Our yard is a long story, which I won’t go into now, but we have a large area in the back which I am seriously contemplating tearing up entirely this coming fall or next spring. I don’t know exactly what to do about this, but I like the idea of a couple of square foot gardening plots back there.
Month: July 2008
It turns out texting might not be the end of language and/or the world
There’s a good piece on the guardian.co.uk web site, “2b or not 2b?” about how texting is not destroying language as we know it. Just the opposite. I’m just skimming this morning, but here’s my favorite paragraphs so far:
People think that the written language seen on mobile phone screens is new and alien, but all the popular beliefs about texting are wrong. Its graphic distinctiveness is not a new phenomenon, nor is its use restricted to the young. There is increasing evidence that it helps rather than hinders literacy. And only a very tiny part of it uses a distinctive orthography. A trillion text messages might seem a lot, but when we set these alongside the multi-trillion instances of standard orthography in everyday life, they appear as no more than a few ripples on the surface of the sea of language. Texting has added a new dimension to language use, but its long-term impact is negligible. It is not a disaster.
and…
Research has made it clear that the early media hysteria about the novelty (and thus the dangers) of text messaging was misplaced. In one American study, less than 20% of the text messages looked at showed abbreviated forms of any kind – about three per message. And in a Norwegian study, the proportion was even lower, with just 6% using abbreviations. In my own text collection, the figure is about 10%.
People seem to have swallowed whole the stories that youngsters use nothing else but abbreviations when they text, such as the reports in 2003 that a teenager had written an essay so full of textspeak that her teacher was unable to understand it. An extract was posted online, and quoted incessantly, but as no one was ever able to track down the entire essay, it was probably a hoax.
Okay, that last one was two paragraphs, but still.
This is something I might have students read in English 516. I haven’t done a unit in the past about texting– personally, it just isn’t that interesting to me and it is something I rarely do myself– but maybe I should. Or maybe I should begin the term with a whole bunch of readings for a week I could call “It Turns Out that the Internets and Other Technologies Are Not Ruining the Kids,” and include readings about the myths of pedophiles and online chat, about the dangers of Facebook/MySpace, about texting, etc., etc. Maybe I could track down some articles to include about the dangers of the phone, of television, of rock-n-roll music, the waltz, and so forth.
Because it’s really hard to properly cite things
That’s an answer to the question “why are there errors in citation, even by academics who should know better?” Or at least that’s my answer.
Anyway, this came up for me this morning after skimming throw the Inside Higher Ed article “Cite Check,” something that might be useful reading in a variety of classes I teach. The basic point of the piece is that research of citation practices in fields like management science, health, other sciences, etc., indicates that there’s lots of errors in terms of quoting/paraphrasing wrong, bad references, and the like. There’s a link in the article to the academic study that might be worth looking at.
In my own scholarship, I obviously try my best, but there are lots of things that are just really hard to cite properly. And in my teaching, I ask my students to do the same, knowing that perfection in these matters is elusive.
But if I were going to get into RV-ing…
As my recent posts about camping would suggest, I think we’ll stick to tent camping. But if I were going to get into RV camping, I think I’d do it like this dude did with a school bus.
GSU, fair use, and eReserves
I’ve always wondered when some publisher was going to sue over copyright and eReserve systems. It turns out that’s underway right now: “Georgia State University Strongly Answers Publishers’ E-Reserve Lawsuit,” which I found via Digital Koans. An interesting story/case that might make its way into a revised version of English 516, depending on how it all turns out. Not to mention the fact that it might change the way I distribute readings to students.
Camping at Orchard Beach
Spring term wrapped up at the end of last week, and Annette and Will and I took off for a camping trip on Saturday and Sunday night to Orchard Beach State Park, right outside of Manistee, MI. I just got done uploading a set of pictures to flickr; it’s right here.
This is only the second time we’ve been camping (see here for time #1), and once again, we managed to pick some less than ideal weather. The first night, we had a minor hurricane come through; conveniently for Will and Annette, I left them at the camp while I was running an errand that turned out to be a waste of time. Needless to say, they were just thrilled with me.
But hey, things picked up. Our tents didn’t completely collapse, a surprising amount of our things did not get soaking wet, and we were able to roast weenies and marshmallows and all was well.
Undeterred by overcast skies, low 60’s temperatures, and gusty winds, we hit the beach Sunday morning. As this 1:11 video demonstrates, we were going to enjoy it, damn it!
After beaching for a while, we all got cleaned up (after all, this campground did have showers and flush toilets and the like) and headed into Manistee for a lunch that turned out to be far too expensive for what it was. Manistee bills itself as being a “Victorian port town,” suggesting cute little shops and touristy stuff, but it reminds me a great deal more of the town where my parents grew up, Algoma, Wisconsin. Actually, Manistee is quite a bit bigger– they have many stoplights for example, whereas I think Algoma still has none– and Algoma is perhaps a bit more touristy nowadays with a winery of sorts and at least a bit more in the way of touristy shops. Either way, there really is no reason why you would go to either town as a tourist.
Then we went back to the camp, hung about, etc. Among other things, Will went and poked at a hole that had a mouse in it and I cooked stew in the dutch oven by the fire. We had a beautiful sunset (see the current masthead here, and/or this picture, for example) and okay but not great stew. We got cleaned up and packed up Monday morning, and then went on a lovely but short hike on one of the paths across the main road from the campground before leaving for home. We should have done this the day before instead of going into Manistee so we could have taken one of the longer hikes; live and learn.
So I think it turned out we had a pretty good time, but I also think all of us learned a bit more about ourselves as campers. The big thing for me is I’m not that interested in camping merely for the sake of camping, merely to get away. Unlike our previous trip to the Pinery, where we were in an area with other tent campers, we were surrounded on this trip by campers with, um, campers– big towing rigs, pop-up campers, and these amusing folks in a gigantic motor home. For me, camping is about “roughing it,” at least a bit, about getting out with family and friends, and about doing something to “connect with nature” in some tangible albeit vague way.
But it seemed to me that for most of the camper campers around us, camping meant simply getting away to a “home away from home.” Our outside TV watching neighbors were far from the only ones who were tuning in; in fact, it kind of felt like we were the only ones who weren’t watching TV. As far as I could tell, most of these folks could be camping just about anywhere– a park with a lovely view, a parking lot, etc.– and the experience would be about the same. I’ll bet that less than 10% of these folks ventured across the road to the hiking paths.
Next summer, I’d like to take a family and friends camping trip to someplace a bit more secluded, something for tents only, and some place a bit more “out in nature” than Orchard Beach. The problem is that these kinds of campsites also tend to be “primitive,” meaning there’s no showers and either an outhouse-styled bathroom or nothing. And while I am okay roughing it a bit and I am all for getting out into nature, I am less okay with pooping in the woods.
The Pirate’s Dilemma looks cool
Via boing-boing:
Much more is available at the web site http://thepiratesdilemma.com/ including a “pay what you want” PDF version of the book and a blog by the author, Matt Mason. This could be good reading for English 516– certainly an option for a book review project.
What Stanley Fish doesn’t know about writing could fill a universe
Stanley Fish has a new book coming out called Save The World On Your Own Time, in which, among other things apparently, he decries the ways in which politics have crept into the classrooms of university professors and how it ought to stop. What professors are supposed to do is teach and that’s that. He has an interview here in Inside Higher Ed where he talks about this and some of his other views.
Frankly, I think he’s kind of lost his marbles.
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