Tag: tough

Netanoia

/ dmueller

Time once again for the EWM Yahoo! NCAA men’s basketball tournament pick’em – 10th annual. We’re using Fibonacci scoring this year (2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21). Everyone is welcome to join this pool, which will include some of the savviest pickers of all time. There’s little time for rocking back and forth in your chair out of trepidation and anxiety (well, okay, but make it quick). Sign up! Free, free, FREE to you: join this year’s group on Yahoo!,
Netanoia (ID#71855). If you have questions, elbow me gently in the sternum with an email at dmueller at earthwidemoth.com. Invite your friends, frienemies, arch-frienemies, Facebook friends, Twitter followers, colleagues, former classmates, bracketologists, bracket-oriented ontologists, etc. The group has space for the next 49 who sign up. Pride-ish stakes: reputations are made (and decomposed) right here.


Yahoo! Tournament Pick’em
Group: Netanoia (ID# 71855)
“Regret your picks all you want.”
Password: ewm

Firm up your selections any time between the selection show on Sunday evening, March 17, and five minutes before the round of 64 tips off on Thursday, March
21.

Brackstang Sally No. 9

/ dmueller

March again: time to try your luck in the internet’s most regrettable, most metanoic NCAA pool. You could win a trophy of some magnitude or other (imagine it however you want as it’s a fiction). Twenty-twelve marks the ninth consecutive year for EWM Yahoo! NCAA men’s basketball tournament pick’em. The pool welcomes everyone to predict the tournament against the savviest basketball soothsayers around. There’s no time for rocking back and forth in your chair out of nervous habit (well, okay, but make it quick). Sign up! At no monetary cost to you, join this year’s group on Yahoo!,
Brackstang Sally (ID#54159). If you have questions, elbow me gently in the ribs with an email at dmueller at earthwidemoth.com. Invite your friends, frienemies, arch-frienemies, Facebook friends, Twitter followers, colleagues, former classmates, neighbors, and pets. The group has room for the next 50 humans/things who sign up. What’s at stake is more precious than than a properly re-set alarm clock on Daylight Savings Day: your rep as a predictor extraordinaire, or predictordinaire.


Yahoo! Tournament Pick’em
Group: Brackstang Sally (ID# 54159)
“Guess you better slow your prediction-maker down.”
Password: ewm
Firm up your picks after the selection show on Sunday, March 11. The latest you
can sign up is five minutes before the round of 64 tips off on Thursday, March
15.

Bracketurgy No. 8

/ dmueller

March already: time to try your luck in the internet’s most fearboding, most kairotic NCAA pool. The trophy is tiny, so tiny in fact that the USPS will refuse to deliver it when you win. Nevertheless, for the eighth consecutive year the EWM Yahoo! NCAA men’s basketball tournament pick’em welcomes everyone to guess against the the savviest basketball futurographers around. There’s no time for biting your nail out of nervous habit (well, okay, but make it fast). Sign up! At no monetary cost to you, join this year’s group on Yahoo!,
Bracketurgy (ID#72844). If you have questions, elbow me gently in the ribs with an email at dmueller at earthwidemoth.com. Invite your friends, frienemies, arch-frienemies, Facebook friends, and pets. Just don’t invite Wisconsin Goobernor Scott Walker because I’d have no choice but to turn him down. The group has room for the next ten thousand people who sign up. What’s at stake is more precious than than a properly re-set alarm clock on Daylight Savings Day: your rep as a predictor extraordinaire, or predictordinaire.


Yahoo! Tournament Pick’em
Group: Bracketurgy (ID# 72844)
Password: ewm
Firm up your picks after the selection show on Sunday, March 13. The latest you
can sign up is five minutes before the round of 64 tips off on Thursday, March
17.

Tough Room

/ dmueller / 2 Comments

Last week’s This American Life on Tough Rooms has been lingering in the back of my mind since I heard it—again, as a podcast to make time pass on the elliptical. The first segment on headline-invention meetings at The Onion struck me at the time as a fantastic clip for orienting the ENGL121 students I will have in the spring to the idea of entering the conversation. As usual, I’m mildly conflicted (and I have the luxury of time before this conflict must be resolved): it’s a bit more agonistic than irenic, but I am still thinking about its possibilities for framing how some of our in-class discussions could go. The idea of tough rooms could also be a useful counterpart to echo chambers. Could the two be joined to suggest a spectrum that has different consequences on either extreme—too much believing or too much doubting?

I’ve also been thinking about a sequence in ENGL121 that would adopt in turn composing logics associated with Grammar A (conventions; writing mythos; “Inventing the University”), Grammar B (Winston Weathers; crots), and Grammar <a> (Rice; networks; hypertext). I don’t know yet how I would position the three in relation, but I can faintly imagine a promising sequence that would help us gain traction on their differences, their respective strengths and limitations, etc.