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Rowan

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15
Oct 26

I had an idea

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’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 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.

That’s what I did today.

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.

In class, we watched another episode of Black Mirror, Nosedive:

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’re all going to be different users of digital media before we’re done.

For next week, they’re now reading something from Jose van Dijck on connectivity, and a new little essay from Anil Dash on the changes in language all of this connectivity is foisting upon us. We’re about two weeks from turning this class on its head in all of the best ways.

After class I drove over to another part of campus to pick up my lovely bride. She wasn’t ready yet, and so I strolled around enjoying the late afternoon’s lovely weather. I took a few photos which I’m sure I’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’t paying attention. I merely drove and made jokes about things we saw on the shelves.

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’t get into here, but I elaborated on elaborately in the abstract) and here’s what I’m going to do. The abstract was a perfect 500 words. Perfect in length, perhaps not in execution. It’s actually pretty good, and might have some real merit, academically speaking. Also, I used 20 citations.

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.

Maybe I’ll get to submit some findings from this proposal next spring.

Since my day was spent staring at screens, let’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.

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’t know why.

You’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’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’s why there’s a candy cane involved. Kids know more about art than I do, and who am I to question their vision?

Also, Halloween is a big, big deal on Chewbacca’s planet, Kashyyyk. They just can’t get enough of it. No one there dresses as Han Solo, though.

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?

There are so many questions all of those movies and books and cartoons did not answer. (I assume they didn’t answer them. Don’t come at me with references to some animated series I’m never watching.) Do the droid gardeners take care of the bird-like creatures? Do they use bird sabers or bird blasters?

Come to think of it, did we even see any birds in the Star Wars universe? I suppose they’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’t it? And that last movie, the real triumph of cinema, the one so great I can’t remember it’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’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.

Clearly I needed to think up another research idea tonight.

photo / Rowan / Wednesday — Comments Off
14
Oct 26

An unsung perk

Our neighbors give us the best views. This time of year, the hallway is light up from the reflected light of that tree, which you can see through the door and across the street.

There were two of those trees there. One of them was cut down. I don’t know why and I can’t bring myself to ask. It’s none of my business, of course, but you could look toward the front of the house and everything looked yellow in the fall. And to play in those leaves, as the children do, would have seemed magical. Alas.

More and more I think there should be a very specific and necessary reason to do things with trees. The most frivolous thing you should do is climb one, or hang a tire swing. Otherwise, there should be a checklist. Paperwork. Digital, of course.

Sure, some trees would still be harvested. We need lumber and paper products and some are dangerous or have disease concerns. Sometimes you might need to just thin a stand of trees. These, and other reasons, are good reasons. “I tire of raking” is not a reason.

Aside from a few moments of sun shining through, allowing for that photograph, it was largely a gray day. Good one to stay inside and do some work. There is, of course, much of that to do.

In class this evening we talked about strategic media planning. This is important, and very interesting to me. And you can almost tell exactly when the group collectively decides they’ve had enough. This is funny to me, but I press on. I’m on a mission, after all.

Maybe the problem is that I didn’t show any videos this evening. The difficulty, of course, being that there aren’t a lot of great movies, TV shows, or commercials that have to do with media buying and psychographics.

So, instead, we walked through an exercise as if we were helping to plan the university’s homecoming festivities. That’s taking next week, so we can parallel. And then I had them break into a little group exercise, which they’re all eager to do, if only because it means thy hear less from me.

We got out about almost minutes early. Small victory in a 2:45 minute class.

Afterward one of the students stuck around. I asked one question and we wound up chatting about classes, sports, the commute, life, Otis Redding, for about 90 minutes. It was delightful. The little things can be very big things.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go find an idea. More on that tomorrow. If I find one.

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13
Oct 26

Hydrangea, grain, Contact

It was bright, sunny, and warm today. I lingered outside for a bit because the forecasts suggest we might be coming to the last of the very warm days. We got up to 81 degrees today. It’ll be in the 50s by the weekend.

But even with the seasonally reduced sunlight I managed to get some sun on my face. Tonight I looked in the mirror and surprised myself to see a little redness on my cheeks. Doesn’t take much, even with the earth tilting us further and further away from that big burning orb.

Let’s check on the hydrangea, which sits in the shade of the northeastern corner of the house and thrives beyond all expectation. It was cut back dramatically last fall, and I wasn’t sure what it would do this year in response. What it did was grow so much we had to trim it away from the chimney. And it’s considerably taller than I am.

