How I Read Plans

Plan Archive

10/11/03-11/03/03
9/21/03-10/10/03
8/21/03-9/20/03
8/11/03-8/20/03
6/2/03-7/21/03
5/5/03-5/9/03
4/26/03-5/4/03

I've been meaning to post almost exactly what [brownj] said about the Dean campaign's dismal week. The story with the Gephardt staffer was a misstep, and the Confederate flag thing was a dreadful, dreadful mistake.

Are there responsible cat-friendly students who will be in Grinnell over Thanksgiving and/or Christmas who would like to make a little money looking after my cats (and another faculty member's)? I hear my regulars are unavailable. Any leads appreciated.

Onion: from the Defensive Dept. on Iraq

The best pumpkin page in the world? Among many other things, it answers the question, "What is a Pumpkin Chunkin"? Oh, and [davisam] has a great costume memory.

The last few days of Talking Points Memo are really, really interesting.

[cadmus]: have you see the virtual planetarium?

Happy Hallowe'en! [brownj], you should definitely go as an ecological concept! And Terpsichore is a great idea for a child's costume.

My costumes from the past--none as good as Terpsichore--include Casper the Friendly Ghost (ca. age 6), the sky (24), a card with a kind of Heidegerrian meditation on costumes beginning "How does a costume costume" that I handed to anyone I talked to at a party (25), and pregnant me--not cross-dressed, just pregnant (29). Who's got other wacky ones?

Nice to meet you, [billupsm]. Your nickname reminds me of a reading I saw David Sedaris do in Philadelpha of his story, "You Can't Kill the Rooster." His imitation of his brother ("The Rooster") is hi-larious. And you can see the video of that reading here by following the first link. Warning: Sedaris uses naughty language at times. Beware! Beware!

Craic from [jansonp] arrived, with a lovely note! Many thanks, Per. We're looking forward to reading the craic. I am a big fan of She Stoops to Conquer from way back. And I love the story of your fishy activism. I believe I had fish and chips from their original location when I was in Dublin, but I might be wrong.

[tarullom] finds Woolf ubiquitous in India. Hmm. Hi, Mary! Those in London might enjoy this map of characters' walks in Mrs. Dalloway. Woolf materials on the Web are finally reaching a point where they're worth paying attention to.

[greenbrm]: for the record, I don't think of myself as a stickler for spelling on timed, in-class exams. This is about my general approach, not your exam specifically, which I wouldn't discuss and don't remember that clearly anyway. I tend to accept, say, "Colerige" for "Coleridge." (That is, I note the correction but don't take off points. Spelling the author's name incorrectly in a paper is another matter.) Exam answers that lose points for spelling are ones that contain multiple errors or that I see as misspelled so thoroughly that they don't reassure me that the student knows how to say the word in question. On the last exam, the Latin (Biographia Literaria) and Greek (strophe, antistrophe, epode) terms generally caused the most problems, IIRC.

Hey, [borovsky]'s here! Welcome!

Hooray! Our friend J.C. Luxton--a writer and actor whom you met if you were in my section of English 120 two years ago--gets a rave review playing Hamlet in the Quad Cities. We'll see him tomorrow night. He and a friend started this Shakespeare company last year when they got a hundred bucks and the use of a small space; they did a really good Measure for Measure, which J.C. directed, casting everybody who auditioned and making great things happen. (It also more than sold out.) Inspiring.

[weimerda], watch out for the allure of old books. That bug bites. So you've seen the 1798 Lyrical Ballads; is it not an astonishingly modest little thing? I was surprised when I first saw it, as in, "You mean this did that?" It took me many visits to the British Library before it occurred to me to order up LB just for the heck of it. I've looked at lots of very rare and valuable books in the course of my research, but I'll remember that one for a while.

[perinoju], the idea is that you need the Classical background for the first half of the British literature survey.

This is really interesting: Google might link with world library catalogs, even adding a feature that will tell you the closest copy of a book from a given ZIP code. I love Internet innovation that takes us back to books.

