fuck the SXSW etiquette guide

Culturally enforced etiquette has never been my thing. Fuck Miss Manners. Fuck anyone who tells me how to be a good girl. Ah yes, resistant to a core – i’ve always been the punkass with a middle finger to the world, finding my identity in proving everyone wrong. And i’m in a contentious mood so it’s only a wee bit magnified right now.

Thus, i couldn’t help but want to spit at The unofficial geek guide to getting over yourself at SxSW Interactive 2005. I consider myself a pretty friendly, approachable person (although this definitely subsides when i’m a walking stressball and i admit a little bit of chaos right now). But i don’t want to be told that i’m not approachable because i’m attached to my laptop. I may not be doing heart surgery but i have a stack of students taking a midterm on Tuesday morning and i’ve chosen to come to SXSW anyhow. Why? Because i do believe in co-presence. But, that said, i can only do it because i will be constantly wired, because i will be sitting in the hallway keying IMs back in my reality between conversations. No, i’m not going to be 100% present at SXSW but if that’s what’s required to go, than i can’t go. I figure it’s better to be 60% there than not at all. I’ll still be goofing around in the hallways, meeting new people and rekindling relationships with old friends who i wouldn’t see otherwise. It sounds like a pretty good deal to me. Or maybe i’m just the kind of bitch that’s undesirable at touchy feel-y events – too much New Yorker in me.

But seriously, i’m shelling out my own bucks and time to fly my arse to Austin – why should i accept someone else’s prescription about how to make the most of my experience there? I have a sneaking suspicion that i’ll get what i want out of the experience and hopefully help make others’ experiences a bit more fun. Why do i have to follow rules to be a contribution? Maybe that means i won’t get a little orange sticker or be the purrfect attendee but why do i have to be perfect?

i am not a pretty girl

that is not what i do

i ain’t no damsel in distress

and i don’t need to be rescued

so put me down punk

— Ani Difranco

U.N. landmine commerical won’t air in US.

A U.N. commercial depicts American girls playing in a soccer match. A girl steps on a landmine and there’s a big explosion. Kids get blown apart. CNN and other networks don’t want to air the ad.

The explosion appears to kill and injure some girls, sparking panic and chaos among parents and other children. Shrieks of horror are heard through much of the spot, and a father is shown cradling his daughter’s lifeless body, moments after celebrating a goal she had scored.

It closes with a tag line reading: “If there were landmines here, would you stand for them anywhere? Help the U.N. eradicate landmines everywhere.”

(Copied from BoingBoing because everyone needs to see this)

caricatured

OK – i have a funny feeling that i’m supposed to be offended by this caricature of me:

But, frankly, i’m utterly amused that anyone would put me in such a silly comic that is mocking a lot of folks and issues that i know.

Of course, my first thought was that it doesn’t look like me. As Coates pointed out, i would never carry a bag like that, i don’t have a tattoo and there’s no white fuzzy hat or armbands (which i would wear with such a sleeveless dress).

And i know that i’m supposed to be ragingly pissed at the misogynistic interpretation of me, but i just can’t help but laugh. ::slapping own wrist:: Bad feminist, bad.

situating Wikipedia

I continue to get painted as anti-Wikipedia which couldn’t be further from the truth. I want to clarify a few things and i think that the latest BoingBoing entry on Wikipedia helps.

It is presumed that the data contained in a dictionary is ‘true’ but *scholars* have pointed out that there are ‘inaccuracies.’ There are two issues at play here. First concerns the truth-value of any record – when is there truth and when is only interpretation possible? I’ll leave that one alone for now. The better question concerns who has the authority to say whether or not something is ‘true’ where truth refers to presumed collective knowledge. The article that BoingBoing cites tells us explicitly that it is ‘scholars’ that have such authority.

Herein lies my primary complaint with Wikipedia – the lack of known authorship. (Note: i have the same problem with encyclopedias and dictionaries too, but i don’t see the Wikipedia arguments as boiled down to paper references vs. digital references.) I want to know that what part of the Wikipedia entry the Jane Austen scholar wrote and what was edited out by others. I want to know that the Jane Austen scholar looked at the entry that a 14 year old wrote and thought it was perfect. I want to know the investment level of the authors. I don’t think i’m alone on this one.

