Virtual Pedometer

Gmaps Pedometer is a "little hack that uses Google's superb mapping application to help record distances traveled during a running or walking workout."

This program works like a charm. The instructions are to the left of the map. Place your cursor and your starting point and double click. Double click at your first turn, and follow that process until you have finished your route. Distances are figured as you go. (It is 0.56597787156678 miles from the front of the Orendorff Building to the post office.)

In case you are not familiar with maps.google.com, you can place your cursor on the map and drag it until you get the spot you want centered. You can zoom in or out, and you can switch from map view to satellite view to hybrid view.

Click here for a map of Powell. The general address for the site is www.sueandpaul.com/gmapPedometer/
The map covers the US, but the Satellite view is not as good everywhere as it is for Powell (Sorry, Cody.)

Beepilepsy, Cube Farm, and Mouse Potato: New Office Slang

Slang comes and slang goes. (Cool, daddy-0!) Some interesting terms have popped up recently in the office world. Sometimes called geek speak, sometimes called New Office Slang, the terms have been floating around the internet of late.

Here are a few choice examples:

• Beepilepsy -- the strange expression someone gets when his or her cell phone goes off while the person is speaking.
• Cube Farm-- a large office composed of many cubicles.
• Mouse Potato -- the online generation's answer to the couch potato
• Treeware -- documentation or other printed material
• Ohnosecond -- the split second in which you realize you've made a terrible mistake.

For more delightful examples, check out New Office Slang at Essays and Effluvia.

Northwest Trail Pacemaker Finalist

For the second straight year, the Northwest College Trail has been named a finalist in the Associated Collegiate Press national Pacemaker Award.

According to the Associated Collegiate Press web site, "Judges select Pacemakers based on the following: coverage and content, quality of writing and reporting, leadership on the opinion page, evidence of in-depth reporting, design, photography, art and graphics."

The winners will be announced October 26- 30th in Kansas City.

Other finalists include Harvard, University of Texas, Carnegie Mellon, Miami, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Syracuse, Northeastern, Johns Hopkins, Columbia, Emory, Pepperdine, and Auburn.

Bad Movie Physics

As TIMES ONLINE reports this morning, the popular horror movie image of ghastly death due to sucking quicksand is just another movie myth.

This discovery is based on the work of four scientists (A. Khaldoun, E. Eiser, G. H. Wegdam and D. Bonn) publishing an article in today's issue of Nature titled "Rheology: Liquefaction of Quicksand under Stress." As it happens, "A person trapped in salt-lake quicksand is not in any danger of being sucked under completely." Instead, one would sink about half-way and stop; the graver danger is if the tide sweeps in on a stuck person and causes drowning.

But that's only half of it: Neither can you pull a stuck person out of quicksand without ripping them asunder. The force to remove one foot from the sand, says the TIMES ONLINE, "would require as much force as it takes to lift a family car, and the body would give way before the sand relinquished its grip."

Sadly, many of nHumanities' favorite movies have made use of horrific quicksand death, such as The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959), Lawrence of Arabia, Flash Gordon, King Solomon's Mines, and The Jungle Book.

More bad film physics . . .

Broken windows: hero jumps through window, not a scratch. In reality jumping through plate glass would slice off body parts.

Flashing bullets: sparks as bullets ricochet off walls, doors etc. Bullets are made of copper-clad lead or lead alloys which do not produce sparks in this way.

Bangs in space: sound is carried by a wave that needs matter to propagate. Outer space is, in essence, a vacuum in which no one can hear you scream.

Banned Books Week 2005 :: September 24–October 1

Celebrate the Freedom to Read!

Observe the American Library Association's Banned Books Week by visiting these links:

• The Top 10 List of Most Frequently Challenged Books
• The 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 1990-2000
• Notable Quotes & Links on freedom of speech and banned books
• Banned Books Online
• Develop Yourself: Expose Your Mind to a Banned Book
• Book Burning through the ages

"If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all." -- Noam Chomsky, speaking in a BBC television interview with John Pilger on The Late Show (1992)

Liquid Sculpture and Strobe Alley

Liquid Sculpture is the web site of photographer Mark Waugh, featuring his pictures of liquid droplets at the moment of impact. The photo at right is of colored water, but his collection includes various colored and viscous fluids as they form frozen fountains, coronets, and other sculptures.

