Sunsets

One of the things I miss most about living in the West (Arizona and New Mexico) are the sunsets. Fortunately, we occasionally get some pretty spectacular ones (usually in July and August when the long daylight hours combine with rain clouds). Here are some shots from just a few evenings ago.

You Gotta Break it Down

Here's a great story about how 4300 folks went from normal to carbon neutral in a decade. It CAN be done if we try.

The Wild Turkeys are Gone

About two weeks ago, sport and I noticed a pair of young wild turkeys hanging out near our apartment complex.

They weren't particularly aggressive, but they were not very alarmed when we walked or drove by (sometimes close enough to touch). One evening we heard what sounded like mournful screeching from one of them. We imagined the other had died because we had not seen them together in two days. Of course, the next day, both were in the herb/flower garden strutting around happily.

We haven't seen these two welcome visitors in a week. Hope they made it to the river safely, or at least to a bigger garden.

"The Scarlet P"

Just got the new College Composition and Communication June 2008 issue, so naturally I picked one article to tear through and deconstruct. Sean Zwagerman's article "The Scarlet P: Plagiarism, Panopticism, and the Rhetoric of Academic Integrity" seemed the most likely suspect, especially considering I wrote my dissertation on the history of surveillance in an array of Internet technologies. I fully expected to hate, or at least feel vastly superior to, any argument I found in his article. Foucault's study on Bentham's never-built Panopticon usually anchors poorly-written English department scholarship. In an almost quotidian way, Dr. Zwagerman's article exceeded my expectations. He does a very nice job situating the paradox of the switch to what Lanham calls an economy of attention in the plagiarism wars. What used to be a valuable commodity (or is at least claimed in our nostalgic and rhetorical constructions of the past), "voice" and "originality" has given way to something much, much different. Zwagerman situates the reader between the ethical horns of the dilemma perfectly. He uses Michel Foucault and Friere (which almost lost me, to be frank) to discuss how power is given over to proprietary places like turnitin.com, etc. The paradox lies in how the drive for integrity gets lost the second one tries to ensure trust through algorithmic checkpoints.

The only disappointment is really an opening for me to take Zwagerman's argument farther. He never says what replaces originality (or its evil twin "intellectual property"). Using his ethical framework, I think it would be interesting to imagine a set of values and competencies beyond trust and solidarity. After all, the music industry is beginning to learn that music data isn't as valuable as embodied experiences. Forget the album. Sell the concert, the backstage party. Heck, make it into a 3-D movie and convince people they need to be there to see it first. For many dyed-in-the-wool compositionists, it may be hard to imagine what students and parents might sign up for if the essay dies, but I think there are plenty of three-dimensional, 360 degree, surround-sound writing activities that can help teachers, students, and writers destroy the concept of plagiarism. Will students continue to betray our trust? Of course. So, too, will teachers betray student trust. Does that call for a system that memorializes these rather small slights with things like academic death penalties and even firings? I hope not.

You Will Go Free

You Will Go Free (Tonio K)

you've been a prisoner
been a prisoner all your life
held captive in an alien world
where they hold your need for love to your throat like a knife
and they make you jump
and they make you do tricks
they take what started off as such an innocent heart
and they break it and break it and break it
until it almost can't be found

well i don't know when
and it don't know how
i don't know how long it's gonna take
i don't know how hard it will be
but i know
you will go free

you can call it the devil
call it the big lie
call it a fallen world
what ever it is it ruins almost everything we try
it's the sins of the fathers
it's the choices we make
it's people screaming without making a sound
from prison cells in paradise
where we're chained to our mistakes

well i don't know when
and it don't know how
i don't know how much it's gonna cost you
probably everything
but i know
you will go free

you can't see your jailer
you can't see the bars
you can't turn your head round fast enough
but it's everywhere you are
it's all around you
and everywhere you walk this prison yard surrounds you

but in the midst of all this darkness
in the middle of this night
i see truth cut through this curtain like a laser
like a pure and holy light
and i know i can't touch you now
and i don't want to speak too soon
but when we get sprung
from out of our cages baby
god knows what we might do

well i don't know when
and it don't know how
i don't know if you'll be leaving alone
or if you'll be leaving with me
but i know
you will go free

Nice Shout Out

Looks like someone in Baltimore caught my NDSU magazine article. It's nice to see some of my hunches about the feedback speed of social media play out in the blogosphere. I'll be honest, I'm thrilled when I get ANY feedback on what I write, so it's nice to have such a rapid response (and positive!) in such a public space.

