What's on Kristen's Mind Today?

Puppies!

2006-10-04T13:33:00.000-07:00

Yeah, so I haven't posted at all about the new addition to the family this summer, Lady the Boston Terrier.

Background: for Christmas last year, we got my grandfather a Boston Terrier puppy. He named her Bitsy, and she was quite possibly the best dog there ever was, positively oozing personality. My grandfather loved that dog like it was his child. Calling her the light of his life would not be an exaggeration. The whole family was really attached to her. Unfortunately, she got run over the Tuesday before Fathers Day, by my grandfather's best friend coming to join him for breakfast no less. At first it looked like she might make it, though she'd have to have a leg amputated, but then he found out that she'd probably lose an eye, too, and might have brain damage, so he had to get her put to sleep.

For a while he was thinking about waiting until this fall to get a new puppy from the same breeder and hopefully same parents, but he came across an ad for some Bostons for sale in Griffin and decided to go ahead and get one. And so Booger came to join the family (so called because of a bit of pink flesh on the edge of her otherwise black nose, which has since either faded away or moved to inside her nostril). But that's not the end of the story. My stepdad, after seeing how attached my mom had been to Bitsy, had already decided he was going to get my mom a Boston for Christmas, but he decided instead to go get one of Booger's siblings. He came back on June 28th with a Boston puppy as a surprise for my mom. My mom named her Lady.

Lady and Booger are wonderful! My mom and stepdad are planning to breed Lady, and I've already been promised one of the first round of puppies. I can't wait.

The girls are just over five months old now, and they're growing fast. Lady is super smart, and I swear she understands English. Booger isn't quite as disciplined, so it's sometimes hard to tell how smart she is, but she's been maturing a good bit over the last few months and is seeming less and less different from her predecessor Bitsy.

Here are some pictures of the girls, from when they first arrived till now:

Lady (aka Ladybug)

Booger (aka Boogie - my mom and aunts refuse to call her Booger)

Lady and Booger together (with Will, my cousin Jerrell, and my uncle Joe)

Murph has been promoted

2006-09-21T11:33:00.000-07:00

Some may remember that I inherited a pair of blue gourami fish last summer from my friend Amy before she moved to Arkansas, who I named Connor and Murph. The little guys have been quite entertaining, as they are fond of "kissing" (swimming toward each other and bumping mouths -- there's actually a variety of gouramis called "kissing gouramis," which are pinkish colored and grow to be about a foot long). Well, Amy also warned me that they'd had them for several years, and though she didn't know about gourami life expectancy, I shouldn't be surprised if they died soon. Sure enough, a couple weeks ago I came home to find Connor, the bigger and apparently older of the two, dead at the bottom of the aquarium.

So Murph was left all by himself. It's been really depressing to see him swimming around in the tank alone. There's no one for him to kiss any more. :( And so, Tuesday night after watching him be so pathetic for a while, I resolved to use my Wednesday afternoon to go to PetCo and find him some tankmates.

I spent a while yesterday morning looking around on the internet to find out what types of fish were compatible and made the trek to PetCo with a prioritized list. My first choice was more gouramis because clearly they can get along, and dang it, I wanted to see some more fish kissing each other. Thankfully, the store not only had gouramis, but several different varieties. I didn't get the pink "kissing gouramis" because they get too big for the tank I have and have a tendency to be aggressive. So I got six others to come and be Murph's new friends. I'll eventually take some pictures of the fish that are actually mine, but here are some representative pictures of the types I got, along with their new names.

I got two more blue gouramis, who are still pretty young and not full-grown yet. Murph is about four inches long, and these two guys are about half his size. Or should I say, the fish formerly known as Murph. Since he's the big guy now, he's been promoted to being called Il Duce. The two new blue gouramis are now Connor and Murph.

I also got three golden gouramis like this one. They're also juveniles, and they, too, are supposed to grow to about four inches in length. I named them Smecker, Greenly, and Duffy. :)

And finally, I got a little guy like this one, a dwarf flame gourami. Don't think he gets quite as big, but man is he pretty, this irridescent orangy-pink color. His name is Rocco.

The cats are loving them, by the way. Mouse is positively captivated, and I think she might have spent the entire night sitting on the floor in front of the aquarium and watching them.

I finally got to be one of the people in a political poll!

2006-05-11T10:01:00.000-07:00

I got to do one of those political phone surveys the other day when I was at my mom’s house. My mom answered the phone, but she’s pretty apolitical and didn’t care to take the time to do it. But man, was I happy to take the call. All these opinions and finally someone to share them with!

One of the first questions, and one I’m fairly certain you have to answer correctly in order to continue to the rest of the questions (since most of them concerned satisfaction with one’s current congressional representative), was “Do you know who represents you and your district in the House of Representatives?” Yes, indeed, I do: Lynn Westmoreland. I had incidentally been poking around his website just a week earlier, so I had tons of opinions to share. When I talked about this to my mom after the phone call was over and told her about this question and my suspicions that the phone call would have been over much more quickly if I’d been wrong, my mom’s response was, “Who IS our congressman?” Yeah, I was definitely the right person to take the call.

The major themes of the survey were: 1) how satisfied are you with your representative? 2) what would you have them do differently? And 3) what issues are the most important for you in deciding who to vote for?

I’m fairly satisfied with Westmoreland. I know that any representative, especially a Republican, is going to do everything in his or her power to make himself appear fiscally conservative, but in looking around his website, his positions on issues, and his voting record, I am seeing that this is truly a priority for him. And I think that’s the most important thing the person representing me in Congress can do. Conservative positions on things like abortion, gun control, separation of church and state, and other social issues are all fine and good, but it’s going to be rare to never that he has the opportunity to affect change in these areas. As far as I’m concerned, the primary responsibility of congress is to be the steward of my tax dollars. Westmoreland seems to have a similar opinion of what his job is. And so when asked about what I was most satisfied with about my representative, I cited his fiscal responsibility.

What would I have him do differently? Well, the same thing I would have all the members of Congress do, Republican and Democrat alike: fix the tax system and solve the problem of poor border security. My reason for visiting Westmoreland’s website in the first place was to find out if he was a cosponsor for the Fair Tax bill (H.R. 25) and start writing him irritating letters on a weekly basis until he was if I found out he wasn’t already a cosponsor. But the Fair Tax and getting it pushed through is one of his biggest priorities, and that makes Kristen happy. But he and the rest of the supporters of HR 25 need to get really loud and annoying and refuse to shut up about it until they get it out of the finance committees in the House and the Senate and it gets a fair chance to be voted on. That’s my pseudo-complaint number one. And my pseudo-complaint number two is the same thing about border security and illegal immigration: you know the border needs to be closed down until we can get security under control, so make that happen! Worry about what to do with the people who are already here later.

And that leads me to a digression that actually reconnects these two big issues for me. I think that the Fair Tax, in addition to being a fantastic solution to the horrible tax system and excellent way to improve our economy, is actually a really good solution to what to do about the illegal immigrants who are already here. One of the major problems most people cite about illegal workers is that they are not paying their fair share of taxes. Well, enter the Fair Tax, where EVERYONE pays taxes, since taxes are paid on purchases instead of withheld from paychecks (or paychecks from the legal workers, anyway). If they switch over to the Fair Tax, I say let the illegal workers stay the heck here. There will be good incentive to become legal citizens since it’s the legal citizens that get the prebate every month to cover tax on spending up to poverty level. If they want to go through the process to become legal citizens, good for them. If they don’t, let them stay anyway if they want to. It’s just more people paying taxes, and probably all of them paying just a little less.

