Month: July 2009

Among sermon-fretting, visiting with Jennifer (passing through town), and attending to Margaret (leaving town tomorrow morning), blogging comes in last.

I’m working on Sunday morning’s sermon. Exodus 16:2-4, 9-15; Psalm 78:1-25; Ephesians 4:17-25; and John 6:24-35. I’m thinking about the phrse from the psalm, “So mortals ate the bread of angels.”

With the iPhone established as the de facto standard for smartphones, isn’t it about time for Apple to consolidate its position by doing exactly the opposite of its current course? If Apple opened up the iPhone to other carriers (as soon as contracts permit) and allowed users to control the apps and media they install on the device (rather than forcing Apple’s iTunes to manipulate the contents), they could deal their rivals a significant blow and at the same time maintain much of the market that their closed-system approach has built.

Sorry to be so unreliable these days — but in my current liminal status, it’s hard gather myself to compose full-scale, thoughtful posts. All the more so, since I owe a lectionary essay and have to compose a sermon for Sunday.
 
That being said, my visa materials have been delivered into the hands of J. Blyth at the British Consul General’s office in New York; we’re hoping and praying for them to process everything rapidly, so we don’t have to reschedule my plane to Scotland. My teaching schedule is gradually shaping up (I’ll be teaching “Bibs 2B” (a course on close reading of selected NT texts; my selections are Matthew and James, with the Didache and the Mishnah in the prominent background) in Greek and English, and a course on the Historical Jesus. I may be tapped for another course, too, but so far these are the only ones for which they’ve asked for course descriptions.
 
And Mitch Ratcliffe has reasserted his leading role in the clamor of people calling for a more open sales model for ebooks. With such noteworthy observers and consultants as Mitch and Seth on board, it’s hard to understand why someone isn’t backing a big push for open access digital publication. Think of books as being like CDs; the digital version is easy to buy (and share) digitally, but many people still pay for the physical instantiation. And books have an even better ground for sustaining their sales than do CDs, since the packaging for a CD amounts to very little other than metadata (much of it readily available online) and ornamentation. Books, on the other hand, offer archival durability, better resolution, requiring no power source, a familiar and easily-navigated user interface, platform-agnostic, and so on. Surely George Soros or Pierre Omidyar could clean a few millions from between the couch cushions to fund a publishing start-up oriented specifically to 21st-century technologies.

Simon’s Cat reminds me a lot of Beatrice.

This morning, Margaret and I are relishing the prospect of a few days off the road. We are temporarily established in the rectory in New Haven, with an affectionate 90-pound chocolate lab and our standard-issue 10-pound bichon; we have very few specific dates-and-obligations; we will take our time, reflect, catch up on writing assignments, plan courses, and mostly just breathe and restore some of the strength that the past weeks’ frazzling has leeched out of us.
 
So this week is a foretaste of actually living somewhere, but this link gives a foretaste of what may lie in store for my academic labors in the U.K. I can see many, many problems with the idea that “impact” can be assigned a quantitative value and compared across disciplines, although since my own work has built-in accounts for real-world behavior and influences I may be able to make a stronger case than might a specialist in Anglo-Saxon literature. Evaluating research for its real-world effects, though, and comparing a sociologist’s studies of police behaviour (that “u” is practise for my future) (so is the “s” in “practise”) to a theologian’s exploration of Newman’s writings as an Anglican — that just doesn’t make much sense. Hey, and will there be penalties for deleterious real-world effects, as when a political scientist or economist persuades policy-makers to pursue a course that turns out to be harmful? “Chicago-school economists obliged to give back millions in research grants due to recession,” or something like that?

Bid farewell to New Jersey and New York, settled in Connecticut for a while.

My farewell tour of East Coast states scratched North Carolina, virginia, Maryland, and Delaware off the list yesterday. We’re hunkered down in New Jersey for a rest day, then I’ll bid it goodbye as well, along with New York.

I became a Jack Vance fan, oh, forty years ago or so. The Eyes of the Overworld turned up in a used book store, and then I had to find The Dying Earth, and then on to libraries’ (uneven) collections. I didn’t know that he was still alive, nor anything about his life; this article in the NYTM gives a sense of what kind of man he is, and of why more people should love his writing. (I hooked the boys a while back; Pippa should be ready any time now. Her writing style already resembles his….)

