Two Poetry Links

Born in Dayton, Ohio, in 1872, Paul Laurence Dunbar was the first African-American poet and novelist to attain international recognition. Now Wright State University Libraries offers a Digital Collection of Dunbar's poetry online.

According to the web site's biography, Dunbar's "mother, Matilda Dunbar, was a former slave with a love for poetry. His father, Joshua Dunbar, was a civil war veteran who had served in the 55th Massachusetts Volunteers, a famous regiment whose ranks were composed of African-Americans." Dunbar went to high school in Dayton with Orville Wright, worked for abolitionist Frederick Douglass at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, and gained fame in 1896 when William Dean Howells published a positive review of Dunbar's second volume in Harper's Weekly; because of the widely circulated review, Dunbar "went to bed destitute and woke up on the morning of his twenty-fourth birthday as one of the most famous living Americans of African descent."

On the web site, you can read Dunbar's most frequently anthologized poem, "We Wear the Mask," as well hundreds others in the poetry index or the five browsable volumes.

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poetrymagazines.org.uk is a new British poetry archive that offers "free access site to the full-text digital library of 20th and 21st century English poetry magazines from the Poetry Library collection." Includes full text search, with an advanced search option.

nHumanities turns one

This week nHumanities turned one. Here are some of our favorite posts from the first year:

• Shipbreaking in Bangladesh
• Finding Web Sites You Can Trust
• No Child Left Behind Goes to College
• Animals and Their Owners
• Agricultural Notes from Abroad
• Department of Ingenious People
• Brokeback Mountain
• Virtual Pedometer
  
• Bad Movie Physics
  

Flickr photo titled last one | a closer look, originally uploaded by definitely.

Sandhill Cranes take flight

(Click on photo for a larger image.)

Our old friend and former Powell resident Steve Moseley sends his regards, along with this photo he took of Sandhill Cranes in Nebraska. Now located in York, Nebraska, Steve says he misses the wildlife of northern Wyoming. The fact is, we miss him.

Photo used with permission.

Sleep Tight . . .

and don't let the bedbugs bite. Alas, it appears that is easier said than done. Bedbugs are staging a comeback.

The Washington Post reports on a Chicago woman who is suing a Catskills hotel for $20 million after being bitten over 500 times by bedbugs. (Warning: distasteful photo included in this USAToday article.)

Bedbugs were once thought to be eradicated in the USA, back in the old days when DDT was widely and liberally used. When DDT was banned in 1972, the bedbugs started moving back in. World travel has made it easy for them to snag rides on unsuspecting travelers, and they are now found in every state except for Alaska, North Dakota, and South Dakota.

The good news is that they do not serve as carriers for human diseases. The bad news is that they are very difficult to get rid of, and they aren't limited to dirty and unkempt places. After all, they don't feed on dirt--they feed on you.

Links:
Worried about bed bugs in your hotel room?
Strangers in the Night
Bed Bugs -- University of Kentucky Entomology

Sleep Is Good

It's just as we suspected: nHumanities has not been getting enough sleep.

According to a new report from the National Institutes of Health, nHumanities, which is one year old tomorrow, should be getting somewhere between 10 and 12 hours of sleep a night. We're not. And we're grouchy, having trouble focusing, learning rather slowly, being forgetful, losing our creativity, and responding slowly to potentially life-threatening situations.

NIH's new comprehensive guide to healthy sleep is titled Your Guide to Healthy Sleep (PDF, 60pp). The booklet gives information on sleep disorders, such as insomnia, sleep apnea, restless legs syndrome, narcolepsy, and some parasomnias, and explores other sleep topics, such as

• Common sleep myths and practical tips for getting adequate sleep,
• Coping with jet lag and nighttime shift work, and
  
• Avoiding dangerous drowsy driving.

