against the humans - is presented as a threat only through the dreams of Sarah Connor however. The storyline of the film does not take us to the place where the AI dwells, or even to the battlesites it creates except through Reese's memories (flashbacks) or in Sarah's imagination of what that world looks like. The repetition of the opening sequence, which could conceivably be argued to be a glimpse of the storyworld of the future, in a dream/memory, clearly labels it as a memory, and subject to amplification or modification as most memories and dreams are. So we never see where the AI "lives".

In Terminator we also never "see" the AI, which presumably is embodied somewhere as the defense system, and so as viewers we are never directly presented with the "enemy" and have no visual image of what it looks like. [The Terminator attraction at Orlando does however present an image of the AI, not present in any of the movies, in its 3D stage/cinema production in which the freedom fighters actually penetrate the defense system and blow up the "mind" of Skynet (which looks suspiciously like the power system inside the Deathstar)]

As viewers, we only see the threat of the robot body as it stalks, maims, and eventually kills human bodies.

In I, Robot, the intelligence behind the robot threat is also less overtly threatening than the robot bodies. We are presented with VIKI, both as the visual display at the interface with which the humans interact and also in her housing (which again, is suspended in midair... what's with this motif in film anyway?). But VIKI isn't perceived as a threat until late in the film. Because we identify with the paranoid protagonist, as viewers, our perception of the threat is kept in line with the threat Spooner perceives, which is literally embodied in the robot bodies of the new NS5 models.

These two movies pinpoint the two real differences between robots and AI that seem to underly our anxieties about the threat they pose; one is highly visible and somatic, while the other difference lies in the imitative nature of each technology.

AI is a cognitive threat - a machine that can outthink human beings - but because the threat is from the machine's ability to think, it is largely invisible, just as our mental processes are not visible to others. In some ways, this makes the threat more insidious because you can't see it coming. It also makes the threat less immediate because there's no object which fear can point to as the threat. In the Terminator movie in particular, the threat posed by AI is global - the extermination of all humans - which is hard for the audience to imagine, given that it is composed of human beings and our collective ego has a very difficult time imagining a world in which we no longer exist.

Malevolent AI systems contain the threat of an intelligent opponent, but more importantly, of an emotionless opponent. In most human conflicts, there have always been human connections that defy the logic of the opposition between two sides - think the actions of people like Oskar Schindler or Christmas Day armistices. One on one, we at least have the option of appealing to common humanity when confronting an enemy. When confronting an AI system, there is no commonality aside from the ability to use logic, but for the AI system, unlike humans, emotion or sentiment is not a part of a reasoned argument. The inhumane thoughts of AI are what is most threatening; they're also what we can't see coming.

The technology of robots is embodied in a physical object, so the threat is much more immediate. The threat is also directed against human bodies. In I, Robot, Will Smith's character is physically pummeled by the robots, he chases Sonny, and the police are held hostage by the physical intervention of the robots; the human race is threatened, but the image of the threat is embodied in the robots themselves, not VIKI. In this way, robots are easier to imagine as enemies. They are physically present, but although they are strong, they are not indestructable. We can imagine ways of getting past their strengths by using even greater strength. Sarah Connor's act of crushing the Terminator brings that home in the movie.

But what is the weapon against an AI system that has decided that human beings are unnecessary (or perhaps even dangerous)? The logic that produces such a decision cannot be reversed by an appeal to sentiment or emotion. When it comes right down to it, the threat posed by malevolent AI in science fiction often emerges from the observation that logically, the human race has done nothing that automatically warrants its survival. We've messed up the planet, we mess each other up, we're thinking about going out and messing up the rest of the universe. What logical intelligence would conclude that keeping human beings around has any benefit whatsoever? Let's face it, we don't have much going for us.

So each threat - from AI or from robots gone bad - emerges from a difference between AI or robots and humans. The robot threat - strength and a hard body - can be countered by our use of other machines. The AI threat can only be countered by an appeal to sentiment, something that won't work on a machine, no matter how eloquently stated. In science fiction, the threat from AI intelligence has greater consequences for human beings, usually because the AI has been given a lot of power, but it's relatively rare that a story imagines only an AI threat. In most disaster scenarios, the AI needs robot bodies, or at least machines, to carry out its plans, returning us to materiality just as the robot body does. So it looks like bodies still win as the immediate threat that gets the most air time, but more distubing possibilities lie in the possibility that a malevolent AI could do more damage than a legion of robots could ever accomplish.

Since I can't read poetry all day

This list of top ten robots certainly are some of the coolest robots I've ever seen.

I especially like:
The RiSE treeclimbing robot (#8)
Boston Robotics' Big Dog - The Robotic Mule (#3);
and RHex - The Robotic Pooch (#7)
and the The Robot Bartender (#10)

I might have been more amazed by the Honda Asimo (#4) and the Sony QRIO (#5) but I'd seen them before, so they lost out to the novelty items on the list.