Waugh's work reminds me of the first such photo I ever saw. When my elder brother went off to MIT, he sent back a postcard of a coronet of milk--amazingly frozen in time against a red background (1957). It was the work of MIT's Institute Professor Harold E. "Doc" Edgerton. An earlier Edgerton picture of a splashing milk drop was so beautiful that it was featured in the New York Museum of Modern Art's first photography exhibit (1937). More images included athletes frozen in competition; bullets piercing balloons, apples, and playingcards; and hummingbirds in mid-flight.

Such images may seem common today, but they were a miracle in the 1930s when Edgerton invented the stroboscope which was used to create ultra-high-speed and still (or stop-motion) photography.

Interesting links:

• Flashes of Inspiration: The Work of Harold Edgerton, MIT Museum
  
• Exploring Photography : Photographers : Harold Edgerton, Victoria & Albert Museum
  
• A Biographical Memoir (PDF) by J. Kim VanDiver and Pagan Kennedy, published by the National Academy of Sciences

Gigi rongak, Bakku-shan, and Backpfeifengesicht

Estimates on the number of words in the English language range from 500,000 to over two million. (Obviously, figuring out the number of words in a language is more difficult than one might suspect.) At any rate, with all those words floating around you'd think that English has virtually every thing, action, or concept covered.

Fortunately, nothing could be further from the truth. Adam Jacot de Boinod has scoured several hundred language dictionaries looking for words which have no English equivalents, and he has collected them in his book The Meaning Of Tingo, a collection of distinctly non-English words and phrases. Here are some choice examples:

• gigi rongak -- the space between the teeth (Malaysian)
• bakku-shan-- a girl who looks pretty from the back but not the front (Japanese)
• backpfeifengesicht -- a face that cries out for a fist in it (German)
• kummerspeck (grief bacon) -- excess weight gained while overeating during emotional times (German)
• plimpplampplettere -- skimming stones across the water (Netherlands)
  

For more choice terms, read "Tingo, nakkele and other wonders" in the BBC News Online.

Definitions Can Be Tricky

Writing for BoingBoing, Xeni Jardin offers a post on BlackMetal for Dummies. An excerpt from her post illustrates the dangers of facile definitions--an object lesson for all young scholars:

"Musical characteristics include superfast guitars and shrieky, bummed-out vocals. Fashion characteristics include spiky shin guards, medieval accessories(swords, chains), and generous use of corpse paint.

"But as the comparative graphic above shows, identification can be tricky. At left, Dani from the band Cradle of Filth is wearing lots of corpse paint. He is Totally Black Metal. At right, Louie the pug -- who is owned by television news producer Jeremy Blacklow from a Certain News Network -- is not one bitBlack Metal, despite facial markings that strongly resemble corpse paint."

Half of Europeans Bilingual

According to an Associated Press article, a recent European Union poll shows that 50% of the citizens in Europe can speak a second language.

The country with the highest percentage of citizens who are able to "master a conversation in a second language" is Luxembourg, at 99%. Hungary came in at the bottom of the scale, with 29%.

In the United Sates, only 9% of the population is bilingual. According to a U.S. Senate resolution, 2005 is the "Year of Foreign Language Study."

Link

Jerred Metz Presentation

Jerred Metz read selections from his work The Last Eleven Days of Earl Durand on Thursday evening, Sept. 23.

The reading was followed by an intense discussion and question and answer period. Even though Metz' book focuses on events which took place in 1939, a number of members of the audience had personal connections to Durand's saga: his escape from jail, flight, and the eventual deaths of six people--including Durand.

Almost Before We Spoke, We Swore

A recent New York Times science article on cursing shakes its head in bemusement at the current American political trend of penalizing obscenity on the air:

. . . researchers who study the evolution of language and the psychology of swearing say that they have no idea what mystic model of linguistic gentility the critics might have in mind. Cursing, they say, is a human universal. Every language, dialect or patois ever studied, living or dead, spoken by millions or by a small tribe, turns out to have its share of forbidden speech, somevariant on comedian George Carlin's famous list of the seven dirty words that are not supposed to be uttered on radio or television.

In fact, the article says, "Some researchers are so impressed by the depth and power of strong language that they are using it as a peephole into the architecture of the brain, as a means of probing the tangled, cryptic bonds between the newer, 'higher' regions of the brain in charge of intellect, reason and planning, andthe older, more 'bestial' neural neighborhoods that give birth to our emotions."

Professor Kate Burridge at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, concludes, "People can feel very passionate about language . . . as though it were a cherished artifact that must be protected at all cost against the depravitiesof barbarians and lexical aliens."

43 Folders | Writing Sensible Email Messages

The number of people who don't understand basic email netiquette is truly appalling. But that's not what I'm here to rant about today.

