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Misc. thoughts on a Georgia/C&W road-trip, part 1

As I’m stuck in Atlanta traffic while Steve B. Drives and talks on the phone, a few notes from the road so far:

  • Most amusing statue to date: that big Jesus reaching for the sky at the something (solid?) rock church outside of Cincinnati.
  • Second most amusing road art: giant decorative bag outside of Chico’s warehouse or something outside of Athens.
  • We were able to golf yesterday at a place called Old Silo that Steve B had researched as the “best public course in Kentucky,” or some such thing. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but it was a nice course and wicked hard. I didn’t break 120 though. There was indeed an “old silo” on the course and now Steve B is noticing them everywhere.
  • No golf today though, as had been originally planned. First off, we both actually are teaching online right now, so we left quite a bit later and worked at the hotel on their wifi for a couple hours before hitting the road.
  • Speaking of which, Panera’s come in handy on such trips as a chance to check in on the road. That and Steve B’s iPhone….
  • The traffic around Atlanta completely and utterly sucks.
  • And of course, I insist on listening to the new R.E.M. As we approach Athens. It’ll be off to the hotel and then to a reception for the conference at some place called the Tasty World….
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Too much information?

I have to get caught up on grading and get geared up for my road-trip/golf trip to the Computers and Writing Conference in Athens, GA (don’t worry, more will be coming soon on that), but I thought I’d take a moment to post on a couple of articles that I’ve been meaning to post on for a couple days now.  The first Julie Frechette’s piece in Inside Higher Ed, “Crossing the (Digital) Line,” which points to a NYTimes piece, “The Professor as Open Book.”  The short version is that both stories talk about the ever-amusing “Professors Strike Back” web site and show, and they talk about that fuzzy line between a college professor “relating” to students and materials by sharing personal information, versus the professor who shares, um, too much.  Frechette sees this as a potential professorial power-play:  the professor shares details and expects his students to give up equally (more so?) juicy details.  That makes sense to me, but in my own experiences as a student, I guess I was particularly put off by the professor who interprets a class about, say, 18th century British Literature (I didn’t take that class, btw) to be primarily about him, his cats, his wife, and their broken-down Subaru.

But I think what information a professor shares in a teaching/professional environment is different than the information that a professor (who, generally speaking, is also a human) shares about him or herself via a web site or a blog or a Facebook account or whatever.  And while there is always some discretion involved in what one does or doesn’t write about online (or at least there should be), I think that most professionals who work in the public sphere (professors, but I would also include lawyers, doctors, journalists, clergy, etc.) have to make a decision about “sharing.”

I used to keep a “professional” blog and a “personal” blog in an effort to draw some separation between those areas of my life.  I like Derrida and Spongebob Squarepants, for example.  But as I wrote when I started this combined blog, I realized that that separation had broken down a long time ago.  Thus one blog.

In any event, students in my students are not likely to hear me go on and on a lot about my wife, son, and dog during class.  But they are as likely to read my thoughts on teaching, scholarship, and the upcoming C&W conference as they are about my golf game.  Fortunately, this week’s trip will likely combine all of the above.

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76% Organic

I was in the food (w)hole the other day and I was in the dairy section for some milk.  A particular vegan “cream cheese” food product caught my eye.  Not because it was unusual to see vegan versions of things like “milk” and “cheese” and “meat” in the store– nothing could be further from the case.  Rather, what I was confused by was the lid of this vegan cream cheese substitute proudly noted it was “76% organic.”

I might be missing something, but isn’t that kind of an “either/or” sort of deal?  Isn’t that sort of like labeling peanut M&Ms as  “50% good source of protein” or fish sticks as “40% healthy fish” or something?  And in a vegan cream cheese product, what is that other 24%, anyway?

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Is the MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning still Open Source?

Maybe it’s just a temporary thing, but I’m a little miffed right now:

The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation sponsored a great series on “Digital Media and Learning,” and worked out a deal with MIT press where you can order the print version or you can download the open source version for free. Here’s a link to that site.

However, when I tried just now to browse through one of these open source publications, the MIT press gives me an error and says that the file wasn’t found. What gives? Did someone have “take-backs” on these once free articles?

Update, May 26:

I’m happy to say I am wrong– all of this stuff still is available as PDF downloads. The site just appeared to be down for a while.

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Just to let you know how crazy my life has been lately…

I was talking to Annette the other day about various family plans and such, and I floated the idea of going camping not this weekend but next, you know, before I was off to this conference. She thought it was a potentially good idea. Then, the next day, she pointed out to me that the conference I’m going to be road-tripping to is next weekend.

Somewhere in there, I lost a week. Yikes.

So, nose back to grindstone. I’ll look up eventually, I think.

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Quakes win! Quakes win!

It’s been a couple of long seasons/years on Will’s soccer team. Last spring, they didn’t win any games. Last fall (I was an assistant coach of sorts on this team), we didn’t win any games. And we started this year (again, I’m an assistant of sorts) by getting crushed by like nine or ten goals.

But losers we are no more.

Today, Will’s team (hey, my team too, right?) finally won one, I believe 3 to 1. Here’s a link to a few pictures of what was a perfectly beautiful spring day, soccer or otherwise.

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Long belated post on “Videos from The English TA Experience by Iowa State Students”

I am startlingly tardy in posting about Inside Higher Ed’s article “Voltaire Wasn’t Cut Out to Be an Iowa State TA” and the videos that are the subject of this– linked on Facebook here and here. Frankly, for all the excitement over things like the Graff and Birkenstein exchange on WPA-L, I’m kind of surprised that no one in the Comp/Rhet blogosphere has commented on this.

I guess someone has to start.

On the one hand, I appreciate the experiences being noted/recorded in these two videos. I’ve been there, of course. And I don’t blame these grad assistants for making these two videos and I don’t dismiss the reaction they have to the writing program at Iowa State (if I was running that program, I’d see this video as a bit of a “warning sign,” frankly). But I do have more of an “other hand” here.

First, this is probably more of the kind of video that should have been shown at some kind of GA gathering more or less privately, giggled at, and then put away. Probably not a video to post on YouTube or, um, Facebook. Second, and I don’t mean to sound all old and WPA-ish on people, but it’s never a good idea for GA’s to make fun of students publicly, even it is in modest ways and clearly in fun (as is the case with this video). Third, the administrative folks clearly over-reacted in trying to repress this. That just goes to show you what happens when administrators freak out.

And fourth (no offense to those folks at ISU) this video is probably twice as long as it should be. A little sensible editing would have helped, honestly.

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Thank you for the advice, Grace L. Phillips

If you ever doubted that newspaper editors ran letters from readers that were goofy just because they (the editors, that is) found them funny, then look no further than this wisdom from today’s Ann Arbor News “letters to the editor” page:

Hangover medicines should be banned

I believe that hangover medicine should be banned. I think that they shouldn’t have medicine for someone who doesn’t do the right thing, and drink too much. Having hangover medicine may encourage people to drink more.

To prevent hangovers in the first place: Don’t drink more than one drink a night.

Your liver breaks down alcohol at the rate of a beer an hour.

Alternate alcohol with

nonalcohol.

It’ll help keep your body hydrated.

Choose your drink selectively.

Congeners are dangerous poisons that appear most in darker drinks.

Grace L. Phillips, Ann Arbor

Thanks again for the advice. Maybe I’ll just stick to caffeine free Diet Pepsi.