Our two previous years here late summer rains bent the thing over, but it stood up quite well to the seasonal deluge this time around. It’s a pleasant thing to look at, even in this season of change. Maybe I like it more right now. It seems a helpful visual cue, even as I am not one for the changing of the seasons, and generally in denial about the passage of time.

But the blooms on this hydrangea show me, or remind me, that there is beauty in more than just perfection. Maybe we always know that. Maybe it only takes a few seconds, a quick glance, to re-learn that. Maybe that’s what stopping and smelling the roses is about. Maybe you just have to think of the beauty of things to see the beauty of things.

One year, when I’m not busy, I’m going to document this shrub daily. Who knows what else it can teach me.

In class today we watched an episode of Black Mirror. It’s now 15 years old, and starting to show its age just a little. I’ve also seen it four or five times with various versions of this class. The themes, however, still work. If anything, it might resonate more today than it did in 2011.

We talked about the episode after it finished. I had a bunch of questions to offer and my students gamely went along with the conversation, which steers us back to one of our foundational conversations of what it means to be human, live a techno-social life, and both. I did not ask them if they wanted to be cyborgs, but they were clearly troubled by the story this episode told. I don’t think that’s necessarily a real reading, though. The characters here were troubled to say the least, but then you have to decide if it was them, or the technology, or both.

Therein lies the cautionary tale, one supposes.

I walked by the statue Contact. I wrote about it here, by Seward Johnson. Then, three weeks ago, we looked a bit more closely at the couple’s hands. Two weeks back, I offered a closer look at some of the textures. Today, we’ll give it one last look, focusing on a few more of the illusions of textures of the trompe-l’œil painted bronze statue.

Have a look at the woman’s purse. It looks like a nice addition to a summer collection, doesn’t it?

The man in the statue has a hat. He’s taken it off for this hug. And it’s another lightweight addition to his ensemble. And aside from trying to make us think it is a high quality bit of headwear, I’d like to point out that the artist took great pains to give it some wear and, also, reshapes it with the man’s grip. These are the little details I’m interested in. In his grasp, in this hug, he’s also warping his hat.

You can almost see inside of it. You can almost see inside of the thing. I wonder if the hat was made separately, at least in the shape of a real hat, and then put in the hand.

He’s carrying a pretty hefty bag. At least we’re meant to think it is his, based on where it is placed, just past the woman in the statue, as if she has walked into his arms. His hat is in his right hand, the suitcase is placed to his left. He’s leaving, or he’s coming home.

Also, the angle of the suitcase suggest he has an ulnar deviation. A radial deviation for her seems unlikely. Finally, he has chosen his wardrobe well, and his shoes match the suitcase, The luggage, then, is his.

I’ve been studying this statue thinking that the man and the woman are sad. Something has happened or one of them, the man it would seem, is leaving. But then as we look at her feet. Something about the way she’s rising up in to him. You tell me, does a sad person stand on their tiptoes when sad?

Anyway, that’s the Seward Johnson statue, Contact. There are four more of his works near that one. We’ll check them all out in the weeks ahead. Pay attention for that. You’re going to have to decide on a favorite.

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12
Oct 26

Unsteadily steady for a new week

It was a weekend with a little bit of lot of things. It wasn’t busy. It wasn’t overly productive. It was peaceful and some fun was had. The weather was nice. Then it was wet. And today was nice again. I caught up on some stuff. I’m dangerously close to getting ahead on some things. Also, there was a lot of cat cuddling.

I lived the bachelor life for part of the weekend. When the cats figure that out they get especially clingy. Also, we are coming up to cuddle season, when the temperatures dip just enough that they want the extra body heat. Last night a truce was declared in the sibling war and I went to sleep with one on either side of me.

Friday I went to campus for a tour with one of the rock star biology professors. She introduced us to the oldest tree on campus, a ginko, and an oak that’s believed to be older than the nation. We walked through the oak grove.

She hated on lawns. We talked about insects and other native bugs. We talked about how lawns are a traps for bugs and insects.

We saw a space that was designed to be an outdoor classroom. Almost no one uses it, apparently, but it also seemed like none of the faculty in our tour group even knew it existed. It’s only three-tenths of a mile from most of my classrooms. Maybe I should figure out a way to use the space.

