Ron Silliman highlights Greenblatt's argument that Shakespeare's true innovation was the creation of opaque characters and plots. Read the post for details and a large number of comments.
(via The Valve)
The Little Professor links to an article by Stanley Fish on his method of teaching Freshman Composition. Fish writes:
Most composition courses that American students take today emphasize content rather than form, on the theory that if you chew over big ideas long enough, the ability to write about them will (mysteriously) follow. The theory is wrong. Content is a lure and a delusion, and it should be banished from the classroom. Form is the way.
I absolutely agree with this. If the goal is to teach students how to write, content should be irrelevant. Fish has his students create their own language, an intriguing exercise. The LP points out, however:
Still, as Sean McCann notes, Fish cleverly avoids the central question: "does the assignment in fact make students better writers?" But Fish also avoids the pink grammar handbook in the room: do students actually learn to write in freshman composition?
McCann elaborates:
The whole approach seems backward to me. The problem with teaching writing is not that it’s too content driven, but rather that it’s already overformalized. Students can’t learn to express a thought well or argue an idea forcefully by mastering, or building, a model. They need to have an interest in clear or forceful expression. Alas, having a thought or an argument is really the hardest part about writing. The problem with most writing pedagogy--Fish’s included--is that, pushing content aside, it teaches students that their ideas and convictions are of secondary importance. No surprise if they don’t learn how to write well in that context.
So, now that I've made it unnecessary for you to read the linked material, even though it's all fascinating stuff, I guess I should proffer some thoughts, just in case anyone still reads this blog (I'm tempted to make a joke about driving off our last few readers, but I know you're all nerds). This is a topic I've been thinking about fairly regularly lately, in preparation for my first teaching assignment. I'll be following someone else's syllabus at first, which, while an understandable tactic on the school's part, is still constraining. The texts chosen make it clear that the department wants to focus on content: the working poor. It's endearingly liberal and optimistic. The expensive private university I attend (I'm on the dole, of course) is overrun by shallow rich kids, so the professors who devised this topic were no doubt congratulating themselves on forcing the students to confront the Plight of the Working Poor in America. While I do think that the privileged clueless should confront these issues, I intend to focus less on the content of the texts than on the form and the often futile attempt to teach basic grammar. Trying to make the kids feel guilty about their (parents') wealth seems like a distraction and unlikely to have any lasting impression anyway. If they're inclined toward sympathy, then they probably already have an inchoate social conscience; if not, I doubt any amount of proseltyzing with cause them to develop one. So, as I said, I'm going to focus on grammar. We'll see how it goes. Maybe some students will actually leave my class knowing what subject-verb agreement is. I'm sure it will make for good blog fodder either way.
Tonight I stood up for my rights. Ok, ok. That's a bit dramatic. I did, however, tell a cop he could not search my car, pissing him off in the process. On the way home from a nice Memorial Day cookout with the family, I was pulled over by a small-town cop for looking suspicious. My crime? Waving my hands around as we drove past him; I was pretend-conducting a symphony, a particularly deviant form of behavior. Once he pulled me over, he saw that my vehicle registration was expired, so wrote a ticket for that. He got me out of the car to ask a few questions (phone number, etc.) and explain to me how I could take care of the citation. Then, as cops love to do, he asked me if I had any weapons or narcotics in the car. I told him "no." He then asked if he could search my car and I again told him, as is my right, "no." He was convinced I had some contraband in my car, even going so far as to tell me that if there was anything in there, we could work something out, maybe just a citation. I stood firm, so he decided to try and get my pregnant wife (still in the car) to give him permission to search (it's technically her car). She also told him "no." After he couldn't brow-beat her into letting him search the car, he gruffly told me I was free to go. I told him to have a nice day and drove away, happy to see him pissed off. What a sweet feeling to stand up for your rights in the face of unnecessary and unjustified harassment. As I told my wife, if only the guilty exercise their rights, those rights will eventually be taken away.
Someone figured out how to create custom book images on Amazon. While the process itself is fairly interesting, the images he's got in the gallery are the real prize. Some great stuff in there.
(via Crooked Timber)
The blog might be unavailable for a while later today. We're swapping servers to an upgraded box, prompted in part by getting hacked (quickly dealt with) around 4am. Of course, we've already managed to drive a lot of our traffic away by not posting regularly, so it shouldn't be too much of a problem.
A friend sent me Kittenwar. I have dutifully added my own cats here, here, here, and here. If you see them, vote for them.*
*This also counts as cat-blogging.
It's been around a couple of years already, so you've probably already heard about Skype, but if not, check it out. It's a good voice-over-IP client that lets you chat with friends (who have mics and speakers/headphones) anywhere for free. You can also do regular IMs and transfer files (unlimited size). I bring it up mainly to let you, dear reader, know that I'm on there and would like to chat with you. My handle should be easy enough to figure out, so gimme a call.
Here's a fun game that creates a montage of google searches and scores your ability to guess the key. The only problem I've had is that sometimes the google images server hang at times.
(via Aeiou)
If I had $80 to blow, I would buy one of these.
Laudator temporis acti posts two passages about Archimedes, one of the greatest mathematicians ever to live. He is a fascinating character in the pantheon of math geniuses. Had he lived longer, it's not too unreasonable to suspect he might have discovered calculus a couple of thousand years early. The quotes also point out one of the biggest problems with the Greeks: their belief that only the life of the mind is dignified. If they had felt differently, perhaps they might have been technologically advanced enough to repel and overcome the Romans.
Novices looking to quickly improve their chess game could do much worse than this list of chess tactics. Naturally tactics are nothing without strategy, but that takes longer to learn. Also, there are good online chess sites that are email-based, allowing days or week to think about a move. RedHotPawn is a good one.
