Footenotes

building CUNY Communities since 2009

Tag: Michael Smith

September 28, 2010

Round-Up 9/20-9/26

Because I’m an idiot and a masochist I watched the Senate vote live on the military spending bill for this year that included a repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and passing the DREAM Act.  By now you know what came out of that but I mention it here because if you watched Senator Durbin’s speech after the vote he mentioned a CUNY Law student who would have benefited from the passing of the DREAM act.  I was too pissed distraught to write down the name of that student which is a shame because I was hoping he might be here.  I want to say it was nice to see CUNY mentioned during the circus, especially since both the repeal of DADT and passing the DREAM act would have been huge victories for so many in the CUNY community.  The thing is – it wasn’t nice.  I wasn’t glad to see a big cardboard picture of a CUNY student being waived around the senate floor in an effort to try and convince a bunch of senators that lots of people who don’t fit into their idea of ‘America’ deserve the right to serve their country.

I do take some consolation in remembering that at any given time CUNY has just under half a million students going through its programs.  That’s not to say that everyone in the university shares my opinions on DADT or DREAM, but I do believe that CUNY students, reflecting the diversity and great breadth of cultures that make New York what it is, know a little something about overcoming obstacles to get to great places.

Look, I know.   I try to keep it light even when I’m picking on people but I’m still a little stunned by the vote.  Besides – making fun of Linda McMahon would be too easy, even for you folks.

Speaking of you folks – it was a busy week on the blogs!  Here’s a few things of note.

Michael Smith @MSmith returned to the blogs this week.  Blogging for York College’s excellent 60 Minutes BootCamp, it looks like the journalism students from York have put together another fantastic piece – this time covering the Islamic community center south of the WTC.  In case you hadn’t heard they’re going to open a community center for Muslims and those interested in Islam downtown.  Apparently people have some thoughts on the matter.

Over at A Cosa Stai Pensando Beniamina Cassetta @beniamina has lost control of her thumbs.  Facebook is something of a dirty word around here so I try not to bring it up much, but you’re right – it is weird you can only like something.  At least Youtube gives you the option to vote down.  This is especially interesting when you consider that you can always delete negative comments as well.  It’s entirely possible to present reality on facebook in such a way that everything you say or link to is liked and commented on positively.  If only I could find a way to do that here on Footenotes…

Our resident poet and busiest guy at the keyboard, Carl James Grindley @Grindley is working on a book.  I’m afraid if I say too much here I might do more harm than good so I’ll leave it at congrats on the grant and good luck!  Invite us to the book party!

Since I’m writing this today, Tuesday, I can kind of see into the future as to what next week’s round-up will be.  Linda it’s good to see you again here, and I have…uhm…opinions…about this high school/college swap business on Tony’s blog.

They’ll have to wait – See you next week!

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July 19, 2010

The Round-Up Where I Realized Summer is Almost Over – 6/12-6/18

Sorry, I guess that was a bummer of a headline.  Think of it as a wake-up call, the beach will never be warmer.  Seriously.

Things started off this week with some big news from Anthony Picciano’s @apicciano blog about education media giant Blackboard acquiring Elluminate.  If Elluminate sounds familiar to you that’s because our very own Adam Wandt @awandt blogged about using it quite a bit last semester.  While Adam had a pretty positive experience with the platform, I’ll be curious to see what Blackboard decides to do with it.  My hope is that they leave it alone and let the Elluminate team continue to develop it, but I suspect it’s something they want to integrate into the Blackboard portal itself.  I can see where it’s clearly a smart move for both companies; Elluminate gets a bunch of cash and Blackboard gets a better feature in their suite, but you know…*cough*…there have been some problems with BB’s stability and I wonder how well it’ll take to something like Elluminate if the two concepts are put together.  And that’s not even touching on some of Tony’s greater concerns about centralization that should probably have all of our eyebrows perked a little more.

Michael Smith @MSmith posted some more of his work, this week reflecting on art in the age of catastrophe.  I hate to play armchair critic, and wince a little when I go back and look at times when I’ve tried to publicly have an opinion on art, so I’ll just say that I really like what you did there.  As someone who came of age in the late 90s rest assured that the insulation of padded foam on everything lingered well past the ‘everything is going to kill you’ 80’s.   To that end I can’t help but feel like my generation of artists lack a certain appreciation for danger.

