BOLLES: Best Swishes for the New Year

Posted at 12:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

John Logie’s new book, Peers, Piracy and Persuasion: Rhetoric in the Peer-to-Peer Debates, is now out from Parlor Press. I’m interested to see that the author and publisher have chosen to carry on Lessig’s publication model from Free Culture: the book is licensed under a Creative Commons license and available simultaneously in capitalist paperback and free PDF. Bravo. The difference, though, is in the combination of licenses: this one is Attribution-NoCommercial-NoDerivs, which would preclude the audio book transformation project that worked so well for Free Culture.

That’s a small quibble, though. This work is a needful thing: the first book-length analysis of how we talk about peer-to-peer culture and how this talk shapes policy. One of the major problems in the copyfight has been the polarized rhetoric of the discussions, an issue that John’s treated before in A Copyright Cold War. Peers, Pirates, and Persuasion extends those comments productively. Here, John offers an examination of the metaphoric frames which cast the slant of the popular and juridical discussion on p2p: are we sharing or stealing? Are we engaging in dialogue or warfare?

Jessica Litman has also alluded to this issue in previous articles: see The Demonization of Piracy and Sharing and Stealing, among other pieces. Her work is, of course, from a legal perspective. I’ll be interested to see how John engages with her commentary.

Clancy’s proposed a group discussion of the book, and I’m definitely in. Who else is?

Posted at 10:36 AM | Permalink

Miss Frizzy says I have to tell you five things about myself that you probably don’t know. I usually try to escape memes because they’re too easy, but this one is quite hard. I think I’ve told you everything that’s fit to print at some point in the past four years. But here goes. One of them, of course, is mostly a lie.

1. One night fifteen years ago, I was driving a borrowed car on a dark country road whilst dressed in complete drag. A car crossed over the median line and, since there were deep ditches on both sides of the road, I had no choice but to let them sideswipe me. I gave chase, and eventually they pulled over. We both got out and after a short discussion the driver gave me his contact information. Later, it dawned on me that he had been convinced I was a man. I would have taken this as a sign that I had finally mastered the Art of the Convincing Mustache, had it not been so dark and he been so drunk.

2. When I was younger, I could concentrate on a text to the point that someone could walk up to me and begin talking and I would not notice until they either touched me or started yelling. I lost this ability in my early 20s.

3. In my teens, my career ambitions swung among the following: veterinarian, ichthyologist, mechanic, restaurant owner, chef, photographer, small publisher, alternative healer, and sales executive. I still harbor one of these ambitions. It’s one of the ones that’s actually relevant to what I do now.

4. I once spent a year in the Scottish highlands learning to weave and herding hairy coos. When that ended, I spent a month in Oban serving blue mussels and ale before coming home. I adored Scotland, and spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out how to move there permanently.

5. Almost all of the significant men in my life have had names that began with J. My first grade “boyfriend” had the same name as my husband.

I’m reluctant to foist any meme directly upon anyone. If you think I would have tagged you and you’re feeling up to the task, then you’re it.

Posted at 9:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Oh, the blessing and curse that is the "keep new" feature in Bloglines. It means that I’ve cluttered up that place with all sorts of good stuff, some of it a year old now. It’s all links that I meant to do something with or save for some wonderful future purpose, but never deployed. The end of the year compels me to clean some of it out, so I’m moving it over here where it can go safely into the archives of oblivion for future reference. (Am I the only one who still likes storing links in the same place I keep everything else instead of keeping them in deli.cio.us?)

New Media
Andrew Lih on How Wikipedia Ranks
danah boyd on making net neutrality relevant and writing community into being on social network sites
The blogging special issue of Reconstruction
Media from Johndan’s old blog: the Eames’ Information Machine and the original iPod launch video
Via Infocult: timeline of the Wikipedia/Britannica controversy, a history of FaceBook, the Foucault-Chomsky debates on YouTube, and frightening instructional AT&T videos.
Information Aesthetics spotlights email thread visualizations, blogosphere linkology, and treemaps
Clay Shirky argues that news of Wikipedia’s death is greatly exaggerated
Anne Galloway’s working bib on The Internet of Things

Fodder for Teaching Presentation Skills
Guy Kawasaki on the art of panels
Dean Dad’s interesting threads on grading group presentations and ">handling difficult classmates

Academic Whatnot
50 ways to take notes

Book History
From Old Books: images from, um, old books
Jill points out material aspects of the original publication of “Death of the Author”

Professionalization
Via Prolurker: The Academic Departments: Home Base for Doctoral Students and the Center of the Graduate Mission of the Institution and Thinking Beyond the Dissertation
AKMA on productively structuring argument in academic writing
Sherry on study breaks (I’d send this to new grad students if I were putting together a comprehensive advice file.)

