metaspencer.blogspot.com

Class Planning

2011-08-13T20:20:00.001-05:00

Website Roundup

2011-05-05T09:40:00.007-05:00

This semester's "Writing in a Digital World" class is over, so I thought I'd link to some of the projects from the class. Students had to make 7 websites, one of which was a collaborative effort. The following links are presented with permission; a few are still works-in-progress.

—> Tolf's site: his refrigerator magnet game is especially fun, as is his "Shootman" game

—> Nick Sibilsky's site: a very clever game here, too; Nick's moving image page is also well done

—> Maggie Marek's redesign: Maggie completed a very nice redesign of the page for our local Bike Project of Urbana-Champaign

—> campus map by Brian Wilson and Ross Evans: part of a larger project to provide good walking maps of campus; Brian and Ross completed a nice site to house their mapping project

—> Lauren Welton's typography site: a zany and clever uptake of the typography assignment (Lauren's redesign project is also quite nice)

—> Ilana Strauss's site: a bunch of great projects here; my fave has to be Ilana's ambitious redesign of Zimbabwe's homepage (ambitious!)

—> Melissa Steiner's site: another great combination of projects; I particularly like the way Melissa's living words site unfurls.

—> Kelsey Shannon's redesign: a simple, purposeful redesign of this highly used dictionary of literary terms

—> Ryan Mahoney's bigfoot site: a perfectly nutty bigfoot site, showing that what might be termed "bad design" can be perfect in some instances (Ryan's puzzle is also pretty cool)

—> Ross Evans's game: the hardest game of the bunch ... and possibly the most clever! This one took me a while to figure out. (note the hints at the bottom for those who aren't up to the challenge)

—> Lucas Cook's site: another elegant batch of projects

Final Verdict: Google-ized Course Calendar Not Worth It

2011-05-02T12:37:00.002-05:00

After a semester of using the Google-ized course calendar widget over at my "Writing in a Digital World" class, I've decided that the gizmo kind of sucks.

It's unpredictable, given server and internet access fluctuations, and will ultimately go away as time goes on. In the end, I've decided that I like my course calendars online but prefer having a bit more control over them than Google allows.

Googlizing a Course Calendar

2011-01-09T22:43:00.009-06:00

As a general principle, I try not to speed the rate at which Google takes over the world. But in this case, I simply must hype their goods: Google's Web Elements tools, which allow you to syndicate a dynamic version of the Google calendar, can work pretty well for organizing a course calendar.

I've been giving it a shot over at the course website for my new "Writing in a Digital World" class.

Here's how it looks and works when embedded on a site:

One thing I'm liking is that, as I make changes during the semester, the calendar not only updates automatically but spits little updates to subscribers. As the semester goes on, I'll try to post here about how it's going.

Domain Dominion

2010-12-11T13:19:00.002-06:00

From over at http://www.vincos.it/world-map-of-social-networks.

Writing in a Digital World

2010-11-02T10:19:00.004-05:00

Our cool Informatics program has posted this article about my new course: ENGL 380/INFO 390: Writing in a Digital World.

My favorite line that came out of the interview: "Design what you're saying, don't just say what you're saying."

Spring 2011
MWF 1:00-1:50pm
ENGL 380 / INFO 390: writing in a digital world

This course explores the rhetorical and cultural significance of new
writing forms in this, our digital age. The written word still
matters, but writing online is increasingly visual and enmeshed in a
range of media forms. Learning to create interesting content for the
web allows one to contact a global audience. Students in this course
will study what it means to write in this digital world. Students will
create eight digital online projects, all coded in simple html, css,
and javascript. No previous coding experience or practice creating web
sites is needed. Experienced coders and web writers will be able to
work at an accelerated pace.

XtraNormal Response "Paper"

2010-10-13T12:33:00.003-05:00

In my English 505: Introduction to Writing Studies class last week, I encouraged students to experiment in their reading response papers. After a few weeks, the rather rigid format I'd been asking for seemed to be getting a bit stultifying.

One particularly clever student turned in this video. It's made using XtraNormal, which is a web-based video composition tool. Something about the juxtapositions—workplace setting + cartoon characters + academic-register—makes the video just too funny and smart. Gotta love what people can do.

5th and Hill Site in Champaign, IL

2010-10-05T14:48:00.003-05:00

I've been teaching up at the Douglas Branch of the Champaign Public Library System, which means I ride right by the toxic 5th and Hill Site on Thursday evenings. Last Thursday, the huge containment tent at the site was being taken down and, I'm guessing, moved to another part of the property.

In bookmarking a few pages relating to the 5th and Hill toxic site, I came across this image of the plant when it was still up and running.

It's hosted over at http://temporarytraveloffice.net/mMigration/mMigration.html, a page with a number of details about the site. Since benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylene were present during refining, the "site" is not really as bounded as the fence around the property suggests. Several houses nearby are undoubtedly positioned on top of toxic land (and water).

A quick Google search for "5th and hill" reveals another contested zone of the same address ... this one in Los Angeles. Somewhere there is a piece waiting to be written about this cargtographic coincidence and the socio-environmental impacts felt in both places.

5th and Hill in Los Angeles:

5th and Hill here in Champaign-Urbana:

Use DropBox, Don't Drop Out

2010-08-30T09:22:00.002-05:00

This story of a grad student who had his dissertation and the backed-up files stolen from his car. Bummer. Now he may have to drop out.

Don't let this happen to you! Back up your stuff using DropBox or a free online service like it. Store stuff. Don't drop out.

Soy Aphids, Part II?

2010-08-20T10:51:00.002-05:00

It's that time of year again in Champaign-Urbana: time to start wondering if the soy aphids will return like a plague. As everyone with a face and lungs remembers from last year, the bugs were everywhere. They'd cover your face when you walked, jogged, or biked—and they were all too easy to breathe in.

So we wait. For the bugs.

Holding Phone Deadly to New iPhone

2010-06-25T14:10:00.002-05:00

In breaking news, it has been revealed that holding the new iPhone leads to lost calls. Since the new iPhone was not designed to be held in the human hand, it seems that setting the phone on a tabletop and speaking into it is the best bet.

The Death of the Viral Video Chart (More on Internet Trash)

2010-06-10T09:36:00.005-05:00

One of my fave daily sites for the past few years has been the Viral Video Chart. It's been cool because it has traditionally featured videos that get a lot of plays and reposts. Interesting new videos usually show up there.

But in the past five or six months, the Viral Video Chart has almost exclusively featured music videos. I'm not saying videos aren't popular and interesting, and they can certainly be viral, but as a "hot new video site," the site simply doesn't do it for me anymore.

