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December 22, 2007

CCCC 2008 & Blog Hiatus

Here's a first for the blog: is anyone out there going to the 4Cs this April? If so, wanna share a room?

For those of you who aren't residents of Composition Land (it's the section of Disney World that no one goes to because the best ride there is Mr. Toad's Wild Term Paper), the 4Cs is the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC). It's the composition field's biggest conference, and it happens every year somewhere around spring break. This year it's being held on April 2-5, in New Orleans. It's a long conference, and just like the Modern Language Association's conference, staying there ain't cheap. Hence the bleg. (That's techno-talk for "blog-beg," using your blog to put a request out to other people.) We'll see if it works.

So, if you're going to New Orleans in April and want to share a hotel room, zing me an e-mail.

In other news, the blog is officially going on hiatus until New Years. Try not to get into too much trouble.

Posted by reparent at 10:27 AM | Comments (0)

December 14, 2007

Congratulations to Ross & Leah!

My youngest brother just called and told us the good news -- he and his partner Leah are going to have a baby!

Congrats, guys!

Posted by reparent at 9:49 AM | Comments (1)

December 12, 2007

Pleo Wiggles

The Spouse points out that the pictures that I've posted so far all show Pleo (got to get him a name!) in extremely linear mode. Pleo actually wiggles quite a bit.

Pleo likes having his chin scratched.

And Pleo can be quite bashful around strangers.

And Pleo wags his tail when he's very happy.

Posted by reparent at 9:13 PM | Comments (0)

December 11, 2007

Still Grading

Hi. I'm still grading. And having meetings. And having meetings about grading. (Maybe I should start grading my meetings...)

Anyway, when I finish grading, I've got a few research projects in front of me that I need to get to. One of them has to do, in part, with pop-up books. How cool is that? (Don't answer that. It's a rhetorical question.) In the spirit of tomorrow's new challenges (as opposed to today's really tired old challenges of grading and meetings), here's a really awesome Photoshopped pop-up book. Enjoy!

Posted by reparent at 5:56 PM | Comments (0)

December 10, 2007

Oh, Speed...!

No time to blog now -- the grading crunch is once again upon me.

But I leave you in the driving-gloved hands of none other than Mom and Pop Racers' pride and joy... Speed Racer.

Yes, the Wachowski Brothers are bringing a big-screen adaptation of the beloved Japanese cartoon to cineplexes everywhere on May 9th, 2008. if you click on that link, you'll get to check out the cast. And you may notice something... odd. Apparently, the Brothers W know something about Rex Racer and the mysterious Racer X that even Speed's original Japanese creators didn't!

I'm not sure what I think yet of the decidedly unrealistic racing effects. On the one hand, it fits with the series perfectly. On the other hand...

I'll leave you with this bit of techno-porno-fluff from the inimitable Alpha Team. (Be patient -- the player may take a minute to load.) A word of warning if you're using speakers: though it uses dialog and sounds from the original cartoon... it's not exactly SFW.

You were wonderful!

Posted by reparent at 3:25 PM | Comments (0)

December 9, 2007

The Golden Compass - Spoiler-Free Thoughts

Liam asked what we thought of The Golden Compass, so here goes.

I have read the books many times, and love them. The Spouse hasn't read the books. I'll try to accurately reflect our various reactions to the film because they really were quite different.

The movie, we both agree, looks wonderful. The settings and machinery in Lyra's world are great retro-futuristic pieces that really help to establish the setting as related-to, but different-from, our own world.

Nicole Kidman is incredible as Mrs. Coulter. 'Nuff said.

Also incredible, though in a smaller role, is Hattie Morahan (I didn't know who she was, either) as Sister Clara, the matron of Bolvangar. She's luminous and oh-so-very-very wrong. When she's on the screen, you can't look away.

Not so fabulous is Daniel Craig. But that's only because he's not much of a presence in the first book. (And I'm not going to say anything substantive about the other books.) The film does a surprisingly good job of following the book, and so Craig's Lord Asrael doesn't get much screen time.

