June 27, 2008

...And Sometimes You Snore

Post coming soon. In the meantime, know that DD has been thinking, deeply, and possibly a little creepily, while you've been sleeping.

And snoring.

Posted by reparent at 6:40 AM | Comments (0)

June 23, 2008

Flower Power

Taking a break from most things digital today, here's something completely different.

Gardening. The mere word can strike fear into the hearts of even the strongest and bravest among us.

I don't like gardening. I suspect it has a lot to do with my parents' technique of using yardwork as punishment for me and my brothers. In a Texas summer that can be a death sentence. Boy howdy did it ever suck.

So, while I'm not fond of gardening, when The Spouse and I moved into our lovely townhouse, it featured a front walkway that just screamed wasteland.

See? That's our door on the left. It's at the end of that long, barren strip of vegetative death and despair.

After receiving some very generous gift cards to local fave Gardener's Supply from my parents and brother and sister-in-law, The Spouse and I set to work. (No one told us plants cost so freaking much. It was a very good thing those gift cards were so generous!)

The walkway presents certain challenges to the aspiring gardener. First, one side is very shady.

The other side is not only wider (requiring different plant cover strategies), but it also gets a lot more sun, which means that you can't put the same plants on both sides. So much for symmetry!

On top of all of that, the "soil" along the side of our walkway is barely that. It's mostly large rocks and clay. This isn't a problem if you're Martha Stewart circa 1996, and have an army of minions to "turn the soil, replacing it with 3-4 feet of hand-mulched soil enriched with your garden compost -- it's a good thing." Being not thus gifted with an army of soil-servants, we did the best we could with several bags of potting soil. Good luck, little plants. You're gonna need it.

And finally, we put in some clematis which, we hope, will soon grow up the fishing-line trellis we strung up in front of the house. Though you can't see it in this picture, those little guys have really gone nuts in the past few weeks.

And the best part of all? All of the plants we "installed" (as The Spouse calls it) are perennials, which means if these suckers survive we're done! Woo-hoo!!!

Posted by reparent at 5:13 PM | Comments (1)

June 19, 2008

Cars... and Disaster

This post was going to be about new "outrageous" cars, the cars that auto makers either produce one of, show off at auto shows, and then never put into production because they're just too cool, or that cost so much money that you and I and everyone we know will never ever see them? Yes, those.

But then I was catching up on some long-overdue blog reading last night and I learned that our good friends Sster and Attic Man (their noms de blog) have become victims of the Midwest flooding.

I mentioned our local paper yesterday, the Free Press, which published this picture (from the news wires, naturally):

The Spouse noticed it first, doing a double take on the grainy black-and-white picture of houses that had floated downstream like flotsam and jetsam, washed up against a bridge trestle. Turns out that Sster and Attic Man's house in Cedar Rapids is very near that bridge. They haven't been allowed back to their house yet, so no one really knows what's going on and how bad the damage is. If you know Sster and Attic Man, check out Sster's blog and zing them an e-mail of support.

But, because life goes on, and because thinking about flood victims half the country away who you can't do anything for at the moment is a sure recipe for depression, I guess we should look at a few of the outrageous cars.

First up is a video from BMW's new GINA project:

I especially liked this bit from Chris Bangle: "Emotion is really the added value to this. I mean, one way is saying you get better function or you get better alternative ways of doing things... but really we want to achieve a higher emotional plane out of this." Because when I first watched the video, I had a number of OMG! moments.

Having owned a convertible, I'm extremely hesitant about the GINA's road handling, though. Even tightly-stretched and clamped down convertible roofs flap and flutter in the wind as you drive the car with the top up. I'm left wondering how the GINA's skin will react to speed and atmosphere, especially with the split hood (which is incredibly cool).

The Spouse sent me this link to a Yahoo story about outrageous cars, and many of them are very cool. But one in particular caught my attention, and it wasn't even included as a picture in the article! (Bad, lazy Yahoo!) Here's the Jeep Renegade:

If you've ever played the game Halo, you recognize this as a blatant rip-off of the Warthog vehicle from the game (minus the chain gun, of course).

But while looking for the Jeep, I came across this concept car from Volkswagen, and I think it's a much cooler variation on the same theme:

And so, as gas prices head for the $6 mark, and as our friends try to figure out what to do now that their living room has become a sewage-filled aquarium, we can at least dream about better times and better, cooler cars.

(I'm still waiting, however, for the flying cars I was promised we'd have by the year 2000.)

Posted by reparent at 5:56 PM | Comments (2)

June 17, 2008

It's Not Random If You Use Numbers

As they say in my homeland, "Howdy!"

The downtime has been lovely, but as part of the new workplan I'm going to be posting something short each and every day to keep the writing mojo flowing.

So, to kick things off, a veritable potpourri of interesting, thought-provoking, and wiinsome (sic) stuff. And, as the title indicates, it's not a random collection of stuff because it's numbered!

~ < * > ~ < * > ~ < * > ~ < * > ~ < * > ~

1) Wii now have a Nintendo Wii! Oui, c'est vrai. And we even have a few games for it that allow online play with other proud Wiiple. At present, we have MarioKart Wii, Endless Ocean, and Trauma Center: New Blood. So, if you've got a Wii, and one or more of those games, too, zing me an e-mail so wii can exchange super-secret and highly irritating Wii-codes, which will then allow us to enter those codes into our Wii systems thus unlocking online play on a game-by-game basis. (Yes, the process seems to be exactly that tedious.)

~ < * > ~ < * > ~ < * > ~ < * > ~ < * > ~

2) With all of the gay marriage going on in Massachusetts, and now in California and New York (though New York took the easy way out by recognizing gay marriages without performing them), I imagine straight, married people around the country must be reduced to quivering piles of lime-green jello as they await the inevitable dissolution of their own marriages. As we've been told time and again by the "marriage is a straights-only club" members, gay marriage is the final straw that will break the (straight) marriage camel's back. And now, via AmericaBlog, we have proof:

~ < * > ~ < * > ~ < * > ~ < * > ~ < * > ~

3) Somebody, somewhere, posted a link to this Talking Jesus Doll (I kid you not), and I haven't been able to get the darn thing out of mind for days now.

It's not that I'm particularly religious... I'm not. I just think Talking Jesus is kinda hot. I really appreciate it when "toy" companies put in the time and energy it takes to make Talking Jesus an attractive Caucasian guy with flawless hair and a reassuringly upper Midwestern newscaster accent (i.e., the accent most Americans can't hear as an accent).

~ < * > ~ < * > ~ < * > ~ < * > ~ < * > ~

4) While I was poking around, looking for the original link to Talking Jesus, I found this on BoingBoing, a link to t-shirt designs refuting one of the primary arguments of Creationism/So-Called "Intelligent" Design"

See, the Creationists argue that you don't have to teach Creationism, per se in science classes, just teach "the controversy" over evolution, which would require teaching Creationism and/or "Intelligent" Design. Of course, among scientists there really is no controversy. Evolution is accepted as the paradigm for the appearance and development of life on earth. And yet they try to weasel religion in any way they can. (Goodness, this is becoming quite the theological post, isn't it?)

I bring this up in part because I like the shirt designs, and partly because I have an editorial cartoon on my office door that makes the same points with astrology, alchemy, phrenology, and other pseudo-sciences. But these are wearable. Cool.

Posted by reparent at 6:43 PM | Comments (1)

May 15, 2008

Did You Know...?

... that today is Peace Officers Memorial Day? And that every year on May 15th, flags are to be flown at half-staff to mourn their losses and memorialize their service?

Neither did I. But as I was walking to my office this morning I noticed that the flags were at half-staff. So, I asked the helpful information desk attendant at our new $50+ million dollar student/conference center why the flags were lowered. She didn't know, but she went back into the main operations office and asked someone who might.

If you've ever played the game of "Telephone," you may have an inkling of what's coming up.

When she returned, she solemnly told me that there was a Presidential Proclamation declaring that all flags should be lowered to half-staff today to celebrate the National Peace Memorial.

I am not making this up. Once I processed what she'd said, I was indignant that the President would "celebrate" peace with the international symbol for state mourning, but I thanked the attendant for checking into it for me and walked away in a bit of a huff.

Then, once at my office, I pulled up Google and started searching for what was really going on.

So, we have two things to be thankful for: 1) the dedication and sacrifice of our police officers; and 2) that our President didn't attempt to force us all to mourn the promise of peace.