In several recent posts, I've talked about how the growing clutter online (okay: I've called it trash) makes it difficult to find information. Most search tools increasingly yield trash as the volume of tagged info online grows. Perhaps the death of the Viral Video Chart can be attributed to the trashing of the web, but I suspect it's more the hyping of music videos. Manufacture plays and reposts, and you can make something appear to be viral which, of course, makes it viral.

Anyway: time to find a new video aggregator.

BP

2010-05-30T14:00:00.001-05:00

Super Teaching?

2010-05-28T11:30:00.003-05:00

From a piece in IHE, I find SuperTeaching.org. What is Super Teaching? Well, it is a "whole-brain, breakthrough ... with special advantages for "new brains" ... [using] three screens." That's right, chalkboards are the problem. White boards too. Even a single projection screen is not enough if you want to be a Super Teacher. All it takes is three screens and you can "elevate learner concentration and retention." Order today!

In some of the promo videos for the multi-screen classroom mod, you'll see that the same image appears on all three screens. Watch as it captures your attention!

War By PowerPoint

2010-04-28T06:31:00.004-05:00

A decent article today in the New York Times about war by PowerPoint and the war on PowerPoint.

It focuses on the spaghetti graphic that's been floating around and is always worth reposting:

Fave quote in the piece, because it makes the software, which is slideware, seem as if it requires the bulletpointing of ideas:

“It’s dangerous because it can create the illusion of understanding and the illusion of control,” General McMaster said in a telephone interview afterward. “Some problems in the world are not bullet-izable.”

UPDATE: Nice response to the article over at Elizabeth Losh's blog.

Volcano Ash Clouds via Photoshop

2010-04-18T15:12:00.006-05:00

One of the easier tools to use in Photoshop is the Polygonal Lasso, as it allows you to create a region with straight sides. This is what happens, though, when a billowing ash cloud is realized in a graphic via the Polygonal tool. Oh and angularity of the ash cloud! (from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8628605.stm)

UPDATE: This article out on ash-cloud datagraphics.

http://writer.bighugelabs.com

2010-04-12T13:58:00.002-05:00

Another "let the tool simplify writing" writing technology.

F is for Field Guide

2010-03-31T10:29:00.004-05:00

Tried to post the slides from today's guest lecture on trends in document design in field guide literature, but SlideShare.com couldn't handle my images. So this little sampling of thumbs (which grows if you click it) will have to tell part of the story:

Flickr Fail

2010-01-26T10:23:00.003-06:00

Searching Flickr in recent weeks, the system seems to fail. Just a few years ago, it seemed like community tagging of digital objects would collectively yield vast networks of accessibility, connecting searchers to user-generated-content of relevance. But increasingly tags seem to yield ... crud. Or subterfuge. But certainly not access.

A recent search on Flickr for "chicken" brings up these images:

"Chicken" even yields this image ... because it's chicken wire.

A few posts ago, I discussed "the web as trash." In this view of what has been previously imagined as clean place, the web is a kind of sea of garbage with content circulating and re-circulating unendingly and without context. The fluidity of folksonomies seem to contribute to the trashed out nature of the internets. Search for "chicken" and find: a hamster, junk, flowers, a dog. Of course, there are ways to find images of chickens, but folksonomies seem to increasingly misdirect toward the clutter.

Anti-Anti-Whaling Actions

2009-12-23T12:22:00.004-06:00

Some of the footage coming out documenting efforts to stop anti-whaling actions. The sound you hear in the video is a Long Range Acoustic Device being used against the Steve Irwin.

Web as Trash Dump

2009-12-15T22:58:00.004-06:00

I'm looking through email and come across a Google Alert for "Spencer Schaffner." Two or three links come in a day via this net, usually amounting to nothing, but I use the alert (and others like it) to keep track of the basic parameters of my web footprint.

Today's link is to coursehero.com, a site based (in part) on mining syllabi and reposting them in altered, stripped-down form. Soooo, since I post course materials and a syllabus every time I teach, and I have been doing this for the past nine years, you can imagine my astonishment at the volume of mined and reposted material over at coursehero.

In a little iFrame, my materials in their unformatted new form look like this:

I used to get bothered when I learned that someone had taken something I'd put online and presented it as their own (without attribution). And syndication can be equally frustrating online; in this case, it's happened without consent and via mechanisms of automation. Via such tools, the web becomes a garbage dump of duplicates and copies. As I've mentioned a couple of times before, originals seem to exist online only momentarily before being copied and republished for further purposes of copying.

In the case of syllabi being ripped off, I'm not too bothered: course materials are meant to be shared, tweaked, and repurposed. If someone can find something useful in course materials, and students benefit, then that's cool. At the same time, by stripping my course materials of all features of design and context, they now look kind of sad online.

I'm tempted to turn all text I post online into images in some desperate attempt to limit the extent to which my words are mined and spread around. But why bother?

HASTAC 2010

2009-12-15T14:17:00.003-06:00

HASTAC 2010 is still accepting applications. It should be another great conference, so get yer dang application in!

Rhetorical Pollution

2009-12-14T13:05:00.002-06:00

As someone interested in rhetoric about pollution, I got a bit of a giggle out of this headline: Rhetoric polluting debate surrounding global warming. The punchline of the piece, as you might imagine, goes like this: "Bring on the facts because the rhetoric is polluting the debate."

Rhetoric as toxic cloud, as irritating pollution, as a vile contribution to debate, as if a debate were a kind of pure, unpolluted, arhetorical space that rhetoric enters into and (gasp!) messes up.

Google Chrome

2009-12-10T19:57:00.003-06:00

I've been annoyed by all the Google videos lately: Google this, Google that. And then this one comes around, hyping Google Chrome, which took like way to long to make it to the Mac, and I can't help but say it: it's the best video of all time. Or at least of the second half of the week:

The vid puts the low in low.tech, simulating the webscape over and over again using various creative gimmicks. There have been so many terrific low-tech vids lately, and this one is just part of that scree, but the pacing is just too much, and it's too funny that the Mr. and Mrs. Goog would hype their browser with things like knitted simulations and dioramas. Oh yeah.

Street Soccer

2009-12-03T09:19:00.004-06:00

Hybrid futbol breakdance capoeira parkour. Flying dirt multilayered videography. Multinational circulation of embodied action. Sport integrated with dance. The introduction of a soccer ball as limiting/enabling mediating artifact.