Secondly, i may be a scaredy-cat but i’m not afraid of Wikipedia. Like Clay, i firmly believe that students should cite their sources; nothing is more gut-wrenching than throwing a line of someone’s paper into Google and finding it on the web. My concern with academic citation is metaphorically concerned with citing Cliffnotes. Don’t tell me what Wikipedia tells you about Benjamin’s essay – tell me what Benjamin says and tell me your critique. If you want to use a third party’s critique to contend with, great, but that’s rarely what students do. Wikipedia’s interpretation may or may not be accurate and if you haven’t read the primary source (which is often the problem), you don’t know. There is no doubt that this is a problem with a broader variety of sources but the efforts to legitimize Wikipedia as better than an encyclopedia wreaks havoc. This is not because i want students using the encyclopedia – they’re far more likely to read the 10 page essay than hike up the hill to the library to find an encyclopedia that may or may not give them a clue about what’s going on. Encyclopedia citations are rarely my problem but Wikipedia as Cliffnotes is. I want students to be critical thinkers, not just piece together the varying levels of supposed critical thought that they find on the web. And if the web is useful to them, it should be as an interlocutor for argument’s sake, not a source of authority.

In both of these cases, comparisons to other media can be made and the problems that manifest are not necessarily new. The problem that i’m having with the Wikipedia hype is the assumption that it is the panacea for it too has its problems and those problems must be acknowledged, addressed and situated. It certainly has great value, both as a tool for information and as a site of community. But there are limitations and i believe that the incessant hype is damaging to being able to situate it properly and to recognize its strengths and weaknesses.

pedagogy of group projects

I have always loathed group projects, mostly due to personal experience in middle and high school. I was always the kid who knew what was going on and perennially pissed at those who didn’t or didn’t care. Pedagogically, i was always told that you needed to learn such a skill because it’s how the world works. I rolled my eyes at pedagogy (or, more accurately, at that age i gave it my finger). In college, i learned to appreciate group projects a bit more. My department was set up so that in the fourth semester, you had to choose a team for a huge final project. For the most part, we all knew each other by that point and there was a social cohesion that made such group work very manageable. Of course, there was always that one group made up of folks who didn’t know each other and inevitably got the lowest score.

I’ve always wondered about the pedagogical strengths and weaknesses of group project work in courses. How do you get past the rotten apple problem? How do you make group projects not have so much overhead that they take up a bazillion hours of negotiation? How do you help people contain their frustration? In other words, as a teacher, what do i gain/lose from group projects? And how do i overcome my own fears of them?

clouds begin to pass

I got the phone call late afternoon yesterday and felt my heart warm. I did the practical things i promised to do in response and then sat down in my office and let the tears drip down my face – tears of relief, of joy, of love.

The worries began many months ago and Google is the perfect tool for the intermittent hypochondriac. I had been prepared for the worst but when all began to unfold, i found myself overjoyed that it had an explanation at all. As the weight of the situation began to press down, i found that i could stand firmly on my feet, balanced, grounded. There was only one caveat – i could not deal with anything minor whatsoever. Meowing cats, laundry, the smog check people, people who couldn’t understand, couldn’t know. I fell out of my usual habits, partially by necessity and with that came the loss of many connections.

I don’t know if i was ever truly afraid – i had confidence; we had confidence. And we fed off of each other. We giggled over the practicalities, brought out our inner children, joked about Smurfs and found fascination in every scientific detail. I relished those phone calls. I stopped being able to distinguish if i was performing OK or just was OK. People worried about me, bless their hearts, and i tried to assuage their concern, whether or not they believed me. I guess it doesn’t really matter – in my heart, i started believing my performance.

So when that phone call came, i got to feel the weight as it melted down my cheeks, got to see just how much i’d been carrying around. Relief is a precious feeling, a tool of joy and love. The clouds have only begun to pass – it will be many months until a clear sky is truly visible. And i don’t know if things will ever be the same. Priorities become objects for inspection, as do habits. But in the meantime, i want to keep building on our childlike play.