---

a: "See, free nations are peaceful nations. Free nations don't attack each other. Free nations don't develop weapons of mass destruction."--G. W. Bush, Milwaukee, Wis., Oct. 3, 2003

b: U.S. Develops Lethal New Viruses

a + b = ?

---

Why songs stick in your head

Extreme Pumpkin Carving

Harry Potter Hurts Heads of Children

What the Second Amendment does and doesn't mean

Addendum: [maness], [cadmus] (welcome!), [brownj]: is it really true that taking a year off before grad school is a sign of being "wishy-washy" in astronomy and/or the sciences more generally? I'm really surprised to hear [maness] think so, since top English programs see time off as neutral or positive. Or am I misunderstanding the point?

Paper-plate origami

The linguistics of politics

Evidence that Warhol appraisers haven't studied their literary theory

Returning to rock-paper-scissors: the tournament is over and you can now study strategy.

[jansonp], that's a lovely bit of minstrelsy history--I've emailed it to myself for proper filing. You're right that this episode is an "odd blend of Irish minstrelsy and the American vaudeville version." My graduate work was only about the Irish and British side of that, but since I came here I've been working on the transition between "minstrelsy" as the Irish-British nostalgic literature peaking from 1770 to 1830 and "minstrelsy" as the mode of blackface performance that was the dominant form of American popular entertainment for about a century starting in the 1830s. I think the transition between the two minstrelsies is more seamless and the overlap between them more significant than Americanists' accounts have acknowledged, but I'm only beginning to be able to make the case in detail. I will be able to look at a good archive in Austin in the spring, however. (Thanks, Grinnell!)

[andersem], the Stylebook is great. And on politics, I agree with what you're saying as the most likely scenario, but I can imagine a third candidate sneaking into an interesting position if Dean fades in the face of Clark's targeted campaign. Could Kerry do well enough early and late to build up delegates and squeak through the middle? I wonder, but I admit I'm hardly an expert on the later stages of this process. What do you think of Clark's chances?

By the way, her reaction to the present Iraq debate ("We blew the place up; we have to fix it") has solidified Braun as my clear favorite among the hopeless candidates. Dean's attempt (a clever one, IMO) to find a middle ground by saying that the reconstruction money should be approved but tied to rollbacks of tax cuts may work well on that issue, but it increases his vulnerability on middle-class tax rates. I commented on that recently, and William Saletan has now addressed the point in more detail.

Oh--and according to President Bush, the recent decrease in violence Iraq meant that things were going well. But the more recent spike in violence apparently means things are going even better! Check it out. And why is it always news that Bush will keep the troops in Iraq despite the attacks? Surely nobody thinks an immediate withdrawal is a possibility. I don't understand how anyone could even see it as a good thing, though apparently some protesters do.

On the other hand, I think the administration is absolutely right to insist on reconstruction aid taking the form of grants rather than loans. Iraq does need a whale of a lot of financial help, and that help needs to be in the form of grants for the new government to prosper. Many Democrats are betraying their own best traditions by trying to convert U.S. aid from grants to loans, and the administration is indulging in vile hypocrisy by making that point and then celebrating World Bank and IMF loans to Iraq as if it's the same as grant aid. They're all getting this wrong, say I. Ugly.

I just heard about Andrea Schmidt. I didn't know her, and I don't know what happened, but I do know a lot of people must be suffering now. My condolences to you.

Monday, October 27th

"The best way to get the news is from objective sources. And the most objective sources I have are people on my staff who tell me what's happening in the world." --G.W. Bush

Arr! No Pirates Allowed!

Actors: check out the thoughts of your ancestors in The Actors Remonstrance (1643) and The Stage-Players Complaint (1641)

Speaking of acting, this is way, way too weird to be true. The guy playing Jesus in the controversial (because arguably anti-Semitic) Mel Gibson film about Jesus has been struck by lighting. On the set. Twice.

I couldn't root for the Yankees when push came to shove. Good for the Marlins. It's still a lame result compared to the other wonderful possibilities, though.

Physical pain and emotional pain stimulate the same sections of the brain. Emotional shocks are as much like physical blows, and vice versa, as the metaphors have always implied.

This game is simple yet tantalizing.

