Steven D. Krause

… judging from my limited viewing of the Summer Olympics on NBC, it seems that the most important sport at the whole thing is women’s beach volleyball. Every time I turn it on, unbelievably fit and tall women in bikinis are pounding the ball at each other the net. As if there’s nothing else going on at this thing. But not that I’m complaining. If I wanted to watch something different, I’d turn it over to CBC…

See this article, “Armed Robbers Steal ‘The Scream’ in Oslo.” Basically, that most famous of Munch paintings was stolen the other day, along with a less famous but still cool painting by Munch called “Madonna.” A few thoughts:

* I’ve been a big fan of Munch’s work and all of the various parodies of “The Scream” for years. In fact, I used to have a web site about it, one where I had pictures of various “Scream” things I collected (a keychain, blow-up dolls, posters, pillows, coffee mugs, etc.) and pictures of “Scream” things I came across on the ‘net and such. The site was popular to the point where I was quoted at one point in time in a newspaper story that ran in The Des Monies Register and then various wire services. The Internet is a weird place; put up a web site that goes into enough detail about something, and before you know it, people quote you like you knew what you were talking about.

Anyway, this makes me think that maybe I’ll set up that “Scream stuff” site again.

* Another story I read about it here, this one an AP wire story, said that the paintings had virtually no protection or security around them. Basically, the robbers came in, waving guns around, and yanked the pictures off the wall, and ran away. Considering the fact that a different copy of “The Scream” was stolen about 10 years ago, you’d think that they’d have at least a little security around this thing…

Annette and Will and I spent the day at the Michigan Renaissance Fair in Holly. Actually, it was a lot like it was last year. Some highlights

* I bought some very comfy and warm sheepskin slippers, which I am wearing as I type this. Not usually my kind of thing, and I’m sure I got ripped off in some fashion, but hey, when you gotta have slippers, you gotta have slippers.

* Will is now set for Halloween with a pretty cool knight costume, including a wooden shield and sword. It was more expensive overall than your “regular” Halloween costume fare, but it might last a little longer than that plastic crap you get at Wal-Mart. Here he is looking knightly:

* The jousting was cool, sort of like a professional wrestling match with horses and sword-play. Here’s a picture to set the stage:

* I don’t know why, but I think one of my favorite things at the whole thing was this puppet show that involved the main puppet trying to gather a crew of pirates. It looked a little like this:

* Mostly what you do at the Renaissance Fair is sort of wander around and look at stuff. Here’s a picture of Annette and Will standing near one of the sorta “alley-like” streets:

* Annette and I kind of figured out something on the way home today. It isn’t that this thing is set in “the Renaissance” or that it is full of inaccuracies per se; rather, it is more or less set in a fantasy role-playing game like D&D. Funny. I just heard a story on NPR the other day about how that game just celebrated its 30th anniversary….

I wasn’t going to put anything up here this week, but I was surfing around this morning and I stumbled across this, the MLA’s Guide to Doctoral Programs in English and Other Modern Languages. This is pretty cool. It isn’t necessarily complete, but the features include the ability to look for a “key word or phrase” (and if you’re thinking about a PhD in English, that key word or phrase ought to be something like “composition,” “rhetoric,” or “writing,” especially if you want to get a job), and you can also limit your results to schools that give their students insurance and such. Neat stuff.

-13 pounds

Since Sunday, I’ve been loyally back to phase 1 of the South Beach diet– well, okay, last night, I cheated a bit with a couple of glasses of wine in celebration of the end of the summer semester. But other than that, I’ve been quite good, and it seems to be working quite well. I swear I’ve lost 5 pounds since the in-laws left. I’m not sure if it’s so much the result of the diet per se, or just the result of simply ending the “eating and drinking fest” I was on whille the in-laws were in town. But whichever, I’m back on the right path.

By the way, I heard a good story on NPR yesterday about the high cost of healthy eating. This is something I knew before– both because I’ve heard this before, and also because I’ve experienced it directly with the SB diet. But what was different about this story was there was statistics about how much it costs per calorie to eat stuff like lean meat, fish, veggies, fruit, etc. (pretty high) versus eating fast food (pretty low).

See this site, FTheVote.com: Trade Sex for Votes. I don’t know if these people are serious or not, but here’s a blurb from the site:

“Believe it or not, even the most deeply rooted right-wing ideologue can be manipulated by sex. As we all know, the sex drive is a powerful beast that has the potential to change people. People lie for sex, they cheat for sex, they even kill for sex – and you can be sure that they will change the way they think (and therefore vote) for sex. All you need to be armed with are your sexy progressive values, a razor-sharp wit, your genitalia, and a mindset that doesn’t mind taking one for the team.

“At Fuck The Vote we provide a Pledge Sheet that can be used conveniently before becoming physically intimate with a conservative. The Pledge Sheet asks the signee to make a promise to vote for anyone but George Bush in the November election. FTV has not endorsed a single candidate but recommends strategic voting. We also encourage FTV fans to take road trips this summer to swing(er) states to collect pledges. If you collect a pledge let us know about it on the Swinger States page! Have safe fun fucking over Bush while fucking for votes.”

Well, I’m happily married, ahd she’s a liberal too, so I guess I’m out…

I just finished up the grading for summer school–EMU runs a “spring” semester in May and June, and a “summer” semester in July and August. It’s a lot of work because everything moves twice as fast (7.5 weeks instead of 15), but I had good classes and enough of a break in the spring.

Now it’s a mad rush into the fall term in two weeks– though really, it’s more like one week since I have meetings and stuff starting August 25. Sigh. Where does the summer go?

