http://www.earthwidemoth.com/mt/ Alarm no sun, alarm is thinking, alarming is determination an earth wide moth is something. Braque | G. Stein en-us dereknmueller@gmail.com 2012-02-09T18:00:17-05:00 hourly 1 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00 http://www.earthwidemoth.com/mt/archives/003648.html The safety officer at Is.'s school hands out safety leaflets like this one each week. Most of these "coloring sheets" concern animal safety messages on letting sleeping dogs lie, never putting your face close to a dog's face, and so on. In a friendly gesture, s. officer always hands me two. "Take an extra one for the refrigerator." 3648@http://www.earthwidemoth.com/mt/ Unspecified 2012-02-09T18:00:17-05:00 http://www.earthwidemoth.com/mt/archives/003638.html Is.'s school put on an MLK Jr. concert on Friday afternoon. I hadn't planned to video-record it, but when I learned her class was doing just one song, I captured it with the smartphone. If the circle is a clock face and the teacher is in the 6 o'clock position, Is. is in a light blue dress around 1 o'clock. Afterward, I caught a meeting/collaborative writing session at which I heard about others' Friday the 13th woes and left feeling fortunate. Fortunate, that is, until I got to Is.'s school again to pick her up and scored a flat tire in the school parking lot. Approaching dusk. Steady snow. Due to D.'s school in fifteen minutes. Happy Friday the 13th to you, too. Wind and the rain, in his hands.... 3638@http://www.earthwidemoth.com/mt/ Rhythms 2012-01-15T15:00:32-05:00 http://www.earthwidemoth.com/mt/archives/003630.html Another blogday. Now eight. I'm tempted to write something reminiscent and festive, but if I do I will be late to DTW. Should've left five minutes ago! To celebrate, there were pumpkin chocolate chip muffins last night. 3630@http://www.earthwidemoth.com/mt/ On Weblogs 2012-01-06T16:20:39-05:00 http://www.earthwidemoth.com/mt/archives/003629.html Building on yesterday's remarks, another scene. Another ride around the store. Another checkout line discard. Where are the King's Hawaiian dinner rolls in Canton's Super Walmart?, you wonder. I don't know about the rest of them, but you'll find one package at register fifteen, just below the gift cards. 3629@http://www.earthwidemoth.com/mt/ Things 2012-01-05T15:15:21-05:00 http://www.earthwidemoth.com/mt/archives/003628.html I see more of this, more items discarded in checkout lines, in discount grocer-retailers like Meijer and Super Walmart. Less of it at Whole Foods and Kroger. I suppose there's a higher randomness quotient in stores where you can pick up a half gallon of Silk, bath towels, an iPhone case, hanging file folder tabs, a Celine Dion CD, dog food, a Detroit Lions Pillow Pet, and "fresh" eggs all in one fell swoop. With so many choices, categorical thinking relaxes, loosens. Also, for context, I usually prefer the checkout lines with human clerks because the automaton clerks are always deferring to the monitoring human clerk, anyway. So I often stand in line. Waiting. Bored. Looking around at people and things. Too lazy even to tweet about the extreme ordinariness of the experience. Lately we've taken a greater than usual interest, also a family-wide interest (i.e., multigenerational interest: Is. will go along with these what-ifs), you could say, in the castaway products--things misplaced among the indulgent and impulsive options attention-attractively located where shoppers are most idle. I see in these products a kind of distributed indecision that spans various distances from bins and shelves and departments to just before the terminal moment of consumer transaction. That is, the item has gone for quite a magnificent and hopeful ride, traveled around the store in a suspended state of possibility until, just before hitting the belt, it is denied. No sale. And we don't know but can only speculate about what motivates the change of heart, change of mind. Why does the produce land there, so close to the end of the supply chain? The recipe didn't actually call for fennel. Or upon a closer look that's not at all like the celery we usually buy. Or I just remembered that we already have fennel in the crisper. Or fennel is too expensive (though this is less likely because the price of the fennel would show on the readout at which point, if refused, the cashier would probably set it aside for re-shelving, a set-aside that would land the fennel elsewhere than among the magazines). 