Bad astronomy in movies

Elizabeth Barrett Browning is the goods. From Aurora Leigh:

Or else I sat on in my chamber green,
And lived my life, and thought my thoughts, and prayed
My prayers without the vicar; read my books,
Without considering whether they were fit
To do me good. Mark, there. We get no good
By being ungenerous, even to a book,
And calculating profits,-so much help
By so much rending. It is rather when
We gloriously forget ourselves, and plunge
Soul-forward, headlong, into a book's profound,
Impassioned for its beauty and salt of truth-
'Tis then we get the right good from a book.

I was going to post about Amazon.com's remarkable new full-text capability, but [archerda] beat me to the punch and asks me about "the implications of Amazon's search function in your research and field." I don't think there will be much of an impact, honestly. The primary advantage of the Amazon feature seems to be that you can establish webs of references; by searching for references to an important critic's name or an article title, I could find books on the same topic. However, scholars have mechanisms for doing that sort of thing already, and a lot of information doesn't emerge in book form. Therefore, I see the Amazon function as a shiny new tool to play with as a hobbyist rather than a research tool. An illustration: I think Bartleby.com's reference section is much more useful for my professional work, but even that has had only a tiny impact so far.

In general, the technologies that have changed literary study most quickly and dramatically have been those that focus research energies rather than diluting them. This is why academic listservs have caught on so quickly: people ask questions there and get expert advice on what sources to consult, for example, rather than another wave of sources from electronic databases or catalogs. The really valuable technologies right now (and the really valuable colleagues and mentors) are the ones that help us know what not to read.

I hope it's clear that I'm not downplaying the impact of technology on my field in general. Perhaps I'll talk about what I see as the really important developments soon.

---

If John Kerry had entered the race late rather than Wes Clark, can you imagine the coverage? A candidate with solid but not too frightening liberal creds, a military background like Clark, and experience neither Clark nor Dean can match! And a huge personal fortune! I see all of this, and I've liked Kerry's Presidential potential since I lived in MA after college, but I think he and his campaign have blown it. I've read articles saying that the problem is that he can't explain his vote for the Iraq resolution briefly--"in two sentences" is the phrase I've seen. I don't buy that. His position is pretty straightforward: he says he voted for the resolution based on assurances from Powell and the administration about their plans, but he was betrayed when they didn't follow through on those assurances, so it makes sense that he voted for the resolution but now criticizes the war and reconstruction. (One sentence!) The position makes sense, and I think people understand it. It's just a tough position to try to defend because it won't strike any major constituency as being quite right: to people who support the war, it sounds critical, especially when Kerry votes against funding for reconstruction; those who opposed the war from the start remember that plenty of people called for voting against the resolution to force a new one that would not be a blank check. Liberal Democrats aren't going to buy the idea that having faith in the administration's abilities was a good idea, and moderates aren't going to buy Kerry's more recent (and much less defensible, IMO) vote against the $87 billion. That, in my humble opinion, is why the ideal paper candidate isn't taking over this race, even though each of his votes seemed pragmatic at the time. Kerry's right to say (with increasing insistency) that Dean's war position shifted--he once said that he thought Iraq had WMD, then said he never really bought it--but I think that criticism isn't sticking because Dean has for many weeks used rhetoric that avoids the issue to go after bigger problems with the administration's rhetoric. Kerry needs a bigger and more current point that will help people understand why Clark's and Dean's current rhetoric creates problems that he solves. Hitting Dean on middle-class tax rates might have worked before Clark entered the race, but I don't think an economic emphasis can fend off Clark. With all that, however, I really can see Kerry winning the nomination as a compromise candidate by Lieberman's logic that this is not a time for rookies. That might end up being a very powerful argument.

By the way, I really hope [woodardg]'s needlessly inflammatory invocation of the Dixiecrats in the S&B was an not official campaign-speak. If that rhetoric comes out of the Kerry campaign officially, my longstanding admiration for Kerry and many of his ideas will evaporate instantly.

Also by the way, if what I'm reading about the demographics of Clark's support is true and holds up, I think more and more important Democrats are going to support Clark. He's looking formidable for the general election if he can get the nomination.

