Plato's "Gorgias"

At the bottom of this blog's front page, I've listed books I've been reading lately: some textbooks, but mostly the "fun" reading I do in my "spare" time. (I do forget to add some of the things I read, but that's par for the course.)

Anyway, right now, I'm re-reading "Gorgias" and I'm not even sure why. I have always liked the campy opening scene, with Socrates coming late to a dinner party at Gorgias's home, arriving with his young pal, Chaerephon, who made them late because he was shopping(!). Another young man in the dialogue, Polus, gets a lot of Socrates's attention by taking Socrates's bait and answering questions that box himself in a corner, the corner Socrates wants him in.

But Socrates is a bit of a bully, I think, in this dialogue: he shifts the grounds for some of his questions, playing word games to entrap his interlocutors. In fact, the whole interaction seems to be a huge display of testosterone, a kind of ancient Greek antler fight between bucks. The different types of masculinity try to best the master masculinity. But he, through his superior (?) reasoning power, is able to emasculate them all by revealing their faulty thinking.

So why am I even bothering to read it, you ask? Well, I've been curious about the uses of analogy lately: when and how they're used. This dialogue includes SO many that are fun to study. It also contains, at least the translation I have (in Bizzell and Herzberg's The Rhetorical Tradition), plenty of casual language and metadiscourse that enables me to see the dialogue played out on stage: what would Socrates and Chaerephon be carrying when they arrive at Gorgias's house after shopping? What jewelry accessorizes Polus? How portly is Gorgias? And Callicles wears a vandyke for sure.

Words are fun

Scroll through the visual representation of the alphabet on this blog: abcdefghijkslmnopqrstuvwxyz by Dan Waber. He calls it an "acrylabet."

Poetry's power

I'm a poetry fan, and I like to teach students about sonnets: they're an example of formal poetry that most students recognize (think Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Sonnets From The Portuguese, especially "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways"); they're also more sophisticated than the nursery-rhymey four-line stanzas that students think of when they think of formal rhymed poetry.

The writer who gets me most excited about sonnets is Edna St. Vincent Millay, who's a master of the Italian form (also called "Petrarchan" after the 14th-century Italian poet who perfected the form, some say). Sure, she uses ten-syllable lines instead of the strictly Petrarchan 7 or 11 syllables, but she uses the classic rhyme scheme: abba abba for the octave, cdc dcd for the sestet.

She also uses the classic content structure: a problem or predicament in the octave and resolution to the problem in the sestet, with the "turn" at line 9. The whole point of sonnets is to juxtapose contrasting ideas, to subvert expectations. Millay's a master at that. But we have to read her sonnets slowly, looking for the grammatical sentences instead of end lines to find her meaning: she's bold!

Here's "Sonnet xli" from 1923 - imagine giving a one-night-stand this kind of brush-off!

I, being born a woman and distressed
By all the needs and notions of my kind,
Am urged by your propinquity to find
Your person fair, and feel a certain zest
To bear your body's weight upon my breast:
So subtly is the fume of life designed,
To clarify the pulse and cloud the mind,
And leave me once again undone, possessed.
Think not for this, however, the poor treason
Of my stout blood against my staggering brain,
I shall remember you with love, or season
My scorn with pity,--let me make it plain:
I find this frenzy insufficient reason
For conversation when we meet again.

What I love about this poem - and Millay in general - is her full acceptance of her corporeality: she's joyful and insistent about being fully human, with all the contradictions and complications that come with living.

Applause for community colleges

On a website called Education Update Online, you'll find the following article from 2005: "Study Reveals Americans Support Expanding Community College System to Serve More Students". Although the article does not make clear when the study took place, with whom, or by whom, and although I can't say I find this particular publication very academic, I *can* say that the article helps me continue with my argument: that community colleges are *colleges* and should, therefore, be funded as such, supported as such, and run as such (rather than high schools or trade schools).

So I googled around the web to find the source of the 2005 article. It's based on a 2004 survey (survey and answers here) conducted by an organization now called Community College Central. This organization has also published an interesting article called "Higher Education More Important Than Ever To Americans, But Record Numbers Fear That Costs May Prevent Access For Many Qualified Students", first published by The National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education to complement the 2005 article.

Food for thought as I consider what my colleague Kris told me today: that new full-time hires in the Minnesota community college system must take courses/workshops in the philosophy of community college teaching, among other things. This additional education is new. A good idea, sure, but it seems to me that all faculty, not just new full-time folks, should take it, especially when many of our new full-time folks come from our part-time ranks.

Budget Analysis

My son pointed me to this website, The Budget Graph: A Visual Guide to Your Federal Taxes, which contains a poster representing the U.S. federal budget.