Anyway, I’m going to take a short “semi-break” in terms of blogging, probably a week, maybe a bit longer. I need to spend some time getting my classes ready of course, but I also want to spend more time actually reading blogs for a while. Oh, and I wouldn’t mind doing a little gardening, playing a little golf, goofing off a bit, etc.

See ya in a week or so.

Honestly, I’m not trying to make folks mad just for the sake of making them mad. I wasn’t going to post anything else about this, but then I rethought it. After all, I’ve been thinking a lot about this whole pseudonym business lately, and I’ve been talking to friends and colleagues about it lately too. And writing down stuff I’m thinking about is one of the points of this blog. So I thought I’d write three thoughts:

Thought #1 I’m not entirely sure if this is “ironic” or not, but the thing that really stops me from speaking too harshly about the problems of pseudonyms and how they relate to identity is I make use of my “real” identity on the web. What I’m getting at is this is a situation where, rhetorically, I cannot possibly be considered credible– well, at least with the folks who embrace a pseudonym– not for what I say but for who I am.

Don’t get me wrong– I’m not lamenting the idea that I can’t be the “judge” or establish the “rules” about how to go about blogging (these are both things I was accused of before). That’s not my concern. I mean something different. Let me put it this way: in order to write an “academic” article about the problems of pseudo-identity on blogs, I would have to acknowledge and account for the fact that I myself actually have a “non-pseudo-identity” (!!) on the web. Like I said, I don’t know if it’s ironic, but it strikes me as kinda weird.

Thought #2 Ultimately, I think the “problem” with pseudo-identity on the web is a lack of accountability in relationship to the real world, especially when a writer’s misrepresentation of identity causes trouble. (And again, let me be clear: I’m not trying to suggest that people who use pseudo-identity are automatically causing trouble.) This one was pointed out to me by a colleague, so let me see if I get this straight: In the story of “Julie,” the man who posed as a “totally disabled” woman who typed with a stick on her forehead (this is recounted in the Stone essay I cite earlier here) claimed that no “real harm” was done because he didn’t do anything in “real life” and his pseudo-identity may have helped people online. On the other hand, in the infamous story of “Mr. Bungle” (as is recounted in the well-known essay by Julian Dibbell essay “A Rape in Cyberspace”), Bungle says that no one was hurt in “real life,” so it doesn’t really matter what harm may have been caused to the people online.

That’s the ol’ “having your cake and eating it too,” a cliché that is synonymous with “unfair.”

Thought #3 A friend of mine reminded me of an episode of the PRI show “This American Life” a few years ago that focused on having powers like a super-hero. One of the segments was about a guy who went around asking people “Which super power would you like to have: invisibility or flight?” According to the blurb on the web site, “how you answer tells a lot about what kind of person you are. And also, no matter which power people choose, they never use it to fight crime.” I think you can see where I’m going with this…

I chose flight.

The Dante’s Inferno Test has banished you to the Sixth Level of Hell – The City of Dis!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:

Level	Score
Purgatory (Repenting Believers)	Very Low
Level 1 – Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers)	High
Level 2 (Lustful)	High
Level 3 (Gluttonous)	Moderate
Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious)	Low
Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy)	High
Level 6 – The City of Dis (Heretics)	Very High
Level 7 (Violent)	Moderate
Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers)	High
Level 9 – Cocytus (Treacherous)	Low

Take the Dante’s Inferno Hell Test

See this article from The Chronicle of Higher Education Online,“Professors Seek Compensation for Online Courses” by Dan Carnevale. The title is a little misleading because it is as much about a policy at Los Rios Community College where faculty are expected to develop online courses while on sabbatical, which seems like a pretty odd way to do it to me. One perhaps relevant passage though:

“A growing number of faculty unions are fighting for language in their contracts that guarantees such compensation when professors get involved in online education.

“At the same time, many colleges take the position that online courses have become so mainstream that producing them should be just another part of a faculty member’s workload, especially since budgets are tight. A recently published study found that the extra pay that professors receive for online development fell 14 percent between 1999 and 2002.”

Two thoughts:

* EMU is a slightly unusual place (what else is new?) when it comes to online classes because they have mostly been offered through continuing education, and that has some complicated implications on the faculty contract such that it’s pretty tough for faculty to teach online classes as part of their regular load– even if they want to teach online classes. Some of that is starting to change. However, continuing ed. has offered quite a bit of support to faculty interested in developing these classes, both in the form of help producing course materials and also compensation for developing materials.

* If university administrators want more faculty to teach online courses– and to teach them well– they should be willing to pay individual faculty members for the work they put into developing these courses. As everyone even remotely familiar with online teaching already knows, it takes a hell of a lot more work to put the materials for online courses together, and not simply because (as the CHE article asserts) because faculty can just “wing it” in a face-to-face classroom. Everything in online courses has to be spelled out in a way that isn’t necessary in face-to-face courses, and making a web site– even with the help of courseware applications– is time-consuming. When you put documents of any sort online, you become a “publisher” of sorts, and the job of publishing brings with it all sorts of responsibilities and duties not typically in the “job description” of most faculty members.

So at schools like EMU, where faculty don’t have to teach online if they don’t want to, the administration has wisely recognized that they have to provide some incentive for faculty to develop these courses. But it seems to me that schools that are requiring faculty to develop online courses ought to provide some similar incentive as well. If they don’t a lot of these schools are liable to have some uninspired and disgruntled faculty teaching some pretty poorly designed online courses. That’s bad from an educational point of view, but even if you take an administrative “University, Inc.” approach, it seems to me that bad teaching will ultimately hurt enrollments and thus hurt the institution’s “bottom line.”