Beards (signs of the Times)

The New York Times reports today that beards are back, part of a reaction against "men who look scrubbed, shaved, plucked and waxed." "Men both straight and gay," the article says, "want to feel rough and manly."

Rough and manly, that's me (see photo right).

Priceless quotation:

"It's a nice masculine aesthetic," said Robert Tagliapietra, who with his similarly bearded partner, Jeffrey Costello, designs a collection of pretty silk jersey dresses under the Costello Tagliapietra label. "We both like that aesthetic of New England cabins with antlers on the wall, plaid shirts and a beard."

» Paul Bunyan, Modern-Day Sex Symbol (from the New York Times)

Brava, Professor Entman

From the Associated Press:

A group of University of Memphis law students are passing a petition against a professor who banned laptop computers from her classroom because she considers them a distraction in lectures.

On March 6, Professor June Entman warned her first-year law students by e-mail to bring pens and paper to take notes in class.

"My main concern was they were focusing on trying to transcribe every word that was I saying, rather than thinking and analyzing," Entman said Monday. "The computers interfere with making eye contact. You've got this picket fence between you and the students."

» Law professor bans laptops in class, over student protest

» Wireless or wireless-less (a related blog post)

Homer rules

The Online Computer Library Center, "a worldwide library cooperative," has published a list of the top 1000 titles owned by member libraries. The Iliad and Odyssey both make the top ten, placing sixth and fifth. Homer, you rule.

» OCLC Top 1000

Power-sit

Like father, like daughter. My daughter created a word today:

power-sit \ PAU-er-sit \ verb
:to sit in a pair on one side of a table in a restaurant, leaving the other side empty and the table oddly asymmetrical

power-sitting \ PAU-er-si-ting \ noun
:the act of one who power-sits

Sample sentence: We power-sat and totally intimidated the server.

Will power-sitting routinely intimidate servers? More data is needed.

Related posts
Oveness
Skeptiphobia

Skeptiphobia

"Aren't you going to put skeptiphobia on your blog?"

Thanks for reminding me, Elaine.

It came to me in a dream early this morning:

skeptiphobia \ SKEP-tuh-FO-be-uh \ noun
: fear of skeptics or skepticism

Sample sentence: The speaker's skeptiphobia explains the lack of time for questions from the audience.

The Oxford English Dictionary has no entry for this "word." Google, I suppose, will now have at least one.

Related posts
Oveness
Power-sit

Lead Pencil Blues

I'm amused to find two of my abiding interests -- blues and stationery supplies -- brought together in the following lyric of graphitic dysfunction. Blues lyrics are rich in double-entendres -- elevators, jellyrolls, lemons, pincushions, poodles, snakes, switchboards, and wieners, but Johnnie Temple's "Lead Pencil Blues" and Bo Carter's "My Pencil Won't Write No More" are the only blues lyrics I'm aware of that focus on the mighty (or not so mighty) pencil. I've transcribed the lyric of "Lead Pencil Blues" from the recording.

Spoken: Lord have mercy --
I wanna write a letter so bad I don't know what to do

I laid down last night, couldn't eat a bite
The woman I love don't treat me right
Lead in my pencil, baby it's done gone bad
And it's the worst old feelin' baby, that I've
    ever had

I woke up this mornin', my baby says she
    mighty mad
Cause the lead in my pencil, it's done gone
    bad
Lead in my pencil, baby it's done gone bad
And that's the worst old feelin' that I've
    ever had

My baby told me this mornin', she's feelin'
    mighty blue
Lead in my pencil just wouldn't do
And she said "Been ready all night --
Lead in your pencil daddy, just wouldn't write"
Lead in my pencil, baby it just won't write
And it's the worst old feelin' baby, that I've
    ever had

My baby says she goin' to quit me
I'll tell you for this reason why
Lead in my pencil gone bye-bye
Laid down last night, couldn't help but cry
Wanted to write so bad, I was about to die
Lead in my pencil, baby it's done gone bad
And it's the worst old feeling baby, that I've
    ever had

Johnnie Temple, "Lead Pencil Blues" (1935). Available on Back to the Crossroads: The Roots of Robert Johnson (Yazoo).

Canon-formation

On the left, Ted Berrigan's The Morning Line (Santa Barbara: Am Here Books/Immediate Editions, 1982), 26 pages, photocopied and stapled, published in an edition of 250 copies and 15 signed copies. Note the now-rusting staples. The Morning Line is the last book that appeared in the poet's lifetime.

On the right, The Collected Poems of Ted Berrigan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), edited by Alice Notley with Anselm Berrigan and Edmund Berrigan, x + 749 pages.