As a technical writing teacher, I'm fascinated by the visual design of this poster. I'm reminded of Edward Tufte's work, especially The Visual Display of Quantitative Information and Envisioning Information. (Equally important is his critique of PowerPoint, a version of it here:"PowerPoint is Evil" reprinted at Wired online.)

The graphic designer who created this poster, Jess Bachman, is a 26-year-old who invites folks to "spread the word" about his creation. Please do!

Persepolis

The book Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi is Century's Common Book for this year, the first year of the Common Book project. It's a great idea: all college students, staff, and faculty are encouraged to read this book and incorporate it into their courses. We've had great preparation and support for the Common Book, such as summer workshops and presentations by Century faculty experts, a college common book blog, and lists of resources for teaching and learning. These resources and events were created, scheduled, and managed by the tireless and creative colleague, Cullen Bailey Burns.

Amazingly, Cullen was able to get Satrapi to come to Century's campus on April 10! Quite a coup, since Satrapi will be promoting her movie Persepolis, which is based on both our Common Book and Persepolis 2.

I saw the movie this weekend and can't recommend it highly enough. The animation is simple yet sophisticated, layered and nuanced: it takes talent to convey subtle emotions in the eyes of an almost-cartoon face, tweaking eyebrows and mouth sizes to show determination, confusion, fear, ennui. The stylized marionettes based on playing-card images perfectly capture the house-of-cards qualities of the army, leaders, soldiers. The charcoal and watercolor backgrounds are beautiful.

Art

I attended an excellent art opening this evening - my friend Mary Hark, formerly professor at Macalester College in St. Paul and currently professor at UW-Madison.

Her recent work comes out of her year in Kumasi, Ghana, on a Fulbright.

Need a class discussion?

Then watch this video:

"The Story of Stuff" is a 20-minute video argument that needs to be seen by everyone!

It's great for many, many reasons. For one thing, it'll explain to you why our government wants to send some citizens/taxpayers an "economic stimulus" check of a few hundred dollars but doesn't want to contribute an equal amount to things like education, health care, transportation infrastructure, etc. It'll also help understand something behind the partisan wrangling about the economic stimulus package.

Watch it until the end, too, to see ways to act.

New Look!

I'm trying for a cleaner look that still has space for the widgets and links I keep adding. What do you think of this design?

More new finds

I'm not sure what to call the paths I've been taking lately to find new and interesting information on the web: following hyperlinks? trails? serendipity? ADHD?

At any rate, I've found a blog called CyberEnglish today, which is written by an English teacher who's also interested in technology.

I've also watched "Text & Technologies," a talking-head lecture on YouTube. Very odd experience, but I've learned something, I think.

And finally, a person can find TONS of educational stuff online. Try this site "Free Video Lectures" for short courses in everything from Anatomy to Electronics to Philosophy to Web Design.

Another Discovery . . .

The MnSCU Center for Teaching and Learning has a blog, too! Although it's not a blog with frequent posts, I think the list of CTL tutorials from June 7, 2007's entry is worth a look. Check it out.

And also try this small blog called "Civic Engagement and Higher Education" by John Hamerlink who works for the Minnesota Campus Compact. These two ideas are important to me, too.

Much Belated . . .

I have just found out that Century College has a blog! Who knew?

Actually, it's not quite a college blog - more like one person - and some important links don't work.

But I suppose something is better than nothing . . . although that phrase loses its punch in this "instant access, ready information" age. Dead links are especially damaging to an institution's ethos . . . .

Considering logic

In this political season (aren't they all?), we're bombarded with arguments by analogy. Most of these arguments contain the logical fallacy called a "weak [or false, faulty, questionable] analogy." It takes work to uncover the weak analogy, but perhaps this little story (stolen from here) will provide a bit of fun:

Consider: How is a raven like a writing desk? (In other words, how are these two analogous?) Most people might say they're not; they share no compelling characteristics.

Consider this answer: Poe wrote on both of them.

It's a joke, right? We know it's a weak analogy because the answer depends upon wordplay, the two meanings of "on" used simultaneously. (The ancient Greeks called this particular figure of speech or trope a "syllepsis.")

In other words: study logic and rhetoric today so you can become a better argument analyzer. Visit these sites:
Silva Rhetoricae
Gorgias's Weblog: "The Daily Trope"
CriticalThinking.org
Language Log
Electric Rhetoric

Podcast of note

Browsing around the Minnesota Public Radio site, I found this: Grammar Grater, "a weekly podcast about English words, grammar and usage for the Information Age." (I wonder what they think about the serial comma? MPR must align themselves with the newspaper crowd.)

An English Course?

I'm intrigued by a professor's introduction to (or invitation to or commercial for) a UC-Irvine course called Digital Rhetoric 2007. The professor, Liz Losh, produced a number of videos on the topic.

