http://wrt-brooke.syr.edu/cgbvb/ 2006-03-29T15:02:48-05:00 http://wrt-brooke.syr.edu/cgbvb/archives/2006/03/im_moved.html After having threatened to move this blog for a while and then taking a break after which I actually did move, it occurred to me that I didn't adopt the best strategy for getting dear readers to follow. So this will be the THE FINAL POST at my old blog address. My new address is http://collinvsblog.net, which is where I've been posting lately. And for those of you following along via RSS, let me encourage you to update your subscription as well, since otherwise, you're thinking that I've been a lot more quiet than I actually have. That's all.... writing cgbrooke 2006-03-29T15:02:48-05:00 http://wrt-brooke.syr.edu/cgbvb/archives/2006/03/bracket_season.html Also known as the Feast of St. Lunardi, this holiday season is in some ways an unapologetic celebration of MSAS (Male Sports Answer Syndrome), the tendency that we menfolk have to simply make up answers to sports questions for which no true answer exists, just because it has to do with sports. Case in point: you could put together an all-star team made up of players from the Pac 10, and I wouldn't seed them any higher than 3, much less the 2 that UCLA received. Of course, I haven't actually seen UCLA play, so that opinion is being pulled straight out of thin air. You will excuse me, I hope, for GLOATING long and loud over the next couple of days. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that Syracuse and Iowa each would win their conference tournaments--Iowa had a better shot to do so as a 2 seed. Coincidentally, that's the seed they should have received in the NCAAs. I know, I know, you're thinking that I'm just being a homer, but consider this: all weekend long, there was discussion about whether Ohio State deserved a 1 seed. Iowa beat Ohio State both times they played this year--they beat them in Iowa City, yes, but they also beat them on a neutral floor when OSU still had a shot at a #1. Don't get me wrong--I'm happy... sports cgbrooke 2006-03-13T12:30:05-05:00 http://wrt-brooke.syr.edu/cgbvb/archives/2006/03/that_is_all.html I know that I talked almost a month ago about transferring over to a brand spanking new domain: CollinVsBlog.net Well, it's happening now. As I type this. Reset your blogrolls, feed subscriptions, etc. I've been having so many problems with the comment filters here that to spend any more time tweaking this site doesn't make sense when that time could be more productively applied to my new digs. They're still very much in progress, but the new site works at least. I'll be leaving this site in place for the foreseeable future. Too many archive links would go nutso if I vanished them. But I'll be closing down comments and trackbacks shortly, and eventually figuring out ways to subtly herd readers of even the archived entries over to my new space. The blog it tells me that it's about. damn. time. That is all. Update? Yes, it's true. I wanted to offer a little incentive for hastening your way over to my "new" site, and so I've posted my first ever screencast for your viewing, listening, and thinking pleasure. I'm crossing my fingers about the "pleasure" part of that...... travel cgbrooke 2006-03-05T01:09:59-05:00 http://wrt-brooke.syr.edu/cgbvb/archives/2006/03/recruiting.html Attentive Obsessive combers of the archives here will recall that, just about a year ago, I discussed the virtues of what we call Visiting Days, our annual recruitment event. We bring the top 7 or so candidates to campus, pay for their travel, host them with current students, and wine and dine them for two days. It's a great way both for us to get to know them and for them to get to know us. In the idealized world of "brains on sticks," we all choose graduate programs according to perfectly rational criteria, select our committees based purely on their explicit expertise in our exam areas and dissertation subjects, blah blah blah. In the real world, though, we work with people based on intuition, fit, compatibility, and all sorts of criteria that are, for the most part, immeasurable. It's certainly important to ask the rational questions about a given program, but I think we underplay the degree to which we make decisions by simply asking: can I imagine myself being successful here? can I see myself working well with this person? would I enjoy taking courses with these students? In other words, I think it's important to give our prospective students as much access to the program as possible, and not just in the form of promotional materials. Likewise, it helps us to decide when we have a chance... administratosphere cgbrooke 2006-03-04T00:08:45-05:00 http://wrt-brooke.syr.edu/cgbvb/archives/2006/03/dueling_posters.html As you might expect, the news that Ann Coulter will be visiting campus has stirred the hearts and minds of at least a couple of people here at SU. I submit for your perusal just two of the posters appearing on the first-floor bulletin board. I leave it to you to determine their divergent origins... Poster 1 (pdf) Poster 2 (pdf)... politics cgbrooke 2006-03-02T18:25:00-05:00 http://wrt-brooke.syr.edu/cgbvb/archives/2006/02/turning_ten.html It's hard to say whether it was that I had fallen behind, or Derek had gotten ahead, but either way, I spent most of this afternoon catching up to him. The result? I tagged and linked up a year and a half's worth of CCC articles, six issues. As always, you can visit CCC Online, and see for yourself. One of the peculiarities of working on the site is that our archive necessarily moves in both directions--as new issues are released, we add them to the site, of course, but we're also moving steadily backwards, at roughly an issue a week, or a volume per month. The process is slightly different for either direction, and there are certain parts of the process that simply get more intensive with each