The Door Game

This is kind of interesting. This game involves choosing from three doors. Unlike the Simpsons, there's not a hungry animal behind any of the doors. I'll let the host site explain the rules of the game. Make sure you stick around for the evaluation at the end.

Movies from Novels

You can make film from fiction? That's a crazy idea, but it might just be crazy enough to work! Here's an article about recent films and their adherence to their novelistic origins. Who'd have known that all of these movies were first novels? But what about Transformers?

Rejection

In the unlikely event that you receive a grade that you'd rather not see, the sort of grade that ought to be reserved for the truly mediocre and inept people who populate this world, you might find a bit of solace in this little video. Or maybe not.

Weirdest Book Titles of '07

I couldn't improve on this, so here's an entire brief article from the NY Times.

The polls are open in the annual balloting for the Diagram Prize, honoring the world’s oddest book title, Agence France-Presse reported. Conducted by The Bookseller, a British trade magazine, the vote at www.thebookseller.com asks participants to choose from six mostly nonfiction titles on the shortlist, culled from titles submitted by publishers, bookstore workers and librarians around the world. The nominees are “I Was Tortured by the Pygmy Love Queen” by Jasper McCutcheon; “How to Write a How to Write Book” by Brian Paddock; “Are Women Human? And Other International Dialogues” by Catharine A. MacKinnon; “Cheese Problems Solved” edited by P. L. H. McSweeney; “If You Want Closure in Your Relationship, Start With Your Legs” by Big Boom; and “People Who Mattered in Southend and Beyond: From King Canute to Doctor Feelgood” by Dee Gordon. The winner is to be announced on March 28. The prize has been offered since 1978, when the winner was “Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Nude Mice.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/25/books/25arts-BOOKTITLESEA_BRF.html?_r=1&ref=books&oref=slogin

Literature vs. literature -- John Grisham

If you've taken a literature class from me, then you know that one of the big questions I like to continue to dangle in front of the eyes of my students is the difference between capital-L Literature and small-l literature. In other words, what makes something worthy of being treated with respect, printed in literature anthologies, and so forth. John Grisham, it seems, doesn't place himself in the upper-case category.

“I’m not sure where that line goes between literature and popular fiction,”
the mega-selling author says. “I can assure you I don’t take myself serious
enough to think I’m writing literary fiction and stuff that’s going to be
remembered in 50 years. I’m not going to be here in 50 years; I don’t care
if I’m remembered or not. It’s pure entertainment.”

Consider the Source?

What a strange morning. I awoke this wintery morning and, before getting completely dressed, performed the sensible task of looking to see if JCCC had cancelled due to the weather. According to KC's channel 5, we were open.
After spending a half hour in my office and speaking to several colleagues, I received a peculiar phone call from Penny, my wife.
"Are you at school?" she asked.
"Yeah, why?"
"You're closed," she continued.
"No we're not."
"Channel 9 says you're closed."
If Channel 9 says we're closed, then I guess we must be closed. After all, they're on TV and we're not. Never mind that classes are in session, the parking lot is filling up, and the Writing Center is buzzing. Channel 9 says we're closed.
When I notified our public information czar about this tidbit, expressing my outrage at her for withholding this information from us, she registered surprise. "I knew that KFKF said we were closed, but this is news to me."
News. Yeah, that's what Channel 9 is all about. They're so late-breaking in their news coverage that they announce us as closed before we close. I'm impressed.
The czar explained that the last time she had called a TV station directly to register a closing, they had simply accepted the news without asking who she was or whether she had the authority to make such a pronouncement. Interesting.
There's a point to this little rant. My point is that you should always check all available sources for school closings so that you get out as often as possible! Also, it is important to be skeptical of sources. Channel 9 either wasn't skeptical about whoever called in with the news on JCCC's closing or they simply made a mistake, perhaps confusing Johnson County Country Club for Johnson County Community College. Either way, a smart student will recognize that these things happen.
Had a person gone directly to the JCCC website, they'd have seen--straight from the horse's mouth--that the school is open.
Taking this idea a bit further, maybe I should be more skeptical. I didn't see Channel 9's error myself. It's not on their web listing now (although it might have been removed in the last few minutes), so maybe Penny made a mistake and I shouldn't trust her. I'm so confused!