Posted by reparent at 9:30 AM | Comments (0)

May 8, 2008

I'm Back

And just in time for my birthday! Yes, today is my 37th birthday, and thanks to the relativistic effects of traveling close to the speed of light, I have it on the highest authority that I don't look a day over 37!

I know you want to know all about my recent trip to outer space, and I was worried that I wouldn't be allowed to discuss it for global security reasons. However, we're lucky that film footage of this top-secret mission has been leaked to the press, with more to come, I am certain.

Now that the space-cat is out of the moon-bag, so to speak, I can speak candidly about the mission I was on. If you haven't seen the leaked clips, watch this:

Yes, the truth can finally be told.

I was on a mission to fight the Evil Space Nazis (ESNs) on the dark side of the moon.

It was very exciting. We've got lots of pictures from the whole shebang, and I'll post some of them in the next few days.

But this adventure with ESNs started me thinking about retro-futurism. Why is it so cool to mix the past into our frothy futurist cocktails? Blade Runner (ha! The Spouse hates it when I go on and on about Blade Runner) famously made 2018 Los Angeles a 1940s-esque noir-fest.

But I digress. Over at his Sweet Homo Alabama blog, Z.C. Byrnes points us to a very cool mashup of canonical western film High Noon and... um, killer robots. How cool is that?!

"Have you forgotten he's got his own deflector shield?" Classic!

Watching this video I was reminded of a tune we heard while in space heading toward the ESN base. In space we got fabulous radio reception from all over the globe, and the crew and I were treated to a fun track on the BBC: The Last Shadow Puppet's "The Age of The Understatement." It's a hoot. Check it out:

Now, while the video gives us Soviet tanks and choruses, the music is heavily influenced by Ennio Morricone's spaghetti western scores. But with a modern twist. I could imagine killer robots being behind that twist. In fact, I bet it was the killer robots who were running the Soviet army. You read it here first, people.

Which, of course, makes me think of that other great recent western-themed future fantasia in song, Muse's "Knights of Cydonia." If you've been living in a retro-futurist-proof bomb shelter for the past year or so, you might not have heard this song. But even if you've heard the seriously western-themed song, have you seen the video?

Oh, Gustof von Musterhausen, your little film is so full of awesome it hurts my brain.

I've written before about remix culture and prosumers (producer/consumers with the near-professional quality modern tech allows), but with "Knights of Cydonia" we get the full circle -- professional video producers remixing genres, effects, narratives, and throwing in a whole heaping of allusions to other works.

And it's all wrapped in a laser-shooting, kung-fu fighting, unicorn-riding sci-fi western package. Excellent.

P.S. Bonus points go to whoever identifies the most allusions in the Muse video!

Posted by reparent at 4:39 PM | Comments (4)

April 14, 2008

I'm a Rocket Man (See You in May!)

So, Richard Branson called right when I was planning my next blog post. Apparently, he needs someone with mad digital literacy skillz to pilot Virgin Galactic's latest spacebuggy. It happens more often than you'd expect.

Since I think it's gonna be a long long time 'till touch down brings me round again to find I'm not the man they think I am at home (Oh no no no), I'm a rocket man... here's a little something deep, profound, cute, and wonderfully wonderful to ponder until blogging resumes at the beginning of May.

Ladies and Gentlement, I present to you, Paul Klusman, engineer, comic, and cat-dude extraordinaire!

Posted by reparent at 7:50 PM | Comments (1)

March 17, 2008

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

As I'm not Irish, I won't bore you with blather about Ireland. Let's get right to the drinking and the singing.

First, a classic sketch from The Muppet Show that may drive you to drink:

Oh boy. Second, "The Wind That Shakes the Barley," a classic folk song here in a shattering performance by Lisa Gerrard of Dead Can Dance. The Spouse and I had the rare opportunity to see Dead Can Dance live in concert in DC. Wow.

I know I need a drink after that. Finally, something a little lighter. The Magnetic Fields' "Abigail, Belle of Kilronan," with a video featuring plastic toys. I suspect the Fields would approve.

(Interesting how this turned into a meditation on death and war.)

Beannachtam na Feile Padraig!

Posted by reparent at 9:53 AM | Comments (0)

February 23, 2008

Even a Child Could Do It... NOT

Some projects are quick. Some are simple. Some are longer, but straight-forward and uncomplicated.

And then there's the stuff I'm working on now.

Right now I'm finishing the coding for the faculty union's web site and drafting my book's prospectus. Both are incredibly detailed, complex, recursive (oh yeah, since I did this I need to go back and add a whole lot of that), and they make my eyes cross.

Which is to say that posts will resume when I manage to extricate myself from this box of pieces, parts, words, and tags.

Posted by reparent at 7:40 PM | Comments (0)

January 28, 2008

REALLY Briefly Noted

My friend Suzanne's article on cooking and food in virtual worlds is out in Seven Days now, and you can read it online here. Way to go, Suzanne!

~ < * > ~ * ~ < * > ~

Go see Cloverfield. The Spouse and I did on Saturday. If you find Godzilla, 9-11, Aliens, and The Blair Witch Project moving, you'll love this film. (And be sure to stick around for the music at the end-credits and the secret clip at the very end.)

~ < * > ~ * ~ < * > ~

And last, but not least, my brother Ross and his partner Leah are finding out the sex of their baby today! And the answer is.....?

Posted by reparent at 11:55 AM | Comments (0)

January 15, 2008

Back on the Air (so to speak)

Aaaaaaaaand... we're back!

The break this winter was really strange. I finished the courses I was teaching, turned in the grades, and then... didn't crash. I was too busy with other school-related work and getting ready for Christmas travel (which meant that we had to finish our gift-buying very early and ship everything before we left -- and if you know us, you know that we're always late with our Christmas gifts). Then The Spouse and I traveled down to Richmond, Virginia to spend Christmas with his family. Then, back up here, more school-related work, and into New Years.

Whereupon I finally crashed. Sickness galore. And, without the prospect/specter of a new semester's courses to prep for and teach, I fell into a weird stasis. But I'm back now, and there's much to be done. (As always.)

Anyway, this semester is all about looking to the future. I'm finishing my book this semester, traveling to conferences, and finally launching a newly redesigned and rebuilt web page for the faculty union.

In my research, I'm always looking toward the future, and not just because I get to work with cool, digital things, either. Digital researchers often prognosticate about what's coming next (Ray Kurzweil is a good example of this), but I try to avoid making predictions about the future of technology. I try to think about what we should be doing, rather than what we will be doing. Often, this involves not evolutionary leaps or tech breakthroughs, but simply adjusting our existing practices. (Ray Kurzweil is a good example of this, too -- he often tries to use his speculations and extrapolations to suggest ethical and productive new practices and relationships with machines.)

With that in mind, here are three videos that present new technology that can (and will, I hope) lead to new practices and relationships with machines.

Our good friend Victor e-mailed this to me, and since then it's shot up the viral charts, getting over 2 million views in just a few weeks. Not bad for a grad student!

The next two are related: Photosynth and Seadragon. For some reason the videos for these won't embed. So, you can use the links above to go to Microsoft's site for each and watch the videos posted there, or you can use these links to watch the videos at TechEBlog of Photosynth and Seadragon. Below, I've embedded the presentation that first introduced me to both of these technologies:

I'm excited about these developments. Sure, they're pretty cool, and fun to watch. But more importantly, they begin to suggest new ways of storing, manipulating, and assembling data to create usable, intelligent, and entertaining information.

When I think about these three (somewhat) disparate projects, I immediately begin wondering:

• What will corporations do with these technologies? That is, how will they package them, and to what ends?
• What practices and uses will emerge from users' interactions with them?
• What will these practices teach their users?
• What can we, as teachers, use these technologies to teach our students?

In his previous presentation at TED of Photosynth and Seadragon, Blaise Aguera y Arcas talks about how Photosynth can pull together images from across the Web and Flikr to create virtually limitless image-fields of what Aguera y Arcas calls the "interesting parts of the earth" -- that is, all of the parts that people take pictures of. It's not exactly the Esper machine from Blade Runner, but it does let you see around corners as the Esper does. What's behind (architecturally speaking) the photographer of the first image of St. Peters Basilica? Photosynth shows you. And as Aguera y Arcas notes in his TED talk, the potential for Photosynth grows as more people share their images.