After a too long hiatus Helldriver @helldriver returns.  It’s hard to write about music, especially in way that does it any justice, but this blog always delivers.  Often it’s the insight drawn from writing on music that resonates the most, such as:

But in a broader sense, what’s happened to the 55 is indicative of what’s happened to New York City as a whole, which for the last couple of decades has been busy draining itself of all its wonderfully garish “local” color, and repackaging itself as one more franchise in a global urban chain store, drawing liberally on its own myths to manufacture a brand identity.

I couldn’t have said it better.  To be fair, that’s not the moral of the story so do read on, but New York and I are in a fight this week.

That being said, run – don’t walk – and catch up on what’s going on at York College’s ‘Boot Camp’.  This project is awesome and I hope to see more about on the Commons.  It’s a great idea and I hope as our community here grows we’ll see more projects similar to this appear across CUNY.

And finally, from the Community Team come two posts you should definitely check out.  Sarah Morgano @Sarah_Morgano posted to Commons Connections and gave us a handy guide to adding users to your blogs.  Scott Voth @scottvoth posted to Wiki Wrangler about the Apture plug-in that allows readers to stay on your site while browsing links from your blog instead of being directed away.

There’s the week that was on the blogs.  I mean it people, go out and play.   It’ll be back in the classroom before you know it.

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July 5, 2010

The Round Up I Wrote After Not Seeing Any Fireworks 6/28 – 7/4

Mayor Mike, we need to talk.

I wasn’t happy about the third term thing, I thought it was a little beneath you actually, but I understood.  There was the financial crisis and you always fought for gun control and Christine Quinn seemed really really into it so I thought, “what the hell” and shrugged it off.  I know, I know I’m a lazy citizen, but after 8 years of basically being hysterical all the time and marching at everything I just didn’t have the energy to fight on this one.

And then you messed with the fireworks.

I didn’t move to Greenpoint for the perogis.  I moved to Greenpoint so I could stand on my roof every 4th of July and have the best seat in the house.  I know that you have nothing to do with the fireworks committee.  You don’t sit around your desk in the days leading up to the 4th picking out flag pins for your lapel and making phone calls to make sure those stupid smiley face fireworks are actually going to perform their job and make a smile.  I understand that.  But if you’re going to flagrantly indulge in chop-shop democracy the very least you could do is take some time out of your billionaire schedule and put the fireworks between two actual boroughs of the city of New York and not between us and…it hurts to say it…New Jersey.  The coast of New Jersey is just bunch of NYC ex-pats who wanted cheaper rent anyways – they’re turncoats – that’s why we shame them.  You can’t just steal Brooklyn’s fireworks and give it to a bunch of people who have bigger, cheaper apartments in a whole other state.  Their reward is there on earth, ours is supposed to be in the heavens.

Not that my 4th was terrible, I spent it in a hammock at a bar-b-que in Fort Greene sipping whiskey, but I’m still mad.

Blooooooooooooogggggggsssssss!

I don’t know what happened this week but we managed to summon all of these long dormant blogs out of the ground. Joseph Ugoretz @jugoretz at Prestidigitation had a lovely post asking whether or not we’ve yet to understand the capacity of the recorded lecture.  For an excellent example of the potential of the medium Joseph linked to David Harvey’s latest:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOP2V_np2c0[/youtube]

The animation is certainly more compelling than the TED format, but I have mixed feelings about what it takes to make something like the Harvey lecture possible.  I’m glad that a lecture of all things put some animators to work, but to what extent can we expect professors with a long view of their lecture to also be production crews?  How do you slip something like animators across a department chair’s desks?

Pedagogy was also on Benjamin Miller’s @benmiller314 mind this week.  Majoring in Meta made an appearance on the blog roll with a slightly neurotic look at whether meta-lecturing was instructive or just driving students crazy.  I had to admire the candor of one of Ben’s students who basically told him to make a decision, but lolz aside, I think Ben’s on the mark.   You don’t exactly get a ‘how to teach’ course with every masters and PhD.   More to the point,  on a good day the classroom isn’t just a person who knows something telling others who don’t, it’s a bunch of people in a room learning something new together.  Teaching on the go facilitates that and can bring you to some unexpected places.  That’s the real secret knowledge of the professor.

Adam Wandt @awandt did some investigative live blogging for us and discovered that ‘death grip’ has plagued iPhones well before the newest one.  Not that it matters to the tech-mob I guess, I was at the Apple store on 5th Ave this weekend and the only death grip that counted was the one you could get on an employee.   I have to say though, Adam, I think you have bigger problems than reception…

How can you read everything backwards?