What began as this:

Became an ad for Nike here:

Feel Good Video of the Week

2009-12-02T10:09:00.002-06:00

The Feel Good Video of the Week (F-G.Vid) is the story of Rob. Sure it was a prank, but it's nice to see people come together around a common cause.

Bodies Missing

2009-11-29T16:55:00.002-06:00

In a recent exploration of cartoon-bots, you know: websites that promise to cartoonify a simply jpeg of your head, I find missing bodies.

Michaele Sahali

2009-11-28T12:23:00.004-06:00

The NYT has this article about how the Sahalis got into a dinner with Obama and other mega.pols.

Michaele Sahali promoting her sneakiness on Facebook:

Social Software for Academics

2009-11-20T12:23:00.007-06:00

Ever felt funny posting about your research to Facebook? Well, now there are several social sites and apps just for academics. Mom and your buddies from the chess club in high school can see one thing; the people you work with can see something else. More importantly, academic social software affords new ways of doing and sharing research.

SciVee has been around for a while, and is still cool: it's the YouTube of academic research. How it works is simple: you upload your presentations and research videos to the site so others can see and comment on your work. This site is not only a great place to learn about research in a range of scientific disciplines, but amounts to a kind of 24/7 virtual conference.

academia.edu is a bit like FaceBook, allowing academics to create networks of like-minded (you guessed it) academics. But whereas FaceBook links people by keyword common interests, Academia.edu links you by fields of specialization—so everyone tagged as interested in "rhetoric" is virtually linked. Another feature of the site is that it creates visual hierarchies of departments, so images like this can be filled out by members online:

Mendeley is one I came across this week, and it's different from the others in that it involves a local application that you download to your desktop. The local app allows you to store, sort, annotate, and organize PDFs and other research files; the app also interfaces with the website (www.mendeley.com) to allow you to introduce your materials into the social network. Oh, and did I mention that it generates the things all academics love, bibliographies? A recent review of Mendeley can be found here.

A few others include:

citeulike.org: social bibliographic site
delicious.com: social bookmarking site
connotea: reference management app
bibsonomy: social bookmarking

Job Search Season

2009-11-18T11:59:00.005-06:00

Tis the season for job searching in academia, and I see that traffic over at 9interviews.com has picked up a bit. I had to re-host the video files recently, and the site seems to be working a bit better.

In updating links and things, I also see that the academic job search wiki is alive and well. In fact, it looks more organized than ever. As we're hiring in Writing Studies this year at UIUC, I was glad to see that info is (if slowly) getting out about our search via the wiki.

I've heard mixed things from faculty about the wiki, as some of the info that gets posted can be misleading. But overall I dig the wiki, as it creates a version of transparency in a process where there can be none.

Leopard Seal Feeds Dude

2009-11-17T13:25:00.003-06:00

One of the problems with this blog, I guess, is that I don't usually post any-old-thing to the blog. Instead, it's writing.related.stuff or art.related.stuff or new.media.stuff. Things like that.

Well, today it's a viral leopard seal video. And I have this to ask: can't we leave the other animals alone just a bit more?

Pictorial Websters

2009-11-14T19:22:00.002-06:00

An absolutely yummy video documentary about printing the Pictorial Webster's.

Pictorial Webster's: Inspiration to Completion from John Carrera on Vimeo.

Jessica Watson: Fave Blog

2009-11-11T10:03:00.003-06:00

Have you seen it? Jessica Watson's blog is an account of her sailing voyage around the world. She's young. She's funny. She out in the freaking ocean all alone.

For me, it's a kind of sequel to Bird Year, an account of the Boothroyd family cycling for a year in search of birds.

Fly Pentop

2009-11-09T17:14:00.003-06:00

This compu-pen from LeapFrog used to look a whole lot cheesier; now the company is hyping it as a much more serious learning tool. It's also gotten leashed to the PC, as you'll see in the second video. Haven't been able to find out much about the "Writing" software package; just this blurb (link):

Get over the stress and learn to succeed at writing with the FLYWARE Fly Through Writing cartridge. From brainstorming to making final edits, you'll be given step-by-step tools that will help you transform your ideas into killer essays, creative stories and fresh lyrics. This software works with the FLY Pentop Computer (sold separately). FLYWARE takes learning to a whole new level of fun! This software works only with the FLY 1.0 Pentop Computer, and is not compatible with the FLY Fusion Pentop Computer.

Sport and Poverty

2009-10-25T10:04:00.004-05:00

This is an odd concoction of contrasts: a downhill mountain bike race, sponsored by Red Bull, and staged in what is described as a "Brazilian slum." At one point in the vid, cheerleaders line the course. Filed alongside the EcoChallenge.

Blog Action Day: Climate Change

2009-10-15T10:33:00.002-05:00

I learned a little late that today is "blog action day" where bloggers are asked to take a singular focus: climate change. This vid hypes the event:

I'm not a climate change specialist, but I have been paying attention to the various arguments used to promote environmental awareness around this issue. Yesterday on this blog, for instance, I was chatting a bit about this video about the effect of climate change on the oceans. In the documentary, titled "Acid Test: The Global Challenge of Ocean Acidification," you see a range of arguments for saving the planet. Earth should be saved because it's beautiful. Animals should be saved because they're like works of art. We need to save the planet to save ourselves. Climate change matters because it's hurting industry. Things like that.

What really bothers me about the film, though, is the ending, where the claim is made (cue optimistic music) that only our energy sources need to change. We can still drive cars. Cities can remain illuminated. We simply need to rely on wind and solar power. This is an appealing fantasy, I think, and one that is pro-science, pro-industry, and pro-consumer society. I don't buy it, though, thinking that reducing green-house-gas emissions is just one of many environmental agendas, and it's not going to happen fast enough (or at all) if all we do is gradually shift to windmills.

Acidic Oceans

2009-10-14T16:02:00.004-05:00

After spending the day writing letters of recommendation, I took a few minutes to watch the now YouTubed film Acid Test: The Global Challenge of Ocean Acidification.

It's another startling call for change making a non-anthropcentric argument for saving, in this case, the oceans. Well, I guess not entirely non-anthropocentric, as one argument is that "we need to save oceans to save our fishing industries." But that's only part of the video, much of which relies on a kind of earth-for-earth's sake logic, which I like.

What's a Blog?

2009-10-08T09:09:00.003-05:00

Dennis Baron has a thoughtful post about the new FCC guidelines regarding blogging and product endorsements. Basically, the new ruling speaks to blogs like Gizmodo—places you go to read about things you may buy.

You can read about the new rules at http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2009/10/endortest.shtm. The rules themselves are at http://www.ftc.gov/os/2009/10/091005endorsementguidesfnnotice.pdf.

