Arizona | Footenotes

January 17, 2011

Round-Up! January 10th to about the 17th

With all the new blogs going up I feel like I have to stand on a chair and shout these days – and I love it! This time last year we only had about half as many blogs, now there’s a ton of you blogging on the Commons. We’re glad to have you! Okay, so where to start, where to start…? Let’s poke around the news a little first. Last week was not to the time for cute and clever with everything going on in Arizona, but this little gem got buried in the news cycle and I think it deserves another go around. Dick Cheney, America’s second favorite robot after Johnny 5, no longer has a pulse. I’ve just written and erased so many sentences, I’ll just let you make your own comment here: __________________.

Also in the news, remember way back in the hazy part of 2010 when everyone started talking about packing up and leaving Facebook? Some brave souls did just that (Hi Matt! @admin) while others tepidly danced around the idea but couldn’t quite make the jump (Hi me and basically everyone else). Turns out 2011 might just give the rest of us slackers the push we need. Goldman Sacks, America’s second favorite bank after Scrooge McDuck’s giant vault/pool of gold coins, has apparently set itself up as the gatekeeper to Facebook’s IPO. Here’s the rub, according to Wired you can’t even get a piece of the company unless you’re holding on to something in the neighborhood of 30 million dollars. You know that 2% who owns most of the country’s wealth? They really love your status updates about making dinner out of an egg and some orange peels.

BLOGS!

First up – Anthony Picciano @APicciano has been keeping a pulse on the Arizona tragedy with frequent updates. He caught this post going around about Rush Limbaugh’s rather tasteless billboard in Arizona that’s since been taken down. If you don’t get out of New York a lot you forget what it’s like out there.

Emily Channell @echannell over at Appalachian Anthology was back this week sharing some sad news out of West Virginia and making plans to head up to Canada for some fieldwork. Good luck up there and blog when you can! BTW, Thanks for your blog and your work – I had a moment a while back where I ran across this article about a gay Massey employee suing Massey for discrimination and felt like I had a better appreciation of him and his circumstances. If it weren’t for your blog I feel like I would have missed something in the reporting of this story.

Lee Hachadoorian’s great new blog Free City was at it again this week. Every post has been a gem. I’m ready to switch to Linux, start using Spider Oak and now mindmapping. Admittedly, I’m quite fond of my trusted stack of legal pads here with their arrows that point to other pages and asterisks that lead to nowhere, but I’ll give anything a shot.

Carl James Grindley @Grindley broke my heart a little. Ok, a lot.

After a bit of a hiatus HellDriver @Helldriver returned with another great post…about Rush. Look man, I already gave you the top spot on the 2010 countdown because of the last Rush gambit, it’s all I got to give. This post was really lovely though and even Matt Gold had to drop into the comments. We’re a bunch of fanboys here, but it’s good stuff. Glad to see you back. \m/

Finally, and I’m stoked, it looks like Aaron Kendall @AKendall has set up shop with the students in Barbuda and got to work on some digging. If you’re new to the Commons you definitely need to go back and catch up on Aaron’s trip to Iceland last summer. This series of blogs is going to be great, especially now that everyone is armed with Flips. The girl in the second video is going to stress out that sifter though. You gotta dig through a lot of crab shells to find a…pipe? dice? What are we looking for this time Aaron?

Ok folks, that’s the week that was! Keep blogging!

January 10, 2011

First Round-Up of the Year!

Welcome to 2011 Commons!

Everyone must have made a resolution to start blogging because there are a bunch of new faces of the blogroll this week! We had a wonderful year in 2010 here on the Commons and all these fresh voices popping up are sure to keep me busy in the year to come. Before I dive into this week’s blogs you might have missed I feel like I should say something about Arizona. Satire and humor are my favorite vehicles for catharsis and over the last year I haven’t been shy about cracking a joke here or there about what’s been happening in Arizona as the political climate has intensified. In fact, I’ve mentioned the state so much that it’s a pretty big tag over there in my tag-cloud. Like all of us here on the Commons I was shocked when I saw the news this weekend and this is no time for jokes. Our own Anthony Picciano has already started off what I’m sure will be a passionate dialogue here on the Commons and I’ll leave it to those of us here who are far more eloquent to have their say. As for myself, I’m pretty much speechless. Here’s hoping for a full and healthy recover to the injured and some kind of peace for those who lost a loved one.