Ninja Advice on Research Papers

It’s that time in the semester when you start wondering about term papers. Who better to help you out on that topic than me? I’ll tell you who’s better: Ask-A-Ninja! He’s got some wonderful insight on the matter.

If He Can Do It . . .

I ran across an intriguing story today, the "by the bootstraps" project of Adam Shepard. Starting with $25 and a change of clothes, Shepard set out to use the system to get on his feet. He lived in a shelter, received foodstamps, and did a lot of grunt labor, but he managed to . . . well, you can read what he did in a year's time.
Anybody can think through various reasons why Shepard had advantages in his effort, but the basic point that I take from his story is simple: If life deals you a bad hand, you have to make good plays in order to get out of the hole. Self pity and self indulgence don't help, in school, at work, or in life. End of sermon.

From Thought to Essay

For those of you dealing with my "Who Am I?" assignment, this essay may be particularly useful.

What's going through the mind of the reporter who writes the article about what goes through the mind of the police officer who pulls over a motorist? Are you still with me? Kevin Ransom wrote an article regarding the mindset of cops performing traffic stops for AOL Auto. While Ransom's work is interesting in helping us to understand the mindset of the officer, I thought it might be interesting to consider how that article popped into Ransom's head.
Did he wake up one morning and think, "Hey, I'd better write an article or they won't pay me this week?" That may have happened. After all, Samuel Johnson tells us that "no one but a blockhead ever wrote except for money." But, having decided that he would write an article, how did Ransom come to this topic?
Unfortunately, I can't find an email link for Mr. Ransom, so we'll have to attempt to infer his motives from what he wrote. I'd like to suggest a couple of routes he might have taken in order to reach this article.
First, and most obvious, Ransom might be the recent recipient of that most unwelcome of slips of paper: the traffic ticket. While sitting in his car as the officer ran his plates, our intrepid reporter may have considered how he might make these particular lemons into lemonade. "I wonder what's going through that guy's head right now?" he may have asked himself. And then he knew how to proceed.
Or, perhaps Ransom found himself in a social setting with a police officer. "You know what I've always wanted to know?" he may have begun before drawing out of the cop a long explanation of the psychology of traffic stops.
Maybe, if we'd manage to talk with this reporter, we'd find that his mind took an entirely different route to this article. It really doesn't matter. My point here is simply that you, as a student writer, can use the events, oddities, and exceptions of your day as the jumping off point for interesting papers. Rather than knocking out the same old tired topics in the same old tired way, pay attention to your life, the news, and the vicissitudes of existence for the seeds of a good essay. In a subject-matter course, say history or psychology, look for places where the news and the course reading overlap. Look for places where your curiosity is piqued or you're irritated. Those are the departure points for meaningful writings. If you'll do this for a while, you'll soon find that you have far more good ideas than you could ever effectively develop.

Publish or Perish

An article in the New York Times recently explored some aspects of the academic publishing system that you ought to be aware of as a student. At most research universities--either the big state schools or prestigious private ones--a junior faculty member has to come in and perform. You might have thought that performance would be measured in how well the professor taught, but that's not the case at all. Instead, new professors are largely evaluated on their publications. How many books and journal articles do they guide into print? How many papers do they read at prestigious scholarly conferences? Sure, if the professor goes in and drools all over the place in class, that doesn't bode well for their gaining tenure, but if the drooler manages to publish enough, then that might work out.
This article describes how Harvard is tinkering with some of the economic aspects of the current system. Notice that they're not trying to dismantle or even seriously reform the whole publish-or-perish mindset, but at least they're admitting that there are problems.
You can't change the mindset at your school. If you're at a community college or a so-called teaching college, then you should have professors for whom teaching is the main thing. Otherwise, you'll find that research leads the parade and teaching, while it might be good, follows behind the band. You can't change that, but you should know about it. Know what motivates your professor. You could try to change them, but more importantly you should endeavor to understand them.