3628@http://www.earthwidemoth.com/mt/ Things 2012-01-04T11:00:52-05:00 http://www.earthwidemoth.com/mt/archives/003626.html I turned in grades almost ten days ago. And ten days has left me enough time to defrag what was the Fall 2011 semester (also enough time to see The Muppets, watch Breaking Bad through season 3, and finish Shields' Vonnegut biography, And So It Goes). The highlights follow, in no particular order. I taught three classes, 50+ students altogether: a new (for me) grad class, ENGL505: Rhetoric of Science and Technology, and two sections of ENGL328: Writing, Style, and Technology. 505 went well for the most part; I'll probably return to Metaphors We Live By and Science in Action when I teach it again in Fall 2012. But I'll replace The Social Life of Information with Kuhn, Polanyi (lectures), or Darwin. Or Mol, if I can ever get around to reading Body Multiple. Maybe add some of the "rhetoric as epistemic" conversation. The two sections of ENGL328 ran back to back on Mondays and Wednesdays. One section was in a preferable lab; the other section was in one of the worst teaching labs I've ever set foot in. A horrible space. And this was an improvement--an upgrade--from the space into which it was originally scheduled. Consequently I had more conversations than I can count with IT folks about why certain lab configurations work differently than others for teaching. This was one of the most nagging and unavoidable frustrations of the semester. These two classes were as night and day as any two I can remember teaching. Same projects. Same readings. But drastically different personalities. My teaching was observed three times in the second week of the semester, and the timing, while somewhat less than ideal in my opinion, had everything to do with the October 15 deadline for my third-year review materials. Why less than ideal? Well, it's plain to me that my classes are stronger, move lively, and more representative as a scene of teaching and learning in the last one-third of the semester than in the first two weeks. Semesters follow arcs; relationships develop. The observations were overall fairly favorable nevertheless. Other than teaching, the first half of the semester was consumed with preparing the third-year review binders (which went in without incident and, by all appearances have been well received at the various stop-offs they've reached thus far) and planning and organizing the WIDE-EMU Conference. The conference went well, especially considering it was an experiment in conference-hosting with no costs to anyone, but had I to do it over again, I don't think I'd both plan a conference and give a talk at that conference--on the same day third-year review materials are due. Too much. Everything went fine, but it left me sapped for the second half of the semester. In the second half of the semester, I gave a "Tech Talk" to our Art Department on "A Quick Rhetoric of QR Codes." Basically it was 30 minutes of examples, how-to, and a plea for more discriminating uses. I also carried a digital-installation-qua-"poster" into the HASTAC Conference in Ann Arbor in early December. I attended commencement, heard George Gervin's address and saw a half dozen students I'd had in class recently accept their diplomas. I helped the Honors College revamp its Presidential Scholars essay prompts and assessment tool (as a member of the HC Advisory Council). I also interviewed Presidential Scholar candidates in early December. I touched up the Masters Degree Consortium site, added a map, and more importantly, collaborated on a survey and all of the required IRB solicitations so we can proceed with circulating the survey in early-mid January. We released two issues of EM-Journal, one on the first day of the semester, and the second on December 1 at the Celebration of Student Writing. At our symposium on pursuing graduate education in written communication, I gave a short spiel titled, "Graduate School in Ten Understatements." Tricky to offer one-size-fits-most advice that avoids 1) being discouraging and 2) meaningless platitudes. Nudged along a proposal for an online version of ENGL326 I'll likely teach in the spring term. I think it's finally, officially approved, and I spent a couple of hours this morning on the course materials. And then there were a small handful of proposals and ms. submissions at various stages that crossed my desk, that waggled through my in and outbox--one ms. revised and accepted, another conditionally accepted, and two different chapter proposals (one accepted; the other in the eds.' hands). For the first time in a long time, I didn't submit any proposals for a spring conference. No C&W. No RSA. And that's in small part because travel funds will have long since dried up by then, I have a busy CCCC docket in March, and I'm usually too fatigued by May to feel all Let's Go! about academic conferences. Might keep an eye out for the WPA Albuquerque CFP though. Or, if there's a Great Lakes THATCamp this spring, might check it out. 3626@http://www.earthwidemoth.com/mt/ Unspecified 2011-12-30T13:00:08-05:00 http://www.earthwidemoth.com/mt/archives/003615.html Getting my hands dirty with Illustrator, sketching a fuzzy vision for a someday course on Rhetorico-geographical Positioning Systems (RPS). I never do this, but I've missed self-set deadline for proposing the course at least twice in 2011, which suggests the only felt urgency for such a creation is my own. Now--and publicly--setting a third deadline for real-izing this proposal by, oh, the 8th of Wheneveruary, 2012. 