We visited what they call the arboretum, which might be the case one day, but they’re overselling it now.

We walked through a meadow that they are returning to purely native plants. We walked through it. Reader, it sounded different. The critters chirped and critted. The birds tweeted. The bees buzzed. It somehow muted the nearby road noise.

It’s a narrow strip of land, in the scheme of things, but the things that live there can help other nearby plots of land. I’d be curious about how that works, but it surely varies species-to-species. Unfortunately, there wasn’t someone with that sort of expertise on the walk. The experts that were there were great, though. And, for a change, I tried not to turn this experience into a class-generating walk.

OK, my idea for the day was a Get To Know Your Campus course. Couple of days of walking. Couple of days of history. Couple of days of different resources and activities that are available to students … stuff that helps people build up investment in the campus community. Maybe it’d be a course for transfer students.

After that tour my lovely bride and I got our flu shots. I also got a tetanus shot because I fell, and also, when was my last tetanus shot? While the woman was giving me my shots I was very brave.

The person that stuck me, twice, offered me a sticker. I declined. We were just going home and there would be no one to propagandize. We did take her up on a lollipop, though. Because we are mature, responsible, pillars of our community, we drove home amusing ourselves by demonstrating weird, noisy ways to enjoy Dum-Dums.

I went for a ride Saturday, my first one since the Wednesday crash. The first day you’re sore. The second day you’re more sore. After that you’re just down lingering pain, or something real and lasting. You have to find out, so I went out.

I reproduced the first ride we took here when we moved three years ago. It was a good time of day for those particular roads and I hadn’t been that way in some time. For some reason I can’t explain it isn’t my favorite route, so I just don’t give it its due. But there are plenty of lovely views.

After you get over the water, get into the county seat, turn back toward home and then go over another bit of water, you get back into the farmland. Maybe that stretch is why I don’t like the route. There are some small hills which are just enough, and perfectly spaced, to break up any momentum I have.

It’s a 20-mile route, which is an easy ride, but I was a bit sore, still. The first six miles my neck and shoulders hurt. But, then, my shoulder felt exactly this way for about two years after my big crash in 2012. I had to stop at a red light, though, and managed to stretch things out just after something in my neck popped. After that, the next 12 miles felt great. I wasn’t fast, but it all felt smooth.

Physically speaking, anyway.

In the last five miles, or so, though, something weird started happening.

This whole route is a lot of straight lines. You turn left at a stop sign. You turn left at another stop sign. You turn left twice more with the flow of traffic. Then there’s the final left and right to get back home. Sprinkled in there are two red lights. The first one was where I had my little stretch. The second red light is four miles from home, and somewhere just before that I lost a lot of confidence in the stability of my machine. And in those last couple of turns after the light I realized I have lost all of my confidence in my limited cornering skills.

This is no way to ride.

Sunday it rained all day. All day. And all night. It rained so much that I even forgot about it. The only time it wasn’t raining was when I took the garbage can down to the end of the drive. I was able to get a lot of class prep done, though. Just as importantly, I plotted out the rest of the week. Just knowing when I’m going to get this or that done feels good. It was such a great use of time that I’m thinking that, by Thursday, I might be working on next week’s class prep.

Let’s see what happens next.

What happened today, though, was that I finished some grading. I wrote my online class. I wrote much of my next message to that class. I made the final changes to Tuesday’s slide deck. I finished Thursday’s slide deck. I ignored Wednesday’s slide deck. That’s for tomorrow.

Today was a beautiful day and after I’d done the day’s work I enjoyed another little bike ride. This time, I took what was one of our other regular routes. It was a long seven-mile stretch into a headwind. My next two turns gave me more speed because of a crosswind and a tailwind. But those were two turns that felt still felt shaky.

The problem with this route is that there are two ghost bikes on one road. They sit right before my next turn, and as I was trying to line up that turn I could hear a car approaching, I could see the little dot that represented it on my Garmin, I could watch it drawing close, I could see the ghost bikes. I could see the turn. I could see the poorly patched ruts in the new road right where I wanted to turn. And, anyway, I need to find my confidence again.

I made the turn safely, of course. Here we are, after all. And the payoff was riding under this lovely canopy of trees. This is a great road.

