All posts in October 2010

No particular health news; I’m as irascible and voluble as ever (and I’ll iras and vol anyone who challenges me on these points). Plenty to do at the office today, so I’m off to battle my inbox and take one step closer to some grant applications. Technically, I’m not allowed to operate heavy machinery, sign…

It was probably related to my current state of dehydration and hunger, but last night I dreamt I was stationed on the steps of a house on a tree-lined park street in a city, where it was incumbent on me to try to shoot black bears with an iPhone application. Real black bears (I mean,…

Joshua Kim at Inside Higher Education proposes five lessons that higher education can learn from Netflix’s decision to offer streaming video of its movie collection instad of sticking to DVD-by-mail rental. It’s a lot like my “Technology Lessons From Napster” essay; although the specific technology comparison has changed, the principles haven’t. Maybe someone will listen…

Margaret came over from the States with a book called The Christian Imagination by my grad school friend and my colleague at Duke, Willie Jennings. She had picked it up shortly before leaving, and was exuberantly enthusiastic about it — which was great to hear, since everyone who knows Willie and his work had been…

Si has an office of his own! (“With a door!” he says.) Margaret and I are getting sentimental, remembering our wee blonde-haired would-be firefighter. You go, fella!

Alex Chow blogged about his experience at the REFRACT conference last week; I was the “other technical person” to whom he referred (overstating my tech standing, but perhaps accurately indicating a distinction from most other participants). Glad you enjoyed the talk, Alex.  

I’ve beamed about Nate’s composition being played in Virginia, and about practically everything Pippa does — this evening it’s Josiah’s turn.   Si has been working steadily at Harold Washington Community College in the Registrar’s office. He aspires to a leadership role in higher ed administration, and he’s working his way up, starting at the…

I had heard via a variety of sources the story about the Washington Senators (sorry, I’m old school) Texas Rangers respecting Josh Hamilton’s painful history of drug problems by celebrating with ginger ale instead of champagne; given so many aspects of sport culture’s tendency to veer toward the macho and heedless, I found this very…

Last summer I volunteered to lecture on Fun Home by Alison Bechdel in the Comp Lit programme’s “Heroic Women” course; this morning, the convenor of the course emailed me to begin pinning down dates and resources. Now I have to reread Fun Home with a view to critical analysis, suggest a bibliography of related/illuminating texts,…

A number of people were paying attention when I gave my talks, and some of them blogged, tweeted, or otherwise recorded their assessments. Bex summarised my Saturday talk, and to my Monday talk in a variety of media: one clip of me mid-talk, live-blogged her impression of what I was arguing, took a picture of…

Contrary to what one might think, I have not been run over by a truck, overtaken by a squad of highly-trained CIA operatives who have been misled into blaming me for the financial crisis, bed-ridden with a rare tropical disease, stricken with amnesia after a cartoon safe fell on my head as I walked down…

As I work on a self-description for the purposes of combing out the tangles in our curriculum, I’m beginning to wonder whether it would be apt to identify me as a post-Derridean New Critic. I relish close reading; I appreciate the nuanced differences that words make; I do believe in the importance of classic works;…