The first crop of blogs for 2011 started out strong. My favorite of the lot is Lee Hachadoorian’s @leehach ambitious Free City which is already a hit here on the Commons and to those who check out our site but aren’t members of the CUNY community. This great first post on why it’s time to switch to Linux is a phenomenal resource for those of us who have been toying around with the idea, but nervous about wandering out into the tall grass. Maybe 2011 is the year I sacrifice one of the retired laptops in the name of experimentation. Worst case scenario – I break a laptop that was hanging out in the closet anyways. Best case – I’ll start to get some of the in-jokes my IT buddies make.

Amanda Licastro @alicastro over at Digitocentricism was back after a long break talking the “How Should the University Evolve? A Conversation about the Future of Higher Education” event that was held at Baruch in November. I’m super annoyed that I missed this event. I think it was Joseph Ugoretz @jugoretz who gave me the flyer for this ages ago, or that might have been another one of Anya Kamenetz‘s speaking engagements. Regardless I had this marked down to go to it and somehow let it get away from me so I’m glad to see some feedback on it. I’m not familiar with Siva Vaidhyanathan’s work but I’m starting to gather that I should be. Amanda does a great job touching on the highlights of that engagement and offering some of her own thoughts about what it takes to stymie plagiarism in the digital age.

Giulia Guarnieri @giulia has a new blog up and running. Her post on CommonCraft.com and their simple tutorials was great. This post immediately reminded me of the David Harvey animated lecture by RSA Animate that was a popular around here a few months ago and is worth checking out again. I feel like this move towards animated education might be inching closer as a norm for teaching if we can get around to developing animation software that works in a fairly easy way like how we all got to work learning Excel and Word. Hmm… By the way – if you haven’t seen this wonderful gem from RSA by Sir Ken Robinson go ahead and clear your next ten minutes.

Well…there you have it folks, 2011 is off and running! Now get to blogging.

2 Comments

June 7, 2010

Late Edition 5/31 – 6/10

Otherwise known as ‘The Round Up I Wrote on Monday Morning Because I Spent All of Last Night Waiting For Godot”

It’s a long story, it’d bore you.

Let’s see, what happened this week in the blogs…

For starters there’s a new blog in town. Michael Smith @MSmith launched IT CANNOT BE TRIVIAL, which I gather is going to be an introspective project as he combs through a lifelong collection of his work. Beyond that it’s also shaping up to be the Commons’ first blog on the visual arts. There were two knock out posts this week; an eponymous post about using his work to subvert a rather stubborn Father’s particular definition of ‘Art’ and a follow-up piece about the intersection of the pencil and neutron. I can’t wait to see more and thanks for bringing this work to the Commons.

I’m tempted to use this as an opportunity to talk about my favorite state’s decision to ‘whiten’ the faces of minority children in public school mural, but I’ll exercise some restraint.

No, really, I promise.

Aaron Kendall @Akendall wins best summer prize. He’s going to be blogging (and filming!) about an archeological dig he’s involved with in Iceland for the summer. In short, having a better time than me. I don’t actually know anything about Iceland except that it covered the earth with a dark cloud of ash a couple of month ago and occasionally has government sponsored fairy exorcisms, but on some level that just makes the place better. Oh, and obligatory Bjork:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUNDkiRkrtk&feature=related[/youtube]

Michael Cripps @michaeljcripps posted an outline (and a call for help) for using blogs in an upcoming course…

Joseph Ugoretz @jugoretz I’m looking at you.

Timothy Wilson @twilson posted about Jack Miles over at Franglophone. In full disclosure I raced over there and geeked out in the comments when the post went up earlier. If you haven’t read any of Miles’ work it’s great for the summer. Heavy without being oppressive and more than relevant considering how much the word ‘God’ gets tossed around in political discourse. His literary critique of religion is also poignant without requiring any advanced knowledge of literary criticism or technique. Also – I love the French/English approach of Franglophone. I’m trying to dust off my French and the blog is a great way to dredge up all those forgotten verbs that are knocking around in the back of my head.