Specifically, the ruling addresses messages "conveyed by bloggers or other 'word-of-mouth' marketers." What strikes me about this is the assumed stability around the terms blog and blogger. Instead of referring to "websites" that hype junk, the ruling speaks to blogs.

We know blogs to be websites typified by routine posting; newer posts generally appear at the top and older posts scroll down to the bottom. Blogs have such elements as blogrolls and comments and dated entries. We know blogging to mean the creation of content on such a site.

Note that static websites are either outside or on the margins of this ruling. Even static-looking websites; so if I create a new .html page each day to hype junk, am I blogging? I'd say not, which produces quite a nice loophole in the ruling.

Michael Atkinson's "Parkour, Anarcho- Environmentalism, and Poiesis"

2009-10-01T12:00:00.006-05:00

A few years ago I got into parkour; not so much doing it, but watching cinematic representations of it and writing about it some in this blog.

Give it time, and an outstanding academic article will come out on just about any topic. Today I got the chance to read Michael Atkinson's "Parkour, Anarcho- Environmentalism, and Poiesis" in the Journal of Sport and Social Issues.

Atkinson's piece is outstanding, involving a study of traceurs in Toronto (he ran with the dudes) and developing an argument about the practice as anti-capitalist, environmentalist, and just downright in touch with urban spaces. A terrific piece.

Bugs

2009-09-24T16:24:00.003-05:00

As you may know by now, our small town in the midwest has been systematically and completely overrun by little small bugs that get in your hair, stick to your clothes, and generally annoy. The bugs are Soy Aphids according to bug bloggers like this one.

Up close, the bugs that have filled our town look like this:

And we've all had plenty of chances to view them up close, since whenever you go outside you get covered in them.

This week has been a bad bug week in another way for me in that I was stung not once, not twice, but three times by the yellow jackets. They're living in my siding, and as it turns out, I swell up pretty bad when yellow jackets sting me.

Pretty much everything I do these days involves following advice I find online, so I ended up shop-vac-ing up the stinging buggers. This made me feel bad, as a bug lover, but the stings were just too much to handle.

Here's what a yellow jacket looks like up close:

That's it for bugs. Tomorrow is Friday.

Recent Review

2009-09-17T09:48:00.003-05:00

It took me a while to notice it, but I see that there is a nice review online of my 2009 CCCC video prezzy. The presentation is on YouTube in two parts that pop up if you Google "desktop mcing."

From the review, written by Missy Nieveen-Phegley:

Schaffner’s work, and the work of emerging scholars employing new media as a vehicle for their scholarship, challenges our perception of academic scholarship and requires us to redefine it, both in how we recognize what constitutes “valid” scholarship and in how we reward it through tenure and promotion review processes.

Here at UIUC, this kind of presentation seems to exist on the periphery of institutional evaluation. I mean, it counts, but not any more than a regular conference paper. "It's just a conference presentation," in a sense. One cool thing about experimenting with new media at conferences, I think, is that there is a lot of free space to do something new; a downside is that there is little recognition for it. A conference prez is a conference prez.

Anyway, I'm using the Desktop MCing approach in two more conference presentations this year: one at SLSA in Atlanta, and another at CCCC in Louisville. I've pretty much eliminated the talking head from the mashup of media elements, and I'm ramping up the pacing in terms of how quickly things come atcha. We'll have to see how it goes.

Pickle Juice: The Taste of Power

2009-09-08T14:08:00.002-05:00

Two recent publications by Pete Gayed, typist and scholastic wonder. The work can be found online (where all good things are) at ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.

My fave of the two pieces is titled "Why Some People Prefer Pickle Juice" and pithily begins "Richard Lifton has seen patients who crave nothing more than pickle juice."

Facebook Lexicon

2009-09-02T12:00:00.002-05:00

A bit ago I put up a few posts about how word clouders (like this'un) can be fun ways to visualize revision.

As a technology, clouders have their limitations given their reliance on lexical prevalence. If I wrote "I like blogs more than frogs," blogs and frogs would be tied. If I wrote "I like blogs. Frogs jump around too much. And plus, frogs are green." Frogs would come out on top via a clouder.

Anyway, Facebook is hyping their lexical clouder as a marketing tool. Step 1: Cloud lexical items on Facebook. Step 2: Sell stuff relating to what makes big clouds.

Facebook's hype copy reads "Lexicon graphs are a powerful way to understand the trends in what people are talking about. We've introduced a number of new ways to play with the data. Use the tabs at the top to explore different trends in a given topic."

Understand what people are talking about? Um, kinda. Only if you understand "what people are talking about" as defined by the prevalence with which they use identical words. "Facebook is like, like, like soooo 2006."

Typewriter Commercial

2009-08-26T13:46:00.003-05:00

Revising a piece on multi-app composition, I came across this ad:

A few others featuring transitional office machines include:

This one is funny:

Birding the Trash Dumps

2009-08-24T14:37:00.003-05:00

Our local news bureau at UIUC does a pretty good job of getting the word out about our work.

Melissa Mitchell put this article out, which made its way around the web some. It was then picked up by the Daily Telegraph and transformed into this piece.

Anyway, a few bloggers have been chatting about the original journal article, noting that it's hard to get a copy of the dang thing. So here is my piece on birding and environmental sporting in pdf form. The citation reads:

Schaffner, Spencer. 2009. "Environmental Sporting: Birding at Superfund Sites, Landfills, and Sewage Ponds." Journal of Sport and Social Issues. 33: 3, pp. 206-229.

This image, from over at Eva Casey's homepage, captures a bit of what the piece is about:

Fall.Semester.2009

2009-08-14T15:17:00.003-05:00

Things are all a-twitter here on campus. Students are roaming around campus looking at maps, orientations have orientations, 500 things need to be done NOW, and I got photographed for an article for the campus paper. As it turns out, I get nervous in such situations, though I'm usually a camera hog. Reading on antiquated diagnostic methods (mental illness) this afternoon.

Oh, and I should say that it is still the case that the closed system that is FaceBook ruined this blog.

Template Composition

2009-06-23T08:04:00.003-05:00

For poster presentations, my institution has just released a new template. Fill-in-the-blank composition; where "identity standards" mean all texts look identical.

Here's what it looks like:

Dorm Bloggers

2009-06-15T15:07:00.002-05:00

Dunno if you follow m/any dorm bloggers, but they can be kinda fun, providing a journalistic angle on campus life, classes, and living in the dorms.