I'm here to rave about Writing Sensible Email Messages from 43 Folders. The care with which you write your emails will save hassled recipients time and temper *and* will get you better responses.

In addition to writing a great Subject line, here's what else you need to do to write good email:

. . . don't bury the lede. Get the details and context packed into that first sentence or two whenever you can. Don't be afraid to write an actual “topic sentence” that clarifies a) what this is about, and b) what response or action you require of the recipient.

Since the Larry Tate meeting on Monday has been moved from the Whale Room, could you please make sure the Fishbowl has been reserved and that the caterer has been notified of the location change? Please IM me today by 5pm Pacific Time to verify.

This isn't the place to practice your stand-up act. Keep it pithy, and assume that no one will ever read more than the first sentence of anything you write. Making that first sentence strong and clear is easily the best way to interest your recipient in the second sentence and beyond.

Zen slap: An email auto-check set for every minute means 60 potential distractions every hour, or almost 500 per day. Look back at a week of your emails and ask yourself: how many distractions was that really worth? How much crucial, instantly actionable email did I receive to make it worth shifting my attention over 2000 times? --43 Folders, Quick Tips on Processing Your Email Inbox

Collective Nouns for Our Times

Last week, A.Word.A.Day featured collective nouns. Collective nouns are such as a skein of geese or a sounder of swine. In response, enthusiastic readers sent in hundreds of suggestions for new collective nouns--ones appropriate to our times. Here are some AWAD gleaned from the submissions:

An earful of iPod users. -Paul Kitching
A clique of photographers. -Lydia Ross
A scourge of evangelists. -David Scroder

A roll of tootsies. -Warren E. Wolfe
A whine of teenagers. -David Gasson
A cacophony of DJs. -Celeste Mulholland

A barf of bulimics. -Steph Selice
A sounder of politicians at pork barrel. -Tom Cradden
A surfeit of spammers. -Peter Moore

A gargle of word enthusiasts. -Preston Cox
A stonish of wonders. -Alan Williams
An overcharge of plumbers. -Murray Zangen

A bling of celebrities. -Lauren Weiner
A wanding of airport screeners. -Mike Edwards
A lunching of executives. -Pat Goodwin

A blather of bloggers. -Scott S. Zacher
A conjugation of grammarians. -Eric Marsh
A contingent of understudies. -Ben Yudkin

A flight of runaway brides. -Michelle Geissbuhler
A covey of highly effective people. -Esther Krieger
A pride of expectant fathers. -Pat Hutley

A lot of used car salesmen. -Owen Mahoney
A pinch of shoplifters. -Jim Vander Woude
A stupor of television viewers. -Rabbi Vander Cecil

A screech of American Idol contestants. -Dick Timberlake
A tax dodge of gin palaces. -Kate Page
An enthusiasm of AWAD subscribers. -Eleanor Jackson

The Last Eleven Days of Earl Durand

Thursday, the 22nd, Jerred Metz will be giving a reading from his book The Last Eleven Days of Earl Durand at 7:00 p. m. in FAB 70. The reading is the first in a series sponsored by the Northwest Writer's Series.

In 1939 Earl Durand, a native of Powell, focused national and international attention on northwest Wyoming. What began as a simple case of poaching eventually turned into an eleven day "crime spree," as the papers of the day called it, complete with jail break, shoot outs, kidnappings, a posse, and a bank robbery.

By the time it was over Powell was the center of a 1939 version of a media storm. To this day there is still considerable disagreement as to what motivated Durand. For some, Durand was something of a Robin Hood figure who willing shared the meat he poached with those who needed it. For others, he was an antisocial outcast who deserved his fate.

Metz' book is based on personal interviews with many of the central characters.

For more information on Durand's saga, see Rob Koelling's "Earl Durand" from First National Bank of Powell: The History of a Bank, a Community, and a Family

Y: The Last Man, Vol. 1--Unmanned

Since 2002, DC Comics' Vertigo imprint has run a series of graphic novels titled Y: The Last Man. The fifth volume is out (Y: The Last Man, Vol. 5--Ring of Truth). The more exciting news, however, is that the first issue chapter is available for free on the DC Comics web site as a PDF download.

Y: The Last Man is a highly-rated graphic novel and science fiction series. SF author Cory Doctorow calls it a "must-read comic book/graphic novel series." Here's the basic premise of the series:

In the summer of 2002, a plague of unknown origin destroys every last sperm, fetus, and fully developed mammal with a Y chromosome - with the exception of amateur escape artist Yorick Brown and his surly male helper monkey Ampersand.

