Maybe it’s just a temporary thing, but I’m a little miffed right now:
The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation sponsored a great series on “Digital Media and Learning,” and worked out a deal with MIT press where you can order the print version or you can download the open source version for free. Here’s a link to that site.
However, when I tried just now to browse through one of these open source publications, the MIT press gives me an error and says that the file wasn’t found. What gives? Did someone have “take-backs” on these once free articles?
I was talking to Annette the other day about various family plans and such, and I floated the idea of going camping not this weekend but next, you know, before I was off to this conference. She thought it was a potentially good idea. Then, the next day, she pointed out to me that the conference I’m going to be road-tripping to is next weekend.
Somewhere in there, I lost a week. Yikes.
So, nose back to grindstone. I’ll look up eventually, I think.
It’s been a couple of long seasons/years on Will’s soccer team. Last spring, they didn’t win any games. Last fall (I was an assistant coach of sorts on this team), we didn’t win any games. And we started this year (again, I’m an assistant of sorts) by getting crushed by like nine or ten goals.
But losers we are no more.
Today, Will’s team (hey, my team too, right?) finally won one, I believe 3 to 1. Here’s a link to a few pictures of what was a perfectly beautiful spring day, soccer or otherwise.
On the one hand, I appreciate the experiences being noted/recorded in these two videos. I’ve been there, of course. And I don’t blame these grad assistants for making these two videos and I don’t dismiss the reaction they have to the writing program at Iowa State (if I was running that program, I’d see this video as a bit of a “warning sign,” frankly). But I do have more of an “other hand” here.
First, this is probably more of the kind of video that should have been shown at some kind of GA gathering more or less privately, giggled at, and then put away. Probably not a video to post on YouTube or, um, Facebook. Second, and I don’t mean to sound all old and WPA-ish on people, but it’s never a good idea for GA’s to make fun of students publicly, even it is in modest ways and clearly in fun (as is the case with this video). Third, the administrative folks clearly over-reacted in trying to repress this. That just goes to show you what happens when administrators freak out.
And fourth (no offense to those folks at ISU) this video is probably twice as long as it should be. A little sensible editing would have helped, honestly.
If you ever doubted that newspaper editors ran letters from readers that were goofy just because they (the editors, that is) found them funny, then look no further than this wisdom from today’s Ann Arbor News “letters to the editor” page:
Hangover medicines should be banned
I believe that hangover medicine should be banned. I think that they shouldn’t have medicine for someone who doesn’t do the right thing, and drink too much. Having hangover medicine may encourage people to drink more.
To prevent hangovers in the first place: Don’t drink more than one drink a night.
Your liver breaks down alcohol at the rate of a beer an hour.
Alternate alcohol with
nonalcohol.
It’ll help keep your body hydrated.
Choose your drink selectively.
Congeners are dangerous poisons that appear most in darker drinks.
You read it here first– well, maybe not first, but you read it here now: this handy list of ultra-portable computers. Something along these lines might be the next laptop I buy, frankly.
Been too busy around here lately, what with planning classes for spring, Estabrook Science Olympiad (that’s tomorrow), kiddie soccer practice, general cleaning/preparing for the in-laws to visit, and the various fireworks on that other blog I maintain. But I do have some other things I want to try to post about in the next day or two here.
In the meantime, here’s a YouTube video of the “show-stopper” number from the documentary Young At Heart, a very moving rendition of the Coldplay song “Fix You:”
As I understand it, this movie was actually made a couple years ago for British TV and is just now being released in the US. We saw it tonight at the Michigan theater, thanks to our friend/all-around good person Rachel and this fine organization, www.BlueprintForAging.org. Go check this movie out if you can– you’ll be glad you did.
Annette watched this video on Facebook this morning and said “you know, this is the kind of thing that Sophie could do if we trained her:
Yeah, right. Maybe if we both quit our jobs so we could both do it full-time. As it is, I think Sophie’s main trick will remain barking at people and licking the window in the living room.
Email clean-out blog post #2: Here’s a link to a report from the CCCCs called “Top Intellectual Property Developments of 2007 for Scholars of Composition, Rhetoric, and Communication.” It includes some links and information about, well, the title of the site: IP issues for the comp/rhet world. Among many other things, working in this material/discussion into ENGL 516 next winter might be one of the changes I make to that course.
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It’s been a couple of long seasons/years on Will’s soccer team. Last spring, they didn’t win any games. Last fall (I was an assistant coach of sorts on this team), we didn’t win any games. And we started this year (again, I’m an assistant of sorts) by getting crushed by like nine or ten goals.