So which one's your favorite?

Flame out

I should've known when I cheered for the Oilers three years ago in a game against Boston that I'd eventually develop a kindly streak toward the team.

Given that they're the only Alberta and now Canadian team to make it to the finals, I'll cheer for them. I did last night. I'm not the only convert. And they have some fabulous fans... just listen to them! (I especially like the fan behind I think it's Ryan Smyth... he's just belting it out!) I miss that. The stations here don't play other countries anthems unless absolutely necessary, so it's a rare occasion when I get to hear O Canada sung, let alone so enthusiastically.

Oddities

Saw a woman wearing one of these. It looks a little creepy on the street.

Sign said "We are undergoing renovations. Sorry for the inconvenience" When I looked beyond the chain link fence, all that was left of the McDonald's was a hole in the ground. Some renovations!

The classroom just became a friendlier place

So today I figured it was make or break day - either eye roller was going to push it farther and do something that I'd have to slap her down about, or she'd get back in line. She wasn't in class right at the beginning, so I thought at first she'd decided class was useless, but then she showed up.

She didn't put her sunglasses on at any point in class - this was an improvement from Tuesday when she wore them for the remainder of class after her comment. She made friendly with others and with me during the break, then participated in discussion afterwards. I'm thinking, this is improvement and maybe we won't have problems.

Then she came up after class. And apologized for Tuesday.

It doesn't make the bad teaching day go away, but at least now I don't feel like I'm totally tanking either.

Thanks eye roller.

Brokeback Mounties

A mountie always gets his man!

What a day

Just had one of my worst teaching days ever. I've had bad days before, but this one seems especially bad... probably because it went bad right from the beginning, and the class was 2 1/2 hours long.

I wasn't really enthusiastic about the material, but I found an interesting angle for approaching it and was trying to connect it to the writing that we've already studied. I figured out it was going to go bad about twenty minutes in, when after the announcements, my bio blurb about the poet and the first read through of the poem, the first comment was so off base that it was almost ridiculous.

Even though I indicated the poem was more complex than the comment allowed, several other students jumped at the interpretation and insisted upon it, no matter how many times I pointed out that there wasn't anything in the poem to support such an interpretation. No matter how many times I'd ask a student to point out the line in the poem that clearly states their claim that the poem was about a single subject, not the plural subject that it is about, they insisted upon reading it as a poem about how every reader has their own unique interpretation of the poem.

NO! It's not about the reader! I wanted to scream. But I kept calm. I finally got them to understand that the poem meant something else than what they were obsessed with, and we moved to the next poem. They were still having difficulty, but I was starting to get through to them. I announced we'd turn to the third poem, which should have nailed it for them and put everything back on track, when a student - one who I wouldn't have imagined would be worried about it - asked about the midterm.

In the course of answering questions and indicating that the exam would cover all the assigned material, not just what we specifically went over in class, eye-roller asked "then what's the point of coming to class?" to which I answered that the midterm was only worth 10% of her mark and she might want to learn something in order to fulfill the other assignments in the course. (I knew better than to appeal to her desire to be better educated or just learn something for the joy of learning itself- she's actively counting the minutes till the course is over)

Another student, sensing the inanity of the questions, asked whether the staples would be straight up and down or at an angle on the exam, which of course lightened things up, but by then I was so annoyed, I was having a real difficulty getting back on track.

We took a break, and when we returned I mostly had it together, but I ended up just lecturing at them mostly because I just didn't have the energy or desire to let them talk.

I think students learn best when they talk - when they're challenged with questions and have to find the answers themselves instead of just having it handed to them, but it's harder as a teacher to do so because so often they end up with some really weird stuff that you have to respectfully debunk while pointing them in the right direction.

But maybe I need to lecture more and guide less.

It's not my style, but I can certainly give it a try.

I hope I feel better about it in the morning.

It IS a small world

The far North and deep South have more in common than I ever thought possible.

CONGRATULATIONS!

So I heard a certain somebody give his valedictorian speech this last week - how cool is that!? - and he absolutely rocked the house! I thought the speech was fabulous, but his classmates loved it even more. I knew this guy was great ever since I met him, but it's also nice to know that other people also think so!

Then I watched him at commencement, also cool, which was also on Mother's Day, so we had plenty to celebrate that day... the only damper on the day was the pouring rain/leaky basement. But other than that it was fabulous!

I'm so proud of you babe!

Q: why do we call it convocation in Canada and they call it commencement here?

In which I wax poetic

You may remember how I was worrying about how to fill 210 minutes of class twice a week. Looks like that's less of a worry than I at first thought.

