Employers Look at GPA

According to an article in The New York Times, the factor that matters most to many employers is a recent college graduate’s grade-point average.

In the article, Johnny C. Taylor, Jr., senior vice president of human resources for the IAC/InterActiveCorp, says "he has found that a young applicant’s G.P.A. is the best single predictor of job performance in the first few years of employment. . . . G.P.A. is the best indicator an individual is likely to succeed. . . . It demonstrates a strong work ethic and smarts."

The article also reports that the National Association of Colleges and Employers' Job Outlook 2007 survey "found that 66 percent of employers screen candidates by G.P.A."

In fact, Tory Johnson, the chief executive of Women for Hire in New York, "tells recent graduates never to put a grade-point average that is below 3.0 on a résumé. 'That is like saying "Hi, I’m mediocre," ' she says."

So what to do if your GPA is not above a 3.0? Here are a few tips from human resource directors:

• Omit your GPA. If you get through the first cut, you may have a later chance to explain your grades.
  
• Play up your GPA in your major. If your overall GPA looks low, then use the 3.1 that you earned in your major discipline.
• Play up your GPA in your senior and junior years, if they are an improvement over your first college years.
• If you were working your way through school, supporting a family, or dealing with family illness, then say so. These can be admirable reasons for a lower GPA.
  

Better yet, avoid the problem altogether by realizing how important that GPA may be and working hard now to achieve a good one.

Source: Those Low Grades in College May Haunt Your Job Search

National Geographic's Top 10

National Geographic News offers the year in review through image and word:

• Top Ten Stories of 2006
• Top Ten Photos of 2006
• Top Ten Videos of 2006

Scary Mary

We've blogged about remix movie trailers before, but this one takes the cake. Scary Mary is Mary Poppins recut as a horror movie trailer. You'll never look at Julie Andrews the same way again.

How to Spend Your Money

If you received gifts of money over the holidays, there are experts in cyberspace who will cheerfully advise you on how to spend it. Two credible sources recently have come to our attention:

• Uncle Mark 2007 Gift Guide and Almanac (PDF): (Uncle) Mark Hurst says, "Sure, plenty of websites and magazines – even Consumer Reports – can give you 17 different options of digital cameras, but that doesn’t help much. You’re not asking to see all the available choices. . . . A better question is, which ONE product should you buy, and why?" Uncle Mark tells you which one product to buy among all the major consumer technology products.
• Kevin Kelly's Cool Tools: "Cool tools really work. A cool tool can be any book, gadget, software, video, map, hardware, material, or website that is tried and true. I am chiefly interested in stuff that is extraordinary, better than similar products, little-known, and reliably useful for an individual or small group." Use the categories in the left-hand margin to find your interest areas.
  

An Oral History of the War in Iraq

For its 45th anniversary issue (November/December 2006), The Columbia Journalism Review has published Into the Abyss - Reporting Iraq 2003-2006: An Oral History.

In its introduction, the CJR says, "we interviewed [Wall Street Journal reporter Farnaz] Fassihi and forty-six other journalists who have covered the war in Iraq. Out of their anecdotes and insights we constructed an oral history — the first of its kind. These people are covering the most significant story of our time and doing it under circumstances that nearly defy belief. They have lived and studied 'the situation' closely, some of them for four years or more. This is their story."

In their comments, reporters speak candidly about the cross-cultural aspects of covering the war. Excerpts:

Borzou Daragahi, Los Angeles Times

I know how religious the people in Iraq are, how traditional they are with regard to gender relations and stuff like that. I would see certain stuff and I would just cringe and want to say [to U.S. soldiers], “You guys are really, really making a bad name for yourself here by storming into this guy’s house with your shoes on. This guy’s done nothing and yet you’re going to make an enemy out of him because he’s gonna talk about you guys for the rest of his life, and that day when they came storming into my house with their shoes on — nobody walks into my house with their shoes on!"

Rajiv Chandrasekaran, The Washington Post

It became clear that you didn’t want to go to some of these places after dark. Even with that, you still got around pretty well through the summer of 2003 and into the fall of 2003. After, it became evident that a lot of contractors were driving around in Jeep Cherokees that looked like ours, I took one and then the second of four SUVs to Sadr City and did the Baghdad equivalent of Pimp My Ride. For sixty bucks, I had it sandblasted and had it painted to look like an Iraqi taxi cab. The really nice paint job on this $90,000 vehicle was stripped off and it was made to look like a ghetto mobile, like a Shiite ghetto mobile from Sadr City. . . .

Elizabeth Palmer, CBS

I've been struck by how essentially humane a lot of the soldiers are, with a very strong sense of right and wrong, which I think comes with growing up in America. And how ill-equipped they were to apply that to a situation like Iraq, without enough historical or geographical or cultural knowledge to actually — unless they were under the command of a very gifted officer, and there are some who are extremely well-equipped, but a lot of them are not — to apply that sort of fairness to Iraqi society. I feel that a huge majority of them are good men trapped in an impossible situation and have not really understood where they are historically, as well as culturally and physically. I think they’re hostages of a terrible situation as well; it’s given me enormous sympathy for them, and certainly a new appreciation for how ill-prepared they were for the mission, at least in the early days.