Euan calls my attention to his appearance on GuruOnline — not, I think,because he aims to set me straight about why and how corporations should engage with social media, but because he wanted to help me win over reluctant bureaucrats, and because (as he points out) the Question-and-Answer interview format works particularly well with short-form video media. It’s (once again) the approach that I argue that teachers and church leaders should take — valuable as full series of course podcasts might be, the medium lends itself to shorter, more topically-concise units.

We were planning to leave this morning, but yesterday afternoon we decided to take things a little slower, finish up packing/sorting this morning instead of last night, have a calmer last few hours in Durham, and to leave tomorrow morning instead. Likewise, Margaret has reflected on the advice we got in yesterday’s comments and Twitter query, and we’re inclined to leave behind much of my less-expensive, older clothing and buy some new clothes once I land in Glasgow.
 
Ugh! I do hate moving. I will be greatly relieved when it’s all over (and the relocation costs squared away). But this is very sensible. I just wish we had had more time to go through my clothing (and books) to make carefully-reasoned selections. I know I’m taking along at least two boxes worth of books I could easily leave behind, or abandon altogether (more, I’m sure). If the search had been concluded in, say, April or early May, the whole relocation operation could have been a lot smoother (and less expensive).
 
Ah, well, if wishes was horses, beggars would ride — as Joe Conroy always used to say.

I’d been thinking of taking along several extra bags when I fly to Glasgow next month, reasoning that I’d soak up the charges for excess weight in order to have clothing at my disposal right away. This morning, though, we note that British Midlands seems to have a strict, light maximum weight for luggage. Now we’re trying to figure out how to get my baseline wardrobe for X weeks to Glasgow (while I wait for the main shipment of my goods to arrive).

Sometime between Josiah’s and Laura’s wedding and my interviews in Glasgow, the red silk tie that Margaret gave me several years ago developed a very peculiar problem. The once-solid red tie has grown dull diagonal stripes; the tie looks as bright as ever in certain parts, and a muted murky red in others. The diagonal stripes don’t align with any external point of contact. It can’t be that, for instance, I bumped against a diagonally-muddy-striped wall. They aren’t congruent with any physical stressor they’ve encountered; it won’t work to imagine that the tie was folded or squeezed in a certain way to produce these regular diagonal stripes. I’m quite prepared shrug and say, “Oh, well, so much for that tie.” I just hate to give up trying to figure out what on earth happened.

Various furnishings that won’t make the trip to Glasgow: chairs, mirrors, bed, speakers, printer. Such deals!

In response to my seeking competitive estimates for our relocation program, Margaret and I received the following emailed bid:

Dear Mr. Adam
 
On 7/14 our firm Sessum, Sessum & Sessum assessed the re-location needs at your residence in Durham, NC. This communication will provide an estimate of the time and materials required for your relocation to various destinations, domestically and internationally.
 
It is our understanding that items to be transported include those belonging to two sons in the midwest, a daughter in transit to Michigan, a wife in transit to Maryland, and yourself in transit to Scotland, Ireland or someplace like that. Items will be transported to these destinations from various locations, including Durham, NC, with miscellaneous items in Princeton, NJ, Chicago, IL, and possibly Maine.
 
Dayum!
 
Sorry.
 
You should know we’ve never encountered a move like this before. However, we are confident in our abilities to orchestrate it successfully.
 
We estimate approximately 3000 shipping containers and 33,022 man hours to complete the following:
Assembly of packing materials
Inventory and packing from 3 locations simultaneously
Loading and unloading
Driving, flying, transporting of household contents
We estimate time and materials at $17,500 for labor and materials for the above effort.
 
Given the trauma our firm has accumulated just from reviewing and assessing your needs, we are increasing our estimate by $30,000.
 
The total for the entire move is estimated at $47,500.
 
We hope you find this estimate acceptable, and look forward to helping your family through this very exciting and devastating transition.
 
Thank you!!
 
 
SS&S

Thank you, SS&S — for the offer, though probably not for the contract.