This "gendercide" instantaneously exterminates 48% of the global population, or approximately 29 billion men.

This is the world of Y - The Last Man

Writing Idea :: Eliminate "Throat Clearing"

Cory Doctorow, author and BoingBoing contributor, offers some good advice on writing: get rid of the throat-clearing and move your main idea from the end of your paper to the top of it:

"Here's a procedure that I almost always find useful for improving almost any kind of written composition -- a speech, an essay, an op-ed or a story. As a first pass, try cutting the first 10 percent (the 'throat clearing') then moving the last 30 percent (the payoff) to the beginning of the talk (don't bury your lede!). About 90 percent of the time when someone gives me a paper for review, I find that it can be improved through this algorithm.

"Weirdly, I almost always need someone else to point this out to me. I circulated a draft paper for comment this week, and it took Grad to remind me that I'd buried my lede and spent too much time throat-clearing. It turned out that he was completely right, but I didn't see it until it was pointed out to me."

Cool & Quirky :: bOingbOing

For the past five years, the bloggers at BoingBoing have been publishing the cool and quirky wonders of the web.

Now blogger Rich Burridge has gone through the BoingBoing archives and created lists of the coolest posts for each month of the blog's history. You can access the list via a chronological directory of monthly summaries or all the links in his BoingBoing category.

Poet's Corner: Anne Bradstreet

An item from Today in Literature:

"On this day in 1672 Anne Bradstreet, the first published poet of the American colonies, died. Bradstreet enjoyed a relatively privileged life in England, but at the age of eighteen she, her husband, and her parents sailed with John Winthrop for the Puritan settlement at Massachusetts Bay. Her first book of poems, The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America, was published back in England in 1650 -- by her brother-in-law and apparently without her knowledge, Bradstreet expressing embarrassment that the world should see the 'ill-form'd offspring of my feeble brain.' These first poems are sometimes candid and immediate, but more often they are conventional in style and on accepted topics -- her love for husband, children, God, etc. Later poems can show a different attitude, one far from embarrassment:

I am obnoxious to each carping tongue,
Who sayes, my hand a needle better fits,
A Poets Pen, all scorne, I should thus wrong;
For such despighte they cast on female wits:
If what i doe prove well, it wo'nt advance,
They'l say its stolen, or else, it was by chance."

Your Health :: A Fit Mind in a Fit Body

News@Nature.com reports that "Aerobic exercise is the best way to keep your memory healthy."

According to Ian Robertson of the University of Dublin, "Exercise is a sort of wonder drug that makes you more mentally agile." Good nutrition, education, and optimism all help keep your brain young, but aerobic exercise is the most important. It helps your brain sprout new cells, make new connections, and keep the frontal lobes young.

While this news is most important for the over-50 set, the young humanities scholar would do well to establish healthy habits now. So leave your book-strewn garret at least once a day for some brisk exercise. In the long run, your brain will thank you for it.

Free Drop-In Tutoring :: Writing

Northwest College offers its students free, drop-in tutoring in writing. Here's the schedule for Fall 2005:

Jennifer Harrison

• Mondays, Wednesdays, & Fridays
• 9-11 a.m.
• ORB 108 (Writing Center)
  

Carla Niederhauser

• Tuesdays, Wednesdays, & Thursdays
• 7:30-9:30 p.m.
• Hinckley Library
  

Maxine Morris (beginning 19Sep05)

• Mondays & Tuesdays, 3-5 p.m.
• Wednesdays, 5:30-7:30 p.m.
• ORB 108 (Writing Center)

Rosebud Returns

The Rosebud Film Group Opens the 2005-06 Season on September 9 with a showing of Since Otar Left at 7:30 pm in Fagerberg Bldg. #70

Roger Ebert says, "'Since Otar Left" tells a story of conventional melodrama, and makes it extraordinary because of the acting. The characters are so deeply known, so intensely observed, so immediately alive to us, that the story primarily becomes the occasion for us to meet them. Nothing at the plot level engaged me much, not even the ending, which is supposed to be so touching. But I was touched deeply, again and again, simply by watching these people live their lives."



The Rosebud Film Group is an informal organization at Northwest College which welcomes film viewers to attend its frequent Friday night screenings throughout the academic year. There's no club to join or no need to attend regularly--come when a scheduled showing interests you.