I was watching "Cold Case Files" last night and saw a piece on the unsolved Zodiac murders in California during the late 70s. They mentioned the canonical website for the issue, which has some great message boards with good discussions. Since this case has been around decades, the information is fairly old (and the prime suspect is dead), but it's interesting stuff. One of the few times I've watched a forensics show where they examined an unsolved case and wasn't pissed at the ending. Speaking of forensics, why do people watch CSI? The real stuff is far more interesting.
Well, the Spurs looked better than the Suns the entire game. Barry? Nuts. Looks like Parker's getting his game back, too, and just in time. He was slow throughout the last round and I don't think the Spurs can win without his consistent scoring.
The league should really cut the regular season in half. Right now, everyone goes into the playoffs hurt (Duncan, Shaq, etc.) but then has to play the real games. That's the great thing about the NFL; the truncated season intensifies the play and focuses the teams. Ah well, go Spurs.*
*!
I assume everyone has either seen Revenge of the Sith by now or has heard enough so that spoilers no longer exist. If not, stop reading. I saw it last night and found it mediocre, really no better than Episode II; for detailed reasons, you can read this, as I pretty much agree with everything he writes. Anakin's shift to the dark side is thoroughly unconvincing; it takes place in about two seconds. I realize that the strength of Star Wars has never, ever been the dialogue, the acting, the characters, or the plot, but even so, his "fall" was particularly unimpressive. Given that all six of the movies hinge almost entirely on special effects, I suppose this one is successful in that regard. There are some good battle scenes. Grievous, however, was singularly disappointing. He's a bad-ass in the Clone Wars cartoon series, but here he's beaten easily. Also, who ever heard of a coughing robot? It's ridiculous, even if he does have lungs. And Yoda talks too much. The reason his tangled syntax works in the original trilogy is because he rarely spoke. He talks way too much in eps I–III to keep up the Germanic syntax. It would be far better had they allowed him to speak normally every-other sentence or so. Then his odd speaking would seem more realistic, like someone who just hadn't quite mastered the language and made occasional mistakes. Not some brain-damaged lizard. Bah; just go see Kung-Fu Hustle. It's far more enjoyable. Of course, everyone in America is now required by law to see Revenge of the Sith in the theaters, so I know you'll all go see it. It's entertaining and not a complete waste of time, but be sure to keep your expectations as low as Phantom Menace set them.
For a massive listing of audio blogs broken down by genre, check out this Tofu Hut post. Is it sad that the title of the blog excited/intrigued me?
(via del.icio.us)
Akin to group hug, but with more interesting graphics, PostSecret scans anonymous postcards with short confessions on them and shares them online. The postcard format allows people not only to confess, but to do so in a visually creative way.
(via Marginal Revolution)
Crooked Timber has a brief post with an interesting discussion right now about footnotes and their variations. Specifically, they're asking what the most interesting ones people have read are. Personally, I'm sick of them, but that's just because I've been editing other people's notes for over a month now; they're always a mess, as I mentioned earlier. My favorite is when an essay using footnotes (not endnotes) has pages where over half the page consists of notes. You might see three lines of the essay and 30 of notes. It's always interesting to find that sort of thing. Why don't they just put that information in the essay itself? I don't mind reading digressions.
Per RP's request in the comments and to keep the blog from going completely dead, I will now explain the difference between "that" and "which" and restrictive and non-restrictive clauses, drawing largely from Strunk and White's Elements of Style since they explain it quite nicely. As I wrote before, "that" is used in restrictive clauses and "which" is used in non-restrictive clauses. A non-restrictive clause is a dependent clause that provides information that is not essential to the meaning. Strunk and White write:
A non-restrictive clause is one that does not serve to identify or define the antecedent noun.The audience, which had at first been indifferent, became more and more interested.
As you can see, the sentence would still make sense were the non-restrictive clause that begins with "which" dropped. A restrictive clause, then, is one that is essential to the meaning of a sentence. As another example, here's one that a professor of mine once used:
Restrictive: The car that is in the garage belongs to my mother.Non-restrictive: The car, which is in the garage, belongs to my mother.
In the first case, the use of a restrictive clause to designate the car implies that there is another car, perhaps in the driveway, thus requiring that the speaker specify which car is meant. In the second case, the information about the car's location is superfluous.
Of course, in everyday speech, we often use "which" rather than "that" for restrictive clauses, hence the common confusion on this topic.
On a related note, this is useful for me as I will be teaching freshman rhetoric (grammar and composition) next year. It should be painful, but instructive.
Ever tried to track down a really great sample from an album? Check out this site that compiles a large range of them for you in a nice graphical interface. It is teh bomb.
Alas, dear readers, our slumbering blog must continue its rest awhile longer. I know that two of our contributers are still busy with school—one finishing his already late thesis, the other dealing with finals—and I, unfortunately, am occupied editing articles for an upcoming Festschrift for a renowned medievalist. I find it interesting that even a firmly-ensconced academic, who shall remain unnamed, with a towering reputation and an otherwise lucid prose style fails to understand the grammatical distinction between the restrictive "that" and the nonrestrictive "which." As Strunk and White write: "The careful writer, watchful for small conveniences, goes which-hunting, removes the defining whiches, and by so doing improves his work." Of course, given the horrid condition of some manuscripts, those that only err in this one small matter are a welcome respite. Even worse than the prose, however, are the notes. Invariably, regardless of author, they are a mess. They lack key information like place of publication or page number; they fail to conform to the publisher's preferred style or, sometimes, any style whatsoever; and they are riddled with typographical errors. Well-heeled notes and grammar are points of pride for me in every paper I write. I suppose that's simply a result of my status as neophyte. Maybe once and if I ever finish and get a job, then I can stop worrying about such things, thus causing another poor editorial assistant the same headaches I now experience.