They guy doing the survey was, I think, pretty entertained by me. As he prepared to run down a list of issue categories for me to choose the one I think is most important in my decisions on who to vote for and my satisfaction with my representatives, he was like, “Yeah, I’m pretty sure I already know which one of these you’re going to pick, but let me go down the list anyway.” Yep, sure enough, taxes and spending is my number one issue.

Near the end of the survey, I was asked to describe my political orientation, and ended up, through several multiple choice questions, describing myself as a moderate Republican. I would call myself Libertarian if not for the moral void in several of their positions on social issues. I’m fairly moderate on social issues (the only social issue I’d consider myself extremely conservative about is abortion), but I’m a hardcore Reagan Conservative capitalist when it comes the economic issues. I’m not super happy with how the Republicans in Congress on the whole are doing right now, but I’m still happier with them than I am with the Dems. And so far I haven’t seen a Republican do something like start crying because someone was being nominated to the Supreme Court who might take away a woman’s right to kill her own baby. Yeah.

Let's Make A Deal

2006-05-01T16:05:00.000-07:00

The voting for the MLB All-Star Game has opened. I'm thrilled to death that my favorite Brave, Brian McCann, is on the ballot. He's a really solid ball player and has been very consistently good both through the end of last season when he moved up to the majors and so far this year as well. Last time I checked, he was sporting the highest batting average of any of the Braves' regular starters. But he came up about the same time as Jeff Francouer, and seems to be stuck in Francouer's shadow. I don't entertain the delusion that McCann will be beating out any of the more well-known catchers for one of the NL spots, but I would love for him to get tons of votes. So if you are All-Star-Game-voting-inclined, please consider tossing your NL catcher vote his way. If you have anyone in particular you'd like me to vote for in my remaining 24 votes, let me know, and as long as they're not an NL catcher, I'll oblige.

As they say in Oscar campaigns, thank you for your consideration.

Eight years gone...

2006-05-01T15:45:00.000-07:00

The movie theater in LaGrange where I’ve worked since my freshman year of college closed down for good two Thursdays ago. Honestly, it was about time, and a new one is currently being built (though it won’t be done till about November). I’d been planning to hang on till I was done with school, going over to the new theater and continuing to work there (I was going to get to learn digital projection and was looking forward to it, but oh well). I was pretty much just working one night a week, Saturday, since I was already in LaGrange for karate demo practice and church every weekend anyway. Plus, I really kind of liked being there. The people (with a few exceptions, most of them doofy managers) have always been really great, and it’s been nice to spend some time around normal people. No offense to any academic reading this, but hanging out with non-academics on occasion is really healthy. Plus, I think the separation from the real world that seems to come with academia has also been staved off by my continuing to work there. It was good for me to spend time being a normal person who isn’t too good to do things like sweep floors and carry boxes up and down stairs. I’ve enjoyed the opportunity it afforded me to stay somewhat normal.

But, as I said, it closed. The lease ended at the end of April, the landlord wanted to raise the rent for the remainder of the company’s stay, and the company refused to pay (in their defense, the rent was really ridiculous even before he raised it). I’m sad that my tenure there is over, but will not cry about the fact that I now have Saturday nights and all holidays off.

I learned a lot of things from that job. One of the people I worked with there is probably one of the people I have disliked the most, but dealing with him for a few years made me develop the confrontational skills I had been lacking my whole life. By the time he got fired, I was to the point where I pretty much stood up to him any time I felt he was out of line, and have carried that ability with me in my dealings with others. As difficult as working with him was, it’s ultimately had a positive effect on me. As further evidence, an old LJ entry regarding me deal with a different but probably even more difficult manager.

And though I would not have thought myself at the lower end of the maturity spectrum for college students, I still did a lot of growing up on that job. When I started in March of 1998, I had just turned eighteen. Two months later, mostly because I was actually old enough for the promotion, I was made a relief manager. The manager who hired and promoted me left to work in a different theater, the new manager was a bozo and a thief, so in another month, I was co-managing the theater with another eighteen year old for the rest of the summer until they could find a manager to replace the one they had to fire. That was one crazy stressful summer, but I think I officially became a grownup during that few months.

I’ve made lots of great friends working at the theater, too. Summer and Christmas breaks were tons of fun. And, of course, our combined creative energies led to the masterpiece that is Carmike Jackass.

I could probably go on for a while about other great things about that job. But this is already a pretty long entry as it is. So I’ll just go on content that I’m still an unofficial/honorary employee at the Auburn movie theater.

As promised, karate demo vids

2006-04-24T22:42:00.000-07:00

So first off, here's a "highlights" video from our karate demo on Saturday for those who are interested: Mall Demo 4/22/06

And me doing bo staff: Kristen's Mediocre Bo Form (the sound didn't transfer very well when I digitized this stuff, so I added the music that I actually use from the form to the video file in approximately the right place).

And finally, I'm putting up my student Brandon's bo form. I'm really proud of how much he's improved at bo staff in the last year, which is all the time he's been using it. It's amazing how much better he's gotten. I wish I could take credit for it, and I can for some of the improvement to his basics, but he's pretty much done this on his own. He practices like a madman. He's gone from starting karate to the black belt division in a year and a half, and I won't be surprised to see him beating a lot of the experienced black belt competitors at weapons before the year is out. So for contrast, first you get his bo form from last May (his first time competing with bo staff and only about 2 weeks after he actually got his staff), and then his bo form from Saturday. It's like night and day.

If I was ever unsure of my opinion toward fire ants..

2006-04-24T22:35:00.000-07:00

...those days are now over.

we ROCK!

2006-04-23T19:15:00.000-07:00

Here's a clip from the karate demo we did at the mall in LaGrange on Saturday, from the team bo form Brandon and I did:
Team Form Clip
We're so good, we're even synchronized when we mess up.

I'll probably post more videos from the demo tomorrow. This little bit aside, it actually went really well.

I'm such a nerd

2006-04-20T20:46:00.000-07:00

So I’ve been totally stoked this last week because of a call for papers flier I found at PCA asking for articles for the Bulletin of Science, Technology, and Society. Yes, you read that right. “Stoked” and an academic journal in the same sentence.

See, I’ve had this idea about the effects of thermodynamics and chaos theory on modernist and postmodernist literature (respectively). I’ve been looking for something to do with it. I was thinking I’d have to decide between that idea and another one (my idea about masks worn by slasher killers in horror movies - and by extension insanity, a version of a mask - as a manifestation of the technology fear that underlies most horror) for PCA next year. But BSTS wants articles for two special issues concerning the influence of science and technology on literature and popular culture.

My article idea comes from a paper I wrote about the Tom Stoppard play Arcadia. The play is all about chaos theory and how it makes scientific notions like entropy and heat death less scary; it gives this really cool way of looking at history as a complex system, governed by the rules put forth in nonlinear dynamics (a fancier term for chaos theory). But the discussion in my paper is really science-heavy, and I’m pretty sure most lit people would go cross-eyed trying to decipher it. I wanted to add discussion of the movie Pi to it, but was warned that that would render it not very publishable except in popular culture journals (I was not as bothered by this notion as the person giving me the warning, but oh well). I’ve also revised my idea a little bit since the first version of the paper. After re-reading Eliot’s The Waste Land in a modernism course a year or two ago, I realized how influenced TWL seems to be by the discovery/development of the laws of thermodynamics. Arcadia almost seems to be Stoppard’s way of telling Eliot and modernists who shared his anxieties to take a chill pill. Anyway, long story short, I’ve arrived at this idea that looks at modernists and the apparent influence of advancements in thermodynamics (The Waste Land and “The Second Coming” by Yeats in particular) and then at contemporary literature & popular culture (specifically Arcadia, Pi, Jurassic Park, and the tv show Numb3rs) and how chaos theory is portrayed in them (along with how some of the anxiety present in the modernist works is relieved), ultimately pointing out how, regardless of the slight revisions chaos theory can provide to one’s world view, both time periods still seem to agree that chaos/unpredictability is comforting while predictability is scary.

