Talking about blogging at "The Writing Show" (and maybe proposing a book project on blogs?)

I probably won’t have much chance to blog this week because I need to get ready for an appearance/presentation on something called “The Writing Show.” It’s sponsored by James River Writers in Richmond, VA, and is the creation of Dennis Danvers, who is a novelist and an old friend of mine from my days in the MFA program at Virginia Commonwealth University. Basically, Dennis wanted to do a show about writing and the internet, he asked me if I’d want to be a part of it, and I said absolutely.

I’m really looking forward to seeing what this format is going to be like. Dennis has told me that his idea is that this is basically a talk show: Dennis is the moderator and he asks questions of a panel of experts and then the audience joins in. The web site describes it as “Entertaining, interactive, The Writing Show is …. Inside the Actor’s Studio meets the New York Times bestseller list… The Tonight Show meets the art of writing.” I don’t know all about that, but I’m always interested in participating in forums that try to break out of the conference presentation mode, and Dennis has said that the past writing shows have been a whole lot of fun.

So I’m not preparing a “talk” per se, but I think a lot of what I’m going to end up talking about is going to be a lot like my spiel at the 2005 CCCCs, “Blogs and the Writerly Life.” The main audience for “The Writing Show” are practicing and aspiring writers, folks looking for book deals of their own, and my CCCCs talk was part of the MFA SIG program. There have been plenty of stories about blogs leading to a book deal, but I hope to also talk about the idea of how blogging in and of itself can be a benefit in the writerly life all by itself.

This perhaps goes without saying, but I’m also looking forward to a roadtrip to Richmond, too. My wife and I are going to take a trip (albeit a short one) down memory lane.

Anyway, this writing show stuff has got me think about a different but related topic, a book project of my own. I am going to be applying for a sabbatical this year for the 2006-2007 school year, and while I was originally thinking about a few other things, I’m beginning to think more about proposing a book (or book-like) project on academic blogging. I haven’t formed anything yet, but I guess I am thinking about a book that more or less builds on some of the things I’ve published/spoken about at conferences before and some of the things I’ve written about blogs here (and, of course, read about blogs elsewhere): identity and blogging, teaching, blogging as a scholarly practice, blogging, related technologies and academic publishing, etc.

Like I said, it’s just an idea at this point– not even a decent paragraph, if you ask me– but if you’ve got any ideas on ways I can take this someplace, let me know.

Slight update:
I came across a description of a forthcoming book on blogs called Uses of Blogs that might be interesting. It’s going to be a collection of essays written mostly by “soft science” types of academics. And of course, there was the interesting collection/experiment Into the Blogosphere, too. I do think what I have in mind is a bit different from both of these projects, but that’s hard to say….

In the naked news department…

It’s not often that you find a single major story about nudity in the Ann Arbor news, let alone two!

On the front page, there was “Fairs live large with art in varied forms.” It was a story about Ann Arbor photographer Harvey Drouillard who photographs volunteers who pose nude in public spaces. This article tells how Drouillard was able to convince two women and one man to climb a ladder to the roof of the State theater downtown and get them to pose in the buff. Apparently, Drouillard has been doing this same stunt for years.

And then there was this, “The naked truth, on stage,” which is a story about a play the Performance Network is putting on called Take Me Out, which is the story (based on a “true” story, I believe) of a professional baseball player who comes out of the closet. Much of the play takes place in a locker room with the ball players naked most of the time. Natural, I guess.

Disappointingly, there are no good pictures for either of these stories. And I was somewhat surprised to not come across an example of Drouillard’s nude photography via Google. I guess you’ll have to use your imagination….

For your Iowa City food needs

I came across the web site for John’s Grocery in Iowa City, IA today because a friend of mine (actually, the same friend who sent me the bit about the Monty Hall puzzle) sent me a link to an article about a guy who used to be a roommate to this friend, a guy who is now the wine guy for John’s.

Funny how things change. Now, John’s Grocery describes itself as “Iowa’s Epicurean Oasis,” a claim I suspect is reasonably accurate. When I was in college, John’s was a good place to get beer and that was about it. I guess they had some gourmet items, but since my cooking skills back then were limited to tuna cassarole made with Kraft macaronni and cheese, I didn’t notice. And back then, everybody referred to it as “Dirty John’s” because it was one of the first places in Iowa to sell Playboy magazine.

Podcasting and teaching writing: an interesting example?

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m planning on using some podcast technology in my online class this coming fall. Though to be completely honest, I haven’t completely figured out what I’ll be doing with it. My original (current?) plan is to use podcasts to supplement the online class materials– not a “lecture” exactly, but sort of a weekly (or so) “show” about the class. But I was at a function last night, talking with a bunch of fellow English (although literature) professors about this, and they wondered why I didn’t just write it all up and post it for students to digest in that form. I suppose they have a point, but I think you could make the same argument about radio in general: why listen to the news on the radio (or watch it on TV, for that matter) when you could just read it? Hmmmm….

