The Black Death and HIV

In 1347, a Mongol army laid seige to the Genovese trading seaport of Kaffa on the Crimean peninsula. Legend has it that when the Mongols began dropping from a strange illness, they placed dead bodies in trebuchets and flung them over the city walls, infecting the Genoese within. (Some scholarship casts doubt on this story, however there is no doubt that the traders caught the plague from the Mongols.)

The Genovese traders fled Kaffa in a fleet of ships. By the time they sailed into Messina, Sicily, most of the crew was dead or dying. Thus the Black Death, also known as the Black Plague, came to Europe. Estimates vary, but eventually almost one third of the population of Europe--some 25 million people--would die from it.

Now it appears that some who survived did so not because they managed avoid the fleas which carried the bubonic plague, but because of a mutated gene which gave them immunity -- a gene which also appears provide immunity to HIV.

Secrets of the Dead is a fascinating program on the subject from PBS. The show presents the work of Dr. Stephen O'Brien of the National Institutes of Health in Washington D.C. His work took him to Eyam, a small village in central England, where records showed that during the plague years over half the population survived an infestation which should have wiped them out.

Check out the complete story here, on the PBS web site.

"Oh my God! They’re using adverbs!"

Attack of the Zombie Copy, by Erin Kissane, talks about undead prose on the internet . . . but the advice the article offers is good for anybody's writing. Here's a snippet:

1. Kill the modifiers. This is machete work, so wrap a bandanna around your face and grab some shop goggles. No reader is going to believe that your process is innovative or your product is world-class just because you say so, so kill those adjectives. Don’t feel sorry for them. They have no feelings.
2. Determine what manner of monster you’re dealing with. Once you’ve cleared the modifiers away, you’ll be able to get a better idea of the real shape of what’s underneath. If you can paraphrase the revealed sentence in a simpler way, the paraphrase can guide you to a new, clearer version.
3. Hit ’em in the head, right between the eyes. Once the sentences’ underlying form has been revealed, you’ll be able to start looking at the overall health of paragraphs and pages. You may find that whacking the modifiers and simplifying the sentences will reveal a mushy glop of circular logic and nonsense; if so, it’s time to deliver a merciful death. If, on the other hand, your copy is only mostly dead, you can revive it by excising meaningless or redundant passages and then patching up the remainder with transitions and clarifications.

Shortcut Keys for MS Word

If you use MS Word as your word processing program, then listen up: you can speed up your keyboarding and save your poor carpal-tunnel tortured wrist by using shortcut keys.

Shortcut keys allow you to perform common word processing functions in one easy step, instead of several point the mouse and choose from a menu and click steps. See? Even the name is shorter: shortcut keys.

You can find a nice, one-page guide to the most used shortcut keys, courtesy of CADCourse.com (PDF:21KB,1p).

Here are a few of the shortcuts I use most:

• Select all text on page--CTRL+A
  
• Copy highlighted text--CTRL+C
  
• Paste copied text--CTRL+V
  
• Cut highlighted text--CTRL+X
  
• Create hanging indentation (for Works Cited page)--CTRL+T
  
• Increase indent of paragraph (for long, indented quotes)--CTRL+M
  
• Double-space lines of highlighted text--CTRL+2

To print a complete list of MS Word's shortcut key commands (9 pp), follow these directions:

1. Open Word
   
2. On the Tools menu, point to Macro, and then click Macros.
   
3. In the Macros in box, click Word commands.
   
4. In the Macro name box, click ListCommands.
   
5. Click Run.
   
6. In the List Commands dialog box, click Current menu and keyboard settings.
7. On the File menu, click Print.

A Rootin', Tootin' Evening.

It was a rootin', tootin' evening when Paul Zarzyski brought his brand of cowboy and western poetry to the Nelson auditorium.

Part reading, part performance, all hard work, Zarzyski roped his audience in and kept them tied to their seats as he launched his poetry with a rapid fire delivery.

Touching on themes ranging from the nature of friendship to the best type of pie, Zarzyski paid homage to his mentor, Richard Hugo, who taught him to listen to the music of words.

(At right) Mike Masterson, Professor of Music, Del Nose, Rodeo Coach, and Paul Zarzyski take a moment to visit before the presentation.

Common MLA Models

It's open season on research-based writing for college classes. The secret to writing correct bibliographic entries is to use a reference book such as Diane Hacker's A Writer's Reference (5th ed., with 2003 MLA update) or the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers (Joseph Gibaldi, 6th ed.) and find the appropriate model or models for the source you are using. Sometimes you must combine elements from a couple of models.

Here are four MLA bibliographic citations that cover the sources most students use in their research papers: the scholarly article accessed via a database, the document from a government web site, the webpage from a larger web site, and a short work from an anthology.

