Tiny Tim

Monster auditions

From the FFXI: Dreams in Vana'diel forums [http://www.ffxionline.com]:

Happy 20th Birthday, FINAL FANTASY

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Today, December 18th, 2007, marks the 20th Anniversary of the FINAL FANTASY Series.

FINAL FANTASY was released in Japan for the FamiCom system on this day 20 years ago.

Originally intended to be the last project of inspired game designer Hironobu Sakaguchi, we can all see where that got Square.

This year also marks the 10th Anniversary of FINAL FANTASY VII, one of the most iconic and revolutionary videogames ever created, and the 5th Anniversary of FINAL FANTASY XI.

Let's all take a moment to think back on the last 20 years (or however many you've been with the franchise) and discuss how FINAL FANTASY has affected the games industry, the RPG, and you.

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My response:

Re: Happy 20th Birthday, FINAL FANTASY

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[System Message: You are not allowed to post URLs as you have not yet contributed sufficiently. Please try again at a later time.]
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Aw shoot. No links for me.

What I meant to say was that I was 13 when I saw the ad for FFVI (well, FFIII here in the US). It didn't exactly get the tone of the game quite right (see youtube and add /watch?v=BeYu8CvKW-g to the URL), but there was a strange subconscious pull to it... I'm twice that age now and haven't stopped playing since then.

Welcome to your early 20's, Final Fantasy.

If you're not willing to lead

From the BBC earlier today:

A chorus of boos rang out. And a member of Papua New Guinea's delegation told the US: "If you're not willing to lead, please get out of the way."

From the BBC a bit later today:

"The US has been humbled by the overwhelming message by developing countries that they are ready to be engaged with the problem, and it's been humiliated by the world community," said Bill Hare of Greenpeace.
"I've never seen such a flip-flop in an environmental treaty context ever."

Now I'm no pacifist, though I am generally against any war maneuver not used as a last resort -- once diplomacy has been exhausted, and once severe economic warfare (embargos, boycotts) has been applied, I think force is certainly justifiable to prevent an entity from committing, say, genocide (in Germany back when, in certain areas of Africa).

Would actions leading to immeasurable deaths, maimings, drownings, starvation, destruction of home/history/way of life, etc in future generations count as an equivalent of genocide? Shouldn't it? At what point will diplomacy be considered to be exhausted on my own country? Or has diplomacy already been exhausted?

I'm pretty fucking exhausted, myself.

Things I Hate #1

When people don't title their emails; when said emails are concise to the point of sounding curt. Email is a form of communication that expresses emotion. When you send me an email that reads like a shorthand business memo, don't think I'm not judging you.

Read and write better

On Thu, December 13, 2007 10:28 am, [person in charge of Eng Dept composition classes] wrote:
> Just a quick reminder before your minds check out for the break, (or go
> into full on MLA conference mode), the Spring R&C Staff Meeting will
> take place on Wednesday, January 23rd from 5:00-7:00 pm....
> [We] would once again like to run the meeting as an open forum,
> so please be thinking about topics that you would like to see addressed.
> It would be great if you could email me with your thoughts anytime
> between now and the meeting

At the meeting, I'd like to put forth two items:

1. The infamous course descriptions. At least one quarter of my class was drawn in by the description, not the time-slot, etc; having students with vested interest in the course matter was a major part of building class discussion (in my case, theatre majors/minors in a course on dramatic literature). It also allowed a major sense of camaraderie to develop in class -- students attended each others' performances even as they worked together.

So my vote is to make the CDs even more readily available: I noticed that other departments post shortened CDs directly into the "notes" section of the entries on the schedule.berkeley.edu website. We should *totally* do this: I'm sure that a majority of R1B students only look at this site during registration...

2. As I handed out my evaluations, I noticed that R1 courses are reduced to "this course is supposed to teach you to read and write better," or something similar. I'd like to see a new version of the official material (here and elsewhere) that acknowledges that R1B courses are meant to be geared especially towards basic research skills as well as composition.

More importantly: these are courses in *critical thinking*, which forms the basis of "reading better" (not to mention writing better) -- and I think we should be overt about it, and include this on all CDs and official R1 material...

My two cents on plagiarism:

In an R&C course, it shouldn't be an issue. Our class sizes are small because these are writing and critical thinking *workshops*: through office hours, in-class thesis-building exercises, pre-exercises leading up to the assignment, and general discussions, instructors are part of the
development of each essay submitted.