The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation

Cory Doctorow of Boing Boing recommends the graphic adaptation of The 9/11 Report that was created by Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colón, saying, "The adaptation works surprisingly well. The Report is notoriously easy-to-read and gripping, more thriller than bureaucratic tome, and its most important conclusions are well suited to being depicted in sequential art."

You can read the first chapter online at Slate.

Faux Pas, Nation by Nation

Wikipedia has useful and amusing articles on national expectations of etiquette. Examples:

• Australia & New Zealand: "When riding alone in a taxi, it is considered more polite to sit in the front passenger seat next to the driver. However, it is not considered impolite for women to choose the back seat if the driver is male, especially at night."
• European countries: "Avoid hand gestures with which one is unfamiliar; many hand gestures are impolite. Also, some gestures have different meanings in different cultures. For example, a variation of the thumb-to-index finger "okay" sign is an obscene gesture in some European countries."
• Scandinavia: "Not finishing one's food implies that the taste or quality was poor and it could not be eaten or the host does not correctly serve the quantity of food one needs."
• Middle East: "Among Muslims, the left hand is reserved for bodily hygiene and considered unclean. Thus, the right hand should be used for eating. Shaking hands or handing over an item with one's left hand is an insult."
• India: "It is considered immature and hoggish to open a gift in front of the person who has given it. Gifts are opened in private."

"They Call Me Naughty Lola"

"Shy, ugly man, fond of extended periods of self-pity, middle-aged, flatulent and overweight, seeks the impossible. Box no. 8623."

"Things I won't do for love include replacing corroding soil pipes and trepanning at home. Everything else is A-OK. Eager-to-please woman (36) seeks domineering man to take advantage of her flagging confidence. Tell me I'm pretty, then watch me cling, at box no. 3286."

"They call me Naughty Lola. Run-of-the-mill beardy physicist (M, 46). Box. 4023."

Since 1998, the London Review of Books has featured a column of remarkable personal ads. Now, the LRB advertising director--David Rose--has gathered the most memorable of these eccentric ads into a collection called They Call Me Naughty Lola: Personal Ads from the London Review of Books.

All personal ads are a wonderful exercise in concise writing, but those from the LRB serve up something extra: wordplay, wit, erudition, and "the occasional philosophical reference."

They are also often self-deprecating and brutally honest. One ad starts, "I’ve divorced better men than you." Surely this volume deserves a home in the Christmas stocking of someone you know.

• Personal ads from the current issue of LBR
  
• Review from The New York Times
• Review from Salon.com

Faces of the Fallen

According to washingtonpost.com, we have lost 3,294 American service men and women in Operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom (based on reports as of 20Dec06). The Washington Post honors these casualties with Faces of the Fallen.

PBS's Online NewsHour provides a similar service in its Honor Roll.

Department of Your Government Cares about You

The National Institutes of Health provides free MP3 audio reports at NIH Radio.

Phishing

According to the FBI, phishing has become the leading type of internet fraud and costs billions of dollars a year:

"The typical phishing attack involves the scammer sending the victim an e-mail message, which appears to be from a legitimate business. The e-mail message requests the victim to update, or verify, personal information by clicking on a link in the e-mail message. This link will take the victim to what appears to be a legitimate company web page. However, the web page is actually a well designed phony web page, which only looks authentic . When the victim enters personal information into the web page, the victim is actually supplying information directly to the scammer."

Here's how the FBI says to avoid phishing:

1. Never use the links or phone numbers contained in an email that asks you to verify personal information. Legitimate institutions never ask for this information electronically.
2. To verify any unexpected emails, call your financial institution using a trusted phone number--the number printed on your bank statement or on the back of your credit card.
3. Keep your anti-virus software and firewall up-to-date.

For more guidance, see the articles on phishing from Yahoo! Tech.

British Museum | Ancient Greece

The British Museum has developed a wonderful online exhibit about Ancient Greece for children aged 9-11.

Featuring objects from the British Museum's collection, the site's staff room provides plenty of ideas and resources for teachers, too.

TV's Great Writer

David Milch is the dark writing genius behind NYPD Blue and Hill Street Blues, and Deadwood. MIT World provides a lecture by Milch from last spring, when Milch appeared as part of MIT's Television in Transition lecture series.

When asked about the inspiration for his writing, Milch reveals how his life has intersected with his work:

Prodded to reflect on some of his twisted but charismatic TV characters, Milch says, "My old man used to beat me pretty good. And I adored him. He wound up taking his own life." That’s for starters. Milch goes on to describe his surgeon father’s gangland relatives; his father’s suicide; and where he’d learned that his father had died (at a "pitch" meeting). It should not surprise, then, that Milch deeply understands "the torment some souls are exposed to." He has suffered bouts of heroin and alcohol addiction, and describes himself as an obsessive-compulsive who doesn’t let his hands touch anything while writing, and so dictates his TV scripts.

Video length -- 1:23:15.

The Wealth of American Slang

cube farm*
prairie-dogging*
idea hamster*

A charming interview on NPR's All Things Considered introduces Paul Dickson's 3rd edition of Slang: The Topical Dictionary of Americanisms.