3615@http://www.earthwidemoth.com/mt/ Rhetorico-Geography 2011-12-08T14:55:33-05:00 http://www.earthwidemoth.com/mt/archives/003590.html November's delivered a barrel of memes: a distorted copy of a copy of a copy of Novembers past. Only warmer. Saw the Rhetcomp Ryan Gosling panels and had to ask around the office, "Who is this Ryan Gosling?" Somebody told me he was in a few movies and he is widely regarded as a sex symbol, a hunk. I'm reading the new Vonnegut biography, And So It Goes. The opening section is a somber stroll through the early years during which K. longed for someone to talk to (before he discovered the magic of humor). Reflecting on his science-minded older brother, Bernard, K. said, "He was a boring bully. Never hit me, but he would talk and talk about science until my sister and I were bored shitless." I like the idea, boring bully. Not to make too little of other sorts of bullying, but reading this got me daydreaming about how it would sound to say, "You're bullying me with boredom." Just like everyone but me knows all about Ryan Gosling, I suppose everyone already knows the boring bully line. Those who've been bullied by this method chuckle politely if nervously, swallow their yawns, and notice oh my it's getting late. The pepper spray cop meme is much more visually gripping than the Ryan Gosling frivolity, hunk or no. An image dominates, the whole world is watching, and its elements are vaulted into new relations with famous paintings, Mr. Rogers, the U.S. Constitution, and, well, "everything" (viz. "spray everything" meme). Notably, few among the "everything" have been non-humans. There's The Ugly Duckling, the baby seal and other sympathetic creatures, but few objects, few door closers, etc. Yet, anyway. Or I am to them as I was to Gosling. 3590@http://www.earthwidemoth.com/mt/ Media 2011-11-29T19:30:01-05:00 http://www.earthwidemoth.com/mt/archives/003580.html Earlier this month, I disregarded office-hour responsibilities ("Will return by 4:30 p.m -DM") on a Monday afternoon and went over to Ann Arbor for David Weinberger's talk, ""Too Big to Know: How the Internet Affects What and How We Know," based on his soon-to-be-released book of a similar title. It's worth a look; the talk hits several important notes, particularly in light of the information studies slice of ENGL505, a rhetoric of science and technology class I'm teaching right now. In 505, we finished reading Brown and Duguid's The Social Life of Information earlier this week, and although several aspects of the book are dated, that datedness is largely a function of print's fixity. I know this isn't big news, but because Weinberger's talk works with a related set of issues, their pairing (for my thinking as much as for the class) has been worthwhile. A couple of quick side notes: Brown's introduction of Weinberger is a nice illustration of differences between Information Studies and C&W or PTC. That "invent" is cast in the shadows of technological determinism is, well, curious. Or, it's what happens when rhetoric has gone missing. I had to turn to an authoritative decision-maker to verify my sense that invent still has some mojo. I like Weinberger's account of the history of facts, and while I understand that facts are useful for argument, their solidity and their restfulness touch off other problems for argument. I left Weinberger's talk largely satisfied with his characterization of the moment we are in and the shifting epistemological sands digital circulation has stirred. But, if the paper paradigm has really met its match, why should Too Big To Know be printed at all? An obvious answer is that book will produce substantially more revenue than the blog where bits and pieces of the book draft surfaced. Yet, it seems like this cuts against the grain of the talk. I will, of course, withdraw this question if Kindle copies of TBTK outsell paper copies. 