It's Out

The email that turned into a mini essay is now online. I think the picture makes me look a bit psycho (there are two other, better, ones in the print magazine). Laura, thanks for giving me a chance to throw some thoughts out there.

The Problem with Normal

WIRED Magazine has an interesting, and semi-provocative essay on how medical science does little to distinguish between "normal" and illness by only focusing upon the latter.

Medicine has become all about finding a problem — a tumor, a heart attack, a failing kidney — and deploying advanced treatment technologies. In the process, we seem to have given up on measuring and tracking what constitutes normal.

Thomas Goetz asserts, I think correctly, that this results in overmedicalization (something sport's research uncovers as often being hyper-gendered).

Imaging and scanning tools are now so good at peering inside our bodies, they've surpassed our capacity to interpret the results. Many findings are what doctors call "incidentalomas," smudges that look like cancer but turn out — often after surgery — to be benign.

The article goes awry in two ways. The logical leap at the end of the article ("all [NIH] grants are given a "priority score," an indication of a project's novelty, originality, and "scientific merit." Normal need not apply") is poorly teased out. The NIH may consider the massive effects of a change of perspective as nonmeritorious, but that needs to be more firmly established. More important, there are many, MANY problems with linking boundary conditions of health with "normal." I don't have time to list them all here now (although I will try to write more on this later), but I will say that a more productive line of inquiry might emerge from embodied or phenomenological examination of these things. We should let people define what is livable and help them (as well as the experts) understand what lies ahead and give them the tools to make the most informed choice.

The Powerful Stay Powerful

The RIAA has stepped up its subpoena's to Midwestern universities by about 3000%, despite no reported spike in filesharing traffic. Meanwhile, Harvard hasn't received a single subpoena or letter of inquiry from the RIAA (at least according to WIRED magazine). What do YOU make of that?

Battlestar Acapella

True That

"Google does a great job of monetizing intent," says Ray Valdes, an analyst at Gartner Research. "It knows what I'm searching for and it can show me relevant ads. But social networks are not about intent."

I could not have said it any better. Burke, my friends, not Aritstotle rules in the social media realm.

A Short Message

I would just like to say something brief to both of the Democratic Presidential candidates. (work safe, but salty language--beware tender hearts)

The Definition of Optimism

The guy at the bottom of this photo created this sortashocking ode to the guy at the top of the photo. I actually went to school with Halcyon Styn, the pink-perched and camera-bedecked compiler of the diptych (we graduated the same year, and were fellow members in the UofR Yeomen).

Here's the punchline. When I look at the guy at the top, I think "problem." When Halcyon sees the picture, he thinks "passion" and makes the diptych. Halcyon, my friends, demonstrates what we call optimism.

Information Bombing

It looks like Apple and/or Radiohead might be gaming popular music algorithms. While the masters of payola may be crying foul, I say w00t yet again to the surfers of the information economy. I, for one, welcome our new overlords...

Telling the Stories that Need Telling

My colleague and friend, Dr. Christina Weber does work on women soldiers' experiences in war. Her work was featured on National Public Radio story this morning. I'm really glad her work is getting wide coverage, and proud that she is one of us North Dakotans.

Fatigue

In case you haven't noticed, I'm pretty infatuated with Twitter. Unfortunately, I'm getting a bit fatigued with the demands of my constant life-stream.

I'm catching a Twitter cramp. Perhaps that makes me a "twamp."

I'll be here all week...

The Shame of North Dakota

Pathetic show of bigotry. Yes, this is my campus.

The Foolishness of Crowds

Flash mobs meet crowdsourcing.

Embodied Beauty

Defying gravity.

Do You Know What Today Is?

International Women's Day.

Now get out there and fight for justice!