What's so great about $22.54?

Visit my friends at Forensic Genealogy--dumb name, but an intriguing site--and take their quiz. This week's quiz challenges you to figure out the claim to fame of a lady holding a check beside her mailbox.Weird eh? Try it out. You stand to win . . . I'm not sure you stand to win anything, but it's kind of fun to participate.

Union University

It’s tough for me to watch the news this week as I see the results of the nasty weather from Tuesday night. While Kansas City was experiencing virtually nothing to complain about, a row of tornados sliced across several states. People in Arkansas rode out these snow twisters in bathtubs, but my mind is drawn to Union University, a Baptist school in Jackson, Tennessee, where a couple of dorms were pretty well obliterated during the night. My former college roommate used to be a librarian there, while a current writing teammate, Joanna, retired from the university and still lives in Jackson. Several editors and other writers I’ve worked with have kids and other family members in school at Union. Miraculously, no students at Union were killed. I guess there’s some sort of message here, but I don’t know what it is.

Mind Control and Education

Your Jedi mind tricks won't work on me!
Sure, students sometimes think they can work amazing mind control feats on professors, but it rarely works out very well. Here's a great example that happened to be caught on tape.

World Wide Words

Where does the term "The Elephant in the room" come from? I ask this because I just asked it myself earlier. I heard students in my fiction class suggest that Hemingway's story "Hills Like White Elephants" evoked that saying. That's a great theory, but, according to World Wide Words, a language web site, it can't be true. By their research, we learn that the phrase goes back not into the 1920s when Hemingway was writing this story, but only into the 1970s. Check out World Wide Words if you're into language oddities and word/phrase origins.

The Freshman Phenomenon

In the wake of that last, rather depressing, entry, I add this. If you've ever thought that college wasn't haven't the eye-opening effect on your life that you'd hope it would--as if anybody really wants their eyes opened--rest assured that you're not alone.
This article suggests that most students don't undergo much awakening in their first year of college. It also indicates that at least one professor has pretty much given up on trying to make that awakening take place. That's the spirit, Prof!

You're an Imposter!

Do you ever walk into a classroom and feel like a fraud? As if everyone else is immensely smarter and more capable than you? As if at any moment some member of the academic truth squad will walk in the door and quietly escort you away?
When I started teaching, I used to joke, as I left the classroom, "That's another day without being found out!" Now, some twenty years later, I realize that they're not going to catch on to me, so please keep my secret safe!
Apparently these feelings are nothing new or rare. The simple fact is that you probably are competent enough and that everyone has these sorts of self doubts. Some people, however, do a better job of hiding them. Here's an article that explores this phenomenon. Maybe it'll make you feel better . . . or worse.

A Different Point of View on Politics

Sometimes you have to see things from a different perspective to fully understand them. That's why I'm grateful to this journalist from Minsk, Belarus, for an outsider's take on the American presidential race:

From Belaruskija Naviny (translated by
the Belarus Information Agency):
Minsk (BIA) 1 February, 2008-- In America,
there are not strong leaders like Aleksandr Grigorevich Lukashenko, who come
into power, and stay in the power. The only president in American history
to have held on his power more than two terms was Franklin Roosevelt. And
he was cripple! He stayed long because of war-time situation, not
strength.
But every four years, the parties make their best effort.
This year, because of failed war in Iraq and weak leadership of George W. Bush,
the American people are going in for politics like never before in their
history. Participation in the political life of the country is up 32% from
its historic low in 2004. This upswing is most notable among the young-people of
America, many of whom have at long last removed their walkman headphones to
"tune in" to their nation's future.
What choices are the Republican
and Democratic parties offering them?At this present, the Republican ("Grand
Old") Party has three candidates in competition: the Christian retail-store
magnate and "healthy life-style" advocate Mike Huckabee, whose business
practices were subjected to critique already in American independent cinema
production "I Heart Huckabee" (2005); Mitt Romney, governor of State Utah and
elder of Mormon church, which until Lukashenko's bold measure against foreign
missionary-activity was responsible for the common sight on the streets of
Grodno and Brest and Vitebsk of clean and polite young Americans, speaking
Belarusian like mother tongue, and promoting their heretical sect to our
villagers like we were pagan Indians; and finally, John McCain, senator of City
Phoenix and number-one opponent of current president George W. Bush within
Republican party.
The Democrats have now only two candidates who stand to
chance against this powerful phalanx: Barack Obama, senator of City Chicago and
nephew of Saddam Hussein; and Hillary Rodham Clinton, organizer of popular
solidarity-building women's breakfasts for discussion of hair-hygiene and of
place of woman in American politics, and only official wife of number-one enemy
of Serbs and all Slavic peoples, Bill Clinton.