Pop Culture
scribblingwoman rounds up Brokeback spoofs
The 50 Greatest Cartoons of All Time, with linked video for each. (High ratio of Warner Brothers, of course.)

Just Beautiful
Aunt B: Breathe In, Breathe Out.

Posted at 11:06 AM | Permalink

We didn’t decorate the first Christmas we lived together. The end of the semester had been unusually busy, since we were finishing up our PhD program applications on top of the usual coursework and grading busyness. I took off for New Orleans while the then-Mister Boyfriend finished writing his papers, and managed to smush my car a little. When I got back there was the usual insurance and repair nonsense to deal with. All of that, coupled with the fact that we were going to be out of town for most of the actual holidays, made dealing with a tree and wreaths and lights seem like just too much to bother with.

One dark, cold night the week before Christmas, the doorbell rang unexpectedly. It was my parents, bearing a rosemary tree and this tiny plastic Christmas tree, which is about four inches tall. (It lit up then, but I haven’t replaced the tiny batteries in awhile.) They couldn’t bear the idea of us spending a tree-less Christmas, even though we planned to come over and enjoy theirs on Christmas night. It was ridiculously sweet of them, and the little tree has lived in my study year-round ever since, next to a tiny Empire State Building and the bobble-headed skull barrister.

Happy holidays, lovely readers. Thanks for making me laugh and think every day of the year.

Posted at 1:06 PM | Permalink

1. Read a bunch of E.B. White. I didn’t mean to haul off and do a survey. I just found a copy of Writings from the New Yorker, and then when I finished it I dug out my copy of One Man’s Meat. And when I finished his biography I wanted to read Katharine’s, since she edited at The New Yorker for 30 years, so I dug up a copy on half.com. And then I wondered how the biographies compared to the letters. And then I thought, “Hmmm, it’s been years and years since I read the children’s books, and I never bothered to read Stuart Little.” And so forth and so on.

Which is all to say that the whole reading begets more reading theory is still working out well for me. I’d dip into this stuff in the evenings, usually, and it would make the exam prep seem fresher somehow. Whatever works.

2. Ended up watching every episode of Dexter. I’ve never had a serial killer fascination, but this is so well written and executed (har!) that it’s worth getting addicted to. It stumbled for a couple of episodes in the middle, but overall the arc was tight and quick. I was explaining to Mister Husband that it’s interesting for the same reason the early Vampire Chronicles are interesting — it successfully renders incomprehensible traits human.

Posted at 2:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I woke up way late this morning because it was so dark at 9:30 that I thought it was 7:30. I was in a bad mood because I had managed to whap my right foot on a steel cabinet and burn my index finger the night before. The house was the typical end-of-semester wreck. I’m too lazy to decorate for Christmas this year, but upset that there are no decorations. I always say that I’d prefer to celebrate the solstice instead and never manage to get my act together on time and obviously this year is no different. Grumblegrumblegrumble.

But then it started with the freezing rain. We had grocery-shoped yesterday, so there was no need to go out. The branches of the trees froze into glass, and it looked so much like the ice storms in Arkansas that I started to cheer up. Eventually the rain turned into huge snowflakes. We only got a couple of inches, but it’s gorgeous outside. I’ve done six loads of laundry, vacuumed, unmulched my study, and made manicotti for dinner. (Clean house, good year.) One of my presents from Mister Husband showed up today, and Rudolph is on tonight. So all in all, it’s a lovely solstice.

Posted at 5:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Back in August, a bunch of us made new school year resolutions. I happened upon mine while digging through the archives this morning, and I’m running about 60/40.

1. Write incrementally.
Heh. Maybe a semester devoted to the big blurt wasn’t the best time to set this goal. I did manage to work fairly incrementally on my NCA paper and I wrote here far more regularly than I anticipated. But did I make regular, daily progress on any articles? No. Gonna keep working on this.

2. Sit the damned exams.
Done.

3. Move about for a bit every day.
This went badly, thank you very much. One of my goals for the diss process is to figure out how to balance intellectual work and attention to the physical. Because I suck at that.

4. Screen phone calls consistently during working hours.
I’ve become excellent about this. It drives my father nuts. But I reduced my worktime interruptions considerably, and my thought process has noticeably benefitted.

5. Maintain non-teaching days as sacrosanct working days.
I also award myself quite a few points in this area. I thought it would go downhill quickly, but it was surprisingly easy to refuse invitations and lock myself in my study on Tuesdays and Thursdays. There were only one or two Work Days when I ended up out and about for unavoidable appointments.

I sorta scoffed at this resolutions business in August, but it’s worked out pretty well. I’d do it again.

