Month: July 2008

Another book for my pile/for English 516: Two Bits

Via Inside Higher Ed, I came across this article, “It’s All Geek to Me,” which is a review of the book Two Bits: The Cultural Significance of Free Software by Christopher M. Kelty. Of course, the book has a web site right here. Not only is the book available free online there; Kelty has also set up a section of the site called “modulate.” Kelty describes this section like this:

As such, “Modulations” is a project, concurrent with the book, but not necessarily based on it, which is intended to explore the questions raised there, but in other works, with and by other scholars, a network of researchers and projects on free and open source software, on “recursive publics,” on publics and public sphere theory generally, and on new projects and problems confronted by Free Software and its practices…

Sounds like a blog to me.

In any event, definitely a book to include to review for English 516 and maybe one to look at myself.

Naughty teacher facebook profiles

This is kind of old news (April 2008), but it was in my email (which I am sorting through) and it’d be good reading for English 516: “When Young Teachers Go Wild on the Web: Public Profiles Raise Questions of Propriety and Privacy.” Basically, it’s about teachers who have sort of questionable Facebook profiles. Besides some amusing examples, I like the fact that many of the teachers in this article were unaware that their Facebook profiles were as public as they are. Just goes to show you that the teachers can sometimes be just as– um, not smart– as the students.

Tip o’ the hat to Nick Carbone for posting this to WPA-L.

Our field-trip to the Elvisfest

I don’t know why I remember this, but here’s a fun-fact about Elvis impersonators that I was actually able to track down on the web here:

When Elvis Presley died in 1977, there were an estimated 37 Elvis impersonators in the world. By 1993, there were 48,000 Elvis impersonators, an exponential increase. Extrapolating from this, by 2010 there will be 2.5 billion Elvis impersonators.

Well, that statistic hasn’t come to pass, but we did have the chance to experience multiple Elvis-like performers the other night right here in Ypsilanti at the Michigan Elvisfest. It was a fine slice of local culture; here’s a brief video with a few highlights:

A few highlights to add:

  • It was kind of an interesting crowd– sort of a mix of a mix of white trash/red-neck folks, people who like the country and western, hard-core Elvis fans, locals out for a good time (that’d be us), and hipsters there on a goof. Actually it was a pretty fun group all in all.
  • There’s a whole Elvis impersonator culture out there that Annette and I were completely unaware even existed. For example, it isn’t “Elvis Impersonators,” but “Elvis Tribute Artists,” or “ETAs.” The MC (who was also an former ETA) kept bringing up all sorts of events similar to the Michigan Elvisfest all over the midwest and beyond. Who knew?
  • Sadly, we only saw one real Elvis Tribute Artist– or is that Elvi?– performing that evening, as you can see from the video. There was a staging area where there were ETAs standing around waiting to get their pictures taken and selling their ETA CDs and other merchandise.
  • Remembering her college youth, Annette noticed a lot of similarities between this thing and drag shows. For example, the adoring fans gave the various tribute artists flowers, which, I am told, is the practice at drag shows, too. Which makes sense since what is an impersonator excuse me, tribute artist but someone in drag?
  • The video features Annette drinking a beer, which, for those who know her, is about as rare as (interestingly enough) an honest to goodness Elvis sighting.
  • Frog Island was a good place to see a show, but every once in a while, we’d get a whiff of sewage smell. I have no idea where it was from, maybe the river, maybe a water treatment plant near there, I don’t know.

So, that’s another thing to check off my “to do in Southeast Michigan” list.

Actual conversation I had at the video store this morning

Or something like this, at least:

The scene: Me at the local Hollywood Video with two DVDs:  disk 1 of the first season of The X-Files, and disk 1 of the first season of Heroes.   We’re seeking video entertainment suitable for the whole family, and we had good luck watching the full runs of Buffy the Vampire Slyer and Firefly on DVD, so we thought we’d give these shows a spin.  I’ve seen all of The X-Files but none of Heroes, so I went for the one disk of each approach.

I take my choices to the counter and to the drowsy young Dude behind the counter.  He looks like someone I would have seen at the Origins convention a few weeks ago: in short, his bad haircut, greasy grooming, piercings, and general surliness suggest a certain kind of uber-geek, one comfortable with science fiction movie trivia, required saving throws in AD&D, and comic book collecting.

Me:  I’d like to rent these.

Dude: (Sighs) Sure, whatever.  (Scans DVD in machine thingy).  Of course, you’re going to be another victim here.

Me: Excuse me?

 Dude: Heroes. Horribly horribly predictable.  You’ll figure out everything you need to know after the first six episodes.  Nothing changes after that.

Me:  What about the whole villains  thing?  That’s how they are advertising the next season.

Dude:  Right, like I don’t know how that is going to turn out.

Me:  Aren’t you supposed to be selling the videos here?

Dude:  I only like selling the good ones.  You’ll see what I mean.

Me:  What about The X-Files?

Dude:  That’s excellent, of course.  I’m looking forward to the movie to see what they do with the characters after all those years.  Regardless, these videos are yours until Thursday.

And scene… 

Even Facebook can’t figure out the he/she/they thing

This is something I will have to include soon English 328 as part of the discussion about style manuals I like to have– I’m starting that again first thing next week, actually: “He/She/They: Grammar and Facebook,” which is on the Facebook blog/news page. I have an article about this on my computer at home, but not on my laptop, so I’ll have to update this post later. Anyway, Facebook folks apparently aren’t keen on the use of plural third-person pronouns in an effort at gender neutrality– as in “Steve is getting themself another cup of coffee.” So here’s their solution:

For this reason, we’ve decided to request that all Facebook users fill out this information on their profile. If you haven’t yet selected a sex, you will probably see a prompt to choose whether you want to be referred to as “him” or “her” in the coming weeks. When you make a selection, that will appear in Mini-Feed and News Feed stories about you, but it won’t be searchable or displayed in your Basic Information.

We’ve received pushback in the past from groups that find the male/female distinction too limiting. We have a lot of respect for these communities, which is why it will still be possible to remove gender entirely from your account, including how we refer to you in Mini-Feed.

This is quite a departure from Strunk and White’s discussion of this in The Elements of Style, where they (White?) begin with “The use of he as a pronoun for embracing both genders is a simple, practical convention rooted in the conventions of the English language.” The third edition of The Elements of Style, the last one that White had anything to do with (and btw, Strunk died in the 1950s or 40s or so), goes/rants on about this issue for several paragraphs. In the fourth edition though, published long after White was gone, the sentence right after the one I quote above, is “Currently, however, many writers find the use of the generic he or his to rename indefinite antecedents limiting or offensive.”

Who says rules are forever?

By the way, it turns out that the fourth edition of The Elements of Style is available online at Scribd, and linked to here. I tried to embed the whole thing, but it messed up the formatting here.

Oh, and PPS:  here’s the Yahoo news article on this I was looking for….

“Laptop use tied to higher test scores”

From the NCTE Inbox comes this Richmond Times-Dispatch article, “Study: Laptop use tied to higher student scores: About 14,550 Henrico County high schoolers are utilizing computers.” Yet another example of an article that I might include in English 516, though it seems you can throw a brick out a window and hit an article that comes up with whatever conclusion you want about the successes or failures of laptops in the schools programs.