In other words, we are present, in some cases with light hand-holding, through the developmental stages of each essay -- so an essay from outside this process would be an odd choice indeed.

But who knows? The other tip I have: teach non-canonical texts. Material for plagiarism is less plentiful that way.

My final student's final essay (late) just came in, so my grades will be
in in a matter of hours, woo hoo!

Best,
Matt

Not struck dumb, I'm just dumb, that's all

Father-daughter talk

On Dec 8, 2007 11:23 PM, [granddad] wrote:

Hi [stepdad]; Great lesson in politics; I'm going to forward it to each of my grandchildren. Thanks for sending. [granddad].

On Dec 7, 2007 8:01 AM, [stepdad] wrote:

Father - Daughter Talk
A young woman was about to finish her first year of college. Like so many others her age, she considered herself to be a very liberal Democrat, and among other liberal ideals, was very much in favor of higher taxes to support more government programs, in other words, redistribution of wealth.

She was deeply ashamed that her father was a rather staunch Republican, a feeling she openly expressed. Based on the lectures that she had participated in, and the occasional chat with a professor, she felt that her father had for years harbored an evil, selfish desire to keep what he thought should be his.

One day she was challenging her father on his opposition to higher taxes on the rich and the need for more government programs. The self-professed objectivity proclaimed by her professors had to be the truth and she indicated so to her father. He responded by asking how she was doing in school. Taken aback, she answered rather haughtily that she had a 4.0 GPA, and let him know that it was tough to maintain, insisting that she was taking a very difficult course load and was constantly studying, which left her no time to go out and party like other people she knew. She didn't even have time for a boyfriend, and didn't really have many college friends
because she spent all her time studying.

Her father listened then asked, "How is your friend Audrey doing?" She replied, "Audrey is barely getting by. All she takes are easy classes, she never studies, and she barely has a 2.0 GPA. She is so popular on campus; college for her is a blast. She's always invited to all the parties, and lots of times she doesn't even show up for classes because she's too hung over."

Her father asked her, "Why don't you go to the Dean's office and ask him to deduct a 1.0 off your GPA and give it to your friend Audrey, who only has a 2.0. That way you will both have a 3.0 GPA and certainly that would be a fair and equal distribution of GPA.

"The daughter, visibly shocked by her father's suggestion, angrily fired back, "That's a crazy idea. How would that be fair? I've worked really hard for my grades! I've invested a lot of time, and a lot of hard work. Audrey has done next to nothing toward her degree. She played while I worked my tail off!"

The father slowly smiled, winked and said gently, "Welcome to the Republican Party."

On Dec 9, 2007 11:23 PM, I wrote:

Epilogue
The daughter changed her vote that November, and learned the true meaning of democracy -- that year, a single vote made the difference and a new Republican governor was elected to run her whole state.

Her new governor cut funding to education -- after all, why should the children of slacker parents get access to the same resources that harder-working parents can afford? Unfortunately, it turned out that the daughter attended a state university, a public university funded by the state (say, like a SUNY, or a UC, or UVM, like many of the grandkids on this list), and soon found that the library was no longer being maintained, nor were the school grounds or dorms. Meanwhile, grad students and associate professors could no longer afford to work (for less and less pay, and worse and worse health-care), and so they had to go elsewhere -- so the instructor-to-student ratio was becoming extremely unbalanced, and the quality of classes was worsening. About half of the extracurriculars that the overachieving daughter participated in were cut by the administration in order to realign finances. The daughter, who had relied on the help of advisors, librarians, grad student mentors, and administrative staff, found it harder and harder to achieve -- and, with just a touch of painful irony, her GPA dropped to about a 3.0. She was sad at first that this would make it much harder for her to follow up with graduate-level study, but realized that there was less and less money in that anyway and decided to get a job as a personal assistant.

Her friend with the 2.0 GPA was a slacker indeed; luckily, her parents were very hard workers in their day. When conditions worsened at her state university, her father was easily able to fund her in transferring to a private university. Three years later, after the prestige of the public university had dropped to an all-time low, the
slacker daughter found that the private-university diploma which her father had bought her was worth more than she'd even realized, and she used it to score a well-paying but relatively easy job -- so that she could send her own kids to the same school she'd gone to.

Luckily for the hard-working daughter, her old slacker friend offered to hire her right away as her personal assistant.
"But you don't want to interview other candidates, or see my resume?" she asked. "You're just going to take me on because of where I'm from, and who I know?"