While Photosynth and Seadragon are mainly (so far, it seems) informational applications, Johnny Chung Lee's research into head-tracking 3-D interfaces is affective. The sense of immersion possible in a responsive 3-D environment is much greater than in a 2-D environment, even one that is designed to appear 3-D. As you can see in the video, even the boring, relatively plain abstract space created by Lee becomes a real place that you feel you're moving through. Lee talks about the potential (and problems) for adapting his technology to games, but it could also be adapted for something like Seadragon and Photosynth, obviously.

This would give us new ways to manipulate data and new interfaces for performing that manipulation. Anyone here remember what life with computers was like before the Apple Macintosh and Windows gave us graphical user interfaces? And now look at what we do with computers and how we do it.

Posted by reparent at 3:57 PM | Comments (0)

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 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 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 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 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)

November 22, 2007

Thankfulness Week - Thanksgiving Day!

It's the big day -- Thanksgiving! (If you're in the U.S., that is. If you're Canadian, Thanksgiving was a while ago, and you're bored of the whole thing by now. Sorry.)

So, what I am thankful for today? PEOPLE! But not just any people. Remember, I'm not too fond of people. No, today I'm talking about very special people. I'm talking about you.

I am thankful that I have The Spouse in my life. He may not know the difference between Blu-Ray, HD-DVD, and DVD, but he knows and loves me. (And he'll buy me the DVDs I want on whatever format I very clearly specify for him.) We're in our second decade together, and life is pretty darn good with The Spouse.

I am thankful for our new friends in Vermont. Vermont is, by far, the smallest place either of us has ever lived. It's also got a strong xenophobic streak. (The local paper still refers to people as "native Vermonters," and letters to the editor frequently include the magical incantation: "As a sixth-generation Vermonter..." No joke.) But we've made friends here, and I'm thankful for all of you/them. (I'm not sure that many of them/you read this blog, but if they/you are reading this, they/you rock.

I am thankful for the wee community that exists on and connected-to this blog. That means all of you reading (and I know that there are many of you) this post -- I'm thankful for you. And for those of you who comment regularly, especially my super-bestest-commenter-pals-ever, Coeurlion and Liam, I am thankful that you take the time and have the guts to respond to the stuff I write about here.

And in a related note, I'm thankful for the Northern Vermont blog community. Before I arrived, I got tipped to N Todd's blog Dohiri Mir, which got me hooked on his podcast, which tipped me off to the now sadly-defunct Friday Coffeeblogging podcast of Bill, Flameape, N Todd, and sometimes Cathy. Cathy interviewed me for 7 Days shortly after I arrived, and made fun of the fact that I correctly used the word "slacks" in a complete sentence. And since then, my colleague Philip created a super-popular political blog. But my point is that the blog scene in Vermont is big enough that there's always something to read (and you should read all of these blogs -- seriously), but small enough that you can know some of these people. And I'm thankful for that.

(And hey, Bill, Flameape, N Todd, and Cathy -- if you want to start the Friday coffeeblogging thing back up, I'm all for it. I think it would be awesome.)

I'm thankful for The Spouse's family, which is incredibly welcoming and supportive of us. It's almost like they're... family. Oh, wait. They are family. Anyway, I'm thankful that they're a part of our lives.

I'm thankful for my family, and for the fact that we regularly communicate. It wasn't always thus, and so I'm thankful for the progress we've made.

And finally, I'm thankful for our kitty family, sisters Samantha and Sabrina, who are entering (as gracefully as their rounded contours will allow) their golden years with spunk and personality. Samantha's got epilepsy and irritable bowel syndrome, and Sabrina has arythmic cardiac arrhythmia -- seriously, even her irregular heart beats are irregular. But they're both stable and happy and plump and they love us. Okay, they tolerate us. But that's a lot coming from cat people.

Here's Sabrina looking, as usual, very serious:

And here's Samantha, looking (not exactly as usual) like a vulture:

Anyway, Happy Thanksgiving all. I hope you all have as much to be happily thankful for as I do.

UPDATE: The Spouse reminds me that Sabrina Cat has asthma, as well as an irregular heartbeat. It's true. Our cats have weird, "cats-don't-usually-get-these-conditions" conditions. They're unique!

Posted by reparent at 7:03 PM | Comments (3)

November 20, 2007

Thankfulness Week - Day 2

Today, I am thankful for SNOW! South Burlington had its first noticeable snow of the season last night and today, and now the wee forest behind our house looks like this:

One of the best things about living in Vermont (as opposed to, say, Texas), is that it snows here (a lot, as opposed to practically never with any accumulation), and it's cold in the wintertime (as it should be, but probably won't be for very much longer, thank you global climate change), and you get to wear sweaters (which are pretty and that's enough reason to like them). That was technically three things, but they're all great and important. In Texas... not so much with the great things. Right now (4:30pm Central time) it's 79 degrees where my parents live, and it feels like 80. No thank you!

So, what (meteorological or otherwise) are you thankful for today?

Posted by reparent at 5:16 PM | Comments (1)

November 11, 2007

Ask Digital Digressions!

Once again, it's time for ASK DIGITAL DIGRESSIONS, the blog post inspired by your deepest desires (for... you know, information... about this... blog...).

Q: Hey, DD, what's up with the one-pants-leg-cuffed look you're sporting on the Author Photo? Signed, Confused in Cuff-Land

DD Responds: I'm glad you asked that, CiCL. The photo in question was taken by The Spouse during our recent trek to Bonny Old Scotland. While bicycling around the Island of Shapinsay in the Orkneys (which is where an important part of Frankenstein takes place), we stopped to enjoy the North Atlantic and take some pictures. This photo was one of the resulting photo-documents. My pants leg is cuffed to prevent my jeans from catching in the bicycle's chain. Since the chain is only on one side of the bicycle, I only need to cuff one leg to avoid getting mangled by a tragic pants-tastrophe. (Besides, that's one dang sexy calf muscle right there!) So now you know.

Q: I noticed you just added a new category to the blog, "Queer Theories." Obviously, that's a sign that the blog is going to be addressing more queer issues in the future. So... what's the best LGBT blog out there? Signed, Asking For No Particular Reason

DD Responds: Wow, AfNPR. That's a toughie. Personally, I read Center of Gravitas, Scott-O-Rama, Someone in a Tree, and Bloggernista (who I think I new once, far away, and in a not-so-happy long ago time. But I always, always check Joe.My.God. And so should you. Not only is Joe's blog consistently entertaining, it's also profound:

Best, most multi-faceted use of the phrase "We found ourselves on the dance floor" evah.

Q: Which school would win in a steel cage death-match: Ohio State or the University of Virginia? Signed, Betting on the Big 10

DD Responds: And is that your final answer BotB10? I'm sorry, but you lose. A recent study by Ohio State researchers Ohio State sociologist Dana Haynie, and her indentured servant graduate student, Stacy Armour, argued that:

youngsters who lose their virginity earlier than their peers are more likely to become juvenile delinquents. So obvious and well established was the contribution of early sex to later delinquency that the idea was already part of the required curriculum for federal "abstinence only" programs.

Except that they're wrong. Now, researchers at UVA (led by Paige Harden, a doctoral candidate in psychology -- go doctoral candidates!) have shown that "youngsters who have consensual sex in their early-teen or even preteen years are, if anything, less likely to engage in delinquent behavior later on."

Read the whole article for the details on the scientific smack-down. It's juicy behavioral genetics goodness. And it shows that the Cavaliers kick Buckeye butt.

Q: What the heck's up with the nom-de-blogs on this blog? Signed, Coeurlion

DD Responds: I'm glad you asked that, Coeurlion! This blog holds fast to a strict policy of respecting our commenters' (yes, both of you) identities. That means not letting the LOLCat out of the bag, as it were. And, just for the record, this blogger prefers "Chard" as a nom-de-blog, which, however, this blog and its blogger refuses to use.

Q: What's the best show on YouTube? Signed, Wretched 'cuz of the Writer's Strike

DD Responds: Obviously, that would be The Flight of the Conchords, originally airing on HBO, and then running in a much better format on YouTube. Check out:

Or this favorite of The Spouse:

Just watch them all. It's better than what you'll see on TV these days.

Thanks for tuning into another installment of Ask Digital Digressions!

Posted by reparent at 4:40 PM | Comments (1)

November 10, 2007

The Patriots Don't Play...