---

* Dickson says that the American office environment has been a rich source of new slang terms during the 10 years since the previous volume. A cube farm is an office filled with cubicles. Prairie-dogging occurs when a loud noise happens and heads pop up over the tops of cubicles trying to see what's going on. Idea hamsters are people who always seem to have their idea generators running.

American Essays

The charm of the essay lies in the fact that it is not formal, that it may be whimsical in its point of departure, and capricious in its ramblings after it has got itself under way. --Introduction, Brander Mathews

Hooray for expired copyrights! Brander Matthews's The Oxford Book of American Essays (1914) is available online via Bartleby.com. Some of America's finest essay-writers appear here (of the--ahem--male persuasion . . . after all, these selections were made with academia's prejudices of 1914).

When speaking of the essay, Northwest College professor Renee Dechert refers to Montaigne, saying that the essay form allows us to watch "a mind at work"--to observe an intelligence work its way through the tangle of thought.

LIFE

LIFE | A Journey through Time is a stunning exhibit of photographs by Frans Lanting, composed around the history of life on earth.

In addition to exhibits & performances and a book, LIFE has a wonderful online exhibit that's worth a visit.

"I Yam What I Yam"

"View the early 'Popeye' strips from a distance, and you notice that they're almost all about class stratification: the WASP-y, middle-class turned nouveau-riche Oyl family exploiting the determinedly lower-class Popeye, with his immigrant's tortured English and willingness to undergo incredible suffering in the hopes of catching a break. Which he never will . . .."

Fantagraphics Books has brought out the first volume of E.C. Segar's Popeye comic strip. With five more volumes projected, the books will chart the progress of Popeye from his early appearances in "Thimble Theatre" to his becoming a huge franchise and an American icon.

In this first volume (up to 1930), there's no spinach, no "Swee'Pea, no Alice the Goon, no Jeep, barely any of the Sea Hag and, most regrettably, no J. Wellington Wimpy." But there is the full cast of Olive Oyl's family (including Castor Oyl, Nana Oyl, Cole Oyl, and Cylinda Oyl).

As Salon.com points out, these early strips show Segar learning his craft, but Popeye appears as "an independent-minded brawler whose good humor masked the effects of a life as rough as anyone on the funny pages has ever endured."

• For more on this topic, see Cartoon America, a Library of Congress exhibit.
  

Another Wikipedia Caution

Over the past year or so nHumanities has posted several entries on Wikipedia, the rapidly growing and extremely popular online web encyclopedia. (See Wikipedia and Wikiality.) We use Wikipedia on occasion ourselves, so we appreciate that it is often useful. However, we've always cautioned that the key distinguishing feature of wiki software--that is that the material can be posted and edited by users--makes it a dangerous tool for serious research.

Now another type of hazard of using Wikipedia has surfaced. In the German version of Wikipedia, hackers edited the entry on the computer virus W32.Blaster worm. They added a link to a web site where a fix could be downloaded to take care of the virus. In fact, downloading the "fix" actually installed the worm.

Heise online has an article on the incident, and iTWire also has a column about it. The offending pages were immediately pulled from the web site, but the incident sounds yet another cautionary note.

The price of internet usage is eternal vigilance.

Tag Cloud of Presidential Speeches: 1776 - 2006

Boing Boing points us to a wonderful tag cloud of US presidents' speeches from 1776-2006. The result is a time line of buzz words.

A tag cloud is a cluster of words (tags) which visually depicts frequency of usage. More commonly used words are displayed with a larger font, stronger emphasis, or different color. Created by Chirag Mehta, the US Presidential Speeches Tag Cloud looks at 360 presidential speeches downloaded from Encyclopedia Britannica and ThisNation.com. A little slider tool above the tag cloud allows you to select the tag cloud of particular speeches. Clicking on the name of speech takes you to the full text of the speech itself.

In the above example--George W. Bush's State of the Union Address (31Jan2006)--it's clear that terrorist is the most popular word in the speech. Compare that to Richard M. Nixon's First Inaugural Address (20Jan1969), where the key word is commitment, a word that is also popular in most of John F. Kennedy's speeches. In Abraham Lincoln's speeches, the emphasis changes over time from constitution to emancipation.

Google's Finger in the Linguistic Dike

In Hans Brinker, or the Silver Skates (1865), we learned the story of the little Dutch boy who, by promptly putting his finger in a hole in a leaking dike, averts a disastrous flood.

Google is attempting something similar with the English language.

According to the Official Google Blog, the word "Google" is slowly slipping from trademarked status into common usage. Google's lawyers say this is "Bad. Very, very bad." Here's what Google insists upon:

Good -- Using Google as a noun to refer to Google.

Well, if you must -- Using google as a verb to refer to using the Google search engine.

BAD! -- Using google as a generic verb for searching on the internet, such as, "I googled that information on Ask.com."

Culture | I'll Sleep When I'm Dead . . . NOT

Forbes.com announces that the 13 top-earning dead celebrities for 2005 "collectively earned $247 million in the last 12 months. Their estates continue to make money by inking deals involving both their work and the rights to use their name and likenesses on merchandise and marketing campaigns."