I’ve got the abstract that is supposed to be submitted first written out and I’m in the process of revising it. If it gets accepted, rock on me. If not, this will probably be what I do for PCA next year. But I’m really looking forward to the possibility of getting to write this up and publish it. I think that someone, somewhere, will appreciate it.

Apparently not much on my mind lately...

2006-04-20T19:08:00.000-07:00

... if you're judging on how frequently this gets updated, at least. So I'm going to start posting the entries I make on my LJ over here, too, with the exception of the ones that are aimed at my LJ friends. So readers here are spared from the more person-directed posts there, and my liberal friends there are spared having to decide whether or not to engage in argument when I start talking politics, as those posts will only go here.

So now the more substantial posts from my LJ are dated back to when I actuall wrote them and are here. Enjoy (if possible).

Here's to more time outside my comfort zone

2006-04-17T17:34:00.000-07:00

So the Easter services went really well yesterday. It was our church's first time doing 2 services on Easter instead of one. Our new pastor Rickey cast the vision for having attendance large enough for two services, and that vision was realized. I haven't heard official numbers, but I attended the first service and it looked like 300-400 in the adult service plus probably another two hundred or so kids and volunteers working with kids. Like a lot of other people, I attended the first service and then worked in the kids' service during the second. I heard the 2nd service was better attended than the first, and there was also the youth service and another round of the kids' service -- probably 800 or so people total during that service. We were guessing 1200-1400 total, definitely a best for us (we average 700 to 800 people a week).

I enjoy getting to listen to Rickey preach -- there is no doubt he is doing what he was born to do. And again, when I listen to him speak, it makes me want to teach/speak in churches some day, too. It would be a great accomplishment to be half as good at it as he is.

And now an explanation of what the title of this entry refers to. I've started doing some of the large-group teaching in the 4th and 5th (or more often 2nd through 5th) grade program at church in addition to my typical assignment as the 5th grade boys' small group leader. I've been really enjoying it. So yesterday as I'm reviewing my lesson before the kids' service was ready to start, the lady who runs the kids' program (and mom of one of the aforementioned 5th grade boys) was looking for suggestions for songs to do for music with the kids -- she was going to be leading worship because neither of the two regulars was available or were in different rooms. I suggested "Lord I Lift Your Name on High" as the third song to the two she had already chosen, citing the fact that it was the same song the adult service was ending with, in addition to the fact that it's one almost all the kids know. She was like, "Well, you're going to have to help me lead music, then, cause I don't know the hand motions to that one."

This is a good time to mention that music time is when I am my least comfortable. I'm not one of those extraverted, enthusiastic singers and dancers. My mom says I have a good singing voice, which may or may not be the case. (How many people try out for American Idol cause their parents told them the same thing?) During the adult service at church I will clap in time with the song if other people are clapping in addition to singing along, but I don't do much else. With the kids, I will participate with the hand motions and dance moves that I deem the least embarassing or that require the least amount of coordination or dancing ability, but even standing in the crowd and participating with the kids (at least the ones who haven't decided they're too cool to participate), I'm self-conscious. I'm free with the singing when I'm alone in my car and that's about it -- if you've ever heard me singing, you're one of the few.

But in the spirit of doing what needs to be done, I got my uncoordinated self up on stage for not just the one song but all three, singing and helping lead the hand motions. It didn't kill me, but it's not something I'll be volunteering to lead on my own anytime soon.

Back in the tech booth, Dennis was grinning ear to ear the whole time I was up there. He was quite entertained to see me do it.

Still, I think it's a good thing to be forced outside one's comfort zone every once in awhile. I just hope next time it doesn't involve singing and dancing.

I got some catching up to do

2006-04-14T16:12:00.000-07:00

I'm back from the conference and have some stories to tell that are at times probably boring and at other times hopefully entertaining to some. But for now I just want to say, "Rock on Jeff Francoeur" (whose name I have to type 2-3 times every time before I spell it right). The Braves may have lost last night, but he finally broke out of his slump and hit not one but two home runs in the game against the Phillies.

The Braves are having major pitching problems so far this season, but they've been hitting well (even without Francoeur performing up to par before last night). As long as their starters start getting things under control, should be another great season.

Anyone interested in
1) catching a Braves game sometime this season, or
2) going to "Baseball 101" in July (a baseball clinic for women only that is organized by the wives of some of the players -- costs 75 dollars and includes getting to meet and get autographs from some of the coaches, players, and announcers, 2 tickets to that night's game against the Reds, and the proceeds go to a local women's charity)?

Kristen, you're not a kid any more.

2006-04-09T15:38:00.000-07:00

I probably should have told myself that before my brilliant little stunt attempt during our karate demo team practice yesterday. But sometimes, when you're surrounded by nine- to twelve-year-olds, you start to take on their mentality, particularly the "I'm made out of rubber and steel" mentality.

In my defense, it wasn't actually something all that hard or dangerous. I'm big on symmetry when I'm choreographing our demontrations, and there's one particular part where I needed to find some way for me and one kid to change places in the least awkward way possible. With a different set of kids in the past, I solved this by having one kid kneel down pretty low and another kid run and do a diving roll over the first one. The kid with whom I need to swap places is the smallest kid on the team, and so I was thinking, hey, I can probably do that move. Get him to kneel down and I'll run and dive over him and do a forward roll. I'm not stupid, though. (For most people, my saying that would mean I put it out of my mind as a possibility, but no.) I wasn't about to try this with a live child to potentially be squashed beneath my falling, spastic self. So I took a few kicking shields and stacked them to what would probably be his height if he was ducking down in front of me and gave the move a shot.

The first time, I tried it as a straight up diving somersault. I'm thinking that's what's responsible for the pain today. Cause holy crap did that cause the tingling of the spine (and stinging of the back as I landed). So I was like, "bad choice." Not that that stopped me. I decided to try it as a shoulder roll (which is like a somersault but you turn your upper body to the side slightly so your head doesn't hit the ground and only a little bit of your spine is ever in contact with the floor - I think it is frequently called an aikido roll, as well). The first time was a bust, and no doubt looked hillarious to all the kids watching me try this, but third time was a charm and I nailed the move. And then practiced it about ten more times. I got it on tape, too, and can see that not only do I NOT look like a total spaz, but I'm still giving the "kid" about a foot of space between "him" and me. I'm by no stretch of the imagination a master tumbler or by any definition a gymnast, but I can pull this off and add it to the demo without worrying about killing one of my students.

However, I did learn a good lesson yesterday -- the one referenced in the entry title. If I were still twelve, I doubt that I would have had any soreness today, but unfortunately, 26 years on this earth + a similar number of extra pounds of body weight + diving over a two-foot-tall inanimate object + a few mistakes learning the move = sore 26 year old. If I had yesterday to do over again, I would have still done the same thing (though maybe taking out the two failed runs at the beginning).

Yay for springtime...

2006-04-06T11:24:00.000-07:00

...except for the whole pollen thing. Oh, and the lack of getting to play on the English Department softball team since only three teams signed up and they ended up cancelling the season.

But the good news is, there are Braves games to watch once again.