Wrapping up the week, Tony Picciano @Apicciano called out a David Brooks piece in the Times this week. I think I’m supposed to be unsettled by the fact that David Brooks is making doey-eyes at Obama’s education strategy. I think I might also kind of agree with David Brooks…so I’m not totally sure I’m glad I read the op-ed.

Whatever man; giant oil spills, 8 years in Afghanistan, Israeli/Palestinian/Turkish/Aid Flotilla the Middle East, Rush getting married again, that other volcano in Iceland…getting on with David Brooks for one op-ed might not be the end of the world.

Oh and bloggers, what happened to my posse? If you haven’t graded those papers by now they probably aren’t getting graded at all so get back to blogging!

See ya next week!

4 Comments

May 16, 2010

That One Round-Up Where I Agreed With Sarah Palin 5/10 – 5/16

Ah Sunday, that last battle of the week before it all starts over.

So yeah, Sarah Palin has declared “We are all Arizonans” and I couldn’t agree more. I promise though, I won’t have another freak-out about Arizona and all of the crazy going on there.

Naaaaaaaaaaaaaw – just playin’. Did you see this? Turns out that demanding papers from anyone not wearing Crocs and Dockers just isn’t enough. Governor Brewer decided on Wednesday that it was time to outlaw any public high school ethnic-studies class that teaches that one race is persecuted by another. Now I don’t know, but it seems like passing a law that forces police officers to harass any person of Hispanic descent might just invite some conversation on race relations and persecution in Arizona. You know, the kind of thing you would want to discuss in a class dedicated to the history and present of a particular ethnicity. The mind reels.

It’s not just me, I promise! Tamar Zilkha @tamarzilkha posted some thoughts on the matter as well. Watching Eric Holder dance around the issues inherent in the Arizona law by saying “terrorist” over and over reminded me of the good ol’ days of the aughts. Are we still at level orange?

But hark! We are in New York and not the desert! And we’re at CUNY, so enough of my soapbox and let’s talk about the week.

All the regulars popped up this week but there was a new blog in town. Daisy Dominguez @Daisilla at the Salalm Newsletter posted a handful of blogs this week. Of particular interest was a requiem for the subject guide. Maybe not a requiem exactly, but a close look at what it would take to bring subject guides back to life for libraries. The ideas she bounced around we’re interesting and I know there more than a few librarians are hanging out here. Did Web 2.0 kill the subject guide? Are wikis a better format? Paging Scott Voth!

Speaking of – Scott @Scottvoth posted this week with some more news about changes to the Commons. The Wiki section of the Commons is due for a little upgrading. I have to say though, I’m going to miss the mountains from the old blog. That’s life.

Helldriver @helldriver made a brief cameo blogging about an unexpected unicyclist set to the music of Masada. The whole thing kicked up a little discussion in the comments about serendipity in New York. I love New York for that. Maybe it’s the 8 (9, 10, 12) million people who live here, or maybe it’s the magic. Either way I saw Tibetan monks warding off spirits at St. John the Divine’s this weekend with big horns, that’s enough for me. I guess that doesn’t really qualify as serendipity but you should still go check it out.

Jeremy Rafal @jrafal had his vacation jacked up by an ad by Americans for Prosperity urging voters to call congress and tell the government to stop trying to “fix” the internet. I have to say it’s a head scratcher. The ad wants to imply that the government is out there buying banks, car manufacturers and is now rubbing it’s greedy little mitts together scheming to take over the whole system of tubes we love so dearly. Personally I kind of like that the government has fixed that whole free speech problem for me. I also really like the way they fixed civil rights with that anti-freedom American-hating Constitution thing. Clever no?