Here are the dead folk whose work ethic surpasses belief:

1. Kurt Cobain
2. Elvis Presley
3. Charles M. Schulz
4. John Lennon
5. Albert Einstein
6. Andy Warhol
7. Dr. Seuss (Theodor Geisel)
8. Ray Charles
9. Marilyn Monroe
10. Johnny Cash
11. J.R.R. Tolkien
12. George Harrison
13. Bob Marle
    

Masters of American Comics

The Hammer Museum and The Museum of Contemporary Art jointly present Masters of American Comics, an online exhibit to accompany their large-scale exhibition of work by "15 artists who shaped the development of the American comic strip and comic book during the past century."

Although the museum exhibits are now closed, the online exhibit provides a sampling of the featured artists, including Winsor McCay (Little Nemo), George Herriman (Krazy Kat), Chester Gould (Dick Tracy), Will Eisner, Charles M. Schulz, R. Crumb, Art Spiegelman, and Chris Ware. The aim of the exhibition is to provide "understanding and insight into the medium of comics as an art form. . . . [Endeavoring] to establish a canon of fifteen of the most influential artists working in the medium throughout the 20th century."

Searching Shakespeare | Shakespeare Searching

The good folks at Clusty.com's search engine labs have created Shakespeare Searched, which "is a search engine designed to provide quick access to passages from Shakespeare's plays and sonnets." The search results are clustered by topic, work, and character, making it easy to find related material among Shakespeare's thousands of words.

Here's an example of what one item in the results list looks like, from a search for the word blood in Macbeth. By clicking on "surrounding text," you can see the context of the quotation; clicking on "citation" will give you a cut 'n' paste way to acknowledge the quote.

So you if you want to identify the speaker of a famous quotation or if you're looking for a thread of thematic elements, Shakespeare Searched is an easy place to start.

Beautiful & Clever

No, we're not touting televisions on nHumanities, but "if eyes were made for seeing / Then Beauty is its own excuse for being" ("The Rhodora," Emerson).

This Sony Bravia ad has beauty and cleverness galore. According to Cool Hunting, the piece took ten days and 250 people to film and five days and 60 people to clean up: "Paint" (slow loading, but worth the wait).

The Truth(s) about Halloween

"Believe it or not, higher education is linked to a greater tendency to believe in ghosts and other paranormal phenomena, according to a new study." --LiveScience.com

As our Halloween treat to you, here are some links related to cherished Halloween beliefs:

• Halloween's Celtic Roots, from Archaeology
• Archaeology of the Undead, from a zombie expert for Archaeology
• Vampire Stars, from Earth & Sky
• "They said that Charles Addams slept in a coffin and drank martinis with eyeballs in them." The Father of the Addams Family, from NPR's Morning Edition
• Ghost writing really is scary, a commentary on NPR's Morning Edition
• Halloween Is an Economist's Biggest Nightmare, by Kevin Hassett for Bloomberg.com
• Why We Love to Be Scared, from LiveScience.com
• Frankenpumpkin, from Radio-Canada.ca
• Halloween Facts--2006, from the U.S. Census Bureau

"26 pounds -- Per capita consumption of candy by Americans in 2005; it is believed a large portion is consumed around Halloween." --U.S. Census Bureau [PDF]

Storm Chaser

Mike Hollingshead lives in Blair, Nebraska. In 1999 he decided to do a little more than watch storms from a hill in Blair, and he started chasing them. He also started taking a few photos while he was at it, using a Canon Digital Rebel and a couple of kit lenses. In 2004 he left his job as a maintenance contractor and started chasing storms full-time.

The results are stunning and at time unearthly. (Which brings to mind the start of the Nebraska fight song, "There is no place like Nebraska.") His images are so amazing that some people aren't content with the truth that these are summer Midwestern storm scenes and have attributed them to more dramatic situations. After Katrina, an email circulated with several of Hollingshead's pictures. The email opened by saying, "Photos of Katrina over Mississippi (Sure let's you know who's in charge.)" See Snopes for more detail. Hollingshead, by the way, has never been in a hurricane.

His web site Extreme Instability offers a portfolio of exquisite storm photos. The background information he provides also makes for interesting reading.

Famous Fictional Folks

The Observation Tower at the top of Petrin Hill in Prague is a 200 foot tall miniature version of the Eiffel Tower. In the base of the tower you will find the Museum of Jára Cimrman, who was voted “Greatest Czech of All Time” in a 2005 Czech Poll.

Cimrman "was one of the greatest Czech playwrights, poets, composers, teachers, travellers, philosophers, inventors, detectives and sportsmen of the 19th and early 20th century" (Wikipedia). In addition to helping design the Effiel Tower and rewriting a Checkov play, Radio Praha reports his "achievements include proposing the construction of the Panama Canal to the Americans, inventing the light bulb and then getting to the patent office five minutes too late to register it, and even making it to within seven metres of the North Pole before being chased away at the last minute by a starving tribe of Native Americans." (Link).

The results of the poll rather irritated Czech Television, sponsor of the contest, which declared him ineligible. The producers had been rather thinking of real people instead of Cimrman, a fictional character who first appeared in a 1967 satirical radio play.

Speaking of fictional people, a new book is out entitled The 101 Most Influential People Who Never Lived: How Characters of Fiction, Myth, Legends, Television, and Movies Have Shaped Our Society, Changed Our Behavior, and Set the Course of History. Some notable fictional characters include:
Robinson Crusoe
Oedipus
Hester Prynne
G.I. Joe
Rosie the Riveter

(You'll have to check out their web site to see where these rank in the top 50. USA Today has a story on the list entitled "They Were Never Born, but They'll Live Forever." They also provide the complete list.)