And in other news, I just found out I'm teaching a course over the summer instead of working in the EC. I love doing both, so I have no problem with it, plus I think it should be a nice change of pace, as I've done the EC thing for the last 2 summers in a row. Working in the EC means 15 hours on campus in the center a week, so I won't be at school quite as much teaching one course (MWF for an hour and fifteen minutes plus office hours), and that's kind of nice. What will be even better is if it's an afternoon class, but I don't know that yet.

And now, the best PICTURE ever...

2006-04-04T18:09:00.000-07:00

Randy sent me this via email; he took it in a Barnes and Noble out where he lives in LA. Quite possibly the best picture ever.

Bestest academic conference EVER!

2006-04-03T15:51:00.000-07:00

I'm going to be going to the Popular Culture Association Conference in Atlanta next week. I'm going to be presenting with my dissertation director, 2 other PhD students from here, and one other person from Georgia State on using film in teaching composition. My presentation is "Aristotelian Appeals in Film: Applications for the Composition Classroom." I've done it already at the ACETA conference in Birmingham a little over a month ago, so I'm pretty good on preparation. However, as the conference nears, I decided to check out what other presentations will be going on so that I can plan which to attend. And holy freaking crap is this the best conference ever. My itinterary as it stands now:

Wed 2:30-4:00 - Film Adaptation I: Heroic Adaptations - "She’s so Sweet, He’s so Noble: Heroines and Heroes from Book to Screen," "Harry Potter and Signs of Omission," "Women of Valor, Women as Victims: Sexual Danger and the Female POW," and "Out of the Kitchen, Into the Battlefield: Looking at Women in Lord of the Rings"

Wed 4:30-6:00 - our presentations (Composition & Rhetoric III: Criticism and Instruction on the Screen: The Rhetoric and Composition of Film)

Thur 10:00-11:30 - Children’s Literature and Culture IV: English Fantasy (mainly Harry Potter) - "Old Wizard, Young Wizard: Mentor Relationships in British Story-Epic," "Harry Potter and the Witch Hunters: Social Context for the Attacks on Harry Potter," "A Child's Guide to Terrorism: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince as Equipment for Living," and "Faerie Wars and Artemis Fowl: Celtic Folklore in Contemporary Children’s and Young Adult Literature"

Thur 12:30-2:00 - Composition & Rhetoric V: Uses of Popular Media in First-Year Composition - "Cartman Goes to College: South Park and Rhetorical Analysis in the First-Year Composition Classroom," "Drawing on Demons: Teaching Writing with the Graphic Memoir," and "Making Muggle Magic: The World of Harry Potter and First-Year Composition"

Thurs 2:30-4:00 - British Popular Culture IV: Harry Potter: Patriarchy, Pottermania, and Making the Grade - "Boys will be Boys: Heroism in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire," "Putting Potter in his Place: The Religious Right Refines its Reaction," and "Making the Grades, Making the Grade: Life at School and After"

Thurs 4:30-6:00 - Horror III: The Living Dead - "Racial Visibility in George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead," "Undead Social Commentary: The Multi-Genre Pop Culture Canon of Zombies," and "A Study in Contrast: Challenging and Reinforcing Gender and Racial Stereotypes in Resident Evil: Apocalypse"

Thurs 8:15-9:45 - Science Fiction & Fantasy XII: Firefly and Serenity - "The Production of Space in Joss Whedon’s Series, Firefly," "'Instead of the cross, the Albatross / About my neck was hung': The Symbol of the Albatross in Joss Whedon's Serenity," "Doe-Eyed Dorks: Joss Whedon's Girl Geeks," and "Firefly and Serenity's Inara Serra, or a 'Good' Woman Speaking Well: Feminist Rhetoric in the ’Verse"

(Care to join me for dinner and the last 2, Will?)

SO EXCITED ABOUT THIS CONFERENCE!!!!!

Some thoughts from the weekend

2006-04-02T21:48:00.000-07:00

--My fifth graders at church are SO smart. I'm constantly surprised how intelligent the conversations we have some weeks during our small group time can become. It's been really great to be their teacher for the last four years and watch them grow up, and I'm enjoying having them now that they can carry on really complex conversations. This morning they asked me if I'm going to move up to sixth grade with them next year or not. I don't know yet if I will; I love them to pieces and would be happy to move up with them, but they're boys and it may be getting near the time when they need to have a guy teacher instead of me. Plus, the guy with the fourth grade boys this year seems to be looking forward to handing his group over to me at the end of the year.

--Jamie & I won second place at a 9-ball scotch doubles pool tournament yesterday. We won some money and we played well. Most of the people there are so nice that it would have been a good day even without the winnage, but winning was nice, too. :) I'm really glad to know all these people that I've met through the pool league -- they are awesome!

--I need to remember that if I end up having to take Excedrine Migraine (aka the Dark Banishing for Headaches), I need to make sure that I also eat and drink plenty between the time I take it and the time I plan to go to bed. I had a headache for the first few hours of the pool tournament yesterday and took E.M. around four in the afternoon or so, and never actually ate anything else for the day besides two granola bars, and didn't drink anything besides half a cup of diet coke and half of a peach Propell. Result (thanks to the caffeine in the E.M): me not being able to fall asleep until five am. Yes, this is the same night/morning in which we lose an hour with the time changing. ANd it was the second night in a row it took me forever to fall asleep (I didn't get to sleep till about three the night before) since it was my fourth day of battling headaches. The good news: no headaches today, and therefore no excedrine migraine to put caffeine in my system. I took a nap this afternoon and I'm going to try to go to sleep sometime before two. Thankfully there is no earliness required of me in the morning.

I think that's all for now. I finished Veronica Mars. It's not Buffy, but it's still an awesome show, and I'm going to be making a point of catching it on tv from now on.

Kristen goes art-crazy

2006-03-31T14:02:00.000-08:00

I went shopping with my dad at Staples on our way to have lunch together on Wednesday, and I found myself on the art supplies aisle. On Facebook a few weeks ago, I started an album of my artwork and have been wanting to add to it, so I grabbed a sketch pad and some drawing pencils and toyed with the idea of buying some watercolor pencils but decided 20 dollars for them was a bit too much. After lunch, I decided to swing by WalMart and see if they had any less expensive watercolor pencils, and indeed they did, so I got those and some watercolor paper, too. And so I spent my free time on Wednesday and Thursday drawing and painting and thoroughly enjoying myself. The results:

pencil drawing: my grandfather
pencil drawing: my sister at age one hugging a puppy
pencil drawing: my grandfather's pasture after some snow
watercolor: some holly after the same snow
watercolor: a rose
watercolor: another flower (a snapdragon?)

I think I'm going to slow down a little with the art craziness and get some schoolwork done or something, but I think I'm going to try to do at least one drawing a painting or week from now on.

In other news, since I've been told by almost everyone I know (particularly the Whedon fans) how wonderful Veronica Mars is, I picked up season one today and am about to go home and watch it (currently at school to make use of the scanner).