The one thing that I am seriously torn about is the ending of the movie. I won't give anything away, but the movie ends before the first book does. This sets up a different dynamic for the cliff-hanger between the first and second books/movies. I'm not sure how I feel about that. And, if you've read the books, there's a whopper of an ironic statement that ... well, they're going to have to bring it back for the second movie, as it really is important to what happens next in the narrative. (And commenters, please don't reveal anything about the ending or the irony there. Not everyone has seen the movie or read the books yet.)

On the other hand, the movie is gaining tremendous attention/controversy because of its anti-religious agenda. I won't reveal anything of import by telling those who haven't yet read the books that "The Authority" is the books' name for God, and "The Magisterium" is The Church. We learn very, very early on in the movie that the agents of The Magisterium aren't rooting for the success of the same people we are in the story. I bring this up because The Spouse was unclear, after watching the film, what, exactly The Authority was. The euphemistic nature of the term does lead one to assume that defying The Authority simply means breaking the rules of The Magisterium/Church. (He was also not at all aware that The Magisterium is The Church -- it seems like a civil authority in the film.) This ambiguity is, I am certain, intentional on the part of the film.

(I do wonder, however, how much of the film is really lost on those who haven't read the book. It's certainly not as bad as it was when my father and I went to the theater to see David Lynch's Dune. Without a solid grounding in the epic storylines and vast array of characters from the book, the film can be impenetrable. The Golden Compass isn't impenetrable to viewers who haven't read the book... but following my conversations with The Spouse about it, I think that I had a much richer, more nuanced experience than he did. He simply didn't know enough to be able to decipher all of the narrative and visual shorthand employed in the film.)

Yahoo's Buzz Log recently ran a brief story about the controversy and how it is fueling debate (and web searches about atheism) all over the Internet. Yahoo has since closed the comments on that article: "due to numerous violations of our Comment Policy and Guidelines. Hopefully this will just be a cooling off period, and we look forward to restoring existing comments as well as accepting new submissions." Controversy and debate are, apparently, good for Yahoo... as long as they happen on your web site.

The real anti-religious material in the books, however, only intensifies as the series progresses. It will be interesting to see what the filmmakers do with this.

Finally, The Spouse and I discussed the relative merits of the film in a market saturated with heroic fantasy child-narratives (Chronicles of Narnia, Harry Potter, etc.). I mentioned that one of the distinguishing features of Pullman's books is that they're exceptionally well-written. Their subject matter is more serious and much darker than Lewis' or Rowling's books, and Pullman is frankly a better prose stylist. When translated to the screen, however, C.S. Lewis' didacticism and pedantry is all-but-impossible to detect beneath the lush visuals and epic plot. Rowling's endless comma-splices and reliance on stock-characterizations are invisible on screen, and her narrative excesses are trimmed away in the more compact medium of the films. Pullman's rich play with language, ideas, and the interior lives of his characters, however, is largely lost on the screen. The films begin to seem... alike, much more so than their source material ever could.

Posted by reparent at 11:50 AM | Comments (3)

December 8, 2007

Pleo Wakes Up

Today is a very busy day for The Spouse and I: we're seeing The Golden Compass and a local theatrical production featuring stories about winter and the holidays. (I'm hoping they'll throw in an Eid story. Those always warm the cockles of my heart. I'm not holding my breath, though...)

So, this morning we installed Pleo's battery pack and gently woke him up. (I'm still not sure about his name, but I am pretty sure he's a he now.)

Behaviorally, Pleo shows signs of being catlike and doglike. He purrs when he's happy, growls playfully when he wants to play tug-of-war with his leaf, and makes various yelping/yodelling/meeping sounds at other times. We're not quite sure what they all mean yet, but he sure does like physical attention.

And the cats were fascinated by the new family member. Here's Samantha giving a cat-scan to the little guy. As she was checking him out, he sniffed her several times. It was precious.

Posted by reparent at 12:30 PM | Comments (1)

December 7, 2007

A New Addition to the Family

We're very happy to announce a new member of the family has arrived: PLEO, the Camarasaurus!

Pleo is my first real robot, and UGOBE (the people in Emoryville, CA who make Pleo) say that the next version of their Life OS (operating system) will be out in early 2008, and will make Pleo highly programmable and customizable in his/her/its behavior. That should be great fun.