Where to Start

Creating Passionate Users is a fine web log written by authors in O'Reilly's Head First series. It's a bit difficult to generalize about the entries here, but they tend to focus on various ways to achieve excellence in the workplace. Think of it as a collection of tips and tricks for combating the mind-numbing world of the Dilbert cartoons.

Kathy Sierra's October 22 posting "Better Beginnings: how to start a presentation, book, article..." is a useful look at capturing an audience's attention in a presentation. Tips include

• Do NOT start at the beginning!
• Show, Don't Tell
• For the love of god, DO NOT start with history!
• DO NOT start with prereqs
• MYTH: you must establish credibility up front

The blog is full of excellent graphics, clear writing, and interesting topics.

The Six Word Short Story

The November issue of Wired Magazine has a fine feature entitled "Very Short Short Stories."

Taking a cue from Hemingway, who once wrote a short story in six words, (link), Wired asked 38 science fiction and horror writers and designers to create their own versions of the six word story.

Notable entries include:

• It’s behind you! Hurry before it
  - Rockne S. O’Bannon
• Lie detector eyeglasses perfected: Civilization collapses.
  - Richard Powers
• The baby’s blood type? Human, mostly.
  - Orson Scott Card
• Kirby had never eaten toes before.
  - Kevin Smith
• TIME MACHINE REACHES FUTURE!!! … nobody there …
  - Harry Harrison
• Epitaph: He shouldn't have fed it.
  - Brian Herbert
• Bang postponed. Not Big enough. Reboot.
  - David Brin

For more stories, read "Very Short Short Stories."

Lawson Inada Reads

It was billed as a poetry reading, and that it was, but we can't say it was a typical poetry reading.

For one thing, about 200 students, community members, and college staff showed up in the Nelson auditorium for a two hour program that most will long remember.

For another, there was a Northwest College jazz combo, featuring Ronnie Bedford, that provided the music which punctuated the readings. And then there were NWC English faculty Renee Dechert and Burt Bradley, who joined Lawson on stage to add a local perspective.

But finally there was Lawson, weaving poetry, autobiography, music, and memory into a narrative about pride in place, pride in culture, and pride in family. It was a narrative skillfully done, a subtle homily about the injustice which results from denying the fundamental human connections which transcend race and nationality to bind us.

Five Myths About Community Colleges

Being partial to community college education as we are, it was nice to see msn.com run a story by Jennifer LeClaire entitled Five Myths About Community Colleges. The upshot of the article is that there are a number of misconceptions about community college education that need to be dispelled. Interesting tidbits include the fact that 40% of traditional age students start at community colleges and Walt Disney and Ross Perot each started their educations at a community college.

Here are the myths that LeClair refutes:

1. Students only attend community college because they can't get in to a four-year university.
   
2. A degree from a community college is not as good as a university degree.
3. Community colleges are inexpensive, so the education is not high quality.
4. Community college credits do not transfer to four-year universities.
5. Community colleges have low academic standards.

We recommend the full article for explanations of why each of these statements simply aren't accurate.

The Stewart-Colbert Ticket

Normally we avoid posting about politics, but the potential of a new ticket seems worthy of comment, even if only to spread the news that John Stewart steadfastly maintains that he and Colbert are not running for office. In an Oct. 9th Associated Press article, Stewart is quoted as saying, " 'Nothing says "I am ashamed of . . . my government" more than "Stewart/Colbert '08." ' " [Students: on the off chance that any of you are actually reading this, please note the deft use of a quote within a quote within a quote in the previous citation.] The article goes on to quote Stewart as saying " 'There's no way you could get the news from us . . . . I've seen the show. It couldn't happen.' "

Actually, however, it turns out it can. According to a study done at Indiana University, the news on The Daily Show is "as substantive as network coverage." As the Huffington Post's media page Eat the Press puts it, "It may be a fake newscast, but the news it reports and comments upon night after night is all too real." In fact, CNN Entertainment reports in an article entitled "Daily Show viewers ace political quiz" that Daily Show viewers know more about election issues than people who regularly read newspapers or watch television news, according to the National Annenberg Election Survey" and they are better informed than viewers of Leno or Letterman. (Note: you can go to the CNN article and take the quiz yourself.)

Clever

When computers were first being developed, you have to think no one imagined that someone would figure out this particular use for them.

What, you rightly ask, is "this," and we have to answer by saying we're not sure what to call it. But here's how it works. Click on the link to Dylan. While Dylan's song "Don't think twice, it's all right" plays, the lyrics--in Garamond typeface--scroll into a line which sketches a portrait of Dylan. It is oddly addictive to watch. Here are some more:

Bob Dylan, portrait, Garamond
Notorious B.I.G, portrait, Baskerville Old Face
The Beatle, Lennon, Book Antiqua
Jose Feliciano, California, Century Gothic
Nirvana, Helvetica, Helvetica
Led Zeppelin, Bush, Times New Roman

These files are from ni9e.com, which is maintained by two individuals in New York who have backgrounds in architecture. They define their site as "a space on the web where we could experiment in ideas free of budgets and committees."

