Month: March 2005

I’m trying to fight off a cold, recover from a busy week that included unexpected travel (which also involved being unexpectedly snowed in), and prepare for the upcoming CCCCs pretty much all at the same time. All of which means my head is feeling pretty fuzzy this morning, so you’ll have to bear with me here….

Anyway, Collin’s blog has hosted a lively conversation about the idea of giving a conference presentation by reading an essay (essentially, staying on script), or by speaking from notes. Collin says his presentation this year will actually be a “talk” based on notes and not a paper that he reads word for word, and he suggests that things might be better if more folks took this approach. I would have posted something over there about all this, but it’s been a while since I’ve written much here anyway. So several thoughts:

• My own “speaking role” at this year’s CCCCs is quite small, limited to my place on a “Special Interest Group” session about creative writing. I’m going to be talking about the use of blogs and the “writerly life.” Essentially, I see blogs as a double-edged sword: I find blogging to be a good way to brainstorm and prewrite and I also think it is a great way to get your writing “out there,” which is the goal of any writer, creative or otherwise. On the other hand, I also find blogging to be a fine procrastination tool. Anyway, I’ll have a handout with some recommended blog reading and I’ll “hold forth” for a few minutes tops. What I’m getting at is for this year’s CCCCs, there isn’t much point in my writing up a paper per se.
• I’ve seen bad conference presentations where the speaker simply reads a paper, and I’ve seen bad conference presentations where the speaker attempts to speak from notes. In other words, I don’t think to read or not to read is the problem. I think the problem, as Bradley Dilger points out in the comments on Collin’s post, is that a lot of conference presentations are flat-out poorly prepared.

  If you “read a paper” for a conference presentation that you wrote on the plane and/or on bar napkins the night before, you’ll probably give a pretty crappy presentation. If you “talk from notes” for a presentation prepared in a similar way, you’ll probably give a pretty crappy presentation, too.

• I don’t know if we need to go to a system where we force presenters to prepare by requiring them to actually prepare ahead of time, if for no other reason because conference presentations aren’t usually “worth” it. Let me put it this way: if I had to spend a lot of time writing up a tight essay in order to participate in a conference presentation, then I would probably just send it out to a journal for review.

  I actually kind of like the fact that conference presentations don’t have to be as “thought out” or sharp as a journal article. Sure, there are a lot of half-baked conference presentations; I’ve given a few myself. But I also think most of my publications first began life as a conference presentation which I revised based on feedback at the conference.

• I think whether or not to read a paper or to give a talk based on notes has a lot to do with one’s comfort (or lack thereof) as a public speaker, but it also depends on the forum. When I go to the CCCCs and I go to one of the “featured speaker” sessions, I want to hear those folks read a paper, kind of the same way when I go to a fiction or poetry reading, I want to hear that writer read her or his own work.

  But frankly, my favorite sessions to be on and to see at conferences aren’t papers but roundtables, the ones where folks on a panel each make a short statement and then the bulk of the time is an exchange between panel members and the audience. Which is kind of what I’m hoping happens at my SIG.

Ack. I think I need some cold medicine….

From the comic strip Non Sequitur.

Even though this is the kind of thing I do in front of my computer all the time…

Numa Numa Dance movie (warning: big and noisy download)

PS: I had meant to post this in the middle of the week, which is why I pre-dated it…

Getting ready for the CCCCs in San Francisco, but don’t really know what to do? Check out John “A Writing Teacher” Lovas’ list of stuff to do while not attending sessions. John is a native, so I’m going to trust him on this.

Surprisingly, there was only one free wireless hotspot on his list near the Moscone Center. It couldn’t be that I have better network access in little ‘ol Ypsilanti, could it?

I haven’t had much of a “break” this winter break. I’ve been pretty busy working on some writing projects, getting caught up with teaching, and dealing with some other stressful things. Mostly “good” stress, but not all good, and stress is still stress.

Anyway, I did have a bit of fun. Among other things, I bought the new expansion pack to The Sims 2, “University.” I’m sure that Samantha is jealous.