Anyway, I’ve been playing around with iTunes and podcasts lately, and I came across some podcasts that are kind of an interesting example how this stuff might be used in a writing class context. Check out the CSU Writing Project Summer Institute 2005 blog and podcast site to see what I mean. I’ll be honest: I don’t find it exactly compelling “must listen to” stuff. But I also don’t think I’m the audience for these blogs, either.

Just to prove that I’ve always been a bit of a geek (or at least had friends who are geeks)….

This morning, my friend Chris (who is– and I say this with affection– truly the biggest geek I know) sent me a link to yesterday’s Wikipedia featured page, “The Monty Hall Problem.” This is essentially a math puzzle. Allow me to quote at length from the wikipedia site:

The Monty Hall problem is a puzzle in game theory that is loosely based on the American game show Let’s Make a Deal. The name comes from the show’s host, Monty Hall. In this puzzle a player is shown three closed doors; behind one is a car, and behind each of the other two is a goat. The player is allowed to open one door, and will win whatever is behind the door. However, after the player selects a door but before opening it, the game host opens another door revealing a goat. The host then offers the player an option to switch to the other closed door. Does switching improve the player’s chance of winning the car? With the assumptions explicitly stated below, the answer is yes — switching results in a 2/3 chance of winning the car.

The problem is also called the Monty Hall paradox, in the sense that the solution is counterintuitive, although the problem is not a logical self-contradiction. It has generated heated debate.

“Generated heated debate…” ya got that right. Now me, being an enormous idiot when it comes to math, I didn’t exactly weigh in with my reasoning and opinions. But when I first heard about this puzzle 15 or 18 or so years ago, I do recall there being “heated debate” among my geeky friends. I remember one friend of mine arguing bitterly that this could not possibly be true. The problem is that this particular friend didn’t know a whole lot about math either.

I did have one friend of mine who immediately said that he knew this seemingly illogical solution was correct. This guy is someone I have long lost touch with, but just to give you an idea of his geek credentials: he finished his Ph.D. in genetics at Harvard University, where he was being funded by a Howard Hughes Foundation fellowship. Anyway, his response when I brought this all up with him way back when was something like “it’s math you wouldn’t understand, Steve.”

Anyway, I recall actually testing the Monty Hall problem one drunken night, I think with a friend of mine named Lisette (who is now a professor someplace– lost touch with her, too). I played the role of Monty, controlling the doors and the location (metaphorically, of course) of the goats and new cars, and she played the role of contestant. One hundred times in a row, she picked one door first and then switched. And damned if she didn’t “win” 66 times.

Ah, memories….

Granholm "blasts" tuition hikes; refuses to believe you cannot get something for nothing

I heard this story on WEMU this morning, and I found a link to a written version on mlive, “Granholm blasts tuition hikes.” For the non-Michiganders reading this blog, let me catch you up:

The Granholm in question here is Jennifer Granholm, the governor of Michigan. On the one hand, Granholm (who is a Democrat, by the way) wants to increase college attendance in the state– she’s said a couple of times that she wants everyone in the state to have the opportunity for some sort of higher education, be that an undergraduate degree, associate’s degree, some kind of community college training, etc. On the other hand, she keeps cutting funding to higher education in the state, saying stuff like this:

While acknowledging that what she once called “fat” had already been cut from university budgets, Granholm insisted schools could do more.

“We all know the state has cut funding, but the state has cut funding everywhere,” Granholm said.

Last year (and I don’t remember all the details about this), Granholm promised to not to cut funding to state universities beyond a particular percentage if the universities agreed to not raise tuition too much. The universities (including EMU) held their part of the deal, but the governor’s office didn’t. Here’s what’s happening this year:

Granholm is proposing a 2-percent cut in state aid to universities for fiscal 2006 and wants Michigan’s 15 public universities to hold their tuition increases to inflation for a second straight year.

After four years of state aid reductions, however, officials at the University of Michigan and Michigan State University said they had no choice but to raise the price of undergraduate education. U-M regents approved a tuition increase of 12.3 percent for state residents. MSU trustees approved a 9.3 percent tuition and fee increase for most in-state students.

In a tuition guarantee plan approved last week, Central Michigan University will charge incoming freshmen 19 percent more than last year, with lesser increases for upper classmen. Credit hour rates would be capped for as long as the student is enrolled, up to six years.

