Immediately on arriving in Korea, I noticed how (a) so many people seem to think that speechmaking is absolutely necessary for any function, gathering, or context, and (b) so many people seem to be bad public speakers, not making any attempt to deliver speeches that interest, involve, or relate to the audience except as something to be endured. Foreigners routinely comment on how rock bands will stop in the middle of a show and start talking… and talking… and talking… They’ll report on whole rooms of Koreans sitting in dazed, half-attentive states while some guy in a suit prattles on …
Month: April 2007
Ironic Plagiarisms
This one takes the cake. On a recent exam, three students plagiarized wikipedia. This was an in-class exam. Instead of just learning the material, the students memorized vast hunks of text from Wikipedia by rote and then wrote them on their test papers. No citation, nothing. (And, as usual, the rote memorization made it harder for them to formulate and express an opinion. Just as I’ve always warned people it will do.) Why is it ironic? The topic of the question was copyright. Two of the three students plagiarized a public domain text discussing copyright. It just doesn’t get any …
Blackface Film Online
I’m reading John Strasbaugh’s history of blackface performance in America, Black Like You, and finding it fascinating, though I suspect that some of his arguments have angered a lot of people. (Even I feel vaguely uncomfortable with some of them, though others seem less objectionable that they are probably thought to be.) In any case, he mentioned a couple of blackface-styled cartoons that had been banned during the course of discussing blackface in films more generally. I thought I’d linkdump it, partly so I can find these links again. All This and Rabbit Stew (1941) Coal Black and de Sebben …
서울 재즈 페스티벌
While the selection of shows is disappointingly small — cheesy Pat Metheny, cheesy Japanese jazz-fusion, or a potentially cool concert with Joe Sample — those of you in Seoul might nonetheless might be interested in seeing something at the upcoming Seoul Jazz Festival. One interesting thing is that some of the local opening acts actually look better than some of the foreign ones. I’d much sooner see a show by Bae Jung-Eun’s trio than see her open for a trio show by Pat Metheny. But I guess I can see a Bae Jung-Eun show anytime, right? Right? Anyone know? I’m …
Lauritsen on Frankenstein, Bad?
For those who participated in the discussion of my post, Frankenstein, Bad? you may find Lauritsen’s response just as pathetic and feebleminded as Greer’s blatherings. How do they get people to publish this crap?
My Favorite 10 Short Stories… For Today
It’s a meme, y’all: scififanatic and jade park have both posted lists of ten currently favorite short stories, and I guess I feel driven to do the same. Maybe because I’m taking a grading break. 10 exams down, 20-something more to go. (And then the midterm essays.) One thing I have to say is that this is much like any list I make: very, very much related to my mood and memory today. On another day, I’d probably be writing another list, though some elements will be the same. The other thing: I’m going to list linked stories as one, …
Uncle Ben, CEO?
Uncle Ben, CEO? A slideshow of racist advertising Alexis linked to.
Decent Derrida?!?!?
Okay, so I was discussing the pathetic understanding of science, and especially our developing scientific understanding of us humans, among the so-called scholars of the humanities, with a co-worker of mine. I was specifically panning Deleuze and Guattari, who have written some total claptrap about science, so bad I remember cheering when I finally found someone dismissing them wholesale over it. I have some patience for Foucault, though my respect was a little tarnished by discussions suggesting he based his work on, well, more on his own sense of how things were than on source materials and so on. Actually, …
Jinni the Quae
I’m waiting a week or two before I start revisions on “Lester Young,” and in the meantime, I have a story idea — something very suited to Analog, in fact, or maybe Interzone since they have a submissions period starting soon — and the idea is a fusion of an old story idea I had, called “The Refugees,” and a totally different thing I was thinking about. I don’t want to talk too much about the story, so I’ll talk about the thing that got me thinking instead.
Frankenstein, Bad?
Anyone think I should send this to the Guardian in protest? Anyone see any significant holes in it? Germaine Greer recently wrote: The latest sensation to galvanise the torpid lit-hist-crit establishment is the “discovery” by market research analyst John Lauritsen that Mary Shelley did not write Frankenstein; Or, the Modern Prometheus (to give the novel its full title). Who is Lauritsen? Apparently, some market-research-analyst gay-rights activist who’s mostly known for arguing that the kaposy’s sarcoma common among AIDS patients is caused not by AIDS itself, by a certain drug in vogue among gay clubbers, and that HIV doesn’t really lead …