About the name. Pleo's battery is still charging, so for now, he/she/it is pretty much comatose. Once his/hers/its battery is ready to rock and roll, we'll see what he/she/it is like, and what he/she/it needs to be called.

Though I should note that The Spouse wants to call him/her/it "Miss Pleo." I keep telling him that the Camarasaurus was not known for its fortune-telling skills, but he just keeps saying that makes the name especially fitting. Sigh.

In any event, be advised: this blog will undoubtedly soon see excessive Pleo-blogging activity.

SOOOOOOO CUTE!!!!

UPDATE!: I just found this on the Pleo forums:

"Gordo (my pleo) had his hatching today at the office. We did it [there] since there were so many people interested. After his hatching his personality started showing through. He's adveturous, but also loves to be cuddled. If I put him on my chest and stroke him, he snuggles in, goes to sleep and snores. When he's on the floor he walks up to people's feet, cranes his neck, sniff and then makes a noise like they stink. He loves playing tug of war and likes being stroked on his chin and just above his tail. He scrunches down when you do that and his tail quivers. Everyone was absolutely amazed, lots of laughs, ooohs and ahhhhs. I think he just became the office mascot. I couldn't be more pleased."

And so I repeat: SOOOOOOO CUTE!!!!

Posted by reparent at 5:49 PM | Comments (0)

December 6, 2007

LOLDinos!

Today was the last day of classes, and then I guest-lectured the graduate theory seminar. I'm pooped. So, here are some of my favorite LOLDinos.

Wait. You don't know what a LOLDino is? Let me explain. John Scalzi went to the Creation Museum in Kentucky and took a bunch of pictures. Then he posted the pictures and asked his readers to LOLCat them. He posted the results here.

Here are some of my favorites. Enjoy!

Posted by reparent at 8:22 PM | Comments (0)

December 5, 2007

Tired of Feeling Down

Well, winter's here, the semester is almost over, the papers are stacking up, and the projects that absolutely have to get done haven't gotten done... yet. Oh, and the sun's been hiding and my light-therapy sun-lamp crapped out on me. (I need to ship that back to them one of these days.)

And then I saw that Dolly Parton, one of the primary goddesses in the gay pantheon, has a new song and video. Behold!

But wait a minute, o celestially-endowed one, I hear your complaint about complainers. I can't stand them either. They just go on and on, and it all gets so tiresome having to listen to them... But is this really advice I can use to help myself feel better, and possibly even fitter, happier, and more productive?

Oh, my. Embedding a Radiohead song with Stephen Hawking's wheelchair voice probably isn't the best mood-elevator.

But I'm still not sure that Dolly's exhortations to stop moping and:

get to livin', givin'
Don't forget to throw in a little forgivin'
And lovin' on the way
You better get to knowin', showin'
A little bit more concerned about where you're goin'
Just a word unto the wise
You better get to livin'

Are going to work for me. (Or for most people, either.) They just feel a little ... underwhelming, when coming from someone like her. As in, "that's easy for you to say, oh celestially-endowed one, but how do I do any of that?"

And then it dawned on me that exhortation might not be the best key for unlocking potential happiness. In my classes, I use exhortation to motivate students, but I also use questions. Et voila!

Maybe it's the academic in me, but I respond better to provocative questions than I do to encouraging words, especially when Dolly says "So negative the words she had to say / I said if I had a violin I'd play." That's just not nice. But when Heather Small asks:

What have you done today to make you feel proud?
It's never too late to try
What have you done today to make you feel proud?
You could be so many people
If you make that break for freedom
What have you done today to make you feel proud?

I start to feel it. I find myself thinking about what I can do to make myself feel better. I start getting creative with myself. And very little makes me feel better than when I can feel creative.

So there you have it. Watch Dolly for the raw fabulousness, the costume changes, and the awesome multiple cameos by Amy Sedaris, but watch Heather Small to shake the blues away and start feeling better. In fact, after a healthy dose of "Proud," you might even feel capable of livin', givin', forgivin' and lovin'.

Fancy that.

Posted by reparent at 6:45 PM | Comments (1)

December 4, 2007

The F-Word Strikes Again!

