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"There is nothing so impossible in nature, but mountebanks will undertake; nothing so incredible, but they will affirm."

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Books–the things

Gutenberg BibleBible as MagazineOnReligion.com points me to an intriguing exhibition at the Huntington Library (too bad I’m on the other side of the country!), “The Bible and the People,” exploring the history of the book that we call the Bible–its status as a physical, obtainable object, and how that object has been regarded through history.

Our story begins in the eleventh century, when the Bible was available only in expensive, hand-copied manuscripts–the exclusive property of clerics and a small Latin-educated elite, nearly all male. Manuscript Bibles could be breathtakingly beautiful, but they could also be inaccurately transcribed and confusingly formatted, their constituent books in varying sequences, their chapters and verses unmarked. As active participants in a Bible-saturated culture, ordinary people were familiar with scripture, but not as a text to read or a book to own.
Our story ends, however, in a very different world: the current Bible marketplace, with its extraordinary number of translations, formats, and versions designed to appeal to readers of every age, race, native language, reading ability, and budget. Today the Bible is the best-selling and the most widely distributed book in the world.

Lately I’ve been reading a lot of “books” on my Palm Pilot-so these “books” have no true physical existence. But some of my favorite objects are physical, bound, books-and even the smell of a large collection of used books can give me a certain thrill of excitement.

I have a guilty addiction to the “Reality TV” and “Home Improvement” shows we have here in the US (“Trading Spaces,” “While You Were Out” and so on), and the thing I constantly notice in the homes on these shows is how very, very, few books I see. Usually there are none at all. Do people even have books in their houses? My main “home decorating” concern has always been finding enough shelf space for the stacks, piles, of books which are always littering my living space.

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Avatar Maker

A fresh breezeIn salute to Patrick O’Brian, I’ve generally used this little animated version I “derived” from a Geoff Hunt print as my avatar in any online forum where I was allowed to use one. It’s a nice little picture, and I enjoy looking at it, so I assume others do, too. I don’t know how much it really represents me, but I got very accustomed to it, and it seems at least as appropriate as most of the other avatars I see around.

Me?Really Me?But in setting up my own Xanga blog, as part of the experiment of having my 095 students do the same, I decided to use an avatar (they call it a “profile pic” at Xanga) that would maybe look more like me. I remembered that I had seen this fun Portrait Illustration Maker linked on the Scribbling Woman blog some time ago. The students had a great time creating their own pictures, although (of course, as recommended) not all of them used them on their blogs. But now, from walking through it with the students, I’ve got two of myself. Which is Jekyll? and which is Hyde?

And now, in joining a new forum or two, I’m wondering whether to use one of these new, but more traditional, portraits, or my old familiar ship of the line.

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Stoop Sailing

What other people in other parts of the world call garage sales, or yard sales, here in Brooklyn we call stoop sales (or stupid sales!). In the time-honored tradition of transferring my garbage to someone else’s house, I’m sitting on the stoop, looking forlorn, hoping someone will buy (name your price!) a small portion of our junk.

Luckily, the wireless connection reaches to the stoop!

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We’re number Three!

Unfortunately, I don’t have a link, but I’m told (thanks, mikepd!) that Reader’s Digest this month lists the 10 colleges that are “tops at combining great academics with low tuition or generous aid packages.” And CUNY ranked, nationwide, third! University of North Carolina was first and Amherst College second, and I guarantee we’re right on their tails!

Woohoo!

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How Bush gets the “WOT” wrong

An excellent analysis from the Legal Fiction blog of just how (and how badly) the Bush administration has bungled the “War on Terror.” Truly sensible reasoning, pointing out the exact flaws in the strategy. They’re fatal flaws (I hope not literally fatal), and they’re flaws to which the administration is one hundred per cent wedded. They’re repeating them to this very day.

the fundamental error was the belief that nation-states are the most relevant actors in the war on terror. In reality, modern terrorism is “transnational,” meaning that it is funded and supported by networks of individuals who are actually hostile to most of the governments in the Middle East. The 9/11 Commission notes this over and over and over – and “transnational” was the word it used. It’s very similar to organized crime. And what I learned is that the Clinton administration realized the dimensions of the new terrorism too, well before the Bush administration took office.

