{"id":573899486,"date":"2026-10-15T20:09:26","date_gmt":"2026-10-16T00:09:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/?p=573899486"},"modified":"2026-10-18T12:59:28","modified_gmt":"2026-10-18T16:59:28","slug":"i-had-an-idea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/blog\/2026\/10\/15\/i-had-an-idea\/","title":{"rendered":"I had an idea"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I was vaguely aware there was a conference deadline approaching. I say vaguely aware because I have presented at this conference twice now, these things have predictable calendars for everyone&#8217;s sanity and for these belated realizations.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, last night I stumbled upon a story and thought, <em>I can find a study in that.<\/em> I looked to see the conference submission deadline and found, to my delight that it was 11:59 p.m. this very evening. And, suddenly, I had a research idea and roughly 25 hours to figure out the details of it. <\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s what I did today. <\/p>\n<p><center><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/blog\/banners\/bannerrowan2.jpg\"><\/center><\/p>\n<p>I spent my office hours digging up literature that will support my new study. This was a fruitful 90 minutes. There were many extra tabs opened on my computer. <\/p>\n<p>In class, we watched another episode of Black Mirror, Nosedive: <\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"900\" height=\"506\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/R32qWdOWrTo?si=gqjT8LacZ7MutT4d\" title=\"YouTube video player\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The class had a lot to say about this in the few minutes we had remaining. They decided that this might be more relevant today than when it was released in 2016. Then I told them about an example of this, and reminded them of real world implications of that. And I think we&#8217;re all going to be different users of digital media before we&#8217;re done. <\/p>\n<p>For next week, they&#8217;re now reading something from <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Culture_of_Connectivity\" target=\"_blank\">Jose van Dijck<\/a> on connectivity, and a new little essay from <a href=\"https:\/\/www.anildash.com\/2026\/10\/06\/kill-unalive\/\">Anil Dash<\/a> on the changes in language all of this connectivity is foisting upon us. We&#8217;re about two weeks from turning this class on its head in all of the best ways. <\/p>\n<p>After class I drove over to another part of campus to pick up my lovely bride. She wasn&#8217;t ready yet, and so I strolled around enjoying the late afternoon&#8217;s lovely weather. I took a few photos which I&#8217;m sure I&#8217;ll share here next week. We stopped by the drug store, where we discovered all sorts of new foodstuffs, and also purchased whatever we went there to get. I wasn&#8217;t paying attention. I merely drove and made jokes about things we saw on the shelves. <\/p>\n<p>Now, at home, I have been working on that conference proposal. I needed a 500 word abstract, with literature review. It takes a lot to write that little. I typed that out before dinner and finished polishing it after. The premise is there is some particular sport-themed content worth exploring in light of the particulars (which I won&#8217;t get into here, but I elaborated on elaborately in the abstract) and here&#8217;s what I&#8217;m going to do. The abstract was a perfect 500 words. Perfect in length, perhaps not in execution. It&#8217;s actually pretty good, and might have some real merit, academically speaking. Also, I used 20 citations. <\/p>\n<p>This took a few hours. I had 90 minutes to spare when I was done. Time enough for another idea for the conference, but nothing came to mind. <\/p>\n<p>Maybe I&#8217;ll get to submit some findings from this proposal next spring. <\/p>\n<p><center><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/blog\/banners\/bannerphotos.jpg\"><\/center><\/p>\n<p>Since my day was spent staring at screens, let&#8217;s find something else to share here. Monday I rode my bike through a very small, three-road, two-stop-sign town. They always make excellent use of their power poles to decorate for the seasons. <\/p>\n<p><center><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/photo\/oct26\/oct81.jpg\"><\/center><\/p>\n<p>Now, of course, they are being quite spooky. A Hulk mask on a pumpkin was a little off-putting, but the handprints on this shirt were even more so. I don&#8217;t know why. <\/p>\n<p><center><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/photo\/oct26\/oct82.jpg\"><\/center><\/p>\n<p>You&#8217;ll have to forgive the composition of these photos. I was doing this while riding one handed at about 15 miles an hour. And I still don&#8217;t feel especially steady on my bike since my spill last week. The photos are what the photos are. And this one is cute. I guess these are all class projects. This one is from a bunch of 2nd graders. Maybe that&#8217;s why there&#8217;s a candy cane involved. Kids know more about art than I do, and who am I to question their vision?<\/p>\n<p><center><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/photo\/oct26\/oct83.jpg\"><\/center><\/p>\n<p>Also, Halloween is a big, big deal on Chewbacca&#8217;s planet, Kashyyyk. They just can&#8217;t get enough of it. No one there dresses as Han Solo, though. <\/p>\n<p><center><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/photo\/oct26\/oct84.jpg\"><\/center><\/p>\n<p>I wonder if the inhabitants of other planets have a need for something like our scarecrows. Do the birds of those planets raid the crops? Or their bird-equivalents? And are the scarecrows humanoid? Would a Wookie go to the trouble of stuffing some clothes with straw, and then putting on a real face? Are the crop stealing animals on Kashyyyk discerning enough to know the difference? <\/p>\n<p>There are so many questions all of those movies and books and cartoons did not answer. (I assume they didn&#8217;t answer them. Don&#8217;t come at me with references to some animated series I&#8217;m never watching.) Do the droid gardeners take care of the bird-like creatures? Do they use bird sabers or bird blasters? <\/p>\n<p>Come to think of it, did we even see any birds in the Star Wars universe? I suppose they&#8217;d want to keep them out of the franchise for identification purposes. Seeing a cardinal fluttering in and among the Ewoks would pulled you right out of that masterpiece, wouldn&#8217;t it? And that last movie, the real triumph of cinema, the one so great I can&#8217;t remember it&#8217;s name or be bothered to look it up. The one so dreadful I laughed in relief in the third act: this is almost over and I don&#8217;t have to do this anymore. A bluebird sitting on a tree branch would have ruined the illusion. Long ago and far away and all of that. <\/p>\n<p>Clearly I needed to think up another research idea tonight. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was vaguely aware there was a conference deadline approaching. I say vaguely aware because I have presented at this conference twice now, these things have predictable calendars for everyone&#8217;s sanity and for these belated realizations. Anyway, last night I stumbled upon a story and thought, I can find a study in that. I looked [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,10,101,15,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-573899486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-memories","category-photo","category-rowan","category-thursday","category-video"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573899486","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=573899486"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573899486\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":573899492,"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573899486\/revisions\/573899492"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=573899486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=573899486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=573899486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}