We're interested in the connections between sleep and learning:

Recent studies reveal that people can learn a task better if they are well rested. They also can remember better what they learned if they get a good night's sleep after learning the task than if they are sleep deprived. Volunteers had to sleep at least 6 hours to show improvement in learning, and the amount of improvement was directly tied to how much time they slept. In other words, volunteers who slept 8 hours outperformed those who slept only 6 or 7 hours. Other studies suggest that all the benefits of training for mentally challenging tasks are maximized after a good night's sleep, rather than immediately following the training or after sleeping for a short period overnight. (Your Guide 12, our emphasis)

Remember: Mary Shelley got the inspiration for Frankenstein in a dream. Sleep is creative. Sleep is good.

Judy Blunt Reads

"Jesus!" Jerking his hand from Jeanette's forehead, he looked up at me. "Does she need to go to town?"
"Can we get out?" I jiggled the baby, trying to get him to settle for a pacifier. Jeanette's temperature had shot to 105. The bathwater was running.

Thus began Judy Blunt's reading on Tuesday, March 28th, in the Nelson Performing Arts Auditorium. Her reading from the chapter "Winter Kill," in her autobiographical book Breaking Clean, mesmerized her audience, most of them westerners who immediately understood the deadly implications of a 105 degree temperature in a young child and a fifty mile night drive to the nearest hospital--with twenty of those miles on a dirt road turned into a bentonite gumbo by a steady rain. A lengthy and informative question and answer period followed the reading.


Blunt's reading was sponsored by the Northwest College Writers Series and Project Succeed, along with generous support from President Miles LaRowe. The final reading in the 2005-2006 Writers Series will be given by Mark Spragg on April 20th.

Guess What? You Can't Multitask Well

The weblog Creating Passionate Users asks if "Multitasking Makes Us Stupid?" And concludes, "Yes."

We believe we can e-mail and talk on the phone at the same time, with little or no degradation of either communication.

We believe we can do homework while watching a movie.

We believe we can surf the web while talking to our kids/spouse/lover/co-worker.

But we can't! (Not without a hit on every level--time, quality, and the ability to think deeply)

For more, see Time's cover story on "The Multitasking Generation" in the 27 March 2006 issue.

The EB Strikes Back

In December, nHumanities reported on a study by Nature which compared the quality of science article entries between Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Britannica and found that "the difference in accuracy was not particularly great." (See Jim Giles, "Internet Encyclopaedias Go Head to Head," Nature, 15 Dec. 2005: 900-01.)

As it turns out, the Encyclopedia Britannica found the comparison offensive, and it has struck back in an open letter to educators (PDF) titled "Fatally Flawed: Refuting the Recent Study on Encyclopedic Accuracy by the Journal Nature." In that letter, EB claims, "Almost everything about the journal'’s investigation, from the criteria for identifying inaccuracies to the discrepancy between the article text and its headline, was wrong and misleading." Says EB, "the fact is that Britannica was far more accurate than Wikipedia according to the figures [Nature provided in the article]; the journal simply misrepresented its own results."

The letter and the entire brouhaha make for fascinating reading, but nHumanities stands by its original conclusions: students always should approach Wikipedia with caution, and for academic writing, no encyclopedia article is a substitute for good research in the library's databases.

Hear the Poetry

Imagine hearing Tennyson (1809-1892) read "The Charge of the Light Brigade." Wonder no longer! You can hear it at The Poetry Archive.

The Poetry Archive is a United Kingdom site which preserves the oral tradition of poetry by offering free online access to poetry--read by the poets who wrote it. The project is the joint brainchild of Andrew Motion, U.K. Poet Laureate, and Richard Carrington, a recording producer. Some of the recordings are historic, while others have been recorded for the Archive.

And while we're on the subject of anti-war poems (Tennyson wrote "The Charge of the Light Brigade" to commemorate a disastrous charge in the Crimean War), Andrew Motion caused a flutter with his 2003 publication in The Guardian of an anti-war poem:

CAUSA BELLI by Andrew Motion
They read good books, and quote, but never learn
a language other than the scream of rocket-burn.
Our straighter talk is drowned but ironclad:
elections, money, empire, oil and Dad.