But the Bush administration did not adapt to this new world. In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz wanted to invade Iraq rather than Afghanistan. These men are not dumb. In fact, they’re brilliant. And their theory wasn’t crazy – it just had outdated assumptions. They were working from the premise that terrorism cannot exist without state support. It was a lesson they learned from their Cold War training, and the exchanges with Libya in 1986 and Iraq in 1993 (Bush’s assassination attempt). The lesson was that if you strike the root (the nation-state sponsor), the terrorism will wither on the vine. That explains perfectly the rationale for invading Iraq (to the extent it was related to terrorism) – it was to scare nation-states in the hopes they would stop supporting terrorism.

That also explains why they pushed so hard for missile defense prior to 9/11. They saw the most urgent threats as coming from rogue nation-states, rather than transnational terrorists. The fact that they continue to propose spending loads of money on missile defense makes me question whether they’ve learned anything from the past four years.

But however brilliant Bush’s advisors may be, they were wrong. Terrorism evolved, and they failed to realize that it had. What’s so especially tragic is that their misconceptions led to them to adopt a strategy (i.e., invading Iraq) that was actually counterproductive to battling the new terrorism. Again, you must remember always that we’re in a battle for the soul of the Middle East – we are not fighting a finite group of existential enemies that can be eliminated through force. The more the Arab world hates us, the stronger the fundamentalists will become, and vice-versa. When the anger rises, so does the level of financial support, volunteering, and public sympathy.

That’s why things like Abu Ghraib, General Boykin, and the fighting in Najaf’s holy cemetery are so absolutely devastating to our effort – more so than perhaps our national press realizes. It’s not just that they inflame public opinion, it’s that these actions fulfill the stereotype of the West as imperial Arab-oppressors and Islam-haters. And this of course meshes perfectly with bin Laden’s propaganda, and it makes it more palatable to young, angry, alienated Arabs. If you sat down and tried to think of the worst possible ways to combat Islamic terror (and political Islam more generally), invading Iraq would be near the very top of the list. It’s strange that men as brilliant as Wolfowitz, Perle, and Feith could be so colossally wrong about Iraq (assuming they’re being sincere as to the motives for invading). But they were. And our troops (and their families) are paying the price. (emphasis in the original)

There’s much more, and that’s just a small slected part of Part One of his analysis (Part Two deals with the domestic failures–less comprehensive an analysis, but just as accurate). A great read.

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Theocracy…

Slate reports that at least one speaker at the Republican convention has gone off-script to flash a sign of what’s really behind their facade of “we’re just moderates, not scary at all, we want to be friends, but we’re misunderstood.” We know what far too many of them really think, even if they’ve been instructed not to say it…

Mississippi congressional candidate Clinton LeSueur strays from President Bush’s carefully inclusive religious rhetoric. Instead of making the nonsectarian statement in his prepared text–“The very foundation of this country is faith”–LeSueur says, “The very foundation of this country is Christianity and faith in Jesus Christ.”

And in the New York Times, we see that they really want to turn us (NYC) into some kind of Stepford-shadow of them (“God’s Country”):

“I left God’s country,” said Leon Mosley of Waterloo, Iowa, co-chairman of his state party. “They could use a bunch of people from Iowa to come here to show New Yorkers what life is all about, what being patriotic is all about, and what country is all about. I’m as confident about Bush being re-elected as I am that eggs are going to be in New York tomorrow morning.”

Well, tomorrow (or a day or so later), there are going to be eggs in New York (scrambled on a roll with bacon), and Leon Mosley can go right back to Iowa where he belongs, to await the destruction of all his confidence come November.

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First day of class

Three classes in a row–all meeting for the first time–makes for a very long day. But it also reminds me of why I like this job. Walking into a room of recalcitrant, reluctant, uncertain, edgy, vulnerable people, and breaking that ice, kickstarting that engine, beginning the work of building a class–it’s invigorating. I get out all charged up, jumping and running, and it’s a rolling momentum that carries me through the day.