Coming soon to a theater near you (or at least it should)

2006-03-16T15:53:00.000-08:00

I just had what is quite possibly the best discussion ever of Oedipus Rex with one of my classes. In our discussion, we were noting how funny it is at some points that certain characters have still managed not to catch on to what is going on, and how playing these scenes out, you would be walking a very fine line between comedy and drama. It came up that since it's such a cool story, someone should make it into an updated film version, set in the present. And since we pointed out how funny it has the potential to be at times, several students insisted that it should be either a dark comedy or have a comedic spin to it. So of course, we had to cast it. My favorites from the suggestions:

Jocasta: Maggie Smith
Creon: Ryan Stiles
Oedipus: Colin Machery
Tiresias: Rowan Atkinson or Drew Carey
Chorus: Wayne Brady

Just imagine the magnificence that would be this film. :)

OK, that makes up for last week

2006-03-15T11:56:00.000-08:00

So I talked about how last week in 9 ball I had moved up to a 4 and then played a 1 who creamed me. I was afraid I'd be moved back down again this week, but I wasn't. So yay for remaining a four! And I also played last night and played like a four should play. Oh, and I won my match, too (and the team as a whole won). I'm feeling good about the fact that I'm a four now. I know I won't win quite as much this way, but it's pushing me to concentrate more and work harder at getting better, so I see it as a really good thing. Five-hood, here I come!

Hooray for good days like yesterday!

2006-03-14T16:15:00.000-08:00

Most of my days lately have been pretty good, but yesterday was especially good. Got to sit in on a class taught by of one of my dissertation committee members to talk about Intelligent Design versus Evolution (which I will talk more about in a minute, for most of this entry, in fact), had the rest of my day at school slightly better than the average Monday, took a splendid little nap when I got home, and hung out with my favoritest person for the evening since we had the night off from eight ball league. When I got home I was pretty sleepy in spite of the nap earlier, and fell asleep during the beginning part of my prayers where I mentally recount the events of my day and name all the things that were good or that I’m thankful for. I went to sleep on the couch with the balcony door wide open, and an hour or so later woke up to a really great storm. Normally I get kind of irritated if I wake up and can’t go back to sleep, but I really like listening to rain storms, so even that was good.

I really want to talk some about sitting in on the Rhetoric of Science class, because that was about the best start to my day I could have asked for. I’ve been looking forward to this all semester. The back story is this: the person teaching the course was on that job search committee with me, and back in January when the first job candidate was visiting, he mentioned at dinner that he was doing a presentation for the Alabama Academy of Sciences in March about the rhetoric of the discussion of Intelligent Design versus Evolution, and that he would be spending a day or two in his Rhetoric of Science class on the topic. This topic has been one of my big reading hobbies the last few years, and I told him so. He said I would be welcome to come to his class on the day(s) it was discussed.

Let me pause here to give you a little background on my interest. First of all, during high school, I was fairly conflicted between going into science versus going into English when I got to college. Some days I wanted to be a writer. Other days I wanted to be a forensic pathologist (back in the days before CSI made it trendy). I went with English because that was where my heart was, but I remain very interested in science.

Secondly, I don’t like to leave myself uninformed on any issue where there is a great deal of polarization if I’m going to claim to have some position on said issue. Specifically I mean religion and politics. If I’m going to say I believe something, I don’t want to get caught being unable to back up my position with really strong facts. If I can’t back my position up, I end up doing more harm to my side of the argument than good. I’m this way with political issues I’m interested in, and I’m also this way with my religious beliefs. Sometimes I wish I wasn’t with the latter issue. I envy the people who have blind faith and have their Christian beliefs without ever feeling the need to doubt and question. But my brain doesn’t work that way. I can’t turn off the questions, the critical thinking, the need to logic things out.

And so I’ve done tons of research on the authenticity and reliability of the Gospels. Cause, honestly, if you can’t trust them, then that makes the whole thing real shaky. Without recounting years’ worth of reading on my part, I’ll say simply that I know enough that my belief in their reliability is pretty much unshakable. Logic and evidence simply does not allow me to doubt that what they say about Jesus is true. This is the most tangible, provable thing about my faith, and when I’m tempted to question anything else, I go back to my certainty about this and everything is fine. I invite anyone who’s reading this who has questions about this kind of stuff to ask. Chances are I probably have asked the same question before and have a well-researched and logical answer. If you know me, you know I really hate being wrong, so if I’m behind an idea, there’s probably good reason.

And this leads me to the topic of Evolution vs ID. I have been reading a LOT about this in the last few years. As I just said, my faith is on a very solid foundation. I don’t need to know this stuff to be satisfied that God created everything, including us. However, I don’t want to say I subscribe to ID as an explanation without being able to explain why it’s superior, and for reasons beyond the fact that I believe in God (not a good enough reason for someone who doesn’t believe). Faith is my entrance point to my position on the origin of life, but science makes a better entrance point for many others. Lots have scientists have come to have faith in God based on what they’ve learned through their studies of astronomy, physics, biology, and the like. So I learn this stuff so I can explain why the theory of evolution (which I would like to rename “random chance” since both evolution and ID accept almost all the same stuff except for the reason life emerged, either through random chance or the actions of an intelligent designer) is not a sufficient explanation for how life began, nor, really, how we came to have so many different types of living things. The more I learn, the more this becomes a second unshakable foundation for me.

And so I was really excited about my guest appearance in Rhetoric of Science yesterday morning. I didn’t know how things were going to go, how lively (or possibly nasty) a debate it would be, if it would be a debate at all, if it was going to be okay for me to contribute (though I was sure hoping). I was going to get to listen to discussion of and possibly discuss myself this topic that I’ve been so interested in the last few years. And I was not disappointed in my experience.

Discussion of Evolution vs ID was only for the first half of the class (an hour and twenty minutes), and, of course, was supposed to focus on the rhetoric of the ongoing debate about this topic. Mostly, we stuck to the fossil record as evidence, which made sense because it’s the easiest for non-science-people to grasp, but also disappointing, since it’s not really until you look at the facts of biochemistry and molecular biology and stuff that you see how flimsy evolution is as an explanation for how life emerged. I did indeed get to contribute to the discussion. It pretty much ended up being me versus the four students in the class. But they were really respectful, including one person who I was totally expecting loud tirades from, and it was really exciting to me to actually get to share some of the stuff I have learned about this topic. Usually if religion, politics, or this topic come up around someone who disagrees with me, either they do the loud tirade thing and I never get to talk, or they make it clear they’re not willing to listen to what I have to say and change the subject. It was very exciting to be allowed the chance to talk, and to have people listening and seriously considering what I had to say.

The gist of what was concluded, rhetorically speaking, is that if you look honestly at what evidence and support both views have, both are relying on probability as support rather than demonstrative evidence. With both relying on probability, argumentatively speaking they are on equal footing. And this leads to the question of why one is seen as so superior to the other, why one gets included in textbooks while people have to fight tooth and nail to even get a mention of the other. I thought it was a really good way to explain it.

I was also glad to be there because I’m pretty sure the teacher of the course subscribes to ID, but it would have been inappropriate of him to take that position in a class where he’s trying to encourage the students to give fair consideration to both and to the quality of the arguments made by both. I think I brought up a lot of the same points and made a lot of the same arguments he wanted to make, but I was in a better position to do it.

This has also made me a little sad that I’ve already done all my coursework and don’t have enough left on the tuition wavier to take any more classes, even if I really want to. I would have LOVED this class. I’m jealous of the people who are getting to take it.

(Note: for the purposes of the class, we defined creationism and intelligent design as two separate views, with creationism representing those who insist that the fossil record is all a lie and that the earth is only 6000 years old, etc. ID, in general, accepts microevolution as a real process, accepts the date of the earth and the fossil record and the other scientific evidence that comes up in the debate, but essentially says that the cause for it all to happen is an intelligent designer rather than random chance.)

I really think the main reason I was so happy about the experience in visiting that class was what I just said above: I actually got a chance to explain my point of view on a topic that’s really important to me, to share at least some of the knowledge I’ve accumulated on that topic, and not have people scream at me or change the subject on me. Yay for civility, and for the authority that comes with knowing terminology like microevolution.