Scholarly Article Accessed Via a Database

If you are using Hacker's A Writer's Reference as your guide, then you will wish to follow model no. 31 (360). To write this citation, you provide all the information that's available for the print version of the article, and then you add the necessary information about how you accessed it online. Example:

Koumans, Emilia H., et al. "Sexually Transmitted Disease Services at US Colleges and Universities." Journal of American College Health 53.5 (2005): 211-217. Academic Search Premier. EBSCOhost. Hinckley Lib., Northwest Col., Powell, WY. 31 Mar. 2005 ‹http://www.epnet.com›.

Within the body of your paper, you would use the following intext citation: (Koumans et al. 212).

Document from a Government Web Site

When a webpage comes from a government-sponsored web site--such as the CDC--then you need to identify the government as the "corporate author" of the document. You would use Hacker's model at the top of page 366, the second example for no. 49. Example:

United States. National Center for HIV, STD and TB Prevention. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. HIV and Its Transmission. 22 Sep. 2003. 31 Mar. 2005 ‹http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/pubs/ facts/transmission.htm›.

The intext citation for this source would be (United States); for subsequent citations, you could use an abbreviation (US). If you had more than one document from this same web site, then you need to add more information so readers can find the citation easily in your Works Cited list: (United States, HIV).

Webpage from a Larger Web Site

The model for a webpage (or a short work) from a larger web site is no. 28 in Hacker (358). Here's an example for a webpage without an author:

"HIV/AIDS: Antiretroviral Therapy (ART)." World Health Organization. 2005. 31 Mar. 2005 ‹http://www.who.int/hiv/topics/arv/en/›.

The appropriate intext citation for this webpage would be ("HIV/AIDS").

A Chapter or Section or Short Work from a Book/Anthology

The model for a work in an anthology is no. 10 in Hacker (352). Here's an example for a short story from an anthology:

Faulkner, William. "A Rose for Emily." Literature: Approaches to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. Ed. Robert DiYanni. Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2004. 73-79.

The appropriate intext citation for this webpage would be (Faulkner 74).

Remember: When in doubt, contact your professor for guidance.

2005-2006 Writers Series Schedule

The schedule for the 2005-2004 NWC Writers Series is now available on the Humanities Division Web Site.

Paul Zarzyski Reading

The Northwest College Writers Series and the NWC Rodeo Team are joining forces to sponser nationally acclaimed poet Paul Zarzyski on Saturday, Oct. 15, at 7:30 p.m. in the Nelson Performing Arts Center Auditorium.

A former bareback bronc rider, Zarzyski now lives in Great Falls, Montana, where he’s “been spurring the words wild across the open range of the page and calling it Poetry for 33 years.”

In his earlier years, Zarzyski studied with Montana’s own Richard Hugo and during the same time took up bareback bronc riding. With help from the former, he earned a master of fine arts degree in creative writing at the University of Montana in Missoula; and with the latter, he tasted the blood, sweat and dirt in both amateur and ProRodeo circuits before finally hanging up his hooks in his late 30s. After turning 40, Zarzyski tried to outwit the broncs again for a couple years on the senior circuit, or what he calls “The Masters.”

Zarzyski has been featured on Garrison Keillor’s “A Prairie Home Companion” on public radio and has recited at national book, folk and storytelling festivals, the ProRodeo Hall of Fame, Library of Congress and with the Reno Philharmonic Orchestra, to name just a few.

For more information, check out Zarzyski's website at http://www.paulzarzyski.com/.

First Friday Reading on Oct. 7th

First Friday, the Humanities Division's open microphone poetry and prose reading, returns on October 7th at noon in the Hinckley Library.

No sign up required. Come one, come all. Share your work. (Come to think of it, songs, tap dancing, and magic tricks are welcome as well.)

AFI's Top 25 Film Scores

Regular readers know that nHumanities loves the movies. So--with a gurgle of joy--we direct you to the American Film Institute's 100 Years of Film Scores. Seeing John Williams top the list with Star Wars (1977) is no surprise, but do you recognize Max Steiner (Gone with the Wind, 1939), Maurice Jarre (Lawrence of Arabia, 1962), Bernard Herrman (Psycho, 1960), and Nino Rota (The Godfather, 1972)? You certainly would recognize their themes, which permeate our culture.

Completing the top ten are Jaws (John Williams, 1975), Laura (David Raksin, 1944), The Magnificent Seven (Elmer Bernstein,1960), Chinatown (Jerry Goldsmith, 1974), and High Noon (Dimitri Tiomkin, 1952).

Speaking of film scores . . . each year, during the run up to the Oscars, National Public Radio's Weekend Edition Sunday presents a feature called Listening to the Movies: Oscar-Nominated Music, by Andy Trudeau. Trudeau examines the Oscar-nominated film scores for the year, explaining the theory and aesthetics of each. He offers his own list of Trudeau's Top 10 Film Scores of All-Time, with audio clips.