...and the weekend just sucks.

Sometimes life isn't so good. This is one of those times chez Digital Digressions.

But even when life isn't so good, there are some good blogs out there. So go read them!

Our first good blog comes via frequent commenter and good friend Liam. Cabinet of Wonders is Heather McDougal's collection of all that is wild and wonderful both inside her brain and outside our ken. It rocks, and so does she. And so does this video she linked to:

I may have more to say about this video later. Stay tuned.

Our second noted and notable blog comes via my down-the-hall colleague Justin Henry ad his blog, Green Galoshes. Justin sends us to David Van Horn's blog (whose name I cannot spell). The thing I like best about David's blog isn't all of the computer science and math stuff I cannot understand. It's the way he blends poetry and cultural references in with the computer science and math stuff I cannot understand. See, for instance, here or here or here. Keep up the good math-y comp-sci-y work, David!

(P.S. to Liam and his kick-ass life-partner Ice: thanks for the anniversary present! You guys are awesome!)

Posted by reparent at 10:11 PM | Comments (3)

November 5, 2007

Tears are Surprisingly Salty

This past weekend, two sad things happened. The Spouse and I saw a student production of The Laramie Project at St. Michael's College which was uneven, but unexpectedly affecting. There wasn't a dry eye in the theater, I think.

And our friends Randy and John lost one of their two boys, Rockie. Rockie was a great big dog with a great big heart (and a great big tail ready to knock over whatever you put down on the table with his exuberant wagging).

There's an animated movie that alleges that all dogs go to heaven, but that doesn't really help to deal with the pain of a suddenly-missing family member. Below is the beautiful message from Randy and John informing us of this sad, unfair news.

Rockie
May 28, 2000 - November 1, 2007

It's impossible to believe that seven and a half years can constitute a lifetime, even for a cute little "beagle" boy dog. Rockie died of complications from emergency surgery. He clung to life for five long days in the hospital, but he just couldn't seem to find his way back to us.

Rocket-mon, yours was a unique and loving soul. You will be sorely missed, not only by your human companions, but perhaps most of all by your brother. Shylo is lost without you.

Here are some of the memories that we will forever cherish:

The way you always made a nest for yourself atop the pile of dirty laundry!
The sloppy smelly kisses you lavished freely and frequently upon us!
The way all the toys and all the bones belonged to you and you alone!
The way you loved and adored and were devoted to one man in particular!
The almost obscene groans of pleasure you'd make at our touch, even when that touch was just an errant foot in the middle of the night!
The evenings in the TV room, when you'd pause from chewing, look up at us, wag your tail and cry out loud and long -- usually at the climax of the show. It was you way of telling us that everything was "right" in your world, and you brought us smiles.

Rockie, you loved well, and were well loved! May that make up a little for the abbreviated lifespan. You will be forever in our hearts, Randy and John.

Posted by reparent at 9:05 AM | Comments (1)

November 3, 2007

It's Singing Saturday!

As promised, here's a post. On Saturday! But it's not just any Saturday... it's SINGING SATURDAY!

But first, a few observations.

• A while back, David noted on his blog, Someone In A Tree, that "There is something primal and therapeutic about letting that sound just rumble up through the body and out into the world. No matter how depressed or lonely or negative I'm feeling, if I start to sing it makes me feel better." I used to sing. A lot. I was in choir and the pop vocal group in high school (yes, I was a choir geek), and then I completed almost all of a BFA in Music Education with a vocal concentration. I was a singing fool. But that was a long time ago, and now I really don't sing at all. Not even to myself. I often wonder what it would be like (and what it would sound like if I just cut loose and belted something out. Probably not pretty, at this point. Sigh.
• Big Bear Butt Blogger Karthas (it's a World of Warcraft Druid thing... and you have a filthy mind!) notes that November is NaBloPoMo, or National Blog Posting Month, for the acronymically-challenged. (Yes, it's also NaNoWriMo, but there ain't no way in hell I'm writing a novel this month.) I can, however, try to post a post each day for the rest of November. (The previous November days don't count because I didn't know about NaBloPoMo.) If you're in to that sort of thing, here's my profile on the NaBloPoMo site. I'm not sure I'm going to do anything with it, as I really don't like the social sites (I know, big surprise), but who can tell what the future will bring? Perhaps I will use this site to torment my blogging friends. Yes, Sster, I'm looking at you!
• So here we go!

First up on SINGING SATURDAY is a lovely rendition of the Flame Wreath chant in a light madrigal style. (You don't need to know anything about Flame Wreath to enjoy this, but I'll explain after the clip.) And for those of you who are now considering skipping this because you a) don't know anything about this "flame wreath" thing; or b) are worried that not knowing anything will dampen your enjoyment, I say: Don't be silly! It's Singing Saturday, so watch the clip and enjoy the pretty harmonies!

For those of you who care, here's what's going on in that chant. Flame Wreath is a spell that one of the big monsters in World of Warcraft casts at players when they try to kill him. It creates a wreath of flame around each of the players in range of the monster, and as long as all of the players in the wreath stand perfectly still, it's not much of a problem. However, if anyone moves through the wreath itself (to run to safety or to attack the monster, all of the players in the wreath get some massive hurt put on them. Hence the raid (the group of players raiding the dungeon) blows up. But even not knowing that, it's nice to hear geeky guys doing neat stuff with harmony.

Next up is one of my guilty cinematic and aural pleasures -- Mortal Kombat. Except that it's Singing Saturday, so you know it'll be fun! (Same rule applies -- watch at least the first minute or so of the clip!)

Now, if you're not familiar with the theme from Mortal Kombat, you're in luck. I'm experimenting with embeddable MP3 players on the blog, so here's the original theme for your entertainment and education!

I think what I like best about these two (and yes, I confess that I rarely make it all the way through the DeCadence video (even though their name is quite clever, that's not quite enough to make up for the fact that a'capella songs shine most brightly when they are able to highlight variation, while techno is quite repetitive) is that these are both examples of really surprising examples of the de-technologizing of essentially technological experiences. That is, it takes no mechanical or digital technology at all to sing, but going up against the Shade of Aran's flame wreath in Warcraft's Karazahn Tower is impossible without a whole mess of technology. Same for the Utah Saints' techno tune, which is the theme to a highly special-effects-dependant movie which is itself based on a series of computer video games.

And, of course, even though these are both de-technologized adaptations, they were both captured by digital cameras, encoded for digital playback, and then uploaded to YouTube. That is, you could call both of these clips examples of technology displaying technology capturing de-technologizations depicting technology-based entertainments. Pretty cool for a Singing Saturday, n'est pas?

Posted by reparent at 3:01 PM | Comments (1)

October 31, 2007

He looks so happy...

Sorry for the radio silence! I'll have a new substantive post up Friday or Saturday, but for now I'll leave you with this, one of my favorite little poems. Stevie Smith's "Not Waving But Drowning."

Click here to read the poem and listen to the poet read it herself. She's a hoot.

Posted by reparent at 7:36 PM | Comments (0)

September 1, 2007

Time to Find a New Life Coach

This evening, The Spouse and I are going to a small dinner party thrown by the former chair of my department. This afternoon's fortune cookie fortune (from last night's take-out):

Today, be civil, but don't go out of your way to be over friendly.

I'm not sure that the fortune cookies are aware that I don't have tenure yet...

Posted by reparent at 5:14 PM | Comments (0)

August 29, 2007

The New Semester Begins

Well, the semester has started and the world has not yet ended (as far as I know).

The new courses are running, and each has a snazzy new blog. Check out my teacher-geeky graduate-level Practicum in Teaching Writing blog here. I'll refer to this as "the Teaching Seminar," regardless of what the University has it coded as in its arcane and Vaal-like computer system, so don't be confused. In the Teaching Seminar I'm tasked with teaching the new teachers how to teach English 001, our version of Freshperson Composition. I like it, and it's absolutely essential for our new Graduate Teaching Fellows, but it's not exactly going to set off any super-cool detectors. Sigh. One day society will realize that teaching is dead sexy. Until then...

We've got my other course this semester, Composing Digital Narratives, a course that is really, honestly, cool and sexy all at the same time. Sort of like David Beckham if he were a college course being taught in a computer lab in the bowels (seriously, we're waaaaaay underground) of the administration building.