Well, that was anticlimactic

2006-03-08T22:29:00.000-08:00

Six months ago I would have been dreading moving up to a 4 in 9-ball. But I've been really looking forward to it since this session started, cause I know I'm ready to move up now. It makes me sad that I won't win quite as much, but I want to feel like I'm making progress in my pool-playing skills. I've been a 3 since last September, and I want to be at least a 5 by the time I graduate. So last night, I show up for 9-ball and I've made the jump to 4. Yay!

Well, yay, that is, until I play the most amazing freaking 1 I've ever seen. 1 my foot. Translated into non-APA-playerese, a 1 should be a really sucky player who misses ball-in-hand (put the ball wherever you want) shots about half the time. A 1 has to get to 14 balls in order to win. Since I'd moved up to a 4, I had to get to 31. Beating a one should be hard for most anyone but a 2 because you have so little leeway -- if they get a few decent runs, the game is over. But this was freaking rediculous. Half of her 14 points came from banking balls in. When the game was over, I had 13 balls total. That should NOT happen. So I was kind of pissed, partly because her skill level was SO innacurate, but mostly because that really quickly killed my excitement about moving up to a four. I wasn't necessarily expecting to win, but I was hoping for a good, close game. AND I'll probably be a three again next week. :(

The rest of yesterday was great, though. Dr. Adams came to talk at Auburn, which was cool all on its own and made yesterday nearly on par with Christmas as far as my excitement level goes, but the coolest thing was that I got invited to go out to eat with him before the speech with some of the reps from the College Republicans. When the girl who arranged the speech talked to him on the phone earlier this week, she found out I've been talking to him over email for the past few years, so she invited me to come along with them. He was actually the only person at the dinner that I knew beforehand, but I had a terrific time and met some cool new people. I got to tell fun stories about what it's like to be one of the only conservatives in the English department. The speech was great and well-attended, too. No goofy professors showed up and made fools of themselves like they've done at his speeches elsewhere (like the one who stood up and threw a hissy fit and then started singing "I'm not listening, I'm not listening!"). There were professors there, but they behaved. One of them was from English (ok, two, but one is actually a conservative), and I believe I'm now outed as a conservative, assuming he hadn't figured it out by my lack of joining in with the laughter when he shares the make-fun-of-conservatives type stuff he finds on the internet when we're in the same computer lab. He has actually expressed dismay at not appearing on the list of professors on noindoctrination.org. I expected a show from him, but received none. I guess there wasn't a whole lot to get angry about and disagree with. The speech was definitely aimed at an audience of conservatives, but the message of it was about the dangers of speech codes, particularly the tendency for them to be unevenly enforced. It would have been hard to argue with anything he said. Dr. Adams is one of my heroes and I want to be like him someday, but I see myself being quieter and more subversive in my methods.

No longer just a potential experiment :)

2006-03-01T21:32:00.000-08:00

A while back I mentioned how I wanted to do a little experiment to see if conservative postings at such places as on the wall beside the elevator buttons in Haley would be allowed to stay up the same as more liberal event announcements and postings. I didn’t do it back then, partly out of the reason that if I did it that way, it would be being done to be intentionally inflammatory (not that things like the open letter to Laura Bush weren’t). But I’ve finally had something come along that lets me commence with the experiment without it being strictly to prove a point.

My favorite political columnist and one of my heroes, Dr. Mike Adams, is coming to Auburn to speak on Tuesday. I knew as soon as I found this out that at least a little entertainment was to be had through advertising it up in the English Department the way the anti-war protests (and every freaking other liberal event on campus) are advertised on a regular basis. I had no idea what entertainment I was in for, however, until the girl who arranged the speaking engagement emailed me the fliers for the event. She had picked out four really good Adams quotes and had designed four different fliers around them. The quotes:

“People often ask me why and how I experienced such a radical transformation, both politically and theologically… [Because] Republican women are simply more attractive than Democratic women.”

“If you are easily offended by free speech, get the hell out of college.”

“Marxism is an emotional disorder, not a political philosophy. And political correctness is really the only form of hate speech.”

“There are more communists teaching on the average American campus than there are teaching in all of Cuba. And, of course, these communist professors do a lot of stupid things, most of which violate the United States Constitution.”

After conferring with a few friends, we decided the first two were best suited for English Department display. And so I paid to make copies of these with my own money (so if there are ever any complaints, no one can say I used anything of the Department’s besides wall space) and posted them on Monday afternoon in the same places where I find the advertisements for every other event there is: on the walls by the elevator buttons and on the bulletin boards across from the elevators.

And, shockingly, this afternoon, only three of the six remained. I saw this coming and had made plenty of copies of the fliers, and I have now replaced the three fliers which, I’m sure, were simply taken down by accident or magically came untapped or untacked. Interestingly, one of the places where the Adams flier had been removed was occupied instead by an advertisement for something like “Sisters in Action,” some feminist film festival. I made sure to put up the “Republican women” flier back on that wall right next to the Sisters in Action one.

Part of me wanted to include a little note attached to each flier that was a repost that points out how liberal event advertisements and letters telling Laura Bush how evil she and her husband are remain in these places unmolested for weeks at a time but that the last copy of this flier posted there lasted less than two days, but honestly, I think it may be funnier if they just keep quietly reappearing.

I’ll be sure to keep everyone updated on the experiment’s progress. =)

A Kid at the Grownups' Table

2006-01-12T16:15:00.000-08:00

t's been quite a while. The end of my semester was crazy busy with oral exams, Thanksgiving break, and being on the TPC hiring committee. Plus, I've been in a slight funk because of something I found out during Thanksgiving break. Funk maybe isn't the right word, but it's hard to be uber happy. I'll explain it in a private entry later. No worries -- it's not really about me, just something I ended up having to pass on to other people that I'm not happy about them having to find out.

As for the title of this entry, as part one of me catching up some on my life happenings...

As said above, I'm on the hiring committee for the Technical and Professional Communication job search as the graduate student representative. Though quite time consuming, it's been fun at times and a very good experience. I'm learning a lot about how this process works for when I'm looking for a job a couple years from now.

We're hiring for two positions, and there are five people we're bringing to campus this month for campus interviews. They each come in for three days total. The first night we go out to eat for dinner (search committee members, department head, job candidate, and some other TPC faculty members), and on the second day, the marathon day, there are tours, times for meeting with faculty and graduate students, presentations, other meetings, lunch, and a gathering at Dr. T's house at the end of the day for coffee/drinks/etc.

The first candidate arrived Sunday and left Tuesday, and tonight begins the second candidate's stay with dinner at Provinos in about an hour and a half.

I was just noticing when I was hanging out at Dr. T's house on Monday evening with what was essentially my dissertation committee and the job candidate, I realized that even though I'm 26 years old now, I still feel like the kid who ended up sitting at the grownups' table at those things. I probably shouldn't feel like such a kid, but I do. I'm so weird.

veritas and assumptions

2005-09-22T12:43:00.000-07:00

I'm in the process of reading a really great book:

Granted, I'm not reading it as fast as most things I read because I'm getting ready for my doctoral exams. But I try to read a few chapters of this every few days.

It's about a girl from a Christian family in the midwest going to school at Harvard and facing the hostility toward Christian and conservative view points that I can definitely say is typical of large universities and probably a lot of small colleges as well. There's a lot more to the story; it's got a lot of spiritual warfare elements, angels and demons fighting each other and such, but it's the portrayal of classroom experiences that I'm enjoying the most because it's so on-target.

