stevendkrause.com

These are things I was going to link to yesterday, but I went to bed instead. So here they are now:

• “Typewriter stays relevant in technology-saturated world,” from the LA Times. It’s about a family-run typewriter repair business and it claims that the typewriter is making a resurgence. I don’t know; I hear the argument that computers are a distraction if someone wants to “just write,” but you’d have to peel my computer from my cold, dead hands. I could see this being useful for either 328 or 516.
• Laptop stand made from a coat hanger. I don’t think this would work that well for me because my Apple laptop doesn’t open flat like the laptop in this design, but it’s still something that’d be worth playing around with for an afternoon.
• “I think I’m musing my mind,” which is a column from Roger Ebert where he writes about what losing the ability to speak has meant to him for his writing. Kind of an interesting piece, maybe the sort of thing that might be interesting in 328.
• “Undecided,” by David Sedaris in the current issue of The New Yorker makes me wonder even more about that all-important group of voters and about his voting as a child. Funny stuff.
• “3 Ways Web-Based Computing Will Change Colleges” from IHE, which is basically about the power of apps like Google Docs for sharing stuff and changing the way that IT works. I think it’s interesting, but there are two big problems. The article addresses one, which is privacy. The other one is that these apps are not quite ready for prime-time for me. Though the sharing part is pretty darn handy, I would agree.
• Finally, this is something I came across this morning: Jenny Edbauer Rice’s tutorial for iMovie, which is something I might very well use in the next week or so for English 328. A handy start for my student’s future video projects.

Day one: Earthquake Soccer wrap-up. Saturday morning was the last game of the fall season for Will’s soccer team. Because Jim the “real coach” was at a conference, I was in charge. (I see myself as somewhere between an assistant coach and the team manager). The kids played a good game, but came up a couple goals short. Still, the best season by far, 2-3-1, and, if most of these kids come back in the spring, I think we’re going to be good.

The “highlight” (or rather low-light) of the game came from the other coach. For non-soccer people (and I am just barely not one of them myself): when the ball goes out of bounds, the other team gets to throw the ball back in. To do so, the thrower must keep both feet on the ground and throw the ball with two hands, over the head, with no spinning or anything. If you throw it badly, the ref will call it and give the ball to the other team. Here’s a helpful wikiHow entry.

Anyway, both teams were getting called on this, probably the other team more than us. Things were going along, and then, kind of all of a sudden, the other coach totally and completely über freaked out. He screamed louder than I have ever screamed (and that’s saying something, believe you me) “THE NEXT ONE OF YOU WHO DOES A BAD THROW IS OUT FOR THE REST OF THE GAME!!! C’MON!! THIS IS FIRST GRADE STUFF!!!” Or something to that effect. It was kind of scary, actually.

The team went out to celebrate after the game for pizza and such (beer for the grown-ups, happily) and opposing team coach’s freak-out was a topic of conversation at both tables. The grown-ups thought that was maybe a wee too much intimidation and intensity for a township rec league for kids 12 and under. The kids (or so I am told by Will) just thought he was kind of a jerk and mean.

Day two: pumpkin carving/halloween decos. We’re quite late in getting our Halloween decorations and pumpkins together this year. And it isn’t the same as it has been, either. Will and I usually to go to this one field and do a “pick your own” kind of pumpkin experience. Well, unless I couldn’t find the right place (entirely possible), that field this year was planted with corn.

Originally, I was going to try to attempt carving with power tools, but that proved to be more trouble than it was worth. I used a drill for some of this, but it was basically a big goopy mess. I did discover two pumpkin carving things this year that I will have to remember for next year though. First, a drywall saw was a super-duper handy tool, much better than the old hacking with a kitchen knife technique. Second, using a template was a good idea and pretty easy to do. My handy-work:

The “scar mouth” pumpkin was from a template, as was my attempt at a Barack O’ Lantern. I’ll post some pictures at some point when they are lit up.

Day 3: Fine punkin party. Hosted by Daye The Frenzied Wren and Dickish MacBastard. All I’ll say now is that it featured a pig roast, hanging around in a (kinda cold) barn, and a band of young kids from Milwaukee. Lots and lots of fun.

Oh, and then we came home relatively early and watched Persepolis. Three and a half days of fun. And now I’d better read for English 505 or I will be in trouble come Monday night….

Annette and I went to see David Byrne on tour this evening at Ann Arbor’s Michigan Theater, and a very fine show it was. I’ve been quite a fan of The Talking Heads for some time, and I’ve also enjoyed Byrne’s solo work. What I have liked about his latest CD/Album/Whatever they call these things nowadays, Everything That Happens Will Happen Today, is that it is a sort of contemporary return to some of the Brian Eno-influenced Talking Heads songs of old. Really fine stuff, my favorite of the Byrne solo work to date.

Anyway, I’ve been looking forward to this show for a while now, and I must say it delivered. Really sharp, lots of fun, some kind of weird elements that worked, lots of enthusiasm, etc. There will be some kind of review you can read online sometime if you want to– you know how the Google works. But a few personal observations:

• Byrne et al were a bit late because (rumor has it) they were across the street at Border’s book-shopping. I find this completely believable, but Byrne should have gone to the better and even more local store, Shaman Drum.
• We were very much in the median age for this show. There were some slightly older folks, and some much younger folks, including a couple of gay men (they were holding hands and such, so I assume…) right in front of us. They were, from my short pov, unfortunately tall.
• It sure seemed like a lot of people showed up late and/or kept getting up and going to the bathroom or whatever. It was pretty annoying, but, as Annette said, it puts students walking in and out of class for no apparent reason into perspective.