Fiction Detectives--Groundhog Day

I ran across this bit of wisdom on the Bill Murray movie Groundhog Day. It reminded me of the bits of detective work that I often encourage my fiction students to pursue. Sometimes this sort of deduction is a pointless way to spend your mental energy--like my colleague Bob who railed about Sam and Frodo walking the wrong direction at the end of one of the Lord of the Rings movies--but sometimes such an exercise can reveal significant information about the story--or the film--that you would not have uncovered in any other way.
The significance of Bill Murray's movie? I'm not sure there is any, but you never know.

The Case Against Anger

If you're reading this, then you must be a networked-type person, an interconnected, blogosphere-dwelling, online-flourishing sort of a human. If not, then what on earth are you doing here?
As a person in the bridge generation between those who struggle famously to integrate computers and the web into their lives (like my mother) and those for whom Web 2.0 is their blood type (like my daughter), I have a love-hate relationship with all of the forces of connection and social networking. Similarly, I am both drawn to and repelled by the hasty rhetoric, political, artistic, religious, etc. that swirls around so many websites.
Cultural critic Lee Siegel has written a book, Against the Machine, in which the negatives of the Internet society are explored. What I find just as interesting as Siegel's anti-net argument, however, are the words of John Lanchester, who reviewed the book in the New York Times. Lanchester points out the frequent anger that lies beneath a great deal of Internet discussion as well as in the pages of Siegel's book.
Anger, I would suggest, rarely does the work that we hope it will do, either in public life, private life, or, for the purposes of this post, in the education world. Anger can be a great motivator, but it must be carefully controlled if its motivation is going to lead to genuine accomplishment.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/03/books/review/Lanchester-t.html?_r=1&ref=books&oref=slogin

Pictures Don't Lie . . . Or Do They

Some forty years ago during the notorious Tet Offensive of the Vietnam War, photographer Eddie Adams took a horrific shot that became an emblem of all that was wrong with the war. In the photo, a South Vietnamese general is shooting a captured Viet Cong prisoner in the head. That photo, while "true," doesn't tell the whole story. It doesn't tell about the American soldiers that this prisoner had just killed. More significantly, it doesn't tell about the carnage, chaos, and confusion swirling throughout South Vietnam in those days. It doesn't tell about the many, many executions being performed by invading North Vietnamese troops during those same days. Forty years later, even the photographer has issues with his work, for which he won a Pulitzer.

The general killed the Viet Cong; I killed the general with my camera.
Still photographs are the most powerful weapon in the world. People believe
them, but photographs do lie, even without manipulation. They are only
half-truths. What the photograph didn't say was, "What would you do if you were
the general at that time and place on that hot day, and you caught the so-called
bad guy after he blew away one, two or three American soldiers?"

I mention this not to suggest that we all play revisionist historians. That war was a long time ago, probably long before you were born, unless you're one of the oldest of my students. Instead I share this in hopes that all of us will take pains to realize that evidence does not always speak as authoritatively as we think it does. Because photos and other sources can lie--or at least tell a partial and misleading truth--we must be constantly vigilant.

One Sheet Wonders

In looking for a permanent site to link for the Hirshorn Modern Art Gallery contest in which artists could use only one piece of paper, I found this trio of intriguing artistic projects. Still, the one-sheet wonders top the bill in my book.