The main character Claire is given some advice by a Christian graduate student in the section I read yesterday. She is getting ready for another session of her philosophy class, where she knows she disagrees with a lot of what is said but can't seem to come up with a way to join into the discussion. The grad student outlines a method for her that makes a lot of sense.

The most important part of his method is to find the assumptions that underly a statement and try to expose them. This is really good advice, and something I do some of the time, but really enjoyed having pointed out specifically as a method for argument. (My typical response technique is to simply ask for evidence, usually a successful one.)

And lo and behold, this morning at school I have an excellent example of assumptions and their function in a lot of the arguments that take place on college campuses today.

Nearly every elevator in the building I work in has fliers posted around it for protests against the war in Iraq, several different ones. But what I noticed today is the wording. None of them refer to it as "the war in Iraq," but instead "the war on Iraq" (emphasis mine in both cases).

Now, that one little word really goes far in demonstrating the difference between their assumptions about the war in Iraq and my own. Their assumption is that the war is against Iraq itself. If this is your assumption, of course the war seems wrong and unjust, and of course it makes sense to take part in some movement against it.

I realize that a lot of people, including many for whom I have the utmost respect, do indeed look at the war in Iraq in this way, based on this assumption, but as familiar as I am with the reasoning behind the decision to go to war in the first place, I have to respectfully disagree. I look at the war as a war against or on the terrorists that happens to be taking place in Iraq because Sadam Hussein, in his blatant disregard for complying with UN sanctions, gave us a good excuse for taking the war there. Some assume that there is a blatant disregard for the life and health of Iraqi civilians over there, but I instead feel as though the efforts on the part of our military to avoid civilian casualties are part of the reason that this war is lasting as long as it is.

Similarly, people who blame spending on the war in Iraq for the government's supposedly poor response to the Katrina disaster, and/or the failure of the levees, are basing these arguments on the assumption that the war in Iraq is useless/pointless/wrong.

Don't really want to get on my soapbox about the war or the Katrina blame game. Just felt like reflecting on this little tidbit from a book I'm reading and how it's quite relevant and useful.

additional link

2005-09-06T12:37:00.000-07:00

For those who think that it was the president who dropped the ball on the New Orleans situation, check out the evacuation plan on the City of New Orleans website, which details a whole lot of things that the mayor failed to do. I'm not saying this is all the mayor's fault, either, but it sure ain't the president's, as he has tried to suggest.

politicizing an act of nature

2005-09-05T19:02:00.000-07:00

I'm getting really tired of listening to all this crap about how the aftermath of the hurricane, or even the hurricane itself, is George Bush's fault. A few of my favorites:

1.) There are more hurricanes and they are getting worse, because of global warming. And naturally, global warming is Bush's fault, so therefore the hurricane is his fault, too.

Well, senators and most newspaper writers would make really crappy scientists. A little perspective:

Powerline Blog: Hurricanes in Perspective

Recent Onslaught of Storms "Natural" by New York Times writer Kenneth Chang

and to check the facts your self, the National Hurricane Center website

2.) Bush took away the funding for levee repairs to fund the war in Iraq, so it's his fault that New Orleans flooded.

How bout some of the folks spouting this head over to FactCheck.org and seeing what they have to say about it. This is an independent group that both democrats and republicans love to send people to in order to vindicate themselves and their actions, and on this one, they seem to be as fair as they usually are. The short version is that Bush could have given more money than he did, but there's no evidence that more improvements would have made a bit of difference.

3.) It's Bush's fault that it was so bad in New Orleans because he didn't make the federal government respond fast enough.

Well, here's another perspective on that.

4.) (My new favorite)If we were a communist country, like that paradise called Cuba, instead of a free market, capitalist society, the government would have done a better job with the evacuation and no one would have died.

This is based on a story that in the past, Castro managed to conduct a hurricane evacuation in 2004 which supposedly prevented any deaths. And apparently he was successful because communist societies, in which no one has much to speak of and have to depend on the government for everything, are superior to captitalist societies in which some people work hard and are successful, others don't work hard and don't have much, and an unfortunate few have circumstances that cause them to be poor at no fault of their own. Well, considering that people are literally flocking from Castro's country, that safe haven from hurricanes, to ours, in which our government apparently delights in leaving poor people to drown, apparently Cuba isn't all that fantastic.

I think I've given this topic more time than it's worth at this point, so I'll shut up now.

a good quote

2005-08-30T04:59:00.000-07:00

"It is one thing to believe the war was a mistake; it is quite another to regard it as a function of the administration's desire to enrich Halliburton or expand the 'American empire,' or because Jewish neo-conservatives pushed docile Gentiles -- Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld -- into waging it 'for Israel.' Such views are held by people who are so angry and so brainwashed about conservatives that they have lost the elementary ability to identify real evil, which is what Islamic and Baathist terrorists and 'insurgents' are."

--Dennis Prager - "Just one question for opponents of the war"

Very much echoes what I was saying below.

Bumper Sticker Tales, Part Two

2005-08-21T17:58:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine is very proud of the bumper sticker he found the other day and intends to order. It says something like, “So you support the war in Iraq? Suit up and ship out, soldier.”

I love this argument. If you’re not going to actually fight the war yourself, this line of reasoning says, then you shouldn’t be allowed to support it.

Well how about this line of reasoning? You don’t pay taxes, you don’t get to vote to put the people in office who decide what we do with the tax money. What a world that would be, where the politicians have to pander to the taxpayers rather than the people who they like to promise the tax money to.

Like that will ever happen.

But seriously, along the same lines, if you say you support government-provided health care, then how about you be the first person to start paying for everyone else’s doctor visits and medications, and start letting a third party pick the cheapest, though most likely not the best, doctor for you to visit when you are sick. I got a big kick out of Kerry talking about how no one would be forced to go to the government provider. That’s right. But only the very wealthy would be able to pay their share of the national plan in addition to paying for their own coverage, and why should they have to pay twice?

I don’t have health insurance right now (though it looks like I may be able to finally swing it this semester), but I sure as heck don’t want the government providing it for me. Cause I’ll be paying for it just the same, but getting much lower quality care, as will we all. Just look at all the countries that do have national health care. If you find an honest study, you will see that this is a BAD IDEA. I would rather play the roulette game of hoping nothing bad happens until I can afford to pay it myself than see the government switch to providing it for everyone. They say free, but it’s not free. Someone has to pay for it.

But back to the topic. In this country, you’re allowed to support ideas and causes without being directly involved. Right around the time I was steaming about this topic, Ben Shapiro wrote about it this week. He puts it pretty well, so rather than my reiterating most of his points, you should just go read his article.

I just want to add that the people who are actually over there fighting this war pretty overwhelmingly expressed their support for the president in the election last November. They put back in office the person who sent them there to fight the supposedly pointless and evil war, so if they don’t have a problem with what they are doing, why shouldn’t I and likeminded others express my support for what they are doing?

I’d be a crappy soldier, but I hope that I help somewhat by trying to save a few freshman souls from brainwashing by their liberal professors. My favorite technique to teach them: just ask for some evidence. Works every time.

Bumper Sticker Tales, Part One

2005-08-21T17:27:00.001-07:00

I saw a bumper sticker on a car at LC last Spring semester that nearly got me to the point of writing a note and leaving it on the car’s windshield. The gist of what the sticker said was, “Jesus said love your neighbor. Pretty sure he meant not to kill them.” That’s a good point. But neither I nor any other Christians I know go around killing people. I know it was an argument against war, probably specifically the war in Iraq, but I think it’s a bad argument, just like it is every other time liberals try to twist Christianity to defend their views.