The Plight of Sydney Mcgee

It seems only right to put up a quick post about Sydney Mcgee, a Texas 5th grade teacher with 28 years of teaching experience who was fired after taking 89 students on a school approved field trip to the Dallas Museum of Art. She was accompanied by four other teachers, twelve parents, and a museum docent. The New York Times reports that "She later received a memorandum in which the principal, Nancy Lawson, wrote: 'During a study trip that you planned for fifth graders, students were exposed to nude statues and other nude art representations.' It cited additional complaints, which Ms. McGee has challenged.” (Link)

We've been around education long enough to know the tip of an iceberg when we see one, and it's clear that there are other issues involved in Mcgee's situation than the field trip. Indeed, a letter from the school district which was posted on Boing Boing stated " What is getting lost here is that this is not about a field trip, censorship, or a parent complaint. It is not about age, tenure or salary level as has also been suggested in the media. This is about a school administrator working to help an employee improve her job performance and to improve the educational experience of students." (Link. Note: scroll down to the bottom of the page for the letter exchange.)

If that's the case, it's just too bad that the principal felt compelled to use an excuse for non-reappointment that apparently didn't have anything to do with the real reasons she and the Board were not happy with Ms. McGee's work.

We feel obligated to include photos of the offending images from The Dallas Museum of Art. (Unlike some Dallas television stations, we are not blocking out the potentially offensive portions of the statues.)

that's A relief

An Australian computer programmer, Peter Shann Ford, has found the missing "A" from Neil Armstrong's first words on the moon.

In 1969, Armstrong reportedly said, "That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind"--which, grammatically speaking, is the same thing as saying,"That’s one small step for mankind, one giant leap for mankind." Armstrong always has maintained that he had included a missing "A"--for a man.

According to The New York Times, "Mr. Ford said he downloaded the audio recording from a NASA Web site and analyzed it with software that allows disabled people to communicate through computers using nerve impulses. In a graphical representation of the famous phrase, Mr. Ford said he found evidence that the missing 'a' was spoken and transmitted to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration."

From the Department of Worries in Development

From the October 6th Chronicle of Higher Education . . .

Variety informs us that Legendary Pictures, in partnership with Warner Brothers, is developing a film version of John Milton's epic poem Paradise Lost. To remind you: Lucifer, fresh off his failed coup attempt in heaven, engineers Adam and Eve's fall from grace.

On paper, anyway, the onetime undergrad theology student Scott Derrickson, attached to direct, seems like the man for the job; his filmography includes Love in the Ruins (1995), Hellraiser: Inferno (2000), and The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005).

nHumanities would add that Derrickson has a film titled Devil's Knot also in production. We smell a trend.

Sadly, Milton gets only third billing on writing credits for the Paradise Lost production.

World Teachers' Day 2006

We pause at nHumanities to remember Mrs. Clara Becker, principal and 7th-8th grade teacher at the grade school in Murray, Nebraska. What teacher will you remember on World Teachers' Day?

"New" Poem by Robert Frost

In 1918, Robert Frost inscribed a new poem, "War Thoughts at Home," in a copy of North of Boston, his second book. In the eighty-eight years since, the poem never quite resurfaced--until now.

The Fall 2006 issue of the Virginia Quarterly Review scoops the world with a newly discovered, hitherto unpublished poem by Robert Frost. Robert Stilling, a doctoral candidate in English Literature at the University of Virginia, discovered the poem, in which Frost reflects on the fighting in Europe during World War I.

Listen to a good story on the rediscovered poem--including a reading of the first two verses--on NPR's Weekend Edition Sunday.

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(04Oct06) Nikkie Proffitt points us to another good story on the poem's discovery from Inside Higher Ed (includes a paraphrase of the entire poem).

Low Tech . . . and Timeless

Science Magazine has published its 2006 Visualization Challenge Winners, and among them--as 2nd place winner in the Illustration division-- is this version of Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man (first drawn more than 500 years ago). Biology teacher Caryn Babaian of Bucks County Community College in Newtown, Pennsylvania,

uses the iconic sketch as a "multi-conceptual image" in her introductory anatomy class to illustrate three crucial anatomical concepts: rotation, transparency, and transverse section. Babaian requires her students to draw the image in their notebooks as they watch it take shape on the blackboard.

(Click on image for larger version.)

X-ray Vision

What interests me about other people's books is the nature of their collection. A personal library is an X-ray of the owner's soul. It offers keys to a particular temperament, an intellectual disposition, a way of being in the world. Even how the books are arranged on the shelves deserves notice, even reflection. There is probably no such thing as complete chaos in such arrangements.

--Jay Parini, Other People's Books, Chronicle of Higher Education, 22Sep06

MONA

Here's another reason to like Nebraska: MONA. The Museum of Nebraska Art (Kearney, Nebraska) has a lovely online display of art by Nebraska artists. Besides featuring a work or two by each collected artist, the online exhibit also includes biographical information and information on each work. (Below, Deborah Murphy's Your Street, Any Street, 1992, acrylic.)

