George Clooney's Secret

He's really Peter Sagal.

Wasting Time and Money

Mrs. Chaka and I have made the dangerous discovery of two hours of Star Trek (TOS and TNG) being broadcast each night. Last night's episodes (The Changeling and Emergence) were somehow archetypal; each embraced all the joys and absurdities of its respective series.

It's always amusing to see how dated the future is. The Changeling made frequent reference to data being stored on "tapes". Then again, in Emergence, Dr. Crusher had a pretty cool blue iPad.

Oh, and I had a Double Down a week ago. Definitely not worth the price of admission.

Spite Food

I read (on the Wait Wait Don't Tell Me blog) that KFC introduced the Double Down because of complaints that there wasn't enough chicken in their chicken sandwich. If true, it places the Double Down in that delightful genre, Spite Food.

Potato chips are the best-known example of Spite Food. To quote the Wikipedia article:

"The original potato chip recipe was created by George Crum, the son of an African American father and Native American mother, in Saratoga Springs, New York on August 24, 1853.^{[citation needed]} Fed up with a customer who continued to send his fried potatoes back complaining that they were too thick and soggy, Crum decided to slice the potatoes so thin that they could not be eaten with a fork. As they could not be fried normally in a pan, he decided to stir-fry the potato slices. Against Crum's expectation, the guest was ecstatic about the new chips."

I'm still hoping to eat one of those Double Downs; haven't got to it yet.

Endless Rain

Blogging has suffered, what with the moving house, the many calls to AT&T trying to convince them to take my money, the computer dying, etc. But I just discovered this and had to blog it:

YouTube Repeat!

Insert the word "repeat" into a YouTube URL before the ".com" and the video will loop endlessly. I'm using it to listen to this over and over. Helps me focus on the giant pile of work.

Wading through Stacks

Adam Graber directed me to this New York Times article about the consequences of digital (and hence, mashable) texts. The whole thing is interesting in its entirety, but what drew my attention was this quote:

“Online research enables scholars to power-search for nuggets of information that might support their theses, saving them the time of wading through stacks of material that might prove marginal but that might have also prompted them to reconsider or refine their original thinking.”

This strikes me as a very real problem. It’s really easy to be a bad scholar. The task of refining your thinking and mastering your subject requires time, focus, and discipline—three things we have in short supply. For all their benefits, digital texts make it easier to veil poor thinking and inadequate mastery of the subject. The power of machine searching delivers a trade-off: a vastly greater pool of data with a vastly more superficial grasp of it. The efficiency of search obsoletes that horribly inefficient part of research, “wading through stacks of material.”

(Perhaps I should qualify my pronouncements: I obviously speak for myself, not for all of academia. My academic credentials amount to a master’s degree and a single journal article*. The temptations and follies I describe are my own.)

A few weeks later, Adam noted that Oxford University Press is trying to address these concerns. In brief, they’re producing “a straightforward, hyperlinked collection of professionally-produced, peer-reviewed bibliographies in different subject areas—sort of a giant, interactive syllabus put together by OUP and teams of scholars in different disciplines.”

The Oxford Bibliographies will no doubt have efficient search capabilities, quick retrieval of the desired documents, and a large pool of data in one place. But by foregrounding the texts that scholars have judged most important, they encourage you to wade through material that should be known, even (especially?) if it’s irrelevant or destructive to your thesis.

As you can tell, I like this image of “wading through stacks.” It sounds like a mixed metaphor, but it makes me think of walking the key shelves in the library stacks. The mass of (potentially) relevant titles thicken the air in that spot, slowing your pace to a shuffle. You look up and down the shelf, pulling out a volume, browsing, letting your mind quicken as your feet slow.

Interestingly, the library in which I picture myself wading like this is the University of Edinburgh library, where I spent a mere six months (as opposed to the four years at the University of Minnesota and three years at Trinity University). I suppose it’s related to the fact that British syllabi encourage more wading. Instead of telling you about the five required books and when you’re supposed to read each chapter, British syllabi give you a list of forty books and tell you to have fun. Read around, master the subject, and at the end of term, write a big old essay about the subject (which will be 100% of your grade for the course).

In my experience, this system results in lower grades but better habits.

---------------------------------------------

*Forthcoming :-)

"It made me feel significant and connected to ancient traditions"

A little satire on Philippe the Postmodern Evangelist:

"Read it again, more slowly this time. I want to hear the poetic forms and imagine myself in the context of the ancient tradition."

That cuts close, that does.

HT: Lingamish

KFC's Double Down

This makes me feel so conflicted about being an American. Disgusted? To a point. Proud of my country? Absolutely.

RefTagger

A while back I posted a massive regular expression that finds Bible cross references. Something like that must be behind Logos's RefTagger, which I'm trying to get working on this blog. This is a test:

Gen 1:14
Gen 3:14
Matt 1:1
Phlm 3
Philemon 3
Rev 45:2

David Lloyd

Christopher Lloyd, comedy writer, writes about his dad, David Lloyd, comedy writer.

I had no idea that the man responsible for the immortal "Chuckles the Clown" worked on Frasier. No wonder that show was so funny.

The “Is that contestant on American Idol a Christian Scorecard”

It's a privilege to bring you a guest post from Jon Acuff, Christian satirist extraordinaire, author of Stuff Christians Like. Like a lot of Christians, I'm sure you're interested in supporting that worship pastor or soloist who's trying to make it big in the secular music world. Well, you're in luck. Mr. Acuff has written up a scorecard to help you add up the clues and hints to pinpoint the secret Christian:

26. After they make the final 12 they thank Jesus = + 2 points (Now we're talking. Everyone thanks God in big moments, but few people will drop the "J" word.)

To add up your score with over a 130 other ideas on this scorecard, visit stuffchristianslike.net.

Holy Saturday

Descended

Jesus played the man
He stared into the abyss
And for my sake, fell.

Amelia's Prenup

There's something telling in the horrible mangling of "medieval."

I'd be a better me if I hated the iPad

David Pogue's twofold review of the iPad assumes the Eloi/Morlock distinction (explained here). Pogue doesn't use those words, but he writes two separate, widely diverging reviews, one for "techies" (=Morlocks) and one for everybody else (=Eloi).

What I find hilarious about this is how much I want the first review to be relevant to me . . . but I'm seduced by the second. I don't actually fit Pogue's description of a techie, and the Eloi review awakened within me deep longing for the device.

The key to understanding this paradox (hypocrisy?) is in Pogue's summary: "It’s not nearly as good for creating stuff. On the other hand, it’s infinitely more convenient for consuming it — books, music, video, photos, Web, e-mail and so on."

There you have it, folks. I want to believe that I'm creative, but I'm just a consumer. I will now take a deep breath and remind myself: Buying things can't make you creative.

I mentioned a while back Stevenf's prediction that New World computing belongs to the Eloi. The iPad is just the beginning. In some ways, this makes sense. Computational machines were always somewhat of a strange device for mass consumption. They can do so much more than home users need them to do. Winnowing things down to what people really use seems inevitable.