Okay, so for a taste of the event, here are a couple of very short videos:

So, here’s a video of a song I didn’t recognize with the “quasi-interpretive dancers” that appeared in amusing ways throughout the show:

Then there’s this short clip from one of my favorite Talking Heads songs, “Heaven:”

Finally, here’s Byrne is a silly balloon hat that someone gave him during one of the encores:

Good stuff– and now to bed way past my bedtime.

I was going to just post this on Facebook, but it didn’t work:

Kinda cool for anyone who has wondered about pop-up books.

There’s an article on eSchool News (which I found via NCTE inbox) that might serve as a nice counterweight to the Nick Carr article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” called “Rethinking research in the Google era.” eSchool News site has a kind of annoying login procedure. But beyond that, it’s still a worthwhile article that more or less draws the same conclusion that both I and my students drew from the Carr article: skimming stuff on the web is not mutually exclusive from reading deeply, and we’ve been doing this skimming kind of thing for a long time.

I thought this quote summed up the article, more or less:

Jim Bosco, professor emeritus at Western Michigan University, says there has “always been the concern that with new technology comes hell. It began with Socrates being concerned that writing had a horrible effect on learning, because up until that point all learning was done through oral tradition. It’s continued with printing and then television. It’s a reoccurring trend throughout history.”

Though he admits there’s some truth to the idea that with newer traditions, something is lost from the old traditions, “that’s just the way progress works,” he said.

Bosco also agrees that scanning and skimming are nothing new for students.

“If people think it’s only the students now, [who] have access to the internet, who skim over information and write papers that are just a collage of quotes and material pulled from other articles, they’re wrong,” he said. “As a teacher who’s old enough to have reviewed papers both before and after the internet, let me tell you: Students in the past used to write papers in the same way. There will always be students who write papers where it’s obvious they have no deep understanding of the material. It’s not a new phenomenon–it’s just better automated now.”

In reading this– especially those last two sentences– I am reminded of a particular time in my undergraduate experience, an infamous gen ed class I took with my friend Chris W. that was basically about the history European nationalism and which was taught by a guy who was apparently known as one of the “TA Emeritus” since he had been doing that bit for so long.

I remember at least one paper I wrote for that class that was based entirely on what I referred to as the “index shuffle.” I looked at the index, picked a listing that seemed both interesting and plentiful with answers, read those pages (and the ones around it), and wrote an essay. I believe I ended up with a B on that paper and also in that class.

TA Emeritus overheard Chris and I discussing this strategy one day late in the term, after we had all gotten to known each other a bit, and we chatted about it one day after class. TA Emeritus said to me “At first Steve, I was disappointed that you had not completed all of the reading. But then I realized that you had learned and masted a valuable college survival skill.” So the way I look at it, I might not have learned directly a lot about European nationalism, I did learn more about writing, even if what I learned was kind of a bad/shortcut strategy along the lines of Google and/or Wikipedia research.

Of course, for the next project in that class, one that involved writing about a book that did not include an index, I was screwed.

This article, “Why I Will Not Vote for John McCain,” by Phillip Butler, who was a former POW who kind of/sort of crossed paths with John McCain at the Naval Academy and as a POW. It’s an interesting piece in a variety of different ways, and man, talk about ethos! This is the kind of argument that could only be made by someone who always was a prisoner of war in Vietnam. Interesting stuff.

… I found this, a Scott McCloud page about his work on the comic book to explain Google’s browser, Chrome. Most interesting to me are the remixes of various folks on this. Cool stuff. I don’t think I’m going to be able to figure out a way to get this into 328 this term, but perhaps 516 in the winter?

We now return to looking for what I was looking for.

For rather innocuous reasons, Annette and I decided to change the billing due date on a credit card we recently acquired/signed on to. Annette called and was told it would take months and a special over-ride to accomplish this. I thought that odd so I called a bit later. To paraphrase the experience:

Me: I was told when I signed up for this card, I could change the billing date whenever I wanted. So I was under the impression that it didn’t really matter and this would be no big deal.

Customer Service Rep (CSR): Well, you can’t keep changing it whenever you want. That’s what people do to avoid finance charges.

Me: I understand that. I just want to do it this once.

CSR: And we can do that. It will take two billing cycles though.

Me: Why?

CSR: Because we have to do this manually. The paperwork has to be filled out and sent and such, blah-blah-blah.

Me: Huh. Where do you send this paperwork?

CSR: Williamton, Delaware.

Me: And do you send this by mule? (I do remember that I did actually say this to the guy). I mean, two months seems like an awfully long time to process this.

CSR: Sir, we service 80 million credit cards, and blah-blah-blah/I’m gonna give you a lecture about how credit works and your credit score and such/blah-blah-blah.

Me: So, there’s no other option here?

CSR: No no no no no no no no no no nooooo and no.

Me: Can I speak to your supervisor please?

CSR: Well, there’s not going to be anything they can do. Blah-blah-blah-blah-diddity-blah, more about what I should do to help my credit but I’m not a credit counselor.

Me: Uh-huh. I’d like to speak with your supervisor.

CSR: Fine.

(On hold for a few moments)

Customer Service Supervisor (CSS): Hi, what’s the situation here?

Me: Here’s the deal: blah-blah-blah. Does this really take two months?

CSS: Nah, I just went ahead and fixed it. You’re fine.

Me: Oh. Oh, good.

CSS: Glad to help. Any questions on that?

Me: Nope.

CSS: Have a nice day.

So, the moral of the story: it never hurts to ask for the supervisor, does it?

Not to dwell on Joe the plumber and such, but I found this post at the daily kos pretty amusing: apparently, team McCain is running a post debate featuring Joe the P commercial with this typo:

As an English professor and a writing teacher, I am contractually obligated to point this error out. Nothing personal, McCain. Though can you at least run the spell-check?