The volume on the right is now on sale for $29.95, 40% off, direct from the publisher.

» The Collected Poems of Ted Berrigan
(from the University of California Press)

Models for education

Education theorists have given us two broad caricatures of teaching -- "the sage on the stage" and "the guide on the side." If you know anything about current education, you know that the first is bad, the second good. Yes, the reasoning, like caricatures themselves, is reductive.

The first caricature transforms the classroom into a performance venue, the professor strutting and fretting his or her 50 minutes, all eyes and ears attending to a glamorous genius. On this account, any presentation of genuine scholarship and intellectual accomplishment is mere preening: "Who does he think he is? A sage?!" The second caricature imagines a classroom full of highly-motivated, self-directed students, in need of just an occasional correction in steering. This caricature assumes a much greater degree of student interest in "group-work" and the like than is often (or usually?) the case. For many students, "group-work," games, and other "activities" are welcome respites from more difficult work; other students see such stuff as infuriatingly condescending.

These caricatures of "sage" and "guide" have little to do with what can really happen in a college class. They erase the possibility of a professor who talks (or professes, as a professor is supposed to do) and leads a discussion -- orchestrating in real time, imperfectly of course, a multi-voiced improvisation on a theme. To my mind, that's the most wonderful sort of class, one whose shape is unpredictable, sometimes awkward, sometimes delightful, and never to be repeated.

Wireless or wireless-less

In light of recent news items about college students messaging and playing online poker during lectures, it didn't seem to me that there could be much debate among academics about the inappropriateness of wireless connectivity in classrooms. But On Campus, published by the American Federation of Teachers, has two profs debating this question in its March 2006 issue.

Dennis Adams, who teaches "decision and information sciences" -- i.e., he's a computer guy, not a technophobe -- argues against laptops in classrooms, pointing out that students who have been raised in a culture of ever-diminishing attention-spans need to learn how to focus. Rudy McDaniel, who teaches "English and digital media" -- i.e., he's also a computer guy, not a technophobe -- argues for the usefulness of laptops and suggests ways to deal with students who are idly surfing. One such strategy:

The next time you spot students with glazed eyes peering into a laptop during your lecture, consider a new approach: Ask them to find an online example of a topic you’re discussing and share it with the class. Repeat as necessary with new offenders. That "distracting laptop in class" problem might just take care of itself.

I started daydreaming today about how such a strategy might work out. Imagine a class devoted to Book Four of Virgil's Aeneid, the episode of Dido's passion and death. What would count as an online "example" of that "topic"? Unrequited love? Devotion to duty? Royal suicide? Roman marriage customs? (Aeneas notes that he never held the torches of a bridegroom, never really married Dido.) The role of Mercury in Roman mythology? Sword wounds? A map of Carthage? An MP3 of "When I am laid in earth" from Purcell's Dido and Aeneas? An MP3 of the pop singer Dido?

I wonder too how quickly a student with glazed eyes would be able to think up a suitable "example of a topic." And were a student to begin searching for one of these possibilties, what would be the point? What are the other students supposed to be doing while the search is underway? And if class simply goes on while the searcher searches (still out of it!), won't the sharing of the discovery make for yet another interruption of forward movement?

Now imagine this sort of interruption occurring with two or three students, perhaps with arguments and protestations of innocence. Allow two or three minutes for the necessary details of identifying each perp, assigning the task, and hearing a brief report. In a 50-minute class, these scattered minutes would eat up roughly 10% to 20% of the available time. I'd hate to be a student intent upon following and learning from a lecture or discussion while my prof's attention repeatedly shifts from the work at hand to students whose minds are elsewhere.

A truth that bears repeating: Technology makes it possible to do things, not necessary to do them. It's possible to type a shopping list into a cellphone, but pencil and paper are simpler and more efficient. And it's possible to watch tv while driving, but it's not a good idea. It's, uhh, distracting, just like a wireless connection in a classroom.

» Should wireless laptops be banned from the classroom?
(from On Campus)

Under Odysseus

From a Trojan War blog written by Eurylochus, one of Odysseus' men:

More drama.

Polites told me that there was some kind of blow-out today between Achilles and Agamemnon. Rumor has it that it was over some girl.

I have a hard time believing that this is true. To be honest, I can’t imagine any girl torn between those two. Agamemnon might be Commander-in-Chief, but there is no kind way to describe his looks. On the other hand, Achilles has to fight the girls off. I swear to Zeus, it looks like a goddamned holiday parade when the guy goes to pick up his laundry.

» Under Odysseus (link via kottke.org)