As I understand it, Wayne State is going to raise tuition around 19 or 18 percent; I had heard that EMU was going to go up 10 percent, but I wouldn’t be surprised if this news didn’t prompt a higher increase. The way I see it, the state universities are simply responding (correctly, I’m afraid) from the messages they are getting from the state. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.

Bizarrely, this is setting up a situation where the Republicans are able to look like “the higher education party.” For example:

“(Granholm) cut university funding and now she’s lamenting tuition increases,” said Sen. Michael Goschka, R-Brant, who chairs the higher education budget committee in the Senate. “Part of the reason for the tuition increases is because higher education hasn’t been a priority for her.”

This comment strikes me as extremely accurate and reasonable.

Look, I understand the complexities of the problem here, I really do. The state of Michigan is in the proverbial crapper right now: high unemployment, too much heavy industry, the auto industry is sluggish, etc., etc. Plus the previous (Republican) governor more or less handed Granholm a pretty awful situation tax-wise. She needs to raise taxes, but politically, that would be suicide. So it’s no wonder that Granholm is literally saying that she doesn’t want the state to actually pay for higher education, but she wants it to be there as a financially affordable option for citizens.

It’s an ugly situation, and I hope it is one the state reverses soon. My first job was in Oregon at Southern Oregon University. That school was chronically under-funded (still is, as I understand it), and because the funding from the state was so minimal, SOU was nearly completely “self-funded,” as if it were a private school. The problem is you can’t run a private school on tuition fees that are attempting to be affordable.

In my two years there in the mid 1990s, the result was a “financial crisis” each winter, one where there were rumors of layoffs of faculty and other cuts. These things didn’t happen (and the old-timers claimed the so-called “crisis” was present every year), and for all kinds of different reasons, I don’t see EMU laying off tenure-track faculty. But I really hope that people like Granholm look at situations in Oregon as an example of what not to do with higher education.

Say, is anybody going to art fair?

I took a scan through some of the “local-yokel” blogs this morning to see if I could find any “up close and personal” reports on this year’s Ann Arbor Art Fairs, but I didn’t find much of anything. Ann Arbor is Overrated has a little piece about the first annual Townie Party, though if you’ve ever read that blog, you can imagine their scoffs at the whole thing.

I played golf with Steve B. and Bill H-D. yesterday at the Forest Akers Golf Course at MSU— the “East Course,” which is the easier of the two. Nice course with lush lush grass and really difficult to hit out of rough. Before I left for home and while in front of Bill’s house, I told Bill and his wife that they ought to go check out the art fairs. One of them asked if we (meaning me and Annette and Will) were going, and I said something like “Nah, that’s for the tourists.”

Actually, we probably would go if we weren’t both pretty swamped in various work projects around here. Annette and I went the first couple of years that we were here, and Will is probably old enough to endure it now. It is an awful lot of people though, and it is so so huge that it ends up being a significant and all-day commitment. As an alternative, we have gone to the Plymouth “Art in the Park” celebration in recent years because it’s just a lot smaller and easier to manage.

But don’t let me stop you from going….

Going "all laptop"

Rich Rice posted a link to this article in Boston.com, “Arizona school will not use textbooks,” to the tech-rhet mailing list. I saw a similar (more in-depth?) article in The Arizona Daily Star, “All-laptop high school to open in Vail.”

I guess my first reaction to this is “it ain’t gonna happen,” at least not entirely. Sure, there’s a lot of textbook info you could replicate electronically, but there’s a whole bunch of information that is either most practically available or only available in good ol’ fashioned books.

And I don’t understand why it’s an “either/or” kind of thing, either.

Miscellaneous links I came across today

In lieu of doing something a bit more productive, I cleaned out my email inbox today, and in the process, I came across a bunch of links to stuff I thought would be worthwhile to post here:

  • The Future of the Book web site. Some good info, but what I thought was especially cool was the java-script powered graphic at the top.
  • Journals in Rhetoric and Composition. Lists and links to different publications in the field. Hey, it’s from BGSU, so it must be good.
  • Today’s Front Pages. This is a pretty nifty little flash-driven site that show you the front pages of a bunch of different newspapers all over the world. It’s an interesting melding of traditional print and electronic media that might be a good topic of discussion in a class like 328.
  • 826 Michigan has opened up (and has a web site, too). I’ve been trying to find some time work with these folks, and I really want to find a way to make some sort of connection between the work that they’re trying to do (tutoring writing to young folks on a drop-in basis) and the work my colleagues and I are trying to do (teach future high school and junior high teachers). I do wish they had opened up the center in Ypsi, but that’s another issue.
  • TiddlyWiki. A friend of mine sent me a link to this. To be honest, I haven’t had a whole lot of time to mess around with this, but it looks to me like it has some kind of cool potential as an interesting way to write hypertext.