"Welcome to the Republican Party," said her new boss.

Insipid moralistic fluff

11:01 AM he: did you go see the movie?

5 minutes

11:07 AM me: Yuck

he: hm?

me: Beowulf?

he: I liked beowulf.

11:08 AM me: !

he: I thought it was a really reasonable interpretation of the poem.

me: hrm

he: It clearly wasn't letter for letter accurate, but it was very entertaining, and I think it got enough things right.

11:10 AM me: I don't. I found it kind of flagrantly simplistic, and the artificial symmetry Gaiman imposed on the original sort of misses the whole point

he: What's the whole point?

11:11 AM me: A whole point, maybe: just the way the saga follows Beowulf through his life into his old age; his life doesn't take on some overall narrative poignancy because, well, it's a life

His demons don't inevitably, cinematically, come back to haunt him

11:13 AM me: And his legacy certainly doesn't continue -- his problem at some level is the fact that he chooses a life of accomplishment, of saga-making (which is well-done in the movie)

11:14 AM But he chooses it participating in human bond-forming -- he never takes a queen or even, it would seem, a lover

He specifically says he wants to avoid this when he's at Heorot

me: There are whole intricacies of heirdom and marriage going on there

11:15 AM me: Which Beowulf comments on, and which he opts out of -- though it could get him the kingdom of Denmark

11:16 AM me: But he foresees -- accurately -- the fact that drama with marrying off Hrothgar's daughter will cause enough drama to take the kingdom down

A drama that is reflected in the scop's tale of Finn and Hengest

I could understand Gaiman's desire to cut back the backstory for practical reasons.

11:17 AM

me: But it seems to me impractical to then refill the empty space with insipid moralistic fluff

he: I keep hearing insipid moralistic fluff, but I didn't get that impression from it at all.

me: "What is a monster, *really*? You're as much of a monster as I am..." Blah blah blah.

11:18 AM We get it. We've been getting it.

he: I don't find a little editorializing from the scriptwriter to be that offensive.

me: "What is a hero? No one is really perfect. Everyone has their secrets."

me: That's not a little editorializing. Those statements became the engine for the entire plot.

They were the entire plot.

11:19 AM

me: They were what drove the action.

he: I mean, I can't imagine how you could make an authentic Beowulf in a movie.

me: Authenticism is not my worry.

11:20 AM I think it would be silly to try to include everything, or shoot at some imagined historical accuracy in a saga that was never terribly concerned with it in the first place.

11:21 AM

me: But the fluff, the new drama with Wealtheow and the random concubine, etc etc... This seemed like an entirely unrelated and overly moralistic story

About pat statements like the ones I made above

me: Which are no longer all that moving

me: A story created on the skeleton of that moralistic story and then dressed n the drag of Beowulf

11:22 AM me: Any element drawn from the actual saga could easily be removed without doing much damage to the core of the story Gaiman created

And as good (?) of a writer as Gaiman is, he pales in comparison to the Beowulf poet

I've only read American Gods, but...

It seems that the man doesn't really have the whole subtlety thing down

11:23 AM And that

is what I have to say about that

I think I shall post my part of this conversation to my blog.

By the way, I am blogging again.

he: Fair enough.

yay.

me: Effective two nights ago.

he: Somewhere new?

me: Yes.

he: whereabouts?

me: Let me post this, then I'll link you.

11:24 AM he: fair enough.

me: I got a call from a student who I was reader for two years ago

I'd happened to exchange numbers with him because he said at that point that he was interested in grad school

11:26 AM And he says "Hey, man, I'm stuck on this paper -- I'm still below the limit and I don't know what to do."

he: heh

11:27 AM me: And, a bit taken aback as he'd kiind of jumped into things after not having been in touch for years, I decide to just work my comp mojo and start talking him through the paper

he: sweet.

me: It took him maybe about five minutes into that to realize that he'd called the wrong Matt

And he thought he was talking to a classmate

he: sweet

me: But he decided I'd probably given him better advice anyway

11:28 AM he: that's pretty awesome.

me: Yeah, I enjoyed it

he: excellent.

fucking cold.

damnit.

11:29 AM me: Yeah, I don't envy you

Our apartment holds in the cold really well

Nice in the summer

Is it a time of day?

What's that dark feeling in the pit of my gut?

So familiar...

Ah. I must be blogging again.
And I was getting so good at time management, too.
(see http://www.nuklearpower.com/daily.php?date=071201 for more info).