Anyway, in the Digital Narratives class, we'll be using crazy tech to mess with everything you thought you knew about stories and storytelling. Should be mucho fun.

~ < * > ~ < * > ~ < * > ~

In other news, my colleague over in the tech garrison here at UVM, Justin Henry, links to Khoi Vinh's thoughts on "ignorant objects," that is, a provocative take on technology and the Velveteen Rabbit phenomenon. I highly recommend you check it out. And while you're there, note the minimalist design of Vinh's blog. Spare, sparse, yet seriously sharp!

Which brings me to our good friend BoingBoing, now in v2.0. They've dropped the clutter from their site design, added comments to their posts, and launched a new sibling site, BBGadgets. I'm hooked.

~ < * > ~ < * > ~ < * > ~

While checking out the new BBGadgets, I came across this picture:

And I was reminded, as I so often am, that the future we were promised is not the future we inhabit. There's an article in there somewhere, I think. Something about the rhetorical appeals and promises in the visual design of the future from the 1940s onward. Hmm...

~ < * > ~ < * > ~ < * > ~

And speaking of the future we inhabit, here are two bits of cultural ... um, something.

Item 1: The Wall Street Journal notices the LOLCats phenomenon:

I know it's hopelessly co-opted now, but I can't help myself. I luv me sum LOLCats. Especially when they make it sooooo easy to put together LOLWSJs like that.

Item 2: I am not a hipster. Seriously. I'm not being ironic. Or maybe I am. Who can tell anymore? Anyway, check this out:

Posted by reparent at 10:29 AM | Comments (0)

August 22, 2007

Pre-Semester Panic?

Last night's fortune cookie fortune:

Clear your mental, emotional and psychic space and you'll see.

Is it a sign of the impending start of the new semester (and two new courses I've never taught before) that I don't seem to remember how to do any of that clearing?

Posted by reparent at 10:20 AM | Comments (1)

July 25, 2007

Busy busy busy (part the next)

I promised to talk about my feelings about the end of the Potter series today, but I have been overtaken by events, so that post will have to wait until tomorrow.

In the meantime, here are a few interesting tidbits:

ITEM: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is the fastest-selling book of all time, with at least 4.1 million books flying off the shelves in the first 48 hours of its release. It's possible that the figure, as Scholastic insists, is actually 6.9 million. In any case, you won't be seeing Deathly Hallows on the New York Times bestseller list. Ever. Michael Giltz explains why. What do you think about this outrageous traveshamockery?

ITEM: One of my colleagues had asked me a few days ago to help her to set up a course blog. UVM supports and hosts faculty, staff, and student blogs using Movable Type, which is nice of them, but MT isn't easy or intuitive. To prep for my meeting with my colleague, I set up a new blog, Standing Still, and have started posting how-to instructions for doing different things with MT. I hope to make the blog a useful resource for my entire department. Next up: including images in posts. If you have struggled or are currently struggling with MT, especially at UVM, zing me an e-mail with topics to address in later posts.

ITEM: Henry at Crooked Timber ventures into the Dark Side of the Force and joins Facebook. I've gone back and forth on this question, and have not yet joined, even though (or perhaps because) UVM has its own Facebook chapter now. Besides the issues Henry discusses, I'm also concerned about infringing on my students' space. What do you think?

ITEM: And finally, something specially for The Spouse (though other academic spouses may find it eerily familiar). Ph.D. (Piled Higher & Deeper), a web comic by Jorge Cham that I recently got tipped to, has quickly become one of my faves. If you suffer from graduate school, or are a recovering graduate student, Piled Higher & Deeper may be right for you. Here's a strip that I found particularly amusing/distressing, and if you've ever inflicted your own academic work on a non-academic significant other, or been the victim of this sort of abuse, you'll get a kick out of it too:

Posted by reparent at 2:48 PM | Comments (3)

July 21, 2007

I'm Busy... And Don't You Spoil The Ending!!!

The Spouse and I are finally going to see Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix tonight. And after that, I'll be occupied for the next 700 pages. Er... the next few days. With an important work project. Yeah, that's it. An important project for work.

Posted by reparent at 4:38 PM | Comments (0)

July 14, 2007

Storm Your Own Bastille Today (A Photo-ish Essay)

Howdy, bonjour, bienvenue, and aloha!

I've been thinking about blogging (and the lack thereof) lately, and my attempts at the CyberCulture course blog last semester to start a series of very brief items. As you might have noticed, the Digital Dartboard turned out to be just another massive project, rather than a time-saving fun-time project. And "massive projects" are a problem when you're feeling overwhelmed by everything else that's going on, not going on (but should be), and might be going on. As I usually am.

And then I bit into a fortune cookie and received the following wisdom:

LEARN CHINESE - Banquet = "Yan-hui"

Wait, that's the wrong side. Though knowing the Chinese (but is yan-hui Mandarin, Wu, or Cantonese? Why don't they ever tell you this?) for "banquet" is sure to be ... well, maybe it will be good for a particularly tough round of Jeopardy!, I guess.

Anyway, on the flip-side of the fortune I learned that my lucky numbers are 7, 15, 40, 38, 46, and 18. So if you win with these numbers, you're now obligated to send me a very healthy cut of your prize money. And I learned:

Do not let ambition overshadow small success.

And I found myself thinking that, for once in my life* I might have actually found an applicable and revelant fortune. Usually, my blogging works like this:

Step 1: Get an idea for a blog post. This step happens with surprising frequency.

Step 2: This is the choose-your-own-misadventure step.

• If you choose to Get Distracted by the Other Things You Have to Do Right Now, turn to step 3.
• If you choose to Go Teach Your Class, turn to step 3.
• If you choose to Think About All of the Cool and Unexpected Connections Among, Causes Of, and Implications Growing Out of Your Original Blog Post and the Rest of the World, turn to step 3.

Step 3: Realize that your cute and cuddly little blog post has magically morphed into a Big Scary Major Production.

Step 4: Tell yourself that you'll get back to the post when you have the energy and time to spare.

Step 5: Go to step 4.

Step 6: Profit! (You knew that was coming, didn't you?)

So, to implement the mystical power of the Fortune Cookie, to bring some new posts to this blog, and to make myself feel a little less guilty about not doing more of those first two things, and maybe even to start retraining my brain to think about achieveable projects rather than the One Project To Rule Them All -- which of course, requires both the power of Sauron and the fires of Mount Doom to compose, yet neither of which, sadly, is part of UVM's faculty research support -- which would be a Great Good Thing for my research agenda, I'm going to start blogging in smaller, daily chunks.

Of course, we'll have to see how that goes. This post, for instance, started out as a quick note to all of your Francophones, Francophiles, and FrancoAmericans to get out and celebrate the Quatorze Juillet, that's "July 14th," which is Bastille Day for the rest of us.. You see how well that worked.

* Once, while an undergraduate in Austin, Texas, I grabbed a bite to eat at a Chinese place in the foodcourt of a mall. My fortune that day (which I shall remember, verbatim, forever) read: "He loves you as much as he can, but he cannot love you much." I wasn't dating anyone at the time, which may have been the point of the fortune, but I still found the message a bit... forward. If you have a fortune cookie horror story, feel free to share.

Posted by reparent at 2:22 PM

June 18, 2007

Back from the Big Apple

I made it back from NYU and the Faculty Research Network Summer Seminars! And not only that, but my luggage made it back with me!!

Seriously, can air travel get much worse?

WARNING!!! OBLIGATORY WHINY AIR-TRAVEL HORROR STORIES FOLLOW.
READ AT YOUR OWN RISK!!!

Upon arriving at the Burlington airport for our vacation to the moon, the Spouse and I were informed that our flight to Newark (motto: "Gateway to the Moon") had been cancelled, and that we wouldn't be able to get to the moon for at least a day until they could get us on another flight.

No one screws with The Spouse's vacation.

The Spouse used his super-Spousal powers to psychically beat the ticket counter into submission, and we were put on a flight on another airline to JFK (motto: "Gateway to Newark, Gateway to the Moon"), where we would have to get ourselves to Newark. The airline, we were told, would reimburse us for our ground travel. We also ran into a group of UVM students heading to the moon for a field trip, who were in the same situation we were. We banded together and prepared to fly to JFK. Once at JFK, we would have 4 hours to get to Newark and make it through security to our departure gate. No problem.