3580@http://www.earthwidemoth.com/mt/ Technologies 2011-10-19T17:00:06-05:00 http://www.earthwidemoth.com/mt/archives/003557.html Here's my brief teaser for phase two of the upcoming WIDE-EMU Conference. I've titled my short talk, "The Hyper-Circumference of Effectiveness in 3..2..1.. FTL Jumps." Since the teaser-trailer is right here for viewing, there's no need for me to say much more about it. I was impressed that Google's auto-transcript (beta) process translated "hyper-circumference" as "high pressure conference," though, as if it's some kind of auto-complete algorithm tapped straightaway into the deep recesses of my WIDE-EMU subconscious. Or, maybe I was never really thinking about hyper-circumference in the first place. Jump! Added: Just noticed the translation calls Burke's 1978 essay something like "Questions and Answers about the Pant Ad." 3557@http://www.earthwidemoth.com/mt/ Unspecified 2011-09-22T17:15:46-05:00 http://www.earthwidemoth.com/mt/archives/003554.html Seeing Things - OOOIII on Vimeo (tags: OOO photography subject object thing photo sontag visual rhetoric ontology bogost) eric135: Jailbreaking Screensaver Hack for Kindle 3.1: Using your own pictures in Kindle Screensaver... A solution for lame Kindle screensaver fatigue. (tags: kindle jailbreak screensaver hack picture) 3554@http://www.earthwidemoth.com/mt/ Delicious 2011-09-17T08:02:50-05:00 http://www.earthwidemoth.com/mt/archives/003547.html 3547@http://www.earthwidemoth.com/mt/ Delicious 2011-08-24T08:03:11-05:00 http://www.earthwidemoth.com/mt/archives/003545.html From Tim Ingold's Lines: A Brief History: Unlike wayfaring or seafaring, transport is destination-oriented. It is not so much a development along a way of life as a carrying across, from location to location, of people and goods in such a way as to leave their basic natures unaffected. Even the wayfarer, of course, goes from place to place, as does the mariner from harbour to harbour. He must periodically pause to rest, and may even return repeatedly to the same abode or haven to do so. Each pause, however, is a moment of tension that—like holding one's breath—becomes ever more intense and less sustainable the longer it lasts. Indeed the wayfarer or seafarer has no final destination, for wherever he is, and so long as life goes on, there is somewhere further he can go. For the transported traveller and his baggage, by contrast, every destination is a terminus, every port a point of re-entry into a world from which he has been temporarily exiled whilst in transit. The point marks a moment not of tension but of completion. (77) I will attempt a more fully developed review of the book later. I picked Lines up this summer curious about his explanation of the trace, of tracing. Ingold discusses traces and threads in the second chapter. But in the passage above from the third chapter, certain qualities of the trace (vs. the thread) bleed over into a contrast he draws between wayfaring and transport. There are moments in this third chapter that click with so many different things, perhaps because the idea of lines and line segments is ubiquitous (methods, course sequences, careers, travel). Yet Ingold's division comes off almost too sharply, holding wayfaring and transport too strictly apart, which leaves me wondering whether the taxonomy is adequate, whether there are blended states in which these two are not only compatible but mutually sustaining. 3545@http://www.earthwidemoth.com/mt/ Reading Notes 2011-08-23T21:40:23-05:00 http://www.earthwidemoth.com/mt/archives/003543.html I cannot explain it, but I woke up this morning with this song playing in my head. There are several versions on YouTube, and most come from the final scene in Life of Brian, but this Ren and Stimpy mash-up is impressive considering the video was assembled from several episodes. 3543@http://www.earthwidemoth.com/mt/ Unspecified 2011-08-23T21:20:32-05:00 http://www.earthwidemoth.com/mt/archives/003539.html This morning I came across this short video on efforts by the Open Source Ecology initiative to develop prototypes for easy cast, easily assembled, low cost farming and building technologies, what they're calling the Global Village Construction Set (GVCS). It connected with some of the things I've been thinking about for ENGL505: Rhetoric of Science and Technology this fall. Global Village Construction Set in 2 Minutes from Open Source Ecology on Vimeo. How? First, we hear nowadays about everything "ecology." And I have ideas about how "ecology" in many cases functions as a metonym for rhetorical action, which of course includes readily identifiable material qualities in the case of OSE. The video itself is not all that different from Marcin Jakubowski's short TED Talk, and I haven't spent much time going carefully over what's posted at the site and wiki (wish there was an RSS feed or date stamps for their blog). But I can already see issues of modularity and scale foregrounded here, which, combined with the ideals of open source might be enough to return to this as a rich case for further consideration. 3539@http://www.earthwidemoth.com/mt/ Networks 2011-08-22T21:25:13-05:00