Friendster blogs (powered by Typepad)

I have no idea when Friendster launched Friendster blogs because i’ve been pretty far out of the loop, but Charlie noted them this morning. They are powered by Typepad and there’s a free option available (with ads of course). They’re all branded with Friendster’s logo at the top and have the Friendster domain. To update your Friendster blog, you have to log in. Plus, all Friendster blogs have easy links to your Profile.

Check out my new Friendster blog.

on advisoring

After a conversation yesterday, it occurred to me that the relationship i’ve had with my advisors and mentors is not necessarily typical. I’ve been thinking about how much is rooted in a disciplinary distinction and how much is rooted in me.

As an undergrad, i had the most amazing advisor. He took on a parental role almost immediately. He was there for me intellectually and in moments of crises. He was always making sure i was OK, the kinds of check-ins that are so important to an 18-year-old going through identity crisis. He taught me how to be a professor, how to be a mentor and gave me a level of expectation that i still hold today. At MIT, my advisor was not that much older than i and while she didn’t take on a motherly role, our relationship was certainly more than simply advisor/advisee.

My current relationship with my advisor is far more like my relationship with my undergrad advisor. He’s very much of a father to me and i love him dearly, both intellectually and personally. How he’s doing and where he’s at is very important to me.

Advisor as parent-figure is something that many of my friends have. One of them we jokingly call daddy (or Bosley depending on how goofy we’re being). Many of us are deeply dependent on our advisors for funding, departmental support, collaboration and sanity, especially those of us in fields that don’t have clear distinctions.

In the humanities, students publish alone while we’re so used to publishing with our advisors. Students get by via TAing while we’re connected to research grants. Advisors in other fields are off writing sole-authored books while ours are all working on publications with us.

I’ve spent the day thinking about how much my advisor means to me and i feel very fortunate to have such a relationship with him – i cannot imagine grad school any other way.

my life as a techno-idiot (and why constants suck)

Once again, i managed to find wacky behavior in technology. I went to create a blog entry this morning and only half of it uploaded. It didn’t save to database and crash like normal – it just saved half. It was weird. I flipped out (like always) and whimpered (like always). Boris once again came to the rescue.

It appears as though my comments template has a lastn of 5134 (which y’all exceeded). And it appears that my Atom template is trying to find 1M entries (which i haven’t written yet). What’s up with the constants? Why do we need constants in code. ::groan::

The wireless in my apartment still isn’t working right even though my angelic roommate has spent a bazillion hours trying to hack the firmware to amplify the antenna and now he’s trying to buy a new antenna because it can’t reach to the other end of the apartment. I feel completely clueless.

Everyone around me is obsessed with camera phones and i still can’t figure out how to take a goddamn picture and get it to send. Worse: i have zero motivation to take a picture.

I realized something this evening: in terms of techno-capability, i’m your generic user and completely techno-clueless… I am not capable of using any interface and i think that the black box should just work but it never does. The only difference is that i adopt early and pay attention to what people are doing, even if i think it’s completely pointless. But i don’t have the mind of a technologist and i can’t figure out how anything works (or, as my roommate likes to tell me, i refuse to try).

Can a Biologist Fix a Radio?

There’s nothing like science humor to brighten my day so i was laughing hysterically when a friend read to me from Can a Biologist Fix a Radio? – or, What I Learned while Studying Apoptosis.

How would we begin? First, we would secure funds to obtain a large supply of identical functioning radios in order to dissect and compare them to the one that is broken. We would eventually find how to open the radios and will find objects of various shape, color, and size. We would describe and classify them into families according to their appearance. We would describe a family of square metal objects, a family of round brightly colored objects with two legs, roundshaped objects with three legs and so on. Because the objects would vary in color, we will investigate whether changing the colors affects the radio’s performance. Although changing the colors would have only attenuating effects (the music is still playing but a trained ear of some people can discern some distortion), this approach will produce many publications and result in a lively debate…

[Note: said friend sees this article as a call-to-arms, not simply science humor… apparently i’m not as big of a nerd as i think.]

danah boyd | apophenia

making connections where none previously existed