Having never taught for such a long time period before, I worried about how to fill such a large time slot. I also worried about the stamina of the students and whether they'd be able to keep up.

They're able to keep up (mostly) and they even seem eager to talk, which makes classtime so much easier to manage. They did get a little wearied by the scansion exercise yesterday. And I was very confused about how difficult a time some of them had grasping the concept. I had one student who swears she cannot tell which syllable the emphasis is on for any given word. I've never met anyone who couldn't figure that out.

I also thought that kids do this in school... don't they? She recalled a clapping exercise, but still claims she cannot tell which syllable to emphasize, even though she is clearly able to because her speech isn't full of weird emphases. She's also the student who rolled her eyes when I said the exam was cumulative, so I'm chalking it up to obstinacy, and just a piss poor attitude about the course.

note to self in ideal world: ask her why the hell she chose the course if she hates it so much or if she's always just this negative and whether she has many friends

I realized that most of my posting has been about this poetry class, which is not only boring for you, dear reader, but also indicates a relative lack of imagination or variety in my blog life. That's mostly because this course is eating up every spare minute that I have. I'm sure my head will be able to emerge out of my ass sometime soon... at least I hope so!

Teaching modern poetry

Teaching an elective is SO different from teaching required courses!

Sure, there are students in the class only because it fulfills a requirement. And some of those students have put it off long enough that this is the only class that they can take to fulfill that requirement before they graduate, so they're not excited about this particular course.

But most of them CHOSE this class.

Deliberately.

That's so refreshing! First day when I walked in, I was met by people who smiled and I could tell they were excited about the material. Yes, I did have a lot of "is this going to be on the exam?" kind of questions... and one eye roller when I said the final was cumulative, but c'mon people! the term's only seven weeks long! If you can't remember what you did seven weeks earlier, you should be getting a CAT scan... or staying awake in class at least.

Comparing notes with the other TA teaching a lit course this term, we were really surprised to find that her general Brit Lit course had half the students enrolled in it as mine. We couldn't figure it out, since her course is required, covers a broader range of material, and isn't poetry (which isn't always popular with undergrads... I know I wouldn't have elected to take it if it wasn't required a U of C).

I finally figured it out after I looked at the course catalog and quizzed my students about why they were in the course. My course fulfills a general "social sciences and humanities" core requirement that ALL students in Arts and Sciences have to fulfill, and the number of seniors in my class tells me that many of them have put it off till now - I have polisci majors, chem majors, graphic design, philosophy, business, you name it, and I've probably got it!

I've always found such mixes successful for discussions because students have so many different perspectives that they bring to the table that you don't end up with parroting and groupthink that sometimes happens when you're only teaching one major. But it's also made me realize that I will have to spend more time than I expected on some basics like how to scan poetry, rhyme schemes, poetic devices and effects, and sound effects.

The trick will be to teach the students who don't know this stuff, without boring the hell out of the English majors that are in the class - they make up roughly a third of the students. I'm figuring on trying to get them working in groups where there's at least one English major per group. That way the major gets to 'teach' and not get bored, while the non-majors learn what they need to know.

Regardless of the challenges that I'll still run into teaching this course, so far it's been a fabulous experience, and I'm really looking forward to the rest of the term!

ummm...I don't get the connection...

According to CTV, the Senate proposed a levy on alcoholic drinks to pay for mental health programs.

Why beer and mental health?

Okay, aside from the 'some of it makes you feel good while too much is pathological' connection, why target beer taxation to fund mental health programs? They need to be funded, sure, definitely in fact, but I don't get the connection.

What's next?
New gas tax to fund childcare subsidies?
New cigarette tax to fund post office expansion?

I'm all for increased mental health funding, but I find it puzzling that revenues for the project are being generated specifically through increased alcohol taxation.

Talking and Listening

So I was telling a colleague over the weekend how many students I have in this summer poetry class - 28 - and she said, "Oh, so it's a lecture class then"

I really hope not! I don't think I can talk about modern poetry for seven hours a week. I can talk a lot when I need to, but seven hours? that's pushing it!

I'm actually hoping to have a discussion component in the class - I've built in a participation mark to encourage people to talk - and I'd like ideally for the class as a group to discuss the poetry. I think it would be far more pedantic to have to format discussion as small groups, because then you have to use discussion questions, which frankly get a bit annoying and students feel like it's just make-work.

At the same time, I know with 28 students, it's going to be real hard to get all of them talking. I know there will be some students who will talk all the time, while others will try to say nothing at all. But I'm going to try it anyway.... 'cause if I have to lecture for seven hours a week, my head will pop right off!

