{"id":6697,"date":"2007-02-13T14:40:30","date_gmt":"2007-02-13T14:40:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/2007\/02\/13\/certainties\/"},"modified":"2007-02-13T14:40:30","modified_gmt":"2007-02-13T14:40:30","slug":"certainties","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/2007\/02\/13\/certainties\/","title":{"rendered":"Certainties"},"content":{"rendered":"\u23f3 Approximate reading time: <\/span> 2<\/span> mins<\/span><\/span>

B. Franklin left it at death and taxes, right? As I teach SU’s research-based
\nsecond semester writing course to seniors (and only seniors), I’m feeling the
\nweight of the death-n-taxes counterpart in academic writing: length limits and
\ndeadlines. Two unavoidable encumbrances. Give either of them a liberatory shrug–whatever<\/i>–and what happens? So we need, instead, to
\ndeclare two-thousand words by Friday, and so on, arbitrary though it might seem. What, besides length
\nlimits and deadlines, structures the writing activity one does for academic credit?
\nSure, there are sentences and paragraphs (utterances, gestures, etc.), but I’m not talking
\nabout language forms. Length limits and deadlines certify the institutionality of
\nthe writing. Institution-free, the writing need not adhere to either
\nstaple, right? With blogging, for instance, what of deadlines? What
\nof length limits? But figure blogs into a course, what will happen if matters of
\nlength limits and deadlines or frequency, even if left to such vagarisms as
\n"flexible" or "open," are not otherwise determined<\/i>? Just a few
\nthoughts…<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I did the annual income taxes this morning, filed them electronically,
\nand then realized I had Is.’s SS# wrong. But the fast-acting S.S.
\nAdministration databases couldn’t match the number with any person they’d heard
\nof,
\nso the flub was caught and corrected and the forms re-submitted. I was able to
\nmove on with the day, tax-collectedly ever after.<\/p>\n

About the certainties in my own work of late as it relates to the
\ncounterparts deadlines\/death and limits\/taxes: for the past two weeks I’d probably fall in the category
\nof
\n
\nWillie Nelson<\/a>* at the slot machines in the lounge of a
\nCryonics laboratory<\/a>*,
\nwhich is to say, avoiding the so-called certainties or producing at a rate not
\nso much frozen as vitric<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n

*Neither an endorsement of Nelson’s habits of interaction with
\nthe IRS, nor any acknowledgment of a belief that cryonics legitimately extends
\nhuman life (what if?). <\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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