Finally, Anthony Picciano @apicciano posted this week about an article in the Times regarding too much education. I don’t want to say too much about the article before you read it but it’s largely concerned with how we decide when to steer people to vocational education. On the one hand vocational schools are an excellent way to get into fields that require specialized training and often secure great salaries for those who go that route. The old standby argument in the other direction is that a liberal arts education isn’t meant to be a one way ticket to the middle class. At it’s best a degree takes a person’s life and gives it a depth and richness that it would have been otherwise unrealized. The character and thinking skills developed at college are supposed to be skills that often run parallel to what comes to material success. It’s hard to start a dialogue about the subject because it requires such a broad scope. You have to take a deep breath before every paragraph. But then again, we’ve got the smartest people in the room right here so why aren’t we talking about it?

Ok, I can’t wrap up just yet because I have this nagging feeling…

I’m sorry about what happened up there at the top. I lost my cool talking about Arizona…

I know Crocs are comfortable, I know.

May 1, 2010

Finally – April’s Over!

Good Lord what a long month.

The blogs were in bloom this week on the Commons. Maybe it was the never-ending rain that forced everyone to sit home and write poetry, or maybe we all just felt like chumps for letting Carl James Grindley do all of the heavy lifting this month over at Poems in Progress. Whatever the motivation there was poetry in spades here. Timothy Wilson was feeling prolific towards the end and broke out some Spanish on us. Good thing we’re not in Arizona or…you know…he’d probably accused of being a Mex’can terrorist commie illegal or something. Ok, alright, Footenotes isn’t exactly a bully pulpit, but come on Arizona. COME ON!

Shhhh…just relax, it’s ok, they’re far away from here and it’s not like I’m in dire need of turquoise or anything.

Anyways, poetry. All of our favorites threw in. Michael Oman-Reagan posted perennial favorite Lawrence Ferlinghetti via Religion Scholars and Linda Wadas at For the Benefit of All Sentient Beings offered some photography as poetry. I was holding out for Scott Voth to write a little ode to wikis but, alas, it was not to be.

But it wasn’t all sonnets and stanzas around here. Tamar Zilkha made a return to the Commons this week thoroughly annoyed with the Census Bureau. It was an interesting post about what constitutes race to the government and good ole Uncle Sam might be a little out of his league when trying to define race. Honestly at this point I wish I hadn’t turned in my Census form yet because I’d love to make a few changes to my own answers. Especially in light of this stupid friggin law that Arizona passed.

It’s basically like a bunch of people in Arizona realized that they’re referred to as the “South-West” and decided it was time to invest a little more in the “Southern” part of South-West. Like, maybe Arizona just got lonely because the only other states that would hang out with it were Utah and New Mexico. I’d be pretty lonely too, but making eyes at Alabama just because you’re tired of the dry heat…I don’t even know what I’m saying. As a southern refugee I always looked towards the desert peoples as wise sages of the brush. Now you don’t need a license to carry a concealed gun and it’s ok to stop anyone (Latino) and demand papers. Because the wild west was so much fun you know, just like at Six Flags.

No seriously, it’s ok, I’m done.

Tony Picciano pulled up Maureen Dowd’s op-ed in the Times this week about the Goldman Sachs hearing over on Tony’s Thoughts. As much as I’d love for something to come out of the criminal charges headed towards Goldman I just don’t see it amounting to much. What I suspect is that Lloyd Blankfein is just going to erect a giant wall of gold bricks around Goldman Sachs downtown and throw big diamonds at SEC investigators till they give up from all of the bruises.

While Scott Voth did not deliver on a wiki poem, he made a post over at Wiki Wrangler giving us a sneak peak at his masters thesis work. The post cards are lovely and it’s a great project suited to the scope of Omeka. Takes some time to visit the Omeka site and learn about what they’re doing.

Speaking of technology and academia, Adam Wandt had a really touching post on the increasing use of technology by the elderly. He set up his grandmother with a computer and got her to explore the internet and technology with some really great benefits on the side. The links towards the end are a nice touch if you’re looking for some further reading on the mental benefits of technology. Congrats Adam!

Finally, Helldriver made it in just under the wire for this week’s round up. It’s a post about spring and music. That, of course, is an understatement, but were I to try and explain what a great post it is I’d just ruin it. To be frank, I think the best thing I can say about Helldriver’s post today is that it’s enough to make me wrap up this week’s round up and get the hell out of my apartment.

See ya next week folks!

1 Comment

Footenotes

Tag: Arizona