Food for Thought Department

McKeachie's Teaching Tips, by Wilbert McKeachie, a classic guide for new teachers which has gone through many editions (I'm quoting here from my battered copy of the ninth), describes the most commonly cited fact about lectures: Research has found that after a lecture "students recalled 70 percent of the material covered in the first 10 minutes, and only 20 percent of the material covered in the last 10 minutes" (so if you insist on continuing to lecture all the time, make sure you speak really loudly during the last 10 minutes).

One study found that if a professor speaks 150 words a minute, students hear about 50 of them; another study determined that students are tuned out of a 50-minute lecture around 40 percent of the time.

--from Beyond Lecturing, James M. Lang, Chronicle of Higher Education, 29Sep06

Test Your Dark Movie Literacy

In a painting reminiscent of Pieter Brueghel the Elder, M&M'S® has created 50 visual clues to the names of "dark movies." Test your dark movie literacy and see how long it takes you to find them all.

Warning: Not work safe . . . it eats up the time!

One of Our Favorites: Maurice Sendak

A new Maurice Sendak title is an occasion for joy--this one especially. In collaboration with Arthur Yorinks (author of Hey, Al!) and Matthew Reinhart (pop-up guru), Sendak has produced his first pop-up book: Mommy?

As in many other Sendak books, the plot features a child in peril--here, a little boy who encounters Halloween monsters as he searches for his mommy. And, as usual, the boy saves himself and achieves his quest.

• NPR has a nice audio slide show of Sendak illustrations where Sendak talks about the source of his childhood fears
• An interview with NPR's Steve Inskeep: Why Maurice Sendak Puts Kid Characters in Danger
  

How to Teach a Dirty Book

Meanwhile, my younger students complained that their parents made off with their Peyton Place copies — not to censor, but to read the forbidden book at last. ("Don’t tell your grandmother.")

In honor of Banned Books Week, nHumanities is pleased to direct you to Emily Toth's wonderful essay on teaching Peyton Place to today's students, 50 years after it was first published: How to Teach a Dirty Book (via Inside Higher Ed).

Free People Read Freely ®

What do To Kill a Mockingbird and Lolita have in common?

Both are books which were challenged this year in an American library or school. A "challenge" is when a library receives an oral or written complaint which challenges the presence and/or appropriateness of a book. In other words, some other American, somewhere, thought you shouldn't be allowed to read these books if you want to.

September 23-30 is Banned Books Week's 25th anniversary. Sponsored by the American Library Association (ALA), Banned Books Week . . .

celebrates the freedom to choose or the freedom to express oneÂ’s opinion even if that opinion might be considered unorthodox or unpopular and stresses the importance of ensuring the availability of those unorthodox or unpopular viewpoints to all who wish to read them. After all, intellectual freedom can exist only where these two essential conditions are met.

This year, Google Book Search celebrates Banned Books Week by putting together a wonderful list of banned books you can read online (or download), including the links to access them.

• ALA's Banned Books web site
  
• Banned and/or Challenged Books from the Radcliffe Publishing Course Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century
• ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom
• How to Handle Challenges to Library Materials
• Google Blog on Banned Books Week
  

Oedipus (with Vegetables)

Need some culture, but don't have the time? Try this 8 minute video of Oedipus, with a cast comprised entirely of vegetables. The cast includes

Laios ..............................Broccoli
Jocasta .....................................Tomato
Oedipus ..........................................Potato
Sheep ....................................Cauliflower
LINK

STUDENTS: WARNING. This dramatic adaptation takes a few liberties with the story of Oedipus. Do not use this as a substitute for actually reading the play.

Hispanic Heritage Month

September 15 - October 15 is Hispanic Heritage Month. First authorized as a "week" in 1968, Congress extended the celebration to a month beginning 1988.

Local activities and television:

• Hinckley Library will showcase items from Spanish-speaking countries and Latino cultures of the U.S. (beginning September 25)
• A film on Hispanics in Wyoming, sponsored by the Northwest College Spanish Club (October 9, 7:00 p.m., FAB 70)
  
• PBS Visiones: Latino Art & Culture (September 24, 3:00 a.m., KRMA of Denver)
  
• PBS Los Braceros--Strong Arms to Aid the U.S.A. (September 26, 9:30 p.m., KRMA of Denver)

Select Web Resources:

• Gale - Free Resources - Hispanic Heritage
• US Census Press Releases: Hispanic Heritage Month
• We the People: Hispanics in the United States (PDF, 2000 Census Special Report)
  
• Hispanic Reading Room (Library of Congress)
• National Park Service: Celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month 2006
• CRM Online (Cultural Resource Management): Exploring Hispanic History and Culture--A Dynamic Field
• Impacto, Influencia, Cambio (everyday people of Latin America and the southwestern US who have affected science and technology)
• PEW Hispanic Center
• REACH: Recursos Para la Enseñanza y el Aprendizaje de las Culturas Hispanas
  
• NARA: Genealogists/Family Historians - Hispanic Americans
• The History Channel: ¡Hispanic Heritage Month!

(Image courtesy of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute.)

Times Reader (beta)

The New York Times has rolled out a beta test of its new Times Reader, which is "a new, downloadable software application that lets Windows XP and Vista users read The New York Times electronically, online or offline, in a paginated format as opposed to scrolling down a Web page. Times Reader lets users retrieve all the latest news and photos (a process that takes about a minute) and read the content offline."

nHumanities has been using the Times Reader for the past few days, and we love it. The experience of reading text online has never been so good, much less reading a newspaper online. It works equally well on the desktop, a tablet PC, a laptop, or an ultra mobile device.