And the payoff was the sun over this field. It felt then, and looks now, like I’m pedaling through a knockoff Van Gogh painting. Just needs windmills and some of his other trademarks.

I took on some other roads I enjoy, a perfect one-mile ribbon, a long uphill stretch that I crushed, and then another up-and-down bit where the bottom is some oddly shaped pond-creek-canal thing I can’t understand that reeks of sulfur. Here I faced a conundrum. If I don’t get out of that little valley I might asphyxiate. Should I pedal faster to get up the hill and away from the smell? If I pedal faster I’ll have to breathe in more of this stuff. Also, what’s causing that? And why is it worse now than it usually is?

On the next road I ran across a cornhawk.

If you see it from the side, this strip of corn husks stretches almost all the way to the treeline. I wonder if it’ll still be standing when I go back by there later this week.

Anyway, on balance, my balance on the bike felt a little bit better. Still felt dreadful about each real turn, though. And some of the bumps, too! I didn’t even have a real hard crash — I still have a small bandage on my elbow, but my knee is fine, and most of the soreness has worked its way out as expected and I’m fine — but it has succeeded in getting in my head.

Oh, hey, that’s almost 1,500 words. And there’s new stuff to grade and other things to do. Let me see to those now.

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8
Oct 26

Sore as anticipated

I am sore. My shoulders are feeling the jolt from yesterday’s little bike accident. My neck is starting to feel it as well. Otherwise, I am just fine. I’ve been re-bandaged, and my road rash looks nice and healthy and clean. Still icky, though. I’ll be more sore tomorrow.

I’ll be back riding Saturday, probably.

Class today was one of those ideas that came to me out of the blue and worked pretty well, only because the students were willing to play along. First, I told them about my bike accident. They’re either interested in road stories or they’re playing me to avoid our class topic. Anyway, we talked through it for a minute. Someone apologized to me like he’d down something, which was kind. Then I said, “But no one here has asked the most important question: How is your bike?”

I think it’s fine, we’ll find out this weekend.

Anyway, I had a few questions for them about the different kinds of data.

Explicit data — data you know and realize you are creating
Implicit data — data you don’t often realize you are creating
Inferred data — guesses about you made by powerful algorithmic processes
Aggregated data — “anonymized” data that are grouped together to analyze or train

They were most interested in answering which of those is most harmful to users. This great thing happened, where someone said one thing and another said another and finally a fifth person said all of them. During one of those answers I playfully stood up, buttoned my coat, and said “My work here is done,” and stepped over to the door.

I’d asked them to look at some social media platforms and then compare notes. I had asked them to think about a series of particular questions. All of this, I said, will be useful for some of our later work. This is the part that was a recent inspiration for the day. Happily, they went along with it, and gave it some careful thought, which was lovely.

Then we watched a bit of Monday night’s Daily Show episode. This group of students is very much interested in a variety of artificial intelligence implications. When we watched this the other night I asked my lvoely bride if I should show this in class. Absolutely, she said.

The interview segment was awkward, clearly uncomfortable for everyone, and also, sobering. It is certainly worth watching.

In class, we’ll watch some other things next week.

We went over the river this evening to have dinner with friends.

City Hall and the famous William Penn statue by Alexander Milne Calder. It is 37 feet tall, ways 25-plus tons, and has been up there for 132 years. One day I’ll get up close to it.

We parked and walked to the place where we were meeting everyone. Along the way we ran across this random light fixture. Given the time of day we passed by it looked better in person than in photo or video form. But someone looks great in any form …

I saw this sign. I’m going to have to share that with friends.

We went to an amazing little Italian restaurant. Met the guy who’s name is on the sign. He’s an older gentleman, soft-spoken, happy to see and greet people at every table in his cramped little space. He told us about his favorite meals on the menu. I was listening carefully because we’ll definitely be back.

The dinner party was people from our university, but some folks from other places, too. There’s a conference of some sort in town bringing everyone together. A few folks wanted to chew the fat after they chewed their food, so we found a place to place some video games and throw some darts.

I threw these, but I did not win the little tournament.

I did win some pinball, though. Pinball is an art of angles, trajectory, timing, and the unknown. You have to appreciate it at that level to be as good as me. If you appreciate it at other levels you’ll be better than me. That will not be difficult.

Dodged two deer on the way home, but we’ve made it home safe, of course. Us and our Italian leftovers. I wonder if I can talk my way into eating both of them …