For example, she presents a couple of what I might call "course lectures" that summarize the use of digital rhetoric: "2007, The Year in Digital Rhetoric" and "2006, the Year of Digital Rhetoric"

Both of these "lectures" would be great in any classroom, as would Losh's initial course invitation. In that video, she's explicit that such courses and the area of study (digital rhetoric) belong in an English department. I agree!

(Do you think I'm getting addicted to YouTube?!)

Typography=Visual Rhetoric

I continue my fascination with typography: the relationships between words as words, as containers, as vehicles, as collections of letters which are themselves words, containers, vehicles.

Here are some YouTube videos that I like:

"Typography" by Boca and Ryan Ulrich, which introduces the vocabulary and concepts of the art
"Who's on First?" by Jimmy073, which uses the famous Abbott and Costello routine as the basis for a terrific little typography film
"Adolph Hitler Speech using Kinetic Typography" by sonyaedith, a powerful presentation of an actual 1939 speech by Hitler, profoundly disturbing and great for many kinds of courses
"Kinetic Typography Girl" by Meyrien Janevine, which has great music, too
"Live Out Loud" by Johnny Lee, short and powerful

Thirty Students, 59 authors

The students listed the authors they'd heard of and came up with a list of 59, of whom almost a dozen I know next-to-nothing about (Upton Sinclair? Robinson Jeffers? Edwin Arlington Robinson?).

Which is to say that I'll learn something this semester - hooray!

Webinar

Although this particular neologism bothers me, yesterday I did participate in a web-based seminar (or "event" as Capella University, the sponsor/host, describes it). Intrigued by the topic, "Academic Standards in Online Teaching and Curriculum," I logged into a webspace to participate, a website that didn't make clear how I was to communicate/listen to the webinar (why does no one use consistent vocabulary when describing things?). Eventually, I was able to connect fully, after typing in questions to the "host" (different from the "presenter") who did an admirable job juggling the technology.

The hour-long experience consisted of me watching a series of PowerPoint slides on my computer while I listened on the phone to the presenter talk about the slides. Participants could type questions into the "Chat" space on the website (not the Q&A space which is where I typed my first three questions). The presenter would stop occasionally to ask for questions, which the host would read to her from the website - evidently, the presenter wasn't seeing the same thing we were seeing. Oddly, I could not tell who else was participating: no list of participants appeared, even though I asked for one, and so I thought I was listening by myself for the longest time - and I thought I was listening to a taped presentation because it was so stilted.

Sadly, the slides and presenter were unsatisfying to me because they were both too complicated and too generalized to be taken seriously as "seminar" topics. If listeners did not already agree with the presenter's points and references, they couldn't accept or even understand the advice they were being given. That such an event was called "higher education" frustrates me. I wouldn't prepare something that thin and biased for my undergraduates.

As a person trained in the humanities, I'm used to asking questions, asking for clarification and for support/rationale/reasons/justification for ideas I encounter. In short, I'm a critical thinker. But critical thinkers could not fully participate in this event because they didn't have any opportunity to be truly critical. Sure, we could ask questions, but no follow-ups, so my only question conveyed to the presenter received a woefully inadequate response: mostly broad generalizations without support (along with a sad joke).

I'm frustrated that so-called experts in education provide such sub-standard content - and via the online medium, which further limits the value of that content. For all the presenter's emphasis on "standards" and "outcomes," I do not see that she planned any for this particular educational event. It was much more of a "do as I say, not as I do" experience.

Extremely disappointing.

Reading Lists

Before the winter break ends, I hope everyone gets to finish the reading they'd hoped to do. I'm still working on Otto Jespersen's 1924 book The Philosophy of Grammar, a book I acquired about 10 years ago and have dipped into periodically. I'd hoped to read it rather than dip, but so far I've not managed. Feels too much like a textbook, and I suspect I'm feeling what many of my students feel: why am I reading all this explanation for something that seems obvious?

Another book on my list for break is The Heath Anthology of American Literature, vols. C, D, and E. I have to make some selections from these volumes for a course called American Literature: 1870 to the Present. Any suggestions?

Candidate information

Since I don't watch television, I didn't even know what Mike Huckabee looks like. I get my most of information from National Public Radio, with occasional perusals of The New York Times online.
This collection of images (clipped from a goofy blog called "Vote for Breakfast") reminds me that he's the candidate who is admired for his weight loss, which I'd forgotten. Odd that such a feat would be persuasive as a Presidential qualification.

But another information source I ran into recently is CNNMoney.com. About a month ago, Marlys Harris of Money Magazine wrote an article that analyzed the net worth of the Presidential candidates. Click the link at the bottom of the article to find a candidate-by-candidate breakdown of their finances. Note that Huckabee wasn't even considered a "top White House contender," so he's not included on this list. I wonder where we could find his net worth?