It was a bit weird this time, teaching more than I expected to, and a course that I’d rather avoid (our ENG 095). I also had the three classes, not in the computer labs, and I had to give them some kind of introduction (warning?) about the tech work we’re doing in each one. And in two of them, it’s projects I’ve never even attempted before. They’ll see it in more detail later–but at this point they just have to trust me. And the really fun thing is that…they do! 🙂

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Windows XP SP2

I took the leap today, against all advice, and installed Windows XP Service Pack 2 on my laptop. It was a little slow to install, but completely painless, and seems to have caused absolutely no problems (so far). I’ll subject it to some heavy testing before putting it on the other machines, though.

No major improvements, except for a very slight (very slight) advantage in blocking more pop-ups (which I know courtesy of a great site for testing that–thanks, Gregg!) than the Google Toolbar alone was getting (I do love the Google Toolbar! :-)). Of course I know that the best way to block them is to just stick to Firefox, but there are some sites (mostly with java and javascript, or other plugins), where the Fox doesn’t quite work right. Contrariwise, however, there are some purposes (like disabling that nasty WYSIWYG toolbar in Blackboard, as well as avoiding popups and security flaws) for which Firefox is absolutely the best solution.

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Library Hotspot

Brooklyn Public LibraryI took my daughter to the Central Branch of the Brooklyn Public Library today. It’s always been one of my favorite libraries. I used to spend many hours there, and I’ve always loved it for many reasons–the shape (when viewed from above, it’s an open book), the soaring wood-panelled central gallery, the tuna sandwiches in the upstairs cafeteria (sadly closed to the public now), the little squirrels on the entrance gates to the children’s reading room, the way the light streams in through the windows on the park side in the afternoon. I’ve even memorized the motto engraved on the facade (to the right of the doors):

Here are enshrined the longings of great hearts, and noble things that rise above the tide; the magic word that wingéd wonder starts; the garnered wisdom that has never died.

I always thought that was pretty cool–but what’s that word “things” doing in there? I’ve no idea who wrote it, and a google search comes up empty.

So today I found that not only is it the same wonderful library I spent so many hours enjoying while in graduate school, but they now offer free wireless broadband! Of course, when I was in graduate school, I had no laptop, and there was no internet (wireless, broadband, or anything at all) until just at the very end, but still–what a pleasant place to spend an afternoon.

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Blackboard vs. ???

A post I read on the CUNY Senate-Forum listserv (from which I seem, suddenly, to be banned–maybe not inexplicably–but that’s another story) made me think about how Blackboard is good for some things…and how there are some other things that for which it’s definitely not good. Or not as good as the alternatives.

In that post, my colleague George Otte gave a very cogent and accurate defense against the uninformed charges that Blackboard hurts academic freedom (the administrative access to courses could allow “spying” on what instructors are doing) and promotes undesirable conformity (because of the uniform interface). I was glad he was so clear on that.

But he also mentioned, briefly, that he thought that Bboard could handle any of the tasks and purposes of electronic portfolios. The only problem with that is that Bboard (especially now that we’re on this centrally-controlled CUNY server) is distinctly a closed system. Students can do portfolios within Bboard, but they’re not accessible to anyone outside the course. So using them for a permanent resource, or for assessment by anyone other than the professor for that course, becomes impossible.

I had this discussion last year, on the subject of blogs, with a different colleague. I was of the opinion that Bboard could really do anything that a blog could do, accomplishing all the same goals, but she pointed out–and easily persuaded me–that the public nature of blogs was an essential feature, and one that Bboard can never offer.

This is why I’m using the CourseForum for portfolios (rather than Bboard) and why I’m using Xanga (rather than Bboard) for blogs.

Of course, Bboard still does Discussion Boards reasonably well–so I’ll certainly use it for that, and for the standard course management and course information tasks, it does offer an exceptionally user-friendly and simple interface.

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