This one is a nice end-of-year post from one of the more popular dorm bloggers:

Comics at the Newberry

2009-06-10T08:05:00.001-05:00

Viral Syndication

2009-06-02T19:21:00.007-05:00

The other day, ML had a nice article published about her recent work on fMRI deception detection.

The article provides a nice example of viral syndication, having been picked up all over the place.

postchronicle.com: Professor Dubious About New Lie Detectors

bio-medicine.org: Scholar unconvinced new lie-detection methods

breitbart.com: Professor dubious about new lie detectors

news.usti.net: Professor Dubious About New Lie Detectors

sciencedaily.com: Scholar Unconvinced New Lie-detection Methods Better Than Old Ones

upi.com: Professor dubious about new lie detectors

labspaces.net:
Scholar unconvinced new lie-detection methods better than old ones

themoneytimes.com: Professor dubious about new lie detectors

It's even over at questionsoftheuniverse.com. Gotta love it.

Visualizing Revision, Part II

2009-05-22T15:32:00.004-05:00

Earlier in the week, I put up a post about using tag clouds to visualize revision. It's a somewhat problematic approach, as it relies so heavily on lexical repetition, but with that known, it still shows a lot.

Now I see that RLG's Merrilee Proffitt (hi Merrilee!) is using a gadget called Wordle to visualize clouds a bit more ... artfully.

So here we go again: my dissertation, completed in 2005, on Wordle, followed by my book as of 2009:

Using Tag Clouds to Visualize Revision

2009-05-17T13:48:00.005-05:00

You probably know this: for folks in many humanities departments at large research schools like UIUC, a published academic monograph is a key part of getting tenure. That book is often derived in part from the dissertation, but there's this culture in place where, no matter how great that dissertation is, one generally has to demonstrate how much the book is different from the dissertation. This demonstration is usually done in prose.

Enter the tag cloud. Dump the text from both documents into an online clouder like tagcrowd.com, and compare results.

Here's the cloud from my dissertation, completed in 2005:

created at TagCrowd.com

And then here's the cloud of the book manuscript circa 6.2009:

created at TagCrowd.com

As you can see, some themes have stayed the same; others have disappeared or been added. For me, knowing these two documents so well, the tag clouds are detailed maps of the writing and rewriting. Each term is a pathway into so many decisions, dead ends, and productive avenues.

Next time I teach revision, I think I'll have students cloud their drafts.

Non-Contact Graduation

2009-05-13T10:25:00.002-05:00

Here at the factory we're churning out another batch of graduates, but this year with less touching advised.

To: Faculty, Staff, Students
From: Robert D. Palinkas, M.D.
Director, McKinley Health Center
Subject: Handshaking at Commencement

Because of ongoing concerns about the possibility of spreading the flu virus, students receiving degrees and their families should not shake hands at Commencement if they have symptoms of an upper respiratory infection such as fever and cough.

McKinley Health Center will provide hand sanitizer on the platform at the Assembly Hall ceremonies so that graduates can, if they wish, use it before and/or after receiving their degrees. Members of the official platform party also are encouraged to use the hand sanitizer provided.

Everyone is encouraged to observe the other guidelines to reduce the risk of infection, such as covering coughs and sneezes; avoiding touching eyes, mouth and nose; and washing hands frequently.

Robert D. Palinkas, M.D.

This mailing approved by:
The Office of the Chancellor

The White House and Photoshop

2009-05-10T14:55:00.010-05:00

News today that $350,000 in taxpayer cha-ching has been spent getting the following pic over the Statue of Liberty. (It's not even that good.)

In the news is how the White House aide who authorized the flyover has stepped down as it freaked out about half of the residents of NYC.

Do White House aides know nothing about Photoshop?

As a service to our nation, I present these additional pics highlighting other national treasures:

Slap Chop

2009-05-04T11:04:00.002-05:00

Slap your troubles away with Slap Chop. I've done it and found virtually no remaining troubles.

The Game of Writing (Online)

2009-04-27T11:36:00.001-05:00

If you can see this, your browser doesn't
understand IFRAME. However, we'll still
link
you to the file.

I-Cubed

2009-04-24T15:36:00.003-05:00

There's a nice bit of hype about my recent web-writing class over at the local I-Cubed Hub.

With just a few weeks left in the class, students are putting together some amazing stuff. If I get consent, I'll post a few projects here. Video games, typefaces, simulations ... they've done it all this semester.

e-Waste

2009-04-16T20:22:00.003-05:00

I have a class to teach in Chicago tomorrow, so Found Friday is going to fall a bit early in the week. This time, it's a poster found strewn about the grass on campus. As e-Waste gets attention, traditional waste gets made.

Found Friday, Wrath and Patience Edition

2009-04-03T14:18:00.003-05:00

You're on the way to give your talk on God, in particular focusing on God's wrath and patience. At that exact moment, as you walk across the quad, God's wrath surfaces ... and you lose your note card.

Fortunately, God has patience, too, so as you stumble through your talk your listeners and God are understanding. Thank God.

Omegle Chat Box

2009-04-01T11:20:00.003-05:00

Chat boxes are old on the interwebs, but Omegle is a bit different, creating a one-on-one chat space w/ a perfect stranger. You don't need to sign in. You enter a chat box. Said stranger is in the box with you. The two of you chat until one person disconnects.

There is no topic, theme, or stated purpose to the encounter. Just a one-to-one connection.

I found Omegle via MW, who says she likes to confess things via the program. She's creative that way. As for me, connecting a few times to see what would happen, I found myself getting amazingly nervous. Kinda thrilled-nervous. A very strange feeling, created, I guess, by the "talk to strangers" vibe branded on the site.

You should try it. Oh, I should say that, in the four minutes I was on, I got called a "jew" and told that "Canada is a country you stupid fuck." These messages were strangely random.

For the record, I know about the country Canada.

Spam Poetry

2009-03-30T19:06:00.004-05:00

This came in via email under the spam filter; I kinda like it:

Garnish the dish with oranges and lemons in quarters there
can remain no important new facts to disclose, there was
movement among the bushes at the far of, ii.hospital, ii.projected
railway, ii.tashil, purchases them the arms of foreign soldiers,
by.

Birds and Music

2009-03-26T15:45:00.003-05:00

From Walter Garstang's 1922 Songs of the Birds.

Informatics of Everyday Life

2009-03-24T09:26:00.004-05:00

Yesterday I put this video up on Facebook, saying something like "Isn't this amazing?!" And it is. Funny, smart, and all about the information of daily life.

ML then showed me that it is a response to this video by Royksopp called "Remind Me," which is equally amazing.