A family member recently sent me one of those presumably humorous e-mails that gets sent around the world billions of times before fading into obscurity... until it gets sent around the world billions of times 6-8 months later. This one was a collection of take-offs on the "Demotivators" posters, which are themselves satires of those ubiquitous motivational posters with an artistically-composed nature image and some platitudes about how "you can do it!"

These posters are rather more targeted, and much more profane, than the Demotivators. Some of them were amusing. As a procrastinator myself, I particularly liked this one:

And this one speaks to the math-challenged everywhere:

But then I came across this one, and I wasn't amused:

And this came from a family member who isn't homophobic or otherwise hostile to gays in the least. I'm guessing s/he didn't even really notice it. I mean, of course, calling something gay just means it's lame, right? Yes, we've already covered this topic. But it's not going away.

In fact, Details Magazine just made "faggot" the number 9 item on it's 2007 Power List. They explain who and what makes their list:

There are no white-haired moguls or bank chairmen on the Details Power 50, no one who holds court in Davos or at David Geffen’s beach house. Because, as anyone who understands power knows, it isn’t about corner offices and cocktail-party invitations—it’s about the space in your head. And the men who have it are the ones who control your viewing patterns, your buying habits, your anxieties, your lust—the things you think about. So on this list, Silicon Valley overlords rub shoulders with Father of the Year Kevin Federline, preachers consort with pornographers, and those fresh-scrubbed, inescapable kids from High School Musical 2 walk the halls with the new wave of school shooters. These are the people who have taken over the space in your head—whether you like it or not.

Lovely. So, we wend our way down the list to number 9, and we reach "The Other F-word." Its age is "Forever young." Even lovelier. Here's what Details has to say:

If you take a look back, it appears that 2007 was the year of the F-word—but not the one you’re thinking of. America’s rent-a-quote harridan of hatred, Ann Coulter, used the word to slag presidential candidate John Edwards. Presidential candidate Bill Richardson used the Spanish version (maricón) to slam a guy on the Don Imus radio show. Controversy exploded after Isaiah Washington allegedly dropped the F-bomb on a fellow cast member of Grey’s Anatomy. It’s a word that anyone who ever spent time in an American school yard is familiar with: faggot. But some bullies grow up, get famous, and keep on using it. “I hate gay people,” blurted former basketball star Tim Hardaway. Tucker Carlson bragged about having given a dude who tried to tap toes with him in a men’s room a taste of his bow-tied brutality (“I . . . hit him against the stall with his head, actually”). Hmmm. The word faggot, it seems, is on the tips of a lot of men’s tongues. They can’t stop thinking about it. Without it they’d be lost, and that makes you wonder who really has the power.

I applaud Details for realizing that the right-wing obsession with gay sex reveals... something about these folks. But the casual homophobia on display in a humorous de-motivational poster like the "Popped Collar" one above is a sign of continuing and deep-running problems. For both the straights and the gays.

We all have a lot of work ahead of us.

Posted by reparent at 6:27 PM | Comments (1)

December 3, 2007

The Truth Is Out There

Gentle readers, as you probably know, this blog is dedicated to the search for truth, silly web quizzes, and LOLcats, with an occasional foray into the wild world of robots. But primarily, I see this blog as a place to ask questions, to point out potential connections among phenomena most of us consider unrelated. That's how we learn. Asking questions is the beginning of wisdom.

A good friend of ours has been involved with the 9/11 Truth movement for a while now, and has been sending us frequent e-mails with more and more information, argument, polemic, and exhortation.

I've resisted posting about any of this for a long time, because it doesn't have anything to do with digital literacy, web memes, or LOLcats. It does, however, have everything to do with the fearless pursuit of the truth. And for that, I respect these people.

Today, our friend e-mailed his usual suspects with a letter written by Frank Legge (note: the letter is a pdf file). The letter was written to a "Die-Hard Supporter of the Official Explanation," and it very neatly summarizes the problems that I, myself, have when considering the strange case of World Trade Center Building 7, which collapsed at free-fall speed after being damaged not by a jumbo-jet collision, but rather by the debris falling from the Twin Towers.