Scheduling

So I'm prepping for the summer course I'm teaching - Modern Poetry - which is pretty exciting because it's a lit course which I've never gotten to teach before. Closest I'd come is a guest lecture on Gawain in my supervisor's Medieval Lit during my MA.

I'm feeling pretty good about the material. I know which artists, poems, movements I want to talk about, but the schedule is what's giving me trouble.

I'm teaching twice a week, 210 minutes per class. Yes, 210 minutes - that's three and a half hours twice a week that we meet. Yikes! I know I've done classes that long, but they're hard! The only time I did that as an undergrad was a block week course in Canadian art. We met twice a day for two and a half hours for a full week. But in that class, half the day was spent on lit, and the other half on visual art, so it was really only like sitting through two different - albeit still long - lectures.

Here, we're talking about poetry the whole time. I want to keep their attention for both halves of the course, and don't want students deciding to ditch the second half at the break - which I know will be a temptation 'cause I've fallen victim to it myself before.

I've decided to treat each day as if they were two different classes, with two different topics, two different lectures, and possibly even two different poets to focus on. I think that will be the way to combat the weariness that I'm sure we'll all feel by the end of 210 minutes. Let's hope that does the trick.

Too bad.

Bloodsuckers

Dracula Blogged begins again today. If you've ever had the urge to read the original vampire story (no, not the first, but the one that has the most cachet in pop culture) you can read it day by day over at Dracula Blogged.

The novel is written as a compilation of documents, all dated, and they're posted according to those dates. If you've read the novel, the blog gives you a very different sense of the story, as it unfolds in chronological order, not page by page, which lends it a sense of veracity you can't get from the book or even from film adaptations. Check it out.

Game 7

So, yes, it is only the quarterfinals, but game 7 between the Ducks and Flames goes on tonight, and I really wouldn't mind seeing the Flames win it. Then they'd advance to play the Oilers, which would be an interesting series to watch... provided there's any coverage of it here - one would hope the semifinals would be.

In honor, I give you

25 Signs Showing You Might be Canadian:

1. You're not offended by the term "HOMO MILK".
2. You understand the phrase "Could you pass me a serviette, I just dropped my poutine on the chesterfield" not that I'd ever say something like this
3. You eat chocolate bars, not candy bars.
4. You drink Pop, not Soda.
5. You know what 'Mickey' and '2-4' mean - I used the term "mickey" here once and was greeted by a lot of confusion... who knew it was a Canadian thing?
6. You don't care about the fuss with Cuba. It's a cheap place to go for your holidays, with good cigars, lots of rum, and no Americans.
7. You know that a pike is a type of fish, not part of a highway.
8. You drive on a highway, not a freeway... and they're often not free
9. You have Canadian Tire money in your kitchen drawers.
10. You know that Casey and Finnegan were not part of a Celtic musical group...though it would be a good name for one, eh?
11. You get excited whenever an American television show mentions Canada.
12. You brag to Americans that: Shania Twain, Jim Carrey, Celine Dion & many more, are Canadians.
13. You know that the C.E.O. of American Airlines is a Canadian!
14. You know what a touque is...and own one.
15. You design your Halloween costumes to fit over snowsuits.
16. You know that the last letter of the English alphabet is always pronounced "Zed" not "Zee"
17. Your local newspaper covers the national news on 2 pages, but requires 6 pages for hockey.
18. You know that the four seasons mean: almost winter, winter, still winter, and road construction. so true! especially in Saskatchewan!
19. You know that when it's 25 degrees outside, it's a warm day!
20. You understand the Labatt Blue commercials.
21. You know how to pronounce and spell "Saskatchewan". (Sas-Kat-chew-an)
22. You perk up when you hear the theme song from 'Hockey Night in Canada'...ah...memories
23. You were in grade 12, not the 12th grade.
24. "Eh?" is a very important part of your vocabulary, and is more polite than,"Huh?"
25. You actually understand these jokes, and forward them to all of your Canadian friends (and then you send them to your American friends just to confuse them...)

Desperation has an ugly smell

So I could tell the university had posted marks for the term by the small flurry of emails I received this morning from students who thought they'd been gypped in the marks they got. Several of them conveniently "forgot" the attendance policy even though it is clearly outlined on the syllabus, I go over it on the first day and remind them of it on a regular basis throughout the term.

I don't know what it is, but this term was worse than usual...all through the term actually. Lots of whiny, grade-grubbing students who spent a lot of time and energy trying to convince me they should get higher grades than they did. I wish they'd spent that much time and energy on just doing the work - then it wouldn't have been a problem! Sheesh!

Benefits of a cultural studies dissertation #31

I spent my weekend watching music videos

Shock To The System
By Billy Idol
BestVideoCodes.com

reading comic books







watching movies





All in the name of research! At least the book review is finally finished (it took much longer than I expected it to).

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.