This quote from Jack London’s The Iron Heel deserves sharing:
“For never was there such a lover as Ernest Everhard” (62).
Socialists and porn stars have the best names.
Blog
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Jack London, The Iron Heel (1907)
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Homebuilt UHF Antenna for HDTV Reception
Today, Y and I went to Lowes for a few supplies. We recently purchased a Samsung LCD TV, but we don’t have cable (except for Internet). We figured it might be fun to watch real TV (as opposed to Hulu or whatever else might be available), so I did some research on the best inexpensive antennas for HDTVs. Overwhelmingly, I found people talking about “coat hanger antennas.” It was hard to imagine that something so easy and cheap to build could work so well despite the video evidence on YouTube (one instructional video with antenna in action can be found here). Nevertheless, I decided to build one and see how well it works for myself. I used the instructions available from Make Magazine here. However, I decided to follow the lead of some folks in the forums who talked about better results with 12-gauge copper wire, which I used in place of the coat hangers. All in all, it took about 45 minutes to build, and it cost me about $16. And, the results? Now, we have 30 HD channels to choose from (20 come in perfectly–the ones that don’t are from stations further away).
Oct. 21, 2023 Update: Video link removed as it no longer works.
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Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five, Uncle Woodrow, and World War II
I read Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) tonight for the first time, and one particular passage struck me in its depiction of memory of World War II. At Billy and Valencia’s eighteenth wedding anniversary, the barbershop quartet, the Febs, begin singing “That Old Gang of Mine,” and Billy is assaulted by the pain of memory:
Unexpectedly, Billy Pilgrim found himself upset by the song and the occasion. He had never had an old gang, old sweethearts and pals, but he missed one anyway, as the quartet made slow, agonized experiments with chords–chords intentionally sour, sourer still, unbearably sour, and then a chord that was suffocatingly sweet, and then some sour ones again. Billy had powerful psychosomatic responses to the changing chords. His mouth filled with the taste of lemonade, and his face became grotesque, as if he were really being stretched on the torture engine called the rack. (172-173)
I’ve seen this before when I was once asking my Uncle Woodrow Head about his experiences in the war before he succumbed to Alzheimer’s Disease.
He told me about the time, prior to the Battle of the Bulge, General Patton inspected his auto group while he was working on the breaks of his jeep. Despite others telling him to snap to attention, he said he had to get it fixed for when they rolled out. Patton’s car pulled up to where my Uncle’s legs were sticking out from under his vehicle. The general got out and told my Uncle that it was men like him that were going to win the war.
He told me about guarding one of the major conferences of the war while manning an anti-aircraft gun with orders to shoot any airplane on sight.
Then, he told me about his friends and the death he witnessed. However, he stopped short and his face took on the “grotesque” that Vonnegut describes in the selection above–the only scene from the book that explicitly invokes memory instead of time warps. The memory of the event overwhelmed my Uncle, a good natured and quiet man who I never before or ever saw again with a face transfigured by a memory so great and terrible that I cannot imagine it.
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I’m Quoted in the Youngstown Tribune on Electronic Cheating
Bob Mackey gave my contact information to the future Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Sarah Sepanek for a story she was writing a week ago on student cheating and the Internet. I responded to her email questions about my experiences with plagiarism in my comp classes and what I know about the possibilities of student plagiarism in the Internet age. Now, you can read Sarah’s reporting with a bunch of quotes from me in the Youngstown Tribune here. And, here is a short excerpt from Sarah’s article, “Electronic Cheating”:
Jason Ellis, an English composition instructor at Kent State University, shared some strategies he and fellow instructors use to prevent cheating. He said that catching a student cheating is only the beginning. “The English department is very supportive of teachers who catch plagiarism and provide proof that plagiarism has taken place. However, I will also say that it is difficult to catch plagiarism,” said Ellis.
Ellis said he combines many tactics, such as knowing a student’s writing style, arranging the students so that he can view their computer screens, and running lines of students’ essays and test answers through Internet search engines to see if they are cases of plagiarism. “I pay attention to the writing style and any formatting quirks that might flag that essay as containing plagiarized work.”
To my future students: I want to help each student become a better writer during each course, and I hope that you come to class with a desire to improve your writing for all of your future works during and beyond your time at KSU. I’m more interested in each student giving their best effort in class rather than having a student represent another person’s writing as their own. Giving your best effort will help you in the long run, while the latter is taking a chance on getting a good grade, failing, or expulsion. Before you run afoul of plagiarism, come by my office and ask me about it if it isn’t clear enough in the syllabus. I always stress to my students is that you come see me during office hours if you have questions or want extra time working with me on your writing. It is up to each student to work hard on their own endeavors as well as make the effort to work with one’s writing instructor, who can guide the student through the writing process as well as develop a sense of one’s responsibilities as a writer. One of a writer’s most important responsibilities is to not present another person’s work as their own, and to always cite the work of others when it is used in your own work.
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eBooks and Librarys
I know that there has been a lot more interest in eBooks following Amazon’s introduction of the Kindle and Kindle DX, but I was surprised to hear that ebooks, while only making up 3% of the book “publishing” market, represent the fastest growing segment of the book market according to this New York Times article. I wonder if ebooks are beginning the logarithmic rise that mp3s did not too long ago to (almost) replace CDs. MP3s were around for awhile before the firebrand RIO PMP300, and the style-and-function conscious Apple iPod took the stage and catapulted the digital audio file technology into something more than just a new technologically mediated way to listen to music. The iPod with iTunes added a streamlined system for selling, distribution, and portable playback of purchased songs. This, combined with rampant file sharing and a proliferation of inexpensive portable mp3 players, catapaulted mp3s over the walls of the compact disc stronghold. Now, the rows of CDs for sale in big brick-and-mortar stores are dwindling. Will the same be true in the near future for books and bookstores?
Amazon and Interead have reading devices and online ebook stores. Many folks are scanning books and making them available online. It seems like history may be repeating itself with books following the music model of going online–bits and tech replacing words on a published pulp page. I’m weary of this transition, because I like controlling the bits that I own. However, Amazon’s ability to remotely change the way a Kindle works (as in the case of the text-to-speech feature that was killed) leaves me concerned about who controls the device after it is purchased.
Those concerns aside, what does the ebook mean for libraries? Ebooks are much cheaper than books, which would give a library the ability to purchase more of them to satisfy their readers. But, I don’t think the big ebook companies (like Amazon) or publishers want ebooks to follow a lending/reselling model that we’ve enjoyed with real books. With a real book, I can lend it to a buddy, or sell it to someone else. Additionally, lending and reselling may take place indefinitely for the life of the book. This is not possible with the current offering of ebooks. Amazon prohibits lending, and Interead allows you to trade books four times (kind of like Apple’s iTunes model of sharing songs–read more here). Additionally, there is the initial cost of a reader. Electronic paper displays on ebook readers are much easier on the eye than traditional, backlit LCD, but this is a new and apparently costly (I wonder how much of this is licensing and not materials production) technology. The point of libraries is to make reading available to a wide audience, but a greater shift to ebooks may marginalize libraries and their patrons. What solution might the publishing industry offer libraries? What should folks like us demand of the publishing and tech companies in the long term as books transition to the digital realm? This seems like another case of the haves-vs-the-have-nots, and those persons with access to technology will make off with the spoils. However, according to the Wall Street Journal, the homeless (this is not to say that all homeless experiences are the same) have computers and get online (read more here).
