Sociologist Frank Furedi recently published an article at Spiked about “Our unhealthy obsession with sickness”. The arguments he makes all, it seems to me, are mistaken. It’s rare I disagree with someone so completely on a topic outside of politics, so I thought I’d go ahead and explain why I disagree… not with a few simple facts, but with his assessment of those facts. Furedi writes: We live in a world where illnesses are on the increase. The distinguishing feature of the twenty-first century is that health has become a dominant issue, both in our personal lives and in public …
Month: March 2005
On Manufactured Realities…
Check out this article at mssv.net, by Adrian Hon, for a fascinating look at alternate reality games in the context of a much older tradition of reality-artifice stretching back 3900 years (at least).
Cat And Rabbit No Love Can Be Make
Laura posted a link to a sorta funny Korean animation. I grinned a couple of times, so maybe you’d even laugh!
The Smack Shack Attack… (and Philosophical Excerpts.)
My friend Marvin’s been a busy boy lately. Aside from posting links to things like films about Kung Fu Fighting toy hamsters on heroin, he’s also posted a magum opus on postmodernism and empiricism to New Sophists’ Almanac. You can see the first post here, and follow up with part 2, part 3, part 4, and part 5. Marvin and I are seriously discussing the shortcomings of postmodernism, using an essay by a historian as a springboard, and the discussion is quite involved, but also, I think, not just interesting but related to the core of what’s going on in …
You Belong in Pictures
So there’s a theater where you can watch an animation that includes characters based on the face scans of everyone in the theater. Yes, you get your face scanned and show up as a character in the movie, in Grand Odyssey Futurecast System. As the blogger at The Speculist from whom I thieved the link from suggested, this is technology made for game software. Of course, as Bill Hicks once said about another entertainment technology, “This is technology made for porno films!” I guess it’s a race to see whether the pornographers or the gamer-geeks start using the tech first. …
“Official” Definitions of Culture, The Deviations of Reality, and Linguistic Imperialism (In and Out of the ESL Classroom)
Apologies for the title. Sometimes you just cannot do better. You know, it’s funny how I came to think about all of this. Chapter Three of the textbook I’m teaching to the majority of my students is about living situations—where people live, landmarks near their homes, who they live with, how they like it. Really simple stuff, so I ham it up a bit and give a couple of hints as to cultural difference. For example, to the amusement of some students I explained why a man perhaps oughtn’t ask a lady he doesn’t know well a question like, “Do …
Test #1
I’m off to give a test to my class. It’s the first test for this Freshman screen English class where nobody speaks more than few words of English, it takes a team effort to translate a phrase like “Next week,” and the students have trouble following the video. The test is fair, but I suspect they’re going to have a lot of trouble with it. Here’s hoping I’m underestimating their level. (But in the end, I did warn them that the class would be difficult.) I hope leveling limits are applied next semester when students register for classes. UPDATE: Well, …
New Banners Added
Well, I’ve been shooting mainly black & white images for a month or more, now, and I’ve gotten some shots which I actually like. So I decided to do a little sprucing up around here, and I’ve uploaded 20 new banners. Though I’ve put them on high rotation, they may not all show up for a while, so for your viewing pleasure, I’m including links to all of the new ones for you to check out. As usual, if there’s one you like a lot, or dislike, or take offense from, the comments function is here for a reason. Some …
Gaaaargh.
It’s freezing cold, which has put me in a so-so mood. The last few weeks, I’ve carefully told each class, at the beginning of class, that their number-one homework was to practice English together. Two hours of practice are absolutely crucial homework, and necessary for them to do if they want to get better than an F. This isn’t vindictiveness on my part, either; I have nothing against my students, I just have expectations of them. This is a University, after all. They are enrolled in an English class, after all. So when I asked, “Who practiced? Did you practice?” …
On the Degrassi Phenomenon
My friend John Wendel really ought to have a media blog. He emailed me a link to an article in the New York Times about