Posted at 11:29 AM | Permalink

Another thing we did Friday evening was go to the library to pick up some point-to-point and interlibrary loan orders. (I ordered Irving’s The Cider House Rules, A Coney Island of the Mind by Ferlinghetti, Flannery O’Connor’s letters, and The Power and Passion of M. Carey Thomas. I’m 80 pages into The Cider House Rules so far and really enjoying Irving’s style.)

Mister Husband picked up For a Burning World is Come to Dance Inane: Essays By and About Jim Pomeroy. On the back cover I found this:

One man’s museum is another man’s graveyard is another’s goldmine is another’s dungheap is another’s pretension is another’s encyclopedia is another’s holy shrine is another’s balance sheet...promotional display...conqueror’s trophy case...cultural atrophy index...social registry...reliquary...hall of fame...wall of frames...hollow games....

Posted at 3:13 PM | Permalink

I was sitting in the afternoon light yesterday, stirring a bowl of frosting, when it suddenly sunk in that I never have to take another test again! There’s gauntlets aplenty in the academic life, but no more in this particular format. Unless I eventually lose my mind and take the LSAT again, but that’s a long-way-off-and-maybe-never.

But I get ahead of myself. Everybody told me I should celebrate on Friday, and I certainly didn’t disagree. But I had no idea what I wanted to do, either. I didn’t want to go Out or to any parties, because the oral exams had flipped my introvert switch. I didn’t feel like drinking, because I’ve been resorting to one-beer-in-the-evenings for the past five weeks in order to sleep, with the consequence that I suddenly associated beer with exams. And I didn’t feel like drinking anything harder. So Mister Husband was put in charge of the occasion, and we went on a date.

“A Date” ended up meaning Cecil’s Deli for their famous reubens and a trip to the Mall of America Aquarium. (Because of course there are sharks in the basement of MOA. Where else would they be?) We hadn’t been before because I was afraid it would be really cheezy, but it was actually a pretty good aquarium for it’s size (which is larger than you’d think). Better than the Great Lakes Aquarium in Duluth, and almost completely empty because of the time of day we went. So we lingered in the tunnels, watching sharks and sting rays and loggerheads swimming above us. I got to pet juvenile sting rays, who seemed to like it, and watch the pups in the nursery.

Then we went to Williams Sonoma for cookie cutters. (Turns out their holiday pancake molds also work really well for cookies.) When we got home, there was a congratulatory monster sequoia disco inferno poinsettia from my parents waiting outside the door.

And then C and I spent most of yesterday baking:

Posted at 8:53 AM | Permalink

I’m ABD!

I’d like to thank my rockin’ reading group, my patient committee, my supportive family and friends, and most of all Mister Husband, who put up with all of my angsty, angsty angst for the past few months. I’ll get to return the favor to him in the spring.

Now, off to a very late lunch.

Posted at 2:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (14)

Because I got nothing else to say. Orals are Friday morning.

(via a bunch of folks, most recently scribblingwoman)

1. Yourself: anxious
2. Your spouse: writing
3. Your hair: up
4. Your mother: industrious
5. Your father: productive
6. Your favorite item: Mac
7. Your dream last night: lasagna*
8. Your favorite drink: tea
9. Your dream car: cleaner
10. The room you are in: full
11. Your ex: forgotten**
12. Your fear: failure
13. What you want to be in 10 years: healthy
14. Who you hung out with last night: C
15. What you're not: simple
16. Muffins: banana
17: One of your wish list items: extension
18: Time: fleeting
19. The last thing you did: dishes
20. What you're wearing: stripes
21. Your favorite weather: snowing
22. Your favorite book: remains
23. The last thing you ate: falafel
24. Your life: good
25. Your mood: portentious
26. Your best friend(s): elsewhere
27. What you're thinking about right now: completion
28. Your car: dirty
29. What you're doing at the moment: typety!
30. Your summer: travel
31. Your relationship status: hitched
32. What's on TV: Dexter
33. The weather: strange
34. The last time you laughed: morning

*I came to reading Scrivener much later than most folks. Never talked, emailed or IM'd, don't know him. But his tattoo post was the last thing I read before bed last night, and I dreamt that I was making lasagna for Scrivener. All the ingredients were in the house, but somehow I could never get everything together in one dish. Hours passed, and eventually I ended up in my Sainted Dead Grandma’s garden looking for herbs and woke up. Clearly, my exams are lasagna. Or something.

**I noticed the other day that I can’t remember his last name anymore. And it hasn’t come to me in the meantime. This is strange, since I can remember full names of folks from second grade.