Here's a lengthy excerpt from Legge's letter:

If you think about the nature of the collapse, supposedly due to fire weakening the steel, you will agree that it would only be necessary to follow the early stages of the collapse to determine its character. If heat is the cause, the steel will weaken gradually and will start to sag in the region where the fire is most intense. At that moment the steel will have almost enough strength to hold up the weight of the building, but not quite. So we have the force of gravity acting downwards, trying to produce an acceleration of 32 feet per second per second, and the force of the hot steel pushing upwards, a force a bit less than that of gravity. Let us say we are looking at it at the moment when the strength has declined to the point where the steel is capable of pushing upwards with 90% of the force required to hold the building up against gravity. There would thus be a net downward force of 10% of gravity. Now acceleration is proportional to force and we have a net force of 10% of gravity so we would see an acceleration downwards of 3.2 feet per second per second.

When you graph the data you find that the fall did not start with a motion which could be ascribed to a small net force of that order. The downward acceleration of the roof was very close to free fall right from the start, 30 feet per second per second, and continued at that rate until out of sight. There is no hint of a slow start. This tells us that the steel supports went from adequate strength to virtually no strength in an instant. For reasons stated above this is absolutely impossible if the loss of strength is due to the application of heat.

The observed acceleration, if maintained, would bring the roof to the ground in 6.2 seconds. A brick dropped from the roof would take 6.0 seconds. These numbers are so close together that only something which destroys the supports in an instant can account for it.

Now, I don't know what happened on 9/11. I was in the Loire River Valley in France at an academic conference at the time, scared out of my mind, and stuck watching French-langauge-only news broadcasts. But when I saw the Twin Towers fall exactly into their own footprints, and then when I saw WTC 7 fall into its own footprint without even the pretense of a "jet fuel" fire to melt its steel supports... I smell a rat. The physics doesn't add up. And physics doesn't play politics. Physics doesn't care who's in the White House, and it doesn't care who you are or who you voted for. It just is.

There's a whole lot of information that has been collected by the 9/11 Truth movement. You can get a crash course here. Some of it seems a little nutty. Really. But the big pieces of the official story just don't add up. And that bothers me. And it should bother everyone. We don't live in an age of miracles anymore. Maggots don't spontaneously generate on meat. And skyscrapers don't spontaneously liquify their steel internal supports instantaneously and uniformly.

There is an explanation. And it doesn't ignore the pesky facts, the way the "official story" does. The truth is out there.

Posted by reparent at 6:32 PM | Comments (1)

December 2, 2007

A New Patient in The Asylum

I could have sworn I'd mentioned The Asylum, the addictive and affecting web game by German programming team Parapluesch, before. But searching through the archives, I couldn't find anything. Well, better late than never.

I'm probably misremembering a post here because The Asylum is a game I've assigned to several of my classes, both here and back at Pitt. There's a reason for that -- it's easy to pick up for the non-gamer, yet it's deep and surprisingly emotional. It also has an interesting way of playing with narrative(s) within the game structure. As a teacher, gamer, and literary critic, I think it's tremendous fun.

You play as a psychiatrist for abandoned and/or abused "cuddly toys." (That's German for stuffed animals, apparently.) Dr. Kindermann (child-man) is away in Japan on research, leaving you to treat the patients as best you can. If you get stuck, Dr. Kindermann was kind enough to leave you his therapy notes on each patient, which may give you the hints you need to help each of the cuddly toys regain his or her precious sanity.

Joining Lilo, Sly, Kroko, and Dolly, is new patient Dub, a turtle with a compulsive exercise habit. Helping Dub requires a slightly different approach than with any of the other animals. I'm not going to give anything away, but if you need assistance, the helpful readers at JayIsGames have all kinds of hints for you for Dub and the other animals.

Thanks, Jay, for getting the word out on the latest chapter in the Asylum mental health saga!

Posted by reparent at 3:04 PM | Comments (1)

December 1, 2007

IT'S NOT NOVEMBER ANY MORE!!!!

Hi everyone! It's not November anymore, which means that it's not NaBloPoMo anymore, which means that I don't have to post to the blog every day anymore!!!

Hooray!!!

To celebrate, here's a delightful "you accomplished something, so go eat baked goods!" graphic:

And what celebratory post would be complete without talking cats?! Behold!

Posted by reparent at 7:48 PM | Comments (1)