You can find out all about the new Times Reader and enroll for the Beta at the service's FAQ page.

Another Reason to Buy More Books (as if we needed one)

Paul Buckley, art director for Penguin Group, has commissioned some splendid cover art for volumes old and new. A recent series which has us drooling is "the Graphic Classics--timeless works of literature featuring amazing, one-of-a-kind cover illustrations from some today's best graphic artists." You can read an interview with Paul Buckley at Hear, Hear.

Pictured, our beloved Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons, with cover art by American cartoonist Roz Chast.

Oy Vey! Jewish Pirates

In an upcoming book, Ed Kritzler argues that many historical pirates were "Ladino-speaking Jews whose piracy grew out of the Inquisition":

While some Jews, like Samuel Pallache, took up piracy in part to help make a better life for expelled Spanish Jews, Kritzler said others were motivated by revenge for the Inquisition.

One such pirate was Moses Cohen Henriques, who helped plan one of history's largest heists against Spain. In 1628, Henriques set sail with Dutch West India Co. Admiral Piet Hein, whose own hatred of Spain was fueled by four years spent as a galley slave aboard a Spanish ship. Henriques and Hein boarded Spanish ships off Cuba and seized shipments of New World gold and silver worth in today's dollars about the same as Disney's total box office for "Dead Man's Chest."

Henriques set up his own pirate island off the coast of Brazil afterward, and even though his role in the raid was disclosed during the Spanish Inquisition, he was never caught . . ..

In honor of Talk Like a Pirate Day, you can read all about it at The Jewish Journal.

How Likely Are You to Die from al-Qaida?

In an article titled One Million Ways to Die, Wired News has created a visual which is a "ranking of the various dangers confronting America, based on the number of mortalities in each category throughout the 11-year period spanning 1995 through 2005 (extrapolated from best available data)."

Death and Taxes

Our new Constitution is now established, and has an appearance that promises permanency; but in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes. --Benjamin Franklin, in a letter to Jean-Baptiste Leroy (13 November 1789)

Death and Taxes (2007 ed.) is a "representational graph of the federal discretionary budget" (in essence, our federal income tax), created by Jess Bachman. Pictured above is a segment of the graph dealing with education. The graph is a fascinating visual display of quantitative information.

nHumanities loves Science Fiction, and we are not alone . . . in more ways than one.

In today's New York Times, Ronald D. Moore--one of the writers for Battlestar Galactica--contributes an op-ed piece on how Science Fiction affected his life, in particular how Star Trek shaped his world view and ideals.

Moore says,

As I grew into adolescence, the show provided a handy reference against which to judge the questions that my young mind began to ask: What is the obligation of a free society toward the less fortunate? Does an "advanced" culture have the right to spread its ideas among more "primitive" ones? What does it mean to be human, and at what point do we lose our humanity to our technology?

Yes, folks, the answers are all in Star Trek, which Moore calls "the gold standard for the idealistic vision of tomorrow."

You can read the entire article--"Mr. Universe"--at the New York Times online.

PS Battlestar Gallactica's new season premiers October 6th on the SciFi channel.

Read Like an Olmec

The New York Times reports that "A stone slab bearing 3,000-year-old writing previously unknown to scholars has been found in the Mexican state of Veracruz, and archaeologists say it is an example of the oldest script ever discovered in the Western Hemisphere." The significance of this find is that it links the Olmec civilization--previously known for huge stone heads and monumental cities--to literacy.

Unknown writing systems are rarely discovered, with the last being the Indus Valley script, which was discovered during excavations in 1924.

Scholars can't read the Mexican glyphs, but the text "conforms to all expectations of writing" and reflects "patterns of language, with the probable presence of syntax and language-dependent word orders."

More about the discovery is in an article in the 15 September 2006 issue of Science, written by the scientists who found the text.

More on Talk Like a Pirate Day

Our previous post provides all the necessary background one needs to fully appreciate Talk Like a Pirate Day.

However, as professionals in the field of language study, we understand that simply reading about a language is insufficient for the development of true expertise.

With that in mind, we recommend what be a fair salty video on the finer points of talking like a pirate.

Talk Like a Pirate Day--September 19th

Don't forget!! Talk Like a Pirate Day is September 19th!

• How it all started
• Dave Barry's popularizing column
• Real pirates from UK's National Mariner's Museum
• Elizabeth's Pirates, from Channel4 (UK)
  
• NationalGeographic.com's Pirate webpages for children
• This week's pirate activity from the International Chamber of Commerce
  

New Scholarly Search Engine

The Librarians' Internet Index alerts us to an online database from Great Britain that's designed to find high quality web sites for education and research: Intute.

With over 113,000 records, Intute's database includes only web sites that have been selected and evaluated by subject specialists, who then write descriptions of the resources. Intute also provides support materials and tutorials that help teach students how to search the internet within their subject areas.

One can also personalize Intute with Myintute, which allows a user to save records and searches; receive weekly email alerts; and export records to one's own web pages.