Posted at 4:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

A letter from Capel Lofft to Henry Crabb Robinson, Oct. 3 1811:

Perhaps one man ought never to advise another, unasked ; especially when that other is probably better able to advise himself. I do, however, advise you, if ever you marry, never (as a man of feeling, and who loves literature, and liberty, and science) to marry a woman of what is called a strong mind. The love of dominion and the whirlwind of instability are, I fear, inseparable from a female mind of that character. All women and all beings love power ; but a woman of a mild and compliant mind seeks and maintains power by correspondent means. These are not called strong minds. ... Hence every woman should be a lover of music — and of feminine music; and particularly of the vocal. And in that she should cultivate the soft, the low, and the sweet. “Her voice was ever low, gentle, and sweet ; an excellent thing in woman,” says that great depictor of character, and particularly of women, who has so exquisitely imagined and dileanated Miranda, Viola, Ophelia, Desdemona, Cordelia, Helena.

Posted at 6:42 PM | Permalink

(via The Nonist)

Posted at 6:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

1. Steal from Geoff Sirc's Funeral Ceremony of the Anti-Proces II: A happening for CCCC and prepare six answers for the first six questions asked, regardless of what they are:

1. That is a very good question. I should not want to spoil it with an answer.
2. My head wants to ache.
3. Had you heard Marya Freund last April in Palermo singing Arnold Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire, I doubt whether you would ask that question.
4. According to the Farmers’s Almanac, this is False Spring.
5. Please repeat the question...
   And again...
   And again...
6. I have no more answers.

Posted at 3:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Mythic Creatures: Dragons, Unicorns, and Mermaids will be on display at the American Museum of Natural History from May 2007 to January 2008. (via onepotmeal)

Steve is quite the clearinghouse of sea monsters lately, because he also linked to Lake Monsters and Other Mystery Animals of Ireland, which includes the Celtic Lake Monster Bestiary.

Speaking of which, BibliOdyssey posted some remarkable bestiary images, one of which looks like a humongous tuna menacing a boat.

The Medieval Bestiary site is one of the best, most functionary bestiary sites I’ve run across. It contains directories of beasts and manuscripts, as well as scholarly articles. If I were to teach bestiaries in a history of the book course I’d definitely include it in the materials, along with the excellent Aberdeen Bestiary site.

I’ve been reading Cryptomundo of late. It’s a very excitable blog with a cantankerous constituency, and recently it’s been tracking sightings of the Wisconsin Bigfoot. I find it’s best read via feed, which filters out all the ads for immortality elixers and ultra pet food and lets one enjoy the idea that there are things yet understood out in the world.

Posted at 2:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Are you people tired of hearing about exams yet? So am I, at least a little. But I want to finish writing about some things I did to prepare so that it’ll be there for future examinees and googlers. It was helpful for me to rummage around in Clancy’s archives and read what she was thinking when she took hers, and so I’d like to pass it on. If this bores you, feel free to skip these entries — my feelings won’t be hurt.

So anyway, writing sprints. The weekend before I took my first two hour in-house exams, it occurred to me to write a one hour answer to each question, just to see what would come out. I had been working on outlines, but actually writing the answer struck me as a better process for my peculiar mind. It turned out that I was right. It let me see how far I could get without notes while still having the luxury of cracking into various resources when I got stuck. It let me reason my way through argumentative structures and find out really quickly what wouldn't work for me. It blew a lot of false securities out of the water, but it also showed me that I could in fact write a substantive answer really quickly. The writing was raw, but all the meat was pretty much there.

I mentioned all this to Derek, and was delighted to find out today that he ran with it and it seems to have worked well for him. (His prep seems much more fine-tuned than mine was, so I expect him to completely rock anyway.) He also commented on the rawness of the writing, because what else can you really expect when you’re going full-tilt for an hour straight? And it occurred to me that another benefit of doing sprints is that your brain holds onto those clumsy sentences you generate. It percolates them and whirls them, and when you sit down to write the real deal, what comes out is almost a 2.0 draft. At least 1.7 or 1.8, anyway. Much better than zero-level.

Another trick that worked well for a colleague of mine was fake-teaching. He would lock himself in his study for a few hours and pretend to teach the central texts on his list as well as the answers to his questions. He's much more verbal than I am, and it worked out really well for him. He passed the writtens well, and his orals are already a little bit legendary in the department.

The point is this: there will come a time in your prep when pouring over notes and outlines again is just spinning your wheels. You may find it very helpful to find ways to actually do something that gives you some clues about your possible performance and also produces some concrete results that you can work with. Sprints and fake-teaching aren’t the only things you can do, but they’re things that I’ve seen work.

Posted at 7:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I am a master procrastinator, so it’s only now that I’ve gotten around to uploading photos from the last year and a half or so. Here are some of my favorites, which include my wedding shoes, some fall 2005 shots from Chicago, Minnesota snow, summer light, and a betta named Veronica Lake.

Posted at 8:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)