The "Remind Me" video has a strong element of social critique going on, where as the Little Red Riding Hood story is much more purely about reducing daily life (and I guess narrative) to quantifiable information.

In 1998, I spent the year collecting every set of instructions I could find, pasting them into my offline journal. Instructions on how to assemble things, make things, and do things. Instructions are a terrific genre, with all their 1-2-3 logic; my personal favorites are instructions for doing intuitive things.

Which makes me think that an archive of instructions like this one would lend itself nicely to an interesting take on the informatics of daily living.

USPS Goes With PowerPoint ... Sans Presenter

2009-03-23T10:45:00.004-05:00

PowerPoint is usually used for presentions; the USPS is using it to disseminate information online ... sans presenter. This is kinda odd. Instead of going to a website to learn about the new envelope regulations, you can download a .ppt file and flip through the slides, my favorite of which is:

Found Friday

2009-03-20T08:51:00.004-05:00

From LN, a dedicated member of the research team here at Found Friday, we present this beauty. (FF Archive #343.34 BN)

Gogle.com, btw, redirects to Google.com, so no need to worry. I tweaked the names at the bottom of the image to preserve the anonymity of the young researcher or researchers who created this document.

Just Cool

2009-03-19T14:57:00.001-05:00

Blog Cleaning

2009-03-19T10:40:00.005-05:00

Cleaned up the blog a bit today. Lighter. Brighter. All of that. Post a comment if you're having view.problems and I'll try to rectify.

Five-Paragraph Essays for Obama

2009-03-18T09:14:00.004-05:00

The headline reads "Eduify Answers Obama's Call to Help Students With New Service." A press release, of course, part of which reads:

Eduify's research also shows that students often get stuck in different places during the typical academic writing process, for example, creating a thesis statement or outlining a five-paragraph essay. Eduify offers a variety of services to tackle these hurdles. These services include teacher-written tutorials and models on a variety of topics which are easily discovered to help students get started or past common problems fast. Additionally, the writing coach service offers tailored help--including proofreading and editing services for a fee--is available to make papers perfect before submission.

Post Conference

2009-03-17T11:07:00.006-05:00

Conferences can be fun, they can be interesting, they can be great for seeing and meeting people, but for me, the presentation part of a conference is often underwhelming. People don't show up. I get scheduled at a weird time. Or something goes wrong during the prez. At CCCC.2009, about 15 people attended our panel. In the three days since, three times that many viewers have viewed my presentation online.

A year-or-so-ago I presented at SLSA, and the conference organizers were cool enough to archive presentations after the conference. I like that. A conference, that way, isn't just an event that ends, but a collection of ideas that live on via web publication.

UPDATE: A detailed blog post by Elizabeth Losh covering the session.

CCCC 2009

2009-03-14T17:26:00.005-05:00

CCCC 2009 in San Francisco was really great: a wide range of topics, plenty of interesting exchanges, nice people, and food. Oh: walking too.

For me, the highlight of the conference was getting to go to so many panels on video games, mainly MMOs. As I'm just getting into this area of research, I learned a lot from what I heard and saw.

As I mentioned to a few people at the conference, my presentation is now online. It's on YouTube in two parts, both of which I'll syndicate below. I've also updated my web.projects page over at metaspencer.com, so you should be able to find the presentation there as well.

I received plenty of useful comments and questions (both in the panel and later in the hallways), so I post the presentation knowing that, in future iterations, I'll be able to pull the ideas together in some more interesting and robust ways.

Part I:

Part II:

UPDATE: A detailed blog post by Elizabeth Losh discussing the session at CCCC 2009.

Selective Filtering

2009-03-12T09:35:00.002-05:00

When selective filtering goes wrong. From over at amazon.com.

The Work that Goes into Conference Presentations

2009-03-06T16:32:00.004-06:00

My goodness, conference presentations can take forever to put together. I've been doing the media-part of my CCCC presentation ... for the past three days. Taking fore-ev-or. It reminds me of a video thing I put together a few years ago (for a conference) on Facebook; that one took a long time too.

What I do like about doing media-rich presentations, though, is that they tend to be a bit more durable than a regular old paper. I mean, I guess you can post a conference paper online; but who does?

So anyway: I'll try to post my prez in the next couple of days. Maybe even before the conference itself.

Facebook Suxion

2009-03-04T09:14:00.003-06:00

I've been experiencing a good deal of Facebook Suxion lately, defined as that force that Facebook exerts upon bloggers in particular, drawing energy from blogging and redirecting it to Facebook. So this blog has dwindled and spindled.

But in reading a very lively discussion over at D. Hawhee, Private Eye's blog, and in listening to Jeff Rice give an eloquent response (last night) to a question about blogging, I'm back here pushing against that Facebook Suckage.

A bit of history:

Upon learning some html in 2000, I coded a few "blogs" or blogish-type pages. One of them was this Busride Blog; another was called "Attention!" and seems to be lost now. (The only post I vividly remember from "Attention!" is one titled "Auto-Flush Toilets in the Age of Reason.") Anyway, at that point I was convinced that blogging platforms like Blogger were cheesy and that coding your own blog was the way to go. So I coded my own bloggish-type enterprises.

My DIY blogs morphed and changed; I incorporated a few into various homepages up through 2005 or 2006 (using iframes), and then I switched over to Blogger. Whatever, I thought to myself, Blogger is easy to use, so why not just go with it?

This week I'm finishing up work on a conference project that, two years ago, I first blogged about. I also have a chapter in my book-in-progress that began as a blog post on this here blog. This teaches me that to blog is to get going on ideas long in advance ... when they're fresh, new, and can be rough as hell.

So yeah: Facebook Suckage be damned, why not blog?

Recent Report

2009-02-24T09:28:00.003-06:00

Some discussion of the five-paragraph essay over the wire lately.

Five-Paragraph Essay: It's a Winner

2009-01-23T09:15:00.004-06:00

Lest you think the five-paragraph essay is a thing of the past, the headline reads Essay Wins Ticket to the Inaugural.

Oh, and the lucky winner claims to have written it in five minutes.

Essay Wins Tickets To Inaugural

By David Schultz/The Connection
Wednesday, January 21, 2009

DESPITE BEING a native of the Washington D.C. area, James Riviere had never been to a Presidential inauguration. That changed this week when Riviere had a reserved front row seat for the swearing in of President Barack Obama.

The Cabin John resident, who works for an international non-profit group in Arlington, had tickets to the swearing-in, the parade and an inaugural ball. After the ceremonies, he and a friend were scheduled to stay in a hotel in the District. And all of this was for free.