Each season's film list includes international films, film classics, documentaries, some new releases, and off-beat experiments. You get the idea: these are not films that are likely to be shown in local theaters. Instead, these are films that appeal to viewers who appreciate the craft of filmmaking and unpredictable stories and characters.

Details about the 2005-2006 Rosebud Film Series are available in two places: on the Northwest College Calendar or by personal e-mail notification. To see the weekly calendar, go to "CALENDAR" on the home page of Northwest College's website at www.northwestcollege.edu. To receive regular e-mail notifications about Rosebud showings, send a message to Richard.Wilson@northwestcollege.edu.

New Edition! Writing in the Academic World

The winners of the 2004-05 academic writing contest have been published in Northwest College's online writing magazine Writing in the Academic World (click on link to view winning essays). nHumanities is happy to say that the students of the Humanities Division are well-represented:

• Adolescent Female Depression, by Carin Sorenson (ENGL 2017)
• Cybersex as "Safe Sex," by Dana Rinne (PSYC 2200)
  
• Incredible Possibilities: Stem Cells and the Future, by Robert Guty (ENGL 1010)
• South African Apartheid, by Kaci Coleman (ENGL 2030)
• Subtle Prejudice, by Brooke Whitaker (ENGL 2030)
• The Importance of FDA Regulation on Herbal Medicine, by Tammy Moore (ENGL 1010)

Writing Tutor

Tutor Available! Starting Wednesday, September 7th, Carla Niederhauser will be the drop-in English tutor available at Hinckley Library, 7:30-9:30 pm, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays.

(07Sep05) The complete drop-in tutor schedule is now available on a later post.

Idea Generation Methods

Writing Idea! All Known Idea Generation Methods lists every brainstorming technique Martin Leith has encountered in the past 15 years. A "co-creation consultant" in the United Kingdom, Leith has consulted books, management journals, websites, academics, consultants and colleagues for these ideas.

Some are tried and true methods you'll recognize from your freshman composition class, but others are totally novel. Bookmark this site, and you never be stuck for ideas again.

Talk Like a Pirate Day :: September 19

Avast! September 19 is International Talk Like a Pirate Day, mateys. So polish your brass, haul on your yardarms, and get ready to walk the plank as a pirate would. Arrrrgh!

Talk Like a Pirate Day started obscurely in 1995 due to the inspiration of two guys--John Baur and Mark Summers--but the day went big time when nationally syndicated columnist Dave Barry embraced the annual holiday.

And why does nHumanities advocate talking like pirates? America's illustrators of the golden age (1870-1965) had a brilliant history of illustrating pirate stories and books. (Above right, the cover of Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island, illustrated by N. C. Wyeth, 1911; below left, Howard Pyle, The Flying Dutchman, 1902, illustration from "North Folk Legends of the Sea," Harper's Monthly Magazine, January 1902.)

American magazine illustration enjoyed a celebrated period in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when beloved illustrators were the stars of their time and households anxiously awaited their next offerings. Some of the names from this period remain familiar: Howard Pyle, Norman Rockwell, Rockwell Kent, Edward Gorey, Maxfield Parrish, N. C. Wyeth, Frederic Remington, John Held, Jr., and more. They worked for magazines such as McClure's, Harper's Monthly, Good Housekeeping, Saturday Evening Post, and Collier's.

What makes illustration different from other art genres? According to the National Museum of American Illustrators, three characteristics distinguish illustration:

1. American Illustration is an art form created to be reproduced, sometimes with accompanying text.
   
2. American Illustration manifests how Americans view themselves; it is both social and cultural history pictured.
3. American Illustration is a visual record which evokes responses from the audience of its day, from the audience of today, and from future audiences; it becomes increasingly valuable as a reservoir of cultural images and a chronicle of change. (The American Imagist Collection)

(07Sep05) Link to Flickr Photoset of all the illustrations from Howard Pyle's 1903 book of pirates.

---

Links of Interest:

• National Museum of American Illustrators
• American Illustrators Gallery
• The complete text of Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates: Fiction, Fact & Fancy Concerning the Buccaneers & Marooners of the Spanish Main (1921), with illustrations
• The Wyeth illustrated Treasure Island online
• Dave Barry's column, "Arrrrr! Talk Like a Pirate--or Prepare to be Boarded" (08Sep02)
• How to Talk Like a Pirate (including risque pickup lines for advanced speakers)
  
• The lyrics of a Pirate Shanty sung to the tune of Month Python's "I'm a Lumberjack" (I'm a pirate! That I be! / I sail me ship upon the sea! . . .)
• The Original Talk Like a Pirate Site