Aaron Kendall @Akendall checked back in this week from Iceland.  Still no sword…yet…but some nice pictures from over yonder.  This week on the island our hero and team went digging around some farm land.  Then John Locke flipped out and turned into smoke.  I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I still miss it.  Apparently the lake near where they were ate away the midden and dashed any chances for some interesting finds.  I feel like if I was an archeologist I would be constantly stressed out because apparently this sort thing is a persistent problem.  I can barely cope when I can’t find the other sock so digging holes all day and then finding nothing usable would break my heart.  Not to nag but you promised us some video!

Michael Smith  @MSmith said he’d make a post a week and the guy is serious!  This week we got Physical Chemistry, a tract about relationships, or atoms, or science yoga.   I suck at physics.  It’s ok, I know that.  I can talk your ear off about gender construction or mid century shifts in theology but come at me with wave/particle stuff and you can almost see the cartoon birds orbiting my head.  That being said, if someone had just taught me physics through art there’s no telling.  I think you’re an attic’s worth of old art projects away from a syllabus.

To wrap things up Tony Picciano @Apicciano caught Maureen Dowd getting all sentimental on the 4th and encouraging us to let our “freakin’ flag fly”  I’m not real sure what Maureen had in mind, but I’m gonna head to the park and read some more David Harvey.

June 28, 2010

That Round-Up I Wrote Recovering from Pride – 6/21 -6/27

Oh Commonsers,

My poor head aches, my shoulders are red with fury and my feet are exhausted – but what a day for a parade eh?   Hunter and Baruch were out this year.  I was hoping CUNY would have a float but it didn’t happen so I’ll make you a deal, right here on Footenotes; If we can talk CUNY into putting a float in the parade next year I’ll liveblog on top of the thing.  Nothing sexier than a shirtless blogger.

I can’t remember if I saw these last year or not but it looks like the storied rainbow flag has some regional competition:

Personally, I like ’em.  I was going to post photos of the Hunter and Baruch groups and these new flags that were everywhere, but my camera didn’t make it back home with me.  Ah well – I hope it met another nice camera of the same gender and had a good time.

Alright alright, you get it, enough about my weekend.

The Blogs!

Thing were busy this week, I love it. We started off with a post from Michael Smith @msmith at It Cannot Be Trivial about his works on cross aesthetics.  As I’ve mentioned before, the back-story on a work of art is often of  more interest to me than the work itself.  I think part of that comes from the fact that art is so often a subjective experience and yet it can create this plutocracy of ‘taste’ that may or may not just be a reflection of gallery reps and auction house interests.  To hear the story of how a certain piece came to exist can really open up a work and give the viewer a place in it that was somehow closed before.

After I reread that little paragraph it started to look like I was saying I didn’t like this week’s display.  To the contrary Ive been crazy about crosses regardless of their religious dimension since I was little.  I was a spooky kid.

Speaking of crosses and spooky stuff, Michael Oman-Reagan had two posts out this week.  The first was an early bird reminder about the AAR’s meeting in Atlanta this year.  I know we have a couple of religion groups and programs here on the Commons so take note.  The second was about Congress getting all nosy and bothering Steve Jobs.  Turns out the gummerment is concerned about whether Apple might be overstepping it bounds with its Location Services features.  Honestly I didn’t even know that was a feature and after hearing about it I still don’t know how threatened I supposed to feel.  I mean if Jack Bauer can just triangulate a cell-phone call to find anyone on Earth then I’m doomed as it is.

Next up in my queue of blogs to cover…oh…uh…so about what I said up there about print being dead…sometimes I just run my mouth without thinking.  Apparently we’re all missing Book Expo America.  Librarianship in Lower Manhattan blogged about this weird book-lover  Xanadu with free booze and librarian worship.   Awesome.  Also – who knew that Kathleen Collins @kcollins ,  one of our own, had a book signing there?  You have to blog about this kind of thing so we can show up!

Turf Wars @Akendall checked in and gave us an update on the Icelandic excavations.  Turns out there are sheep and clay pipes buried in the earth.  I’m excited to the see the video out of there and whatever else they managed to pull out of the ground.  I’m a dork about that kind of thing.  I do think we ought to start a pool here on what he’s going to find.  My money’s on a sword.   I don’t know why, it’s just a feeling.  Come on folks, step right up and place your bets.