Riviere had won the Presidential Inaugural Committee’s “Ticket to History” essay writing contest. His five paragraph essay on what the inauguration means to him was one of 10 winners out of more than 250,000 submissions from across the country.

Riviere wrote about his experiences in Kenya as a Peace Corps volunteer in early 2008. Since Kenya is the ancestral homeland of Obama, Riviere said that excitement among Kenyans about his candidacy was unreserved. “Everyone knew Barack Obama,” he said, “And everyone was confident that he was The Man.”

Only a few days after Obama’s historic primary victory in Iowa, violence erupted across Kenya due to a disputed presidential election there. Riviere was forced to evacuate and, although he made it home safely to Montgomery County, he was saddened and disappointed that his Peace Corps tour of duty had been cut short.

READ ON AND SEE PART OF THE ESSAY.

Course Website Up for Spring 2009 Class

2009-01-09T12:24:00.003-06:00

I've taught this class before as an undergrad/grad class on writing technologies, but this semester it'll be a bit different. More web stuff, less historical tech stuff.

Xperimental

2009-01-04T13:55:00.001-06:00

A crawler I use pulled up a link to this page which has the following text. Oddly compelling odd text. I want to learn to write this way, all information to the max.

Audio kitchen found slides lost something? grocery lists noyes museum found by toby slater found by spencer schaffner found magazine. Installed option at a suggested price of about $200, what are the physics on a mousetrap car plus installation in addition, when does harlow shopping centre open la ford plans to add auxiliary audio tis the season for new gadgets also in tech: your guide to.

Fashion Shorts?

2008-12-22T08:20:00.002-06:00

Take the day off this Wesenday, and wear your fashion shorts!

(Thanks to LN for this one. Found in Champaign.)

DataMapping

2008-12-08T12:38:00.000-06:00

I thought I was hearing my name a lot lately. The BabyNameWizards are doing a nice job of visually representing name prevalence.

This reminds me of another mapper; this one of streets and sent to me by JS: BenFry.com

Big Willy Speaks Up

2008-12-05T13:32:00.001-06:00

Another comment on my post from July of 2006, this time with Big Willy writing into the blog:

this is true i love all these comments about not caring about the signs... really if they just built new skate parks for us maybe we wouldn't skate on their fucking property! screw the fucking popo sk8 or die mutha fucka!

~big willy~

Protect Your Environment with D Con!

2008-11-24T12:38:00.000-06:00

Gif of the Day

2008-11-21T15:31:00.002-06:00

Two Online Writing Tools

2008-11-11T08:44:00.000-06:00

Two anti-distraction writing tools this week, one a web app and another downloadable for Mac.

Write Or Die is a web window that will time and punish you while it obstreperously counts your words; WriteRoom takes over your desktop, basically disabling the myriad distractions that can get to you when you're trying to writing using a standard word processor.

WriteRoom looks more or less like this; little green type over a black background:

I used WriteRoom a bit this week to do some prewriting on a new chapter I'm writing, and kinda liked it ... for a while. I had some trouble bumping up the type size, and the red-squigglies were just too red in front of the black background ... but I like the idea. These apps try to return us to writing from the land of multitasking; they try to remind us that PCs were once just glorified typewriters.

Bird Ingestion Test Facility

2008-11-05T11:33:00.001-06:00

Sometimes research will take you in unforeseen directions. This image is of a bird ingestion test facility. The apparatus is for running birds through jet engines to see how the engines fare. We can guess what happens to the birds.

The image is taken from this in-depth discussion.

Restroom Ink

2008-11-03T09:19:00.002-06:00

A nice piece on restroom ink. But this one is even cooler: a dude who leaves a clean mark.

Tailenders

2008-10-29T13:48:00.001-05:00

The Tailenders, a documentary about evangelical efforts to spread the word ... using very nifty little low-tech record players. A video featuring the gizmo is here.

Another image of it in use is here.

It's playing on our campus this evening:
Free and Open to the Public
Wednesday, October 29, 2008, 7-9 p.m.
Knight Auditorium, Spurlock Museum, 600 S. Gregory St., Urbana

cnnbcvideo.com

2008-10-28T10:17:00.000-05:00

Ha! J.O. sends me a link to cnnbcvideo.com with a very funny auto-customized get-out-da-vote video. Perhaps you've seen it.

Album

2008-10-22T13:06:00.000-05:00

I just realized that because I use Blogger, and because Google bought Blogger, and because Google runs Picasa, by blogging on Blogger I now have inadvertently created this photo album of images posted to this blog.

If you don't want to explore the link, it looks something like this:

Found Balloon

2008-10-20T12:05:00.000-05:00

Found deflated balloon:

Coolest Conference of the Season

2008-10-15T21:14:00.000-05:00

BW, of former UIUC fame, sent me a heads-up about what I think is the coolest conference of the season: N O T E S – S K E T C H E S – S C R I B B L E S ... Writing and Drawing as Creative Tools.

The line-up is not all found notes or anything, but it does lean toward the handwritten and the scribbled. Zha!

Different Types of Graphic Narratives

2008-10-12T16:34:00.001-05:00

In prepping for the seminars I'm teaching this week and next, I put together a short list of different types of graphic narratives. Thought I'd post it here too. I'm kind of amazed at how broadly graphic narratives are productive. My fave categories: comic journalism and DIY.

Background
bayeux tapestry
Guaman Poma
New York World
Boondocks
The Far Side

Classic Comics
Batman
Wonder Woman

Graphic Novels
Chris Ware
Watchmen
League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
V for Vendetta

Memoir and Family Histories
American Born Chinese
Maus I, II, III
Citizen 13660
Persepolis 1 and 2
We Are on Our Own

Manga
Home Sweet Home
Inuyasha
Ranma 1.5

History
Berlin: City of Stones
Just the Facts
From Hell

Travel Journals
Carnet de Voyage
Shenzhen: A Travelogue From China

Making Graphic Narratives
Writing and Illustrating the Graphic Novel
The DC Comics Guides
Graphic Storytelling and Visual Narrative

Criticism and Theory
Graphic Novels: Everything You Need to Know
Scott McCloud

Graphic Biography
Graphic Biographies (Saddleback Publishing)
Che: Graphic Biography
Hoover: Graphic Biography
Malcolm X: Graphic Biography
Ronald Reagan: Graphic Biography

Do It Yourself (DIY)
Howtoons.com

Coming-of-Age Narratives
Blankets
Fun Home
Potential
Stuck in the Middle
Stuck Rubber Baby

Comic Journalism
Joe Sacco
War in the Neighborhood

Classic Literature (in comic form)
ClassicalComics.com
GraphicShakespeare.com

Eco Fur?