---

[aswell]: excellent.

[parkerma]: Lovey and maternal from Jane Eyre? Huh. I'm trying to figure out what part of the book would do that to you.

Thanks, [simoneli]! I'm sending all the positive vibes I can to you and your dad.

The five-second rule is real!

We're back from a weekend away that was all vacation for me, partly work for [cjacobso], who was checking out the hotel that will host the convention she's organizing next month. Our first stop was at the Four Mounds Inn outside Dubuque. We spent a really mellow day there to unwind, then went on to Chicago. Having heard good things about the architectural river cruise, we took it in the incredibly nice weather on Monday and had a good time. We also had lunch about 20 feet from Mitch Albom, the sports reporter now known as the author of Tuesdays with Morrie, which Carolyn read and absolutely hated. She refrained from sharing that opinion with Mr. Albom, who was being interviewed as he lunched.

On the trip, we finally finished reading Harry Potter V to each other. HP fans, perhaps we should start a thread on "Notes" to share thoughts about the latest. What do you think?

A number of people have started counting the number of novels they've read of the Top 100 list I posted, and [bakaitis] asks how many I've read. I did look over the list for that after people started counting; IIRC, the number was in the low 30s for things I've read, with predictable weakness in contemporary and non-British European stuff, both of which I'm slowly working to correct. I thought some of the selections within authors were a little weird--I had read substantial works of 60-something of the writers, but my reading often didn't match the listed works.

Holy cow! Bush I has criticized Bush II in subtle ways before, but he now appears to be taking the gloves off. You can see why: GHWB would never have let the Boykin scandal develop this way.

From The New Yorker: one of the best compilations I've seen of the information about what went wrong with intelligence-gathering about Iraq

My mom found this: Gifts for a Better World

A vision: open source everywhere

Baseball's Dewey Defeats Truman

Well, at least there will be no cause to spend any time thinking about baseball over break.

For me this semester, breaks and weekends are times I look forward to because I can use them to work really hard and maybe start to catch up on some things. If I treat them as time off, I won't keep my head above water. I'm not complaining, just observing my own thought process: I have really adjusted to looking forward to days off so that I can work more. Is that good? Hmm. [cjacobso] and I will get a little bit of real break tomorrow, however, as we explore northeast Iowa. Have a great week, everyone!

Scientists dig the purple frog.

Ouch: Generation PS2 reviews] the video games of generation me.

Now available: iTunes for Windows

This is getting a lot of attention: a poll of troops in Iraq

Monkey brains + robot arm = deliciousness

More ter rifying information from Salon about touch-screen voting. There's a good Microsoft twist in this piece.

Speaking of Tristram Shandy, it's number seven on the Guardian's new list of the 100 greatest novels of all time, which link [osgood] emailed me, perhaps because I strike him as Quixotic. The list is very, very traditional and very British; there's an article on the process here.

Huh: How to write a thank you note

Despite the gloomy possibility of a Yankees-Marlins Series, I need also to step back and appreciate tonight's matchup. Is it the juiciest playoff situation of all time? One game, all the marbles, two of the best starting pitchers ever. Plus the curse of the Bambino being tested against the very Yankees who bought him. Plus the fact that Clemens became great with the Red Sox, and if he loses, this will be his last game. Plus the emotional fireworks of their last matchup and the volatility of both pitchers. I can't imagine another game so leaded with history and emotion. The only thing that would make it richer would have been the prize being a matchup with the Cubs.

Barely Thursday--12:40 a.m. I'm sooooo sorry for [brownj] and the legions of other Cubs fans. I can't believe how similar this was to the Giants' situation last year. As, I'm sure, has occurred to Dusty Baker, Kenny Lofton, and others. (I was busy from about 7:00 am to 11:15 pm today, so I taped the end of the Red Sox and all of the Cubs and watched them as fast as I could when I got home. Therefore, I just found out what happened.) For whatever it's worth, because of living in the midwest now or whatever, I found tonight that I had shifted to pulling harder for the Cubs than the Red Sox. Ouch ouch ouch.