new issue that we add. But the big news is that, as of a few minutes ago, I compiled the data for Volume 47, Issue 1, which was originally published in February of 1996. Technically, it's 10.75 volumes (since there was a 2-issue volume that shifted publication from the calendar year to the academic year), but it's definitely 10 years. So in a strange way, today is the archive's 10th birthday. In less than a year, we've managed to archive 10 years worth of the journal, interlinked the journals forwards and backwards, and generated a keyword index for those 10 years,... CCC Online cgbrooke 2006-02-27T20:05:40-05:00 http://wrt-brooke.syr.edu/cgbvb/archives/2006/02/bitter_cold_and.html Okay, so it's not as bad as all that here today, but it's steady enough and ongoing enough that the roads never quite get clear, and it freezes when it hits the windshield, and when it comes down to it, after my fender bender a couple of years ago, I don't push it if I don't have to. Worse comes to worst, I can always trudge up the hill to the RiteAid for some Mr. Pibb and some red vines.... bio cgbrooke 2006-02-26T16:46:40-05:00 http://wrt-brooke.syr.edu/cgbvb/archives/2006/02/cylon_whisperer.html A couple of random pop culture notes, for your personal edification. First is that I picked up the new Jenny Lewis album this past week--she's the voice behind Rilo Kiley, a band that I can listen to over and over. Lewis's solo effort is reminiscent of RK's More Adventurous in specific places, but I'm going to have to listen some more before I can say any more than that. Right now, it's on auto rotation, so I'll be listening every day, but only in chunks. Oh, and I should mention that this CD reminded me, yet again, why I don't like ordering CDs from places like Amazon. The disc arrived, and inside the case, which was of course packed without any padding whatsoever, all of the little plastic thingies that hold a CD in place inside the case had snapped off. It was packed so tightly that they didn't drift around or scratch the disc (which would have truly pissed me off), but still. It's not that tough to design packaging that might truly protect a disc, is it? Second, as I've discussed here before, Battlestar Galactica is the best sci-fi show on television right now, and last night's ep did not disappoint in that regard. One of the best characters has been Gaius, who's both a genius and the single most responsible person for the near-annihilation of the human... BSG cgbrooke 2006-02-25T17:32:28-05:00 http://wrt-brooke.syr.edu/cgbvb/archives/2006/02/seriometer_spik.html I hadn't really planned on saying much more about Jeff's IHE article, but then I got pulled in by the furor over it, which you might similarly observe at various places. And I write this fully knowing that there's an easy way to read this entry, which would go something like "oh, he's one of Jeff's friends and one of the 'chosen few' besides, of course he'd jump to Jeff's defense." If I'm going to be honest about it, then I have to admit that there's a little of that going on here. When I see a friend called out as an asshat, an idiot, a pretentious academic, et al., I don't think anyone would fault me for feeling a little defensive on that person's behalf. In the comments at one of the sites mentioned above, Jeff's point is paraphrased thusly: All the anonymous bloggers do it out of fear, which proves Tribble right; they don't do it in order to experiment with forms or personae. That paraphrase differs so wildly from my own perception of the article that I have to wonder how much of this is hangover from the various "nymous" fights that have broken out at various points in the short history of academic blogging. That is, I can't help but feel that there's a predisposition at work in reading the essay that way. And I'm more... networks cgbrooke 2006-02-24T00:15:50-05:00 http://wrt-brooke.syr.edu/cgbvb/archives/2006/02/shouldafreude.html That'd be my variation on schadenfreude, designating the (only slightly) jealous pang I feel when someone else says or does something that I wish I'd thought of first. That was my thought as I caught Ben V's latest over at if:book. In particular, check out the description of the subtitling for the American release of the Russian movie Night Watch: What they've done is played with the subtitles themselves, making them more active and responsive to the action in the film [snip]: "...[the words] change color and position on the screen, simulate dripping blood, stutter in emulation of a fearful query, or dissolve into red vapor to emulate a character's gasping breaths." Very cool. The idea of spicing up the traditional white text at the bottom of the screen is something that should have occurred to someone (me!) long before now. Also, mainly bc I want to save it for future reference: The problem with contemporary discussions about the future of the book is that they are mired -- for cultural and economic reasons -- in a highly inflexible conception of what a book can be. People who grew up with print tend to assume that going digital is simply a matter of switching containers (with a few enhancements thrown in the mix), failing to consider how the actual content of books might change, or how the act of reading... writing cgbrooke 2006-02-23T02:35:51-05:00 http://wrt-brooke.syr.edu/cgbvb/archives/2006/02/seriously.html I have to admit, even after musing about Scout Niblett, that I'm feeling more than a little guilty, after Jeff went to the trouble of hailing me in his IHE piece, of not exactly living up to the compliment that his hail pays me. Not that I'm feeling particularly serious lately or anything. Well, that's not quite right. The truth is that there are times when, despite my best efforts, the serious overtakes me, where it seemingly surrounds me on every side. Where every sentence ends up getting weighed against possible readings, especially at a time (like now) where I'm involved both in faculty searches and graduate admissions. Times like these I can feel my blogging slow down to a crawl--even if no one else perceives them, I can chart my moods pretty accurately by looking through my archives, and seeing how frequently I post, what I post about, and what I don't post about. ... That long pause was me reading about four months worth of archives, and forgetting what exactly I was going to say here. You may think I'm kidding, but I'm not. I had something to say, and forgot it. Come back tomorrow, and maybe I'll have remembered.... meta cgbrooke 2006-02-22T01:27:17-05:00 http://wrt-brooke.syr.edu/cgbvb/archives/2006/02/who_is_scout_ni.html As it happens, Scout Niblett was only known to me, for the past two weeks, as the name of someone who appeared on a poster next to the elevator on the ground floor of our building. Every day, I walked past the poster for Scout Niblett's upcoming performance/appearance (Feb 25, for those keeping track), and every day, I mused to myself on the name Scout Niblett, accurately (as it turned out) making the connection to the character from To Kill a Mockingbird and inaccurately (as it turned out) connecting it vaguely to Green Giant Corn Niblets. Every day, for two weeks, I walked upstairs, having seen the poster, sometimes several times a day, mentally vowing to actually look up Scout Niblett on-line, so that I might sort these and other associations. Every day, that vow lasted only approximately as long as it took me to reach the top of the stairs, supplanted by other, presumably more important, activities. You would be entirely justified in wondering: if it takes him two whole weeks just to look up some random singer on the Internet, how much longer do matters of consequence require? I'm just saying, you'd be justified.... tunes cgbrooke 2006-02-21T09:40:27-05:00 http://wrt-brooke.syr.edu/cgbvb/archives/2006/02/talentcide.html Here's a bit of serious for you, from Nicholas Carr's "The New Narcissism": As I myself have thought about the watery philosophy and the powerful technology that dovetail so neatly in Web 2.0, I've become convinced that we're building a machine that will, to great and general applause, destroy culture. More provocation than fully developed thesis, this is what made me think today. I don't think he's right, and I think there are the Long Tail arguments to support my opinion, but only if you understand that the "pure" LT position isn't that LT automatically equals quality. Rather, it's that LT outlets lower the threshold for sustainability of niche opinions, texts, communities, many of which will be crap, and a few of which we'll have been glad to have. I'm thinking here, for example, of the way that Anderson describes Netflix's ability to sustain a market for documentaries. But I appreciate Carr's willingness to poke at the near-sacred way that plenty of LT (and Web2.0) arguments simply take for granted that more = better. I guess I feel that the opposite case (more = worse) is no more accurate...... networks cgbrooke 2006-02-17T16:05:38-05:00 http://wrt-brooke.syr.edu/cgbvb/archives/2006/02/frenzy.html It's always difficult for me to come off a few days/entries in a row where I feel as though I've "gotten serious." Does it somehow take some of the starch out of my collar to then post something frivolous? Should I try and gradually work back in by taking the serious down a notch each day until I'm back into my regular range? Do I just break the ice of seriousness with a big ol' goofhammer? I'm opting for goofhammering today. So here are two utterly frivolous observation/comments: Is it totally mean of me to suggest that perhaps Lindsay Jacobellis should have waited until after the race to check her board and make sure that her Visa Check Card wasn't missing? Yeah, probably so. And speaking of mean (but still somehow completely hilarious), I should preface this by noting that while I'm really not much of a reality TV fan, I have gotten into Project Runway on Bravo over the past two seasons. Yes, this is a guilty pleasure. One of the contestants this season, Santino, does a spot-on imitation of Tim Gunn, who's kind of the fashion coach on the show (he doesn't judge the candidates, but tries to help them here and there, keep them on task, etc.). Anyhow, there's a video snippet on the Bravo site, where one of the other contestants has Santino do his Tim... telefetish cgbrooke 2006-02-17T15:29:23-05:00 http://wrt-brooke.syr.edu/cgbvb/archives/2006/02/avast_ye_windmi.html I want to both acknowledge and thank Scott Jaschik of IHE for being willing to brave the storm and ire of those of us who feel strongly about the whole Facebook situation. That's no small thing. In light of his visit, I thought I might lay out, without swearing, as clear a statement of my position as possible. I don't know that he will find it persuasive, but perhaps it will offer some context for the anger that many of us feel over this. Let me start with a snippet from Katherine Hayles's new book My Mother Was a Computer (a book I hope to review once I've (a) turned back into Dr. Banner, and (b) gotten much more of my workload under control). Hayles attempts to make the case that we need to consider "code" at the same conceptual level as "speech" and "writing," sort of a parallel to Ulmer's (among others) orality, literacy, and electracy. Hayles writes Code that runs on a machine is performative in a much stronger sense than that attributed to language. When language is said to be performative, the kinds of actions it "performs" happen in the minds of humans...[examples]...code running in a digital computer causes changes in machine behavior and, though networked ports and other interfaces, may initiate other changes, all implemented through transmission and execution of code (50). Now, I'm taking liberties... writing cgbrooke 2006-02-15T14:46:11-05:00