In-Universe

Probably no more than a year ago:

Sunnydale is located on a "Hellmouth"; a portal "between this reality and the next", and convergence point of mystical energies...

Hogsmeade is the only settlement in Britain inhabited solely by magical beings, and is located to the north-west of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry....

Archenland is a nation to the south of Narnia. Its borders are formed by mountains to the north and by the River Winding Arrow to the south...

Now:

Sunnydale, California, is the fictional setting for the U.S. television drama Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Series creator Joss Whedon conceived the town as a representation of a generic California city...

Hogsmeade is a fictional village in the Harry Potter series of novels by J. K. Rowling...

In C. S. Lewis's fantasy novels the Chronicles of Narnia, Archenland is a nation to the south of Narnia. Its borders are formed...

It used to be common practice to enter fictional locations into Wikipedia with the same style, tone, and attention to detail as any non-fictional location. Parallel universes were presented parallel to each other, through a medium governed by consensus; no one objected to this free play of fact and fiction -- in fact, it made a pretty great read; only the extremely stupid, surely, were confused about whether Terabithia really existed.

But Wikipedia must keep up appearances. (For whom? I thought the thing was supposed to be for us, by us?) The Wikipedia: Manual of Style alerts are legion, and this one is still up on most of the sites quoted above:

This book-related article or section describes an aspect of the book in a primarily in-universe style. Please rewrite this article to explain the fiction more clearly and provide non-fictional perspective.

Follow the links. There are guidelines indeed.

The latest surge in Wikipedia's oxymoronic campaign for academic authority is not only doing damage to how research is taught and understood, but to the very idea of the Wikipedia project. At best, it produces little sound bites of backward thinking from its competitors -- see the 7 December BBC article "Students 'should use' Wikipedia" [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7130325.stm] for the full story:

Ian Allgar of Encyclopaedia Britannica maintains that, with 239 years of history and rigorous fact-checking procedures, Britannica should remain a leader in authoritative, politically-neutral information.

Good old politically neutral information. Hey, remember in the late eighties when we realized that the notion of neutral information is illusory, and often a tool of manipulation? Weren't internet-based media supposed to provide a way around that?

In the days of Geoffrey of Monmouth, Bede, Sir John Mandeville -- before guys like Ian Allgar invented truth -- encyclopedists produced compendia, chronicles; they built timelines and maps that conformed to their narratives (Jesus, Arthur, whoever) rather than empty gestures in the opposite direction.

Wikipedia once provided a frontier for the free play of information, for medieval-style historiography to grow again. This was never to the exclusion of modern academic rigor, but perhaps it rebelled a bit against the top-down control of truth, which internet-based media were supposed to help destabilize.

In its attempts to make information neutral, Wikipedia only neuters.

As we might expect from any campaign for neutral information (there have been countless such campaigns, though they never seem so neutral with hindsight), all traces of the fan-generated, playful entries are are being systematically obliterated, with no record kept. They preserved a cultural moment; they embodied material extremely important to the devotees that created them; they are being burned. As usual.

To the medievalist's eye, the fixes are still transparent in the cases of Hogsmeade, Sunnydale, Archenland, and others -- there is most often an obligatory opening sentence which ensures that "fictional" is the first word we see, but then the old article often goes on just as the superfan originally, delightfully, wrote it. But there are no Middle-Earth locations to visit on Wikipedia anymore. We must look where the censors don't think to in order to find the gems. After this:

Yoknapatawpha County is a fictional county created by American author William Faulkner as a setting for many of his novels. It is widely believed by scholars that Lafayette County, Mississippi is the basis for Yoknapatawpha County. Faulkner would often refer to it as "my apocryphal county."

We get the dear old original, in present tense, and pretty much unharmed except at the first ellipsis:

Yoknapatawpha county is located in northwestern Mississippi and its seat is the town of Jefferson... bounded on the north by the Tallahatchie River and on the south by the Yoknapatawpha River and has an area of 2,400 mi² (6,200 km²). Most of the eastern half (as well as a small part of the southwest corner) of the county is pine hill country. The word Yoknapatawpha is pronounced "Yok'na pa TAW pha." It is derived from two Chickasaw words—Yocona and petopha, meaning "split land."... Yoknapatawpha was the original name for the actual Yocona River, which runs through the southern part of Lafayette County, of which Oxford is the seat. The area was originally Chickasaw land...