What we didn't know is that when you change airlines, even when it's the airline's fault (bad airline! bad!) security takes your suitcases and dismantles them in front of everyone. They take every single item out of your suitcase, parade them around the ticketing area, and then cram them back into the suitcase, wrinkling and breaking as much as they can in the process. How ridiculously violating!

Well, after that, the flight to JFK was delayed. Once we finally took off, we had 3 hours and 15 minutes to get from JFK to Newark.

After arriving at JFK, the belt that carries baggage to the baggage claim broke. It took them an hour to get that fixed. Once we got our bags, we had 2 hours and 15 minutes to get from JFK to Newark. At rush hour. In the New York greater metropolitan area.

We'd missed the last airport shuttle bus ($20 per rider) between the airports, so we took a cab ($120 total with tolls and interstate surcharge, which came to $25 per rider). Our cab driver took us through every borough he could think of, up through Harlem, and then, finally, down to Newark. He did manage to avoid traffic, but really! When we finally arrived at Newark, we had 1 hour to make it through ticketing, bag check-in, and security, and then to get to our departure gate.

Oh, and we had to fight with the airline staff about our reimbursement. Grr.

Somehow, we magically made it to our gate on time, only to learn that we had no plane. And then we had a plane and a flight crew, but no gate personnel. So the flight crew was stuck with us in the departure gate area, waiting for someone to come around and let them onto the plane. So that we could then get onto the plane, too.

Eventually, the Spouse and I (and presumably the undergrads on the field trip) made it to the moon. Miraculously, our luggage did, too. Of course, our luggage didn't make it back from the moon. They'd left the bag in Newark, and I had to go back to the airport in Burlington the next day to pick up our bag, which had decided to spend one last fun-filled night in the greater New York metropolitan area without us. I'd ask it what happened, but what happens in Newark stays in Newark. At least, that's what the bag says.

This was not to be the case with the trip to NYU, however. When I arrived at the airport, I was told that I had no seat on the plane. They'd switched to a smaller plane and had thus fewer seats. So my seat, which I'd paid for a month earlier, was no longer on the inside of the airplane. And not only that, but the only flight they could put me on would arrive at JFK (motto: "You've Got a 1 1/2 Hour Subway Ride Ahead of You!") after the check-in for the Faculty Research Network would have ended. That means no room for you-know-who.

I channeled my inner Spouse and good-cop/bad-cop-ped the ticket agent mercilessly (it's much harder when you're doing this by yourself) until she put me at the top of the stand-by list for the flight I was supposed to have been on. Then I pestered/flattered the gate agents until they removed the people who were supposed to be on the plane but who hadn't shown up yet. I got a seat. On the smaller plane.

Because it was a smaller plane, they didn't have enough room for the luggage. So they took four pieces of luggage off the plane and sent it on the very late flight. Mine, of course, was taken off of the plane.

And the desk staff at NYU refused to accept the luggage when it was delivered. Which meant that I had to be there to get it, no matter what I was doing at the time, or where I was.

My luggage wasn't delivered until 7:45am on Monday, just in time for me to get a very quick shower (with soap!) before the start of the seminar.

On the flight back from JFK, my flight was on-time, and my luggage made it back with me. I can only assume that this is just to keep me off-guard so that I do not expect or prepare for the next preposterous indignity they have in store for me.

I like being in other places. I just hate getting there. I thought the getting there was supposed to be "half the fun." If that's still the case, we really need to rethink our vacations. Getting there by air is no fun at all.

Here endeth the obligatory whiny air travel diatribe. Regular blogging about actually-interesting stuff will resume on Wednesday.

Posted by reparent at 10:02 AM | Comments (1)

May 15, 2007

I'm a Travelin' Man...

The Spouse and I will be away from our computers for some much-needed down-time until the end of May. See you all in June!

(Image courtesy of ROFLCat)

Posted by reparent at 8:31 AM

April 19, 2007

A Day of Silence

Yesterday, April 18th, was the annual "Day of Silence."

Obviously, this blog participated, refusing to post in solidarity with the cause.

Day of Silence is a project of GLSEN, the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network. Participants in the Day are encouraged to hand out cards that say something along these lines:

Please understand my reasons for not speaking today. I am participating in the Day of Silence, a national youth movement protesting the silence faced by lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people and their allies in schools. My deliberate silence echoes that silence, which is caused by harassment, prejudice, and discrimination. I believe that ending the silence is the first step toward fighting these injustices. Think about the voices you are not hearing today. What are you going to do to end the silence?

Though I support GLSEN and the Day, I'm not sure that more silence is the best approach. This seems to me to especially problematic given the increasingly oblivious college campus, where half of the student body at any given moment is listening to their iPods. The other half is split between people shrieking into their mobile phones and people click-click-clicking text messages at each other. Each of these groups render themselves completely insensate to the goings-on around them. And they seem to think that their ignorance of their surroundings is contagious. My cats seem convinced that when they can't see me -- because they're hiding under the covers on the bed, for instance -- that I can't see them or their zaftig kitty butts sticking out from under the covers. I bring this up because just the other day I was teaching class and a student received a text message. I knew this because I was standing next to her desk at the back of the room and her phone -- which was sitting on her desk -- started vibrating. BRRRRRRRRZZZZZZZZ. Hard to miss. Then, in a fit of thoughtfulness, the student turned away from me and texted a message back. I was relieved that I couldn't actually watch her thumbs dance over hey keypad. Judging by the speed of her click-click-clicking, she's a whiz at it and the blur of her thumbs might have given me vertigo. When she had finished, the student closed her phone -- clam-shell snapping shut -- and placed it back on her desk, turning back to face me again. I wasn't offended, as much as I was puzzled. Who thinks it's okay to do this in class when the professor is standing next to you?! But I digress.

GLSEN encourages "Breaking the Silence" rallies where people speak out about their experiences after the Day, but this seems to me to be yet another preaching-to-the-choir "event" that fails to reach the people who most need to hear something other than the hate and derogatory humor and slurs that our culture still thinks is a-okay.

What do you think? About any of it?

Posted by reparent at 2:51 PM | Comments (2)

February 22, 2007

A Digital Dartboard?

Over at the course blog for CyberCultural Studies, I've started a "briefly noted" series I'm calling a "Digital Dartboard," because it gives the students ideas about digital culture to put on their dartboard. Each Dartboard post will include three or four odd, amusing, disturbing, and/or otherwise provocative tidbits about digital technology and culture that you (and, ideally, my students) may find stimulating.

The awesome aleatoric power of the dartboard (which is similar to, but independent of, the outstanding oracular power of the Magic 8 Ball), cannot be overestimated, especially when one considers that I am making my students write ten (gasp!) short analyses of digital culture over the course of the semester. I know, I know. I am cruel.

So, check it out. The first entry in the dartboard is here, and I'll post links to later entries as they get uploaded.

Finally, this weekend, the Spouse, some friends, and I will be driving down to Boston, where we will experience TOMB. I'll post about it when we get back. Even (especially?) if it stinks, it should be interesting. I may even be able to wrangle an article or a conference paper out of it.

Super, ultra, I-really-mean-it-this-time finally, you may have noticed that I'm (still) having problems with comments on this blog. The spam is killing me, and that's even after I've set the security level to Shoot On Sight. So, bear with me. I'm not willing to require TypeKey (even though it's free), because some of my very favorite people have had problems with it. This means that sometimes your comments may not show up right away. They may take a few hours (or days) to show up.

Posted by reparent at 11:30 AM

February 9, 2007

Machinima Friday: "Express Your Inner Feelings" Edition

Today's Friday machinima is episode 13 from Ill Clan's "Tra5h Ta1k." This week's webisode examines the might and majesty of blogging, video blogging, and YouTube.

As you can guess, the results aren't pretty.

In completely unrelated news, I finished my narrative for my First Reappointment Evaluation. It came in at a slim, trim, 13 1/2 pages. Single spaced.

As they say on the Internets, "woot."

Posted by reparent at 10:16 AM

January 31, 2007

Argh -- Dossiers!!! And Stuff.

I'm being evaluated for my First Reappointment this semester, so I'm a little stressed right now.* I'm still drafting my "faculty evaluation narrative" for my dossier (i.e., the "justify your existence, in detail" piece in my binder), and I'm feeling a bit (ha-ha!) overwhelmed at the moment from the sheer immensity of the task (and the overall oddness of the genre).