Dime Novels for Women

We've posted previously on Golden Age Romance Comics and now here is a fine exhibit on American Women's Dime Novel: Dime Novels for Women, 1870-1920 from the Center for History and New Media, George Mason University. (At right, the cover art for When Lovely Maiden Stoops to Folly by Laura Jean Libbey.)

Dime novels originated in mid-19th c. America as cheap, fictional, tabloid publications aimed at a youthful, working-class audience. The plots were adventure-oriented and the covers grew increasingly lurid. Eventually, dime novels evolved into regular book format, but--as a rich source of popular fiction--inspired later publications such as comic books and American genres such as hard-boiled detective fiction.

According to Felicia L. Carr, the author of the online exhibit, women's dime novels examined issues of class and gender and were enormously popular and influential in the 19th c. among their working-class female audience. Carr has provided an introductory essay which examines the growth of dime novels, literacy, and women's fiction in the 19th c.

Additional links:

• Dime Novels from American Treasures of the Library of Congress
• Stanford University's Dime Novels and Penny Dreadfuls
  

Shipbreaking in Bangladesh

They are almost a quarter of a mile long. Their crews use bikes to get around on them. They can carry over 500,000 tons of oil. A crash stop can take two miles and last 14 minutes. Astronauts can see them from outer space. When they pump their bilge they can leave a wake 93 miles long. There aren't many ports they can fit in, so smaller tankers often sail out to unload their cargo.

Supertankers. And when they are worn out, many are driven aground on a broad, flat beach at Chittagong, Bangladesh, where Bangladeshi workers wade out through the mud at low tide and dismantle them. The Jan/Feb 2006 issue of Foreign Policy Magazine has a compelling photo essay on this process entitled End of the Line by photographer Brenden Corr.

The images are hard to forget, and the shipbreakers of Bangladesh have attracted numerous other photographers. Edward Burtynsky's shipbreaking photography is haunting, as is the work of Jiri Rezac, Rune Larsen, and Sebastiao Salgado.


Links:
About Supertankers
Wikipedia: Supertankers
Photo: Supertanker Bilging
Google Supertanker Satellite Photo
From Wired: Super Rust on Supertankers
Ship Breaking:
Rune Larsen: About Ship Breaking
Greenpeace: Shipbreaking
National Film Board of Canada: Shipbreakers

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ms.dsk adds on 26Mar06,

Here's one of seminal articles on the topic (covering shipbreaking in both Alang and Bangladesh) which appeared in The Atlantic Monthly in 2000. Be sure to choose the PDF version so you can see the amazing, humbling photographs:

Langewiesche, William. "The Shipbreakers." Atlantic Monthly Aug. 2000: 31-49. Academic Search Premier. EBSCOhost. Hinckley Lib., Northwest Col., Powell, WY. 26 Mar. 2006 ‹http://search.ephost.com/›.

Eiffel Tower Panorama

The Eiffel Tower is one of the most recognizable images in the world. In spite of that, it is difficult to grasp its incredible size. When completed in 1899, it was the tallest structure in the world.

Panoramas.dk helps you to get a feel for just how tall it is with its Eiffel Tower Panorama. Simply click on the image and drag to the right or left to see Paris from the second deck. Zoom in with the shift key, zoom out with the Ctrl key.

Other Eiffel Tower Links:
From Paris: Virtual Visit
Wikipedia Entry (full of interesting tidbits)
The Official Eiffel Tower Site

One final note: in 2003 SNTE, the company which manages the Eiffel Tower, added flashing strobe lights which fire at night in a distinctive pattern. They then copyrighted the image. As a result, it is now illegal to publish nighttime images of the Eiffel Tower. See Eiffel Tower: Repossessed.

2006 Bloggies Announced

The Sixth Annual Weblog Awards--a.k.a. the 2006 bloggies--have been posted and are available for your viewing pleasure. Representing some of theyear's best blog work in 30 categories, the bloggies are a great place to find new weblogs to enjoy.

Testing Aids Learning

According to a study published in the March 2006 issue of Psychological Science, tests don't just assess what you know--they also help you learn material:

"Our study indicates that testing can be used as a powerful means for improving learning, not just assessing it," says Henry L. "Roddy" Roediger III, . . ..