2008-09-29T14:49:00.001-05:00

From a link in the Seattle Times, Eco-Luxury Fur: a company claiming that wearing expensive furs is beneficial to the environment.

The hype-text on the website reads:

"[W]ithout any of the negatives often associated with fine furs." Huh? I can think of a few.

And this passage from the Independent:

"Fur is sustainable, recyclable, biodegradable," says Hutchings, who then goes on to argue that possum fur is a special case. "These animals would be killed anyhow, and the way the government does it is inhumane." Currently, the New Zealand government sprays pellets of poisonous sodium monofluoroacetate (1080) over large areas. "The animal is left out in the wild to rot, which can be a source of secondary poisoning, and there can be collateral poisoning if other animals eat the pellets," says Hutchings. Her possums are killed within 10 seconds using cyanide, or are trapped. The fur is processed without the use of artificial colours or preservatives, and made into cushions or throws that cost $200 (£112) for a cushion and $3,400 (£1,900) for a bedspread. "That the fur is ecologically compelling is icing on the cake. It feels luxurious and looks incredible," continues Hutchings, who thinks her throws can help climate change. Possum fur is the third warmest in the world, so snuggling under one of these bedspreads allows you to turn the thermostat down.

When I first heard of EcoTimber back in 1994, I got a bit worried that "eco" was being too widely affixed to things that weren't, but this "wear fur, help the environment" claim is just too much. Exterminating/managing an overly abundant invasive population is one thing; wearing the bodies of the creatures in order to participate in the historical luxuries of fur is another.

More on Political Speech

2008-09-29T09:59:00.002-05:00

If you're anywhere near UIUC, you prolly know already that employees of the U are required to keep their political views secreted away while at work. The other day, I posted this little chart which was sent to me through campus mail:

On my run, it occurred to me that all of the following are kosher, following this little table-graphic:

wearing a pin or t-shirt in support of the Green party
wearing a pin or t-shirt that reads "I'm voting for Trotsky!"
wearing a pin or t-shirt that reads "Vote for O'Bhamma"

Many work arounds exist, methinks, for those eager to embody their politics this election season.

Bad Directions

2008-09-23T09:43:00.001-05:00

I found this bad set of directions this morning on the walk in:

Why bad? While I generally prefer hand-written directions to the GoogleMapsified and MapQuestian varieties, these directions result in a route that looks like this:

That's right, with the jog up Neil in the middle, the traveler ends up making two extra turns and even cutting back to the east the tiniest bit. The following would be a much more efficient route to a N. Prospect destination:

Sometimes you find things, and they're just wrong. Which is why we have the Found Innitiative: to set things straight in this world.

No Pins Allowed

2008-09-19T10:16:00.000-05:00

I'm not a big pin wearer, so it is with relief that I see I won't be in violation of the law prohibiting political activity in my workplace:

Newberry Library Gig

2008-09-16T13:40:00.000-05:00

The description of my seminar up at the Newberry Library is online and reads:

Graphic Novels in the Language Arts Classroom
Spencer Schaffner, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
10/14/2008
One of the key challenges in teaching graphic narratives is convincing readers that a text that looks every bit like a simple comic requires more than minimal analysis and critical reading. Thoroughly understanding a graphic narrative means developing literacies that make sense of both visual and textual elements on a page. Certainly some of the most popular graphic narratives in recent years like Art Spiegelman's Maus: A Survivor's Tale and Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis require such skills. This seminar will include an overview of the graphic narratives currently available to readers, focused readings of specific texts, description of resources for teaching graphic narratives, and discussion of what kinds of activities work best when teaching graphic narratives. Our goal will be to develop both reading strategies and inventive activities for teaching

It will be fun.

David Foster Wallace Dead

2008-09-15T11:09:00.004-05:00

First shock to see that David Foster Wallace has killed himself with a length of rope, but then not really surprise, because he seemed pretty tortured. I only saw him read once, in Portland, and it was a spectacle: on stage with Sherman Alexie and a few other current notables, DFW was grubby and expectorating into a can the whole time. He looked pained. He evaded questions.

I once rode a ferry with a dude who said he didn't read the works of authors who had killed themselves. I scanned quickly and came up with a few favorites of mine who did: Virginia Woolf, Hemingway, Plath ... thought to myself "Why rule them out, just 'cause of that?"

But now, with DFW taking himself out of the game, I'm a bit bitter and unwilling to pick up one of the more current volumes that I have yet to read. But maybe I will. I mean, Broom of the System was not my favorite, but I really really liked the footnotes in Infinite Jest. Like really liked them. And the tennis stuff. And the ending.

UPDATE: I now see that it is becoming seen as clever to begin obits for DFW in a pseudo-David-Foster-Wallacian way. The one from the Washington Post reads:

In the footnotes of the brief life of David Foster Wallace, a reader might discover that in addition to penning one of the seminal novels of the latter 20th century, and in addition to trademarking a dizzying writing style populated with parentheticals and those brilliant footnotes, and in addition to becoming a symbol of pop culture and intelligentsia for a large segment of Generation X, the "Infinite Jest" author lived for a time in Normal, Ill.

And from the NYT:

David Foster Wallace, whose darkly ironic novels, essays and short stories garnered him a large following and made him one of the most influential writers of his generation, was found dead in his California home on Friday, after apparently committing suicide, the authorities said.

Kind of cheesy, but I think he'd giggle.

By Jove

2008-09-15T09:34:00.002-05:00

From PG, a link to a video sharing site ("Jove") for scientists to post videos about their experiments (and some text).

Found Friday

2008-09-12T09:17:00.000-05:00

Found in Urbana on the walk in to campus. Rubber band, plastic bag, plastic skateboard, repentance.

Bounty Hunting

2008-09-11T17:14:00.000-05:00

For the past few weeks, I've been tracking down some articles on Alaska's former bounty on Bald Eagles, which makes it sort of odd to see the recent press emerge on Palin's sponsorship of aerial "predator" control programs. From the Seattle PI

Predator control. Palin approved and expanded the state's aerial predator control program, where wolves are shot from aircraft and bears hunted from aircraft and killed upon landing. This year, her state biologists even dragged 14 newborn wolf pups from their den and, having already shot their parents, then shot each of the pups in the head at close range. Last year, her administration offered a $150 bounty for each wolf killed until the bounty was ruled illegal by the courts. Hundreds of wolves are killed each year by this antiquated state program that has no scientific justification whatsoever, but rather is designed to appease Palin's urban sport hunter supporters.

Google pulls up many more pieces relating to this here.