So, today's goodies for you will all be briefly noted, and will mostly come from today's class discussion in CyberCultural Studies. (In today's class we'll be talking about iPods, mobile phones, and text messaging (or "txt mssging," if you prefer).

First, I just learned (via Boing Boing), that today is National Gorilla Suit Day! Who knew?!

What are you waiting for? It's early yet. You can still be part of this momentous occasion. Get busy!

Now that you're back from your door-to-door gorilla-suit adventuring, here's a web comic from Nitrozac & Snaggy over at The Joy of Tech that's funny and apropos:

(Click on the image to go the Joy of Tech site and see the picture biggie-sized. You can also read Nitrozac & Snaggy's web comic archive, which really should be required reading for this course. I need to work on that.)

And here's a video I just came across that picks up on many of the issues around these technologies and the cultures they spawn.

(Fair warning: if you're easily offended, this video might not be for you. It's definitely NSFW. It contains strong language, celebrities, adult situations, industrial/punk music, The Klumps-style family humor, and profane gestures.)

* - At UVM, tenure is a 3-step process (usually). Here's the normal timeline (though there are exceptions). In the second semester of your second year you are evaluated for a First Reappointment. I've been told this is just to make sure that I'm breathing and not summoning demons or eating babies in class too often. In the first semester of your fourth year you then go up for Second Reappointment, at which time the department, the dean, and the college get to decide whether they think you're going to be able to get tenure in the next 2 years. This is, obviously, a much bigger thing. Then, in the first semester of your sixth year, you're evaluated by the department, the dean, the college, the university, the president, and the provost. This is, even more obviously, a very big deal indeed. So, while First Reappointment isn't the end of the world (I've been assured), it's still big enough (and the start of something that is, in fact, quite big enough thank you very much) to have me a little freaked out.

Posted by reparent at 10:38 AM

December 14, 2006

Woo-Hoo!!! Freedom!!!

So, the semester is over.

Wait. Lemme rephrase that.

WOOT!!! THE SEMESTER IS OVER!!!!

All of the papers have been graded. All of the grades have been recorded. All of the records have been submitted, in triplicate (I kid you not).

That means that the semester is now, officially over!!!

In case you couldn't tell, it feels really, really good.

This semester has been especially challenging, as my faculty service activities have ramped up in both the time and energy they require from me. Also, I taught my first fresh-folk course here at UVM and my first senior seminar. Both were tremendously fun, and a lot of work. I'd like to think that they were a lot of work for the students, too, but I guess only the class evaluations will tell me for sure.

In any case, the blogging silence can now be lifted, and posting will resume at my usual (hey! compared to some "bloggers" I know, I post a lot) pace.

For right now, here's a little something to enjoy. You may recall that I'm bitter about the lack of future stuff we have available to us here in the futuristic land of 2006. That's 6 years after the arrival of the official future, which was 2000, for the record. Well, this is starting to make up for it. The Spouse and I are psyched as all get out about this coming summer when we intend to take a fabulous international vacation.

I think I want to go here, instead:

Popular Science tells us that:

In Dubai, where hotels are prized for ostentation, a group of commercial developers is hyping the creation of the $500-million Hydropolis Undersea Resort. A sprawling 1.1-million-square-foot complex—with lavish suites, a ballroom, a shopping mall and a missile-defense system to ward off terrorists—Hydropolis is an ambitious vision of luxury at 60 feet underwater.

Oooooooo. Pretty dolphins. So, so very expensive. Good thing all those years of education have paid off (get it?!) in the ultra-high-paid world of College English Teaching!

Unfortunately...

As of press time, though, the project had stalled in the preconstruction phase. According to Mansoor Ijaz, deputy chairman of the board for Crescent Hydropolis Resorts, LLC, Hydropolis is on hold pending “land acquisition” and probably won’t be finished before the current opening date, set for 2008.

GRRRRRR!!!!!

Posted by reparent at 3:53 PM | Comments (1)

October 6, 2006

On the Road this Weekend

I'll be out of town this weekend, which means that I won't be here to rip out the annoying and often NSFW spam that seems to be neverending.

So I'm ratcheting the spam filter up. Way up. And I'm leaving it there until Tuesday of next week.

If you want to comment (and I really, really do want you to comment), please take a moment and set up a free account with TypeKey. When you click on the "Comment" link at the bottom of a post, look for this text above the box for your comment:

If you have a TypeKey identity, you can sign in to use it here.

Click the link and you'll be taken to TypeKey and can log in or create a new account. Then when you come back to Digital Digressions, your comment will be automatically approved. Theoretically. (I strongly suspect that my build of MovableType is broken in important ways.)

I'm sorry the system isn't easier or simpler. I'll see you next week.

Posted by reparent at 5:09 PM | Comments (1)

October 4, 2006

The Blogger SAT Challenge -- The Results!!!

A little while ago I mentioned "The Blogger SAT Challenge" -- a not-so-scientific experiment in comparing the writing of bloggers with the writing of high school students on their SATs.

First, the good news. My entry scored thusly (out of 6):

And for all of you wondering what the super-secret topic was, here it is:

The essay gives you an opportunity to show how effectively you can develop and express ideas. You should, therefore, take care to develop your point of view, present your ideas logically and clearly, and use language precisely.

Important Reminders:

• Since this is an online version of the test, you will get 20 minutes instead of the usual 25
• An off-topic essay will receive a score of zero.

Directions: Think carefully about the issue presented in the following excerpt and the assignment below.

"I have learned that success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed." -- Booker T. Washington

Assignment: What is your opinion on the idea that struggle is a more important measure of success than accomplishment? Plan and write an essay in which you develop your point of view on this issue. Support your position with reasoning and examples taken from your reading, studies, experience, or observations.

If you'd like to read the entries, click here.

Second, the even better news. My entry was scored by the "expert grader" thusly (also out of 6):

The first score is from other bloggers. The second is by one (I'm guessing each grader only read one entry, but it may have been two) of the following: David Bruggeman, Suzi, Elisa Davis, Natalie Hudson, Battlepanda and Lisa. I don't know any of these people, but I agree with the score.

I'm a horrible (now) high-school writer. When I was a student in high school, I was a whiz at the Linda Richmond-esque mode of extemporaneous "The Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, Roman, nor an empire; discuss" mode of motiveless oration. And it does have its uses. For one thing, it really does demand a close attention to structure and organization.

On the other hand, it's also deadly dull.

And, possibly worst of all, it reinforces dichotomous thinking. Writing prompts of the type included on the SAT and in the Blogger Challenge almost always present two options and ask the writer to make a persuasive case for one of them. In the real world, we know that "You are either with us or against us" is a logical fallacy. Demanding that developing writers conform to this sort of on-off cognitive world-view is demeaning to them and a waste of a grader's time.

Chad Orzell -- a physicist, and one of the architects of the Blogger Challenge -- reflects:

I think these results do support my original point, way back when this whole thing started: it's a lot harder to write a good short essay on demand than you might think when you have the chance to look at the question at leisure. Even bloggers, who spend a lot of time writing short essays of their own free will, don't do all that well with a set topic and a tight time limit.

Orzell's right: writing good, short essays is hard. But I wouldn't call what the SAT calls for "a good essay."

I was especially intrigued by the comments by the "expert graders":

I was struck by the number of writers who felt that musing about some aspect of the question, or one of the words in it, or one of the stories it reminded them of, was a reasonable way to respond to the directions.

Goodness! How... willful of them.

Often writers tried to be clever with roundabout ways of coming at the question, but it only made my job as a grader more difficult, and grumpy graders don't give fives and sixes.

If anything, the bloggers were *worse* than high school students in getting to the point and staying on topic. They also tended to equivocate more, to argue the merits of both sides, which, though it might mark you as a reasonable person in normal discussion (in real or online life), actually hurts your SAT score.

Heaven forfend that "expert graders" should be forced to contend with complex approaches to the topic at hand! Don't they know that issuing anything other than a "Sir, yes sir!" or a "Sir, no sir!" over and over again (the New York Times article that started the Challenge informs us that "longer essays were more likely to get a high score than shorter ones") dishonors the spirit of open inquiry and skillful expression that these writing exercises enshrine?

But my favorite has to be this gem:

I was struck by the number of people who wrote essays without apparently thinking the directions applied to them. They made assumptions about the assignment, or decided that they were better judges of what the assignment should be, and then wrote what they wanted to write rather than produced what they were asked to write.