Miquelrius notebook retrieved intact. Several last-phase boxes packed. Two estimates solicited, need third.

Via a link from Brooke, Chris Heard’s flow chart for grading (US)/marking (UK) papers. On this topic, I add that such a flow chart provides the criteria that a teacher can then make explicit when framing the assignment itself — so that students can know in advance that the teacher will be basing the grade on this or that characteristic.
 
From IHE, an article that proposes a system for using online interaction effectively to enhance the value of comments on student papers. I’m not convinced by the specifics of what they suggest, but the underlying principle of closing the feedback loop provides a flashing neon clue for all teachers. Right now, I’m in the midst of relocation chaos; there’s no guarantee that any resolution I make this morning will endure to the fall semester. But I hope I’ll remember to make sure to elicit specific feedback from students with regard to the comments I make on their papers. I’ll commend the University of Glasgow (my new employer), though, for producing student handbooks that spell out across-the-board criteria for assigned papers; grading criteria gain usefulness in proportion to the generality with which they’re applied (so that in an academic ecology in which every teacher deploys different criteria, or makes no criteria explicit, students will have a difficult time making sense even of explicit guidelines).

I received a packet of forms to fill out today relative to my criminal record, my housing situation, my tax status (in the U.K.), and so on. It makes me want to yell out the window, “But I don’t have a Taxpayer Identification Number! (Not for the U.K.)”
 
The storage garage is relatively orderly. We have a few boxes to close up, my clothing to distribute into transportable divisions, three estimates for shipping to obtain (Glasgow will reimburse the lowest), and my renegade pocket notebook to recapture.
 
The notebook — a Miquelrius, comparable to a Moleskine — fell out of my pocket on the Duke Shuttle bus on Monday. I called around about it Tuesday morning; no one seemed to know where it was. Margaret and I searched all over, to no avail. Today, I hopped on the Shuttle again, and asked the driver where I ought to look if I lost something on the bus. “What’s your name?” she demanded.
 
It turned out that she had found it, and was trying to get my attention as I stepped off the bus. When I didn’t hear ehr, she asked the other passengers if any of them knew me. One thought I was a Div School faculty member, so she gave him the notebook and told him to get it to me.
 
So today I went to every Div School office I could think of, to check to see whether the mystery passenger had brought my notebook there. No luck.
 
On my way back home on the Shuttle, I told the driver my tale of woe and intrigue, and she looked around on the bus. “You know that guy I gave the notebook to?” she hollered back at one passenger. Yes, she acknowledged, she knew him. He gave it to such-and-such a person at the Divinity School, someone I hadn’t seen in his office. I gave her my card, and asked her to give it to the notebook recipient; I emailed him myself, when I got off the bus. We’ll see what happens tomorrow.

Does anyone have experience with intercontinental moving agencies that they would share with me? I gather that my office in Glasgow will hold a fair number of books, alleviating some anxiety on that point, but we still need to get the books there in the first place.

The other day, danah boyd posted an insightful column about laptops/smartphones in meetings and lectures. While I try to prescind from portentous claims about a “clash of civilizations” or “paradigm shifts,” I suspect that people who have begun to assimilate the capacities of cyborg life (constant net access, fractional attention processing) will irritate the dickens out of people who have not begun that transition (if they are not outright resisting it). Over the next few years, we’ll develop a new etiquette that takes account of both the changed digital capacities (on one hand) and of (semi-)cyborg priorities and attitudes (on the other); we’ll have different technological developments that will irritate tardy adopters; the world will go on. Climate change is a danger to civilization; cyborg existence will change civilization, and some folks won’t like the change, but Juvenal and Lucian didn’t like the changes of civilization in their time, either.
 
I don’t try to extort attention from students or conference participants. Sometimes I ask that students concentrate their capacities on immanent-capacities (memory, association, improvisation) only, but that’s for the specific purpose of cultivating those capacities — not to insulate me (or them) from the vastly-expanded capacities made available online. Apart from that caveat, I have to win direct attention from classes and audiences; if I’m not engaging their willing focal attention, then I can’t complain if they’re checking their email. Heck, I could use more time for clearing email myself.