If the Series is Yankees-Marlins, the two teams I least wanted to win, I genuinely won't care what happens aside from a vague curiosity about historically important moments. Go Sox!

Oh, I feel for the Cubs and their fans, especially the fan. It's not lost on Giants fans, at least, how similar the situation was to Dusty's big Game 6 of last year. As my brother points out, however, "It's sure better to be at home with Kerry Wood on the mound in a post-catastrophe game 7, than to be in Anaheim with Livan, don't you think?" I do think. Go Cubs!

More on Mac OS X Panther

Bad news for the Bush administration: an ex-aide backs up the intelligence-manipulation story.

Good news for the Bush administration: approval ratings are up slightly in spite of everything. Bush is going to be very hard to beat in the election.

[stone] has a great curse from Tristram Shandy. I adore that book. I've been surprised to find that some of my fellow British novel scholars hate it; I can't think of another canonical novel that inspires such mixed reactions.

Thanks for the feedback, [jansonla]. Who knew that volleyball practices have become paper workshops for my seminar? (Answer: We few! Inside joke.)

[marzench], that was the most surprising bit for me, too.

I join [brownj] in congratulating the students who did science poster presentations over the weekend. I hadn't gone to that event before, and I really enjoyed it. It's easy to see why the MAP model works so well for the science division.

"Baby Got Back" in Latin

Interesting: seven myths about the religious right.

The pheonomenon of members of the Israeli army refusing to participate in certain missions is a long-established one, but it seems to be getting some more attention lately. The issue seems to produce interesting commentary about the variety of perspectives on the Palestinian situation.

[jansonp]: [cjacobso] (who is my wife Carolyn, [rebelsky]) and I went to St. Stephen's green (Per's picture) during the couple of days we were in Dublin together a while back. I remember it for the baby ducks who would swim serenely along and then BOOP! dive headfirst into the water, not to reappear for 5-10 seconds. This is probably old hat to people who watch ducks routinely, but we thought it brilliant. A good memory.

Staying in the family: [jansonla], yeah, it's Westley according to official sites and such. I think the actors say it inconsistently in the film. Did you find the online writi ng stuff useful? I'm really interested in feedback on how to use it, if at all, at the seminar level. There's no urgency to the question, of course.

[phippst]: The faculty did bring up staff concerns (in general and some specific ones) at a faculty meeting early in the strategic planning process. We were told that those concerns were important but that (like curricular concerns that were also raised) they did not fall under the purview of strategic planning--IIRC, the logic was that strategic planning is ultimately about the actions of the trustees, who do not directly control labor policy for the staff or the curriculum. I don't know whether that reasoning is valid, but for whatever it's worth, the faculty did raise the issue, and that was the reason we heard for the result you're seeing. Why there weren't staff focus groups I don't know.

Wow: George Will savages his fellow conservatives for supporting Arnold.

Interesting Democratic debate analysis from Slate. Best line: "Like a drummer in Spinal Tap, Bob Graham has departed the 2004 presidential race, leaving in his wake a sense of absence of a sense of absence."

From MediaLog: Rush Limbaugh, addict, on drug use in 1995: "Let's all admit something. There's nothing good about drug use. We know it. It destroys individuals. It destroys families. Drug use destroys societies. Drug use, some might say, is destroying this country. And we have laws against selling drugs, pushing drugs, using drugs, importing drugs. And the laws are good because we know what happens to people in societies and neighborhoods which become consumed by them. And so if people are violating the law by doing drugs, they ought to be accused and they ought to be convicted and they ought to be sent up."

I just got the links in my Plan archive to work as HTML. Good. [plans] and [kenslerj]: the problem I described a while ago is still present. I can't make multiple HTML links at the same time when I "change plan." (If I had used HTML linking for this entry, for instance, the software would have eaten everything from the George Will link to the Plan archive link.) Therefore, the HTML functionality really doesn't help me. As a result, I find myself wishing that the old curly-brackets method of linking still worked, because that's easy to convert to HTML. The square brackets and pipe system is hard to convert because the symbols aren't unique. In other words, the switch to accepting HTML in a flawed way has actually made it much harder for me to change my Plan into HTML.