The thing is that Christianity is not just Old Testament God and it’s not just New Testament Christ. It’s both. And it is really not easy sometimes, as a Christian, to decide where you draw the line between upholding moral standards versus showing acceptance and love to everyone. Using the view that you are supposed to love and accept everyone, help everyone in need, turn the other cheek, etc., is fantastic on an individual basis. If you are a Christian, it is what you are called to do.

However, if you are in charge of a country, or really any sized group of people, you are going to be an irresponsible leader if you do some of these things. And that includes turning the other cheek. Any president who just rolls over and lets other countries do whatever they want to our cities and our citizens should not be president at all. This country wouldn’t be around long at all if that is what we had in our leader.

Bush is a Christian man, and I believe he is also genuinely a good man. I don’t believe that he took any decision regarding our military’s presence in the Middle East lightly. I don’t believe it was an easy decision for him to send our troops over there, knowing not only that some of them would be injured or killed, but also that they would be forced to injure and kill.

Anyone who believes that Bush was glad to be sending our troops over there is either a moron, blinded by ideology, or both. There are few people on this planet evil enough to enjoy making that decision, and I am positive that Bush is not one of them.

I think this same dichotomy applies to other aspects of running the government. For instance, it would be the Christlike thing to do to supply every person in the country who is in need with food, money, and more, but once again, a leader doing this would be exceedingly irresponsible. All details and logistics of a decision like that aside, the country would make itself broke doing this, and this would be unfair to ALL its citizens.

We’re still called as Christians to love everyone regardless of their sins, but a country can’t just decide not to punish criminals, or excuse criminal acts because the person committing the crime thought they had a good reason. You do this, and every person who feels justified in committing a crime (and I imagine this is the case a majority of the time) will do so because they know they can get away with it. Again, unfair to the victims of the crimes and the citizenry at large.

So that is a short summary of why I think you can be both a Christian and a Republican, be a Christian and support the war in Iraq. I try to live my life making more Christlike choices –choices more associated with liberalism -- in how I treat others, but believe that the role of government is to be more like the Old Testament God.

Stay tuned for Bumper Sticker Tales, Part Two.

I want to be like Dr. Adams when I grow up.

2005-08-09T11:46:00.000-07:00

"Sexual her-assment at Appalachian State" by Mike S. Adams.

The Fair Tax Book

2005-08-06T20:48:00.000-07:00

Neal Boortz and John Linder’s book The FairTax Book came out this week and has been selling great, which is just awesome. If you are a taxpayer (and I don’t just mean the people who end up having to pay every April 15, but even those who get excited about the money that the government seems to give them at that time of the year, which was theirs in the first place), you should read this book.

I already knew how the Fair Tax (H.R. 25, originally introduced in 1999 by Linder) works before reading this book, but now I have a much more entailed understanding of it. If you are unfamiliar with it, the idea is that the income tax would be replaced with a national sales tax (expected rate: 23%). That probably sounds scary, but about 22% of what you pay for anything now is the imbedded cost of our current tax system. It would probably only take a month or so for prices to end up about what they were before, but with the advantage of you keeping your entire paycheck instead of 50-80% of it.

This system also untaxes the poor, who are paying the 22% imbedded tax cost in whatever they buy now, even if they have no other tax responsibilities, while most still pay FICA and Social Security, too. The way this happens is that every household gets a prebate at the beginning of each month to cover the cost of taxes on spending up to poverty level for their household size for that month.

There are so many benefits to this system, ones that stand to improve the American economy by leaps and bounds, covered in great detail in this book that you absolutely MUST read. Even if you already know about the Fair Tax, there is still plenty this book has to offer. For instance, it provides a history of the income tax. I didn’t know that an income tax was originally prohibited by the Bill of Rights. Once the income tax got started, it got worse and worse. Seems to me that the lawmakers didn’t think they could get elected on their beliefs and priorities and abilities alone, so they needed money to throw around to buy votes, and since the government does not generate its own money but just takes it from us, they had to find a way to get more and more of it.

I don’t think anyone with a decently functioning brain who reads this book with an open mind will have any doubt that this is a better system than what we have by far. All the typical complaints you hear about this system (usually made through either misinformation or intentional lies) are addressed in detail in this book.

In this country we have people who like to take any new idea and tear it to shreds, pointing out all the bad things about it, talking about how terrible it is. No Child Left Behind is an example – all I ever seem to hear about is NCLB is complaints about how holding underprivileged schools accountable is unfair, that actually carrying out the warned reduction of funding when they fail to meet standards is mean, that it stifles fun and creativity in schools, that it isn’t working in certain places, etc. NCLB is not perfect, but at least they’re trying to do something to fix the problem with our country’s education system. Unless you have a better suggestion, shut up with the griping. It’s like that commercial where there’s a piece of litter on the sidewalk and all these people stop and stare at it and complain about how terrible it is that someone would litter, talk about how someone should do something, etc, all while accomplishing nothing.

Fair Tax is like that to me. Maybe someday we could come up with something that’s an even better system, but the Fair Tax is far better than our current system, is the most fair to the most people, and most benefits the country. So people need to stop bellyaching and speculating about what things could go wrong, and especially need to stop twisting elements of HR 25 around to scare voters into thinking it’s bad. And some goofy Democrats need to stop lamenting the fact that this wasn’t their party’s baby and just do what’s best for the country.

Thomas Sowell is awesome

2005-08-02T07:15:00.000-07:00

From his most recent "Random Thoughts" column (which I always look forward to):

"It is hard to see how people who are opposed to faith-based organizations can support the dogmas of the schools of education or the multiculturalists."

"The government forces those who sell pharmaceutical drugs to list the possible side effects, even if only a few people will suffer those side effects. Unfortunately, the government itself never tells us about the bad side effects of the things it prescribes."

"Some ideas seem so plausible that they can fail nine times in a row and still be believed the tenth time. Other ideas seem so implausible that they can succeed nine times in a row and still not be believed the tenth time. Government controls in the economy are among the first kinds of ideas and the operation of a free market is among the second kinds of ideas."

Read his whole article at townhall.com.

Maxine Hairston

2005-07-19T08:48:00.000-07:00

I'm in the thick of my readings for my upcoming doctoral exams right now. One of the things I've read that I've enjoyed most was Against the Grain: A Volume in Honor of Maxine Hairson. This lady was cool as heck. When more and more teachers began to use what is often referred to as "critical pedagogy" (aka the English Composition classroom as site for political change), she spoke out against it, pointing out that so many aspects of that approach work against creating an atmosphere where students can feel comfortable enough to really learn to write. A few great quotes from "Diversity, Ideology, and Teaching Writing" (CCC 1992):

"As writing teachers we should stay within our area of professional expertise: helping students to learn to write in order to learn, to explore, to communicate, to gain control over their lives... We have no business getting into areas where we may have passion and conviction but no scholarly base from which to operate."

"I vigorously object to the contention that they have a right -- even a duty -- to use their classrooms as platforms for their own political views. Such claims violate all academic traditions about the university being a forum for the free exchange of ideas, a place where students can examine different points of view in an atmosphere of honest and open discussion, and, in the process, learn to think critically."

But what kills me is this: this same woman who recognizes that teachers tend to blindly believe that they are correct and therefore justified in convincing a captive audience of 18-year-olds to either agree or keep their mouths shut, she is the same woman who, in her addresses to the CCCC conferences recorded in this book, conveys an understanding that everyone in the room agrees with leftist ideology. Because, naturally, no academic could make it as far as they have and still incorrectly subscribe to the ideology of the