Maura Smale @msmale was up in Connecticut giving a presentation on a game she created called Quality Counts.  Please don’t turn you game loose on Footenotes.  We’re like dinner theater here: bad dinner, bad theater.  That being said, she titled the post ‘Still in the Game’ and something struck me as familiar.  Did you really reference late Steve Winwood?

Linda Wadas @lindawadas from over at ‘For the benefit of all sentient beings’ pointed out a couple of kinds of vetch that popped up in her yard.  You can’t eat ’em but they look pretty.

And finally this week we’ve got a couple of new things from the Community Team.

Scott Voth @scottvoth – resident Wiki overlord – made a great post about integrating wikis into your blogs.  This is a great resource if you’re using your blog for classroom work or online courses.  I haven’t had a chance to play around with it, but I’m off to do that after we wrap up here.  You can always message Scott with wiki questions, he’s here to help!

Sarah Morgano is bringing a new feature to the Commons that I’m really excited about: 5 Questions With… This week she talked to Adam Wandt @awandt about the Commons, blogs, and Twitter.  Got something to say – go find her!  Otherwise she’s coming to you…

and between Apple Location Services and her all around Jack Bauer-ness you can’t hide.

See you next week!

1 Comment
June 13, 2010

Round Up! 6/7 – 6/13

Well let’s see…

Phillip Corbett, standards editor at the ole’ Grey Lady herself, finally hit his breaking point and banished the word “tweet” from the New York Times.  Now I’m not one of those people who likes to dog the Times about being behind the curve, but I do think it’s kind of funny that this decree comes down to the poor staff writers after what… 4 or 5 years of Twitter-mania.   It’s hard not to picture him sinking his teeth deeper and deeper into his red pencil every day,  finally clearing off his desk with his arm and storming out into the bull pen shaking his fist at Heaven.

I mean that’s how it could have happened.

I mention this mostly because I caught that piece of news shortly after reading our own Matt Gold’s post on leaving Facebook.  In his post he talks about using Twitter professionally while Facebook had some personal resonance and I suspect he’s not alone.  Plenty of businesses use Twitter to advertise sales and new releases while plenty of people use it to communicate professionally.  So when does technology language become, well, language.  How is the verb ‘tweet’ any different from ‘blog’?  Nobody says ‘vlog’ because a) it’s ugly and b) the ratio of vlogs to blogs is remarkable high.  Vlogs have no currency so the word doesn’t mean anything, but ‘tweet’?  Can one lonesome standards editor really put a stop to it?

But enough arm-chair semiotics.

It was a busy week here on the blogs.  Always prolific Tim Wilson @twilson wrote something in French that just makes me angry because I can’t read it (Im trying,I promise) and posted a heads up about the Eighth International Conference On The Book.  I’d actually really like to go this and see what the speakers have to say about print and the future of the book.  There’s been plenty of talk around the Commons on where print is headed, and it’s a giant issue that we’re going to have to address sooner or later.

George Otte @gotte sent out a call for an online journal this week.  Sarah Morgano is covering the spat of technology posts that were around this week so I don’t want to say too much about it here, but I do think that this looming sense that print is under siege is obviously tied to the agility and ease that makes an immodest proposal such as George’s entirely tenable and, more to the point, immediately possible.

Stepping away from books and language for a moment I want to point out something that happened on the Commons this week.

Something big:

Helldriver @helldriver confessed that he loves Rush.

I just don’t…well…I don’t know.  It’s like, you know, when you come home from work one night and find the police at the apartment next door and you realize you just never really know someone.

Let me not do the post an injustice by calling it merely a confession though.  The word ‘panegyric’ comes to mind.  Pericles and the funeral oration maybe.  I’ll just go for broke and call it epic.  Have a look yourself and after you’re done, enjoy:

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

Last week saw the debut of Michael Smith’s @msmith blog It Cannot Be Trivial, and this week’s post were fantastic.  I spend a lot of time crawling around galleries in Chelsea and Brooklyn and while I appreciate the necessity of subjectivity in encountering a work of art on its own terms, I really love the way a blog can help provide context for work that actually brings something more to it.  For example, the first post this week about the cement slab was great because it gives the work so much more depth (to me at least) to know that it was reinterpreted in light of the riots and ultimately (Spoiler) busted up, unceremoniously tossed after being broken into pieces.

To wrap up the week I want to leave you with this:

Does Professor Quality Matter? Evidence from Random Assignment of Students to Professors

I’m just going to sit this link right there right in front of you and let you decide what to do with it.

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Environment: Reclaim Dev

Branch: 2.5.x

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