I smiled, but I wondered why do they think a scorer (and after all, pleasing the scorer is what matters much more than self-respect when taking a test) cares about their opinions?

"[W]hy do they think a scorer ... cares about their opinions" indeed? After all, the prompt only asks "What is your opinion on the idea that struggle is a more important measure of success than accomplishment?"

I'm giving the scorers grief, but it's not their fault that they're being forced to behave this way. It's the nature of the beast.

The New York Times article gives a brief list of tips for writing a high-scoring SAT essay. Here are a few more that, mysteriously enough, didn't make the final edition:

• Reduce your complex set of ideas, opinions, and experiences into easy-to-spew talking points. Talking points are the new essays.
• Begin your writing with a clear statement of your position. That way, the grader (or anyone else) won't be burdened with having to read any more of your essay.
• Repeat, repeat, repeat! Your grader/reader may forget what your position is if you don't restate it in each paragraph.
• Never, ever question the false dichotomy presented to you as the wisdom of the ages! Resist the infernal urge to comment on its hackneyed topic! And foreswear the temptation to question the question being put to you! Like the Pope, We are infallible. And we are not amused by your so-called "free thinking."
• Regardless of what you write (you are in control of your writing, aren't you?), or what you realize while you're writing (this isn't the time for thinking, it's a timed writing exercise!), or the weight of the evidence on the other side (you did pick the more obviously correct position, didn't you?), don't ever change your mind as you write. And for goodness sake don't ever concede that the other side might have some virtue. That's a quick trip to a low score!

Orzel concludes that bloggers are "dumber than high-school kids." I disagree. We're just not as obedient when it comes to reductive, intellectually demeaning busy-work.

And thank the gods for that!

Posted by reparent at 2:45 PM

"Beyond the Scream" Panel

I won't be in town for this, but if you're going to be around Champlain College on Saturday, October 7th, I heartily encourage you to check it out!

For a clearer version of the flyer, click here: http://www.uvm.edu/~reparent/media/dean-panel-flyer.pdf.

Posted by reparent at 12:19 PM

October 1, 2006

What the Hell Is Going On Here?

I was going to post something here about an election mailing I received yesterday.

This is its back cover:

Now, if you're not from Vermont, and/or you don't follow Vermont politics closely, you may not know these candidates. You may not know their political party affiliation.

But you'll probably notice that they're "Vermont's Reform Team."

What does that mean? Does it imply that they're heading to Washington (and to Montpelier, Vermont's state capital) to "clean up" corruption or rout failed leadership?

No, not really. They're the Republican slate for the mid-term elections. Jim Douglas has been governor of Vermont for the past four years. If he's intent on reforming the governorship... why doesn't he just retire?

Martha Rainville and Rich Tarrant want to go to Washington to increase the Republican majority in Congress. Rainville has the advertising firm behind the "Swift Boat" attacks on John Kerry creating ads for her (Seven Days). Rich Tarrant "has spent more money than any other office-seeker in Vermont history, [and] has created more television ads this year than any other U.S. Senate candidate in the nation" (Rutland Herald). His ads have been, for the most part, smear attacks on the front-runner, Bernie Sanders.

I teach rhetoric. I like teaching rhetoric. I'm fascinated by finding the most persuasive and affective (and, hence, effective) means of expressing something. Rhetoric has a long and illustrious history.

Rhetoric has also come to mean empty, manipulative speech designed to mislead. This flyer is one such example of rhetoric in its pejorative sense. There is no possible scenario in which sending more Republicans to this Republican-controlled Congress could or would lead to reform. Indeed, the Republican agenda seems to be agressively "more of the same," or, as it is so often put these days, "staying the course." That's a far cry from "re-forming."

I am, of course, reminded of the exchange between Alice and Humpty Dumpty in Through the Looking Glass:

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less."
"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."

Apparently, some people can.

- * - * - * - * -

I've become quite disturbed today, reading about the "torture bill" that was just passed by the Senate. Besides "giving" the President the "authority" to "interpret" the provisions of the Geneva Conventions regarding torture (and this is a huge, gargantuan, unimaginably enormous "besides"), it also suspends Americans' right to habeas corpus.

If you know what habeas corpus is, feel free to skip this paragraph. If not, read on -- it's important. Habeas corpus is the legal concept that a government has certain responsibilities once it seizes a person and incarcerates that person. That's where the term comes from: it's Latin for "you have the body." Because the state has someone's body in one of its jails, habeas corpus compels the state to bring the prisoner "to the court so it can be determined whether or not that person is imprisoned lawfully and whether or not he should be released from custody. A habeas corpus petition is a petition filed with a court by a person who objects to his own or another's detention or imprisonment" (LectLaw).

As Americans, we assume that if we're ever arrested (unjustly, of course... we're all good people) we'll get our day in court so that we can exonerate ourselves.

Except that if you're determined to be an Unlawful Enemy Combatant, you can now be subject to indefinite detainment, with no guarantee of a trial, hearing, or of the right to even hear the evidence and charges against you.

But wait a minute! That's only for Unlawful Enemy Combatants. I'm not one of those!

Here's Georgetown law professor Martin Lederman's take on the new law:

But the really breathtaking subsection is subsection (ii), which would provide that UEC is defined to include any person "who, before, on, or after the date of the enactment of the Military Commissions Act of 2006, has been determined to be an unlawful enemy combatant by a Combatant Status Review Tribunal or another competent tribunal established under the authority of the President or the Secretary of Defense."

Read literally, this means that if the Pentagon says you're an unlawful enemy combatant -- using whatever criteria they wish -- then as far as Congress, and U.S. law, is concerned, you are one, whether or not you have had any connection to "hostilities" at all.

This definition is not limited to Al Qaeda and the Taliban. It's not limited to aliens -- it covers U.S. citizens as well. It's not limited to persons captured or detained overseas. And it is not even limited to the armed conflict against Al Qaeda and the Taliban, authorized by Congress on September 18, 2001. Indeed, on the face of it, it's not even limited to a time of war or armed conflict; it could apply in peacetime.

Oh. Yeah. Well, there's that.

- * - * - * - * -

The Spouse and I went to Vermont's first Senatorial Debate last night at nearby Champlain College. The debate featured the two leading candidates, Socialist/Independent/Democratic (take your pick, apparently) Bernie Sanders and Republican Richard Tarrant (part of the "reform team, natch), and four "other party" candidates. (They are: Peter Moss: Anti-Bushist Party, Craig Hill: Green Party, Cris Ericson: Independent, and Peter Diamondstone: Liberty Union.) The evening was profoundly depressing.

First, the debate was focused solely on foreign affairs, a field I have come to see as completely immaterial to Congress. The ruling parties in the ruling party determine foreign policy, "inform" the ruling party Senators and Congresspeople, and it becomes law.

Second, as The Spouse pointed out, it is screamingly obvious that there are only two reasonable choices in this race: Sanders and Tarrant. Despite some interesting ideas and approaches from each of the others, every single one of them crossed the line from lovable, rebellious kook into raving loon at least once last night. So, we're back with our dichotomous republican/democrat "choice" (which is also why Sanders is on the Democratic ticket this November), and I'm no Naderite, but there's got to be a better way.

- * - * - * - * -

So, I'm in a funk. Things don't look so good, and they don't seem likely to improve anytime soon.

I'm not afraid of the government, not even with its (not really) new torture powers, or its destruction of habeas corpus. I'm just profoundly ashamed of what they've made my country do, say, and stand for. And no one seems to care.

In fact, if you look at the polling numbers, it's the hard-core Christians that are most likely to support the use of torture! I think I must have misread the Sermon on the Mount: "But I tell you, do not hesitate to torment an evil person. Strike him on the right cheek, and turn to strike the other also. And forgetteth not the use of biting hounds and drowning nigh unto the very point of death, but do these things in my memory." I could have sworn it was different the last time I read it...

- * - * - * - * -

Could someone tell me, please: What the hell is going on here?

Posted by reparent at 3:17 PM | Comments (1)

August 29, 2006

I'm Back

Greetings and salutations, blogonauts!

It's been a crazy time here. Since my last communique, the Spouse and I made it official and got hitched in a big, fancy, expensive wedding. (Well, we might not have made it official, as we'd eloped last November, but we sure did make it public. And expensive.)

I spent a week training new grad stu