"Students who self-test frequently while studying on their own may be able to learn more, in much less time, than they might by simply studying the material over and over again," he adds. "Incorporating more frequent classroom testing into a course may improve students' learning and promote retention of material long after a course has ended."

The research findings, reported in "Test-Enhanced Learning: Taking Memory Tests Improves Long-Term Retention," suggest that we should all welcome pop-quizzes. Teachers are only giving them because they care about us.

The Butler Did It . . . But Not Anymore

The popular search engine Ask Jeeves is now Ask.com. As part of the change, Teoma.com is no more; Teoma now reroutes to Ask.com, which incorporates its technology.

Reviews from Pandia Search Engine News and Gary Price's ResearchShelf both rate Ask.com highly, saying it is "even less cluttered than the previous one, and boasts a Zen like simplicity." When you check out the search engine's homepage, be sure you test the easy-to-find search tools on the right-hand side of the page.

Historic Video Footage from NARA

(Title image from 1939 Department of the Interior Motion Picture "The Wapiti of Jackson Hole.")

Google has entered an agreement with the US National Archives and Records Administration to digitalize historic video footage. Google Video recently announced the inclusion and availability of 103 historic videos.

Highlights include

• The earliest film preserved in the National Archives holdings by Thomas Armat, "Carmencita--Spanish Dance," featuring the famous Spanish Gypsy dancer, 1894
• A representative selection of U.S. government newsreels, documenting World War II, 1941-45
• A sampling of documentaries produced by NASA on the history of the spaceflight program
• Motion picture films, primarily from the 1930s, that document the history and establishment of a nationwide system of national and state parks.
  

Read the press announcement here or see a sampling of the films here.

Unseen. Unforgotten.

(March 25, 1965: Mississippi Highway Patrolmen watch Civil Rights marchers arrive in Montgomery from Selma.)

During the turbulent Civil Rights Era, newspaper photographers took hundreds of dramatic photos which helped shaped the nation's perceptions of the struggle, but hundreds more were lost, stolen, or archived. Thanks to the efforts of Alexander Cohn, former photo intern for the The Birmingham Times, some of those unseen photographs are now published for the first time.

According to a story from The Birmingham Times, "In November 2004, Cohn went through an equipment closet at the newspaper in search of a lens and saw a cardboard box full of negatives marked, 'Keep. Do Not Sell.'" Inside were negatives from the Civil Rights struggle that were never published. As a result, Cohn "interviewed dozens of photographers, clergymen, elected officials, civil rights movement participants, historians and other witnesses to the events" and gathered even more unseen images.

You can see the results of Cohn's work in a special report from The Birmingham Times called Unseen. Unforgotten.

Watch Out, Paris, Here We Come

On March 1st, eight intrepid students in French 2460 left the academic study of French in Powell and headed off to Paris in pursuit of a more hands-on application of their language skills. Led by legendary Humanities Division faculty and bon vivants Richard Wilson and Harriet Bloom-Wilson, the group will spend ten days honing their language skills in a variety of settings ranging from museums to cafes.

Scheduled events include visits to L'Arc de Triomphe, le Cluny, Sainte-Chapelle, Notre-Dame, le musée du Louvre, le musée Rodin, and le musée Picasso. A special event is a private tour of la Cathédrale de Chartre with guide M. Malcolm Miller.

How to Get Your Brain to Remember

According to news@nature.com, researchers have discovered that we successfully store memories when our brains are primed for the information. The priming process occurs in the brain's frontal region, where conscious thinking occurs.

The discovery hammers home some old advice for students: that they should really think about things rather than trying to learn by rote. "Always try to focus on understanding what is written; don't just regurgitate," says [lead researcher] Otten, because concentrating on meaning is a far better primer for memory.

But setting up your mind for better memory will inevitably be a subtle process, Otten admits, and it's not clear how best to prepare the brain for improved recall. Simple advice might be most effective, however: when reading, try to concentrate rather than letting your mind wander.