As a (near) middle-aged male college professor, I don’t think I’m the typical player of The Sims 2. Still, I find the game a good distraction (beats a lot of what’s on TV nowadays), and I figured that this new “College-themed” supplement would be right up my alley. It’s pretty good, though, like many other things with The Sims, this new supplement makes some pretty weird assumptions.

I understand that you can’t really make an entertaining “game” out of the academic life, so it probably isn’t surprising that “University” is more about the social life of college: the dorms, frat houses, hanging out, and so forth. Sims do have to go to class and they declare majors, and different majors are good for different future careers. Most of the majors seem to correspond well to future careers: being an art major will help your Sim in the artist career path, being an economics major will help in a business career path, etc.

So, what’s the best career path for a literature major? Criminal. I kid you not.

I think I’ll play a literature major. Who knows? Maybe he’ll grow up to be a mob leader.

Oh, and PS: at least the makers of The Sims value literature more than philosophy. The ideal career path for philosophy majors is “slacker.”

Will’s school had the first and second grade musical program last night, a production called A Book is a Magic Carpet. Sorry for the poor quality of the photo, but it’s the best our zoomless and aging digital camera could do. I’m hoping for some better pictures with the film camera.

As this link to a google search suggests, this is a commonly performed production, sort of the grade school equivalent of Guys and Dolls or The Sound of Music. It’s more or less a medley of songs about various children’s books– a number about Dr. Seuss, “Hi-ho, hi-ho, off to work we go,” a couple of numbers about how good it is to read, etc.

Some of the parts included White Rabbit (along with Alice, of course), Snow White (with the dwarfs and the hi-ho number), Fox in Sox, Frogs, and Toads. Will actually had a major speaking part, “narrator #1.” There were a total of four narrators, and these kids pretty much said everything. Some of Will’s lines included:

• “Books are magic carpets that can take us anywhere we want to go. Come on. Hop on board!”
• “Yes, he did, sir! He wrote many! Maybe even ten or twenty! He wrote Horton Hears a Who… of Zooks and Yooks and green eggs, too! Now it’s time to go sir, now, sir” (this was during the Dr. Suess number).
• “I love mud puddles. And they remind me of my favorite book– called Mud. Hey, look! There’s the little girl from Mud now!” (this was a tough ling because Will kept saying “I don’t really like that book.”)
• And a lot of “hey, look there!” and “I don’t know; what do you think?”

Anyway, he did a fantastic job and it was of course the best production I’ve seen, well, ever. Of course, I might be a bit biased.

It looks like I missed it, but yesterday was Yahoo’s 10th anniversary, and to celebrate, they were giving away free ice cream cones. Pretty cool.

Alas, the ice cream is gone (March 2 only), but there is a pretty neat retrospective on the last 10 years of the ‘net put together in the format of the 10 X 10 web site.

No, no, not me– Alex Halavais, who teaches communications and informatics at the University of Buffalo (isn’t that the same as SUNY, Buffalo?). I stumbled across his blog today while procrastinating, and read this entry about a course he’s teaching about pornography. A few of the highlights I found both amusing and interesting:

• “I keep the door to my office closed when writing lectures and when someone knocks, I have to make sure the screen is clear of anything offensive, despite the fact that I will be talking about this in front of a class of 400.”
• “Although there may be people who would find the danger of teaching such a course an addiction to porn, at this point I would be happy if I never again saw the image of a naked person.”
• “It’s not just me who gets bored with porn. I have a feeling that while many students took this course because of the nature of the material, the novelty has worn off (despite what the school newspaper suggests).”
• “At this stage, it appears clear that a not insubstantial number of the students are going to fail the course, despite some generous curves on the exams. I don’t know that some brief titillation is worth having to admit to failing your porn course.”

I was undecided about where to link to this, here or on my official blog. I decided on here:

Reading-too-much-into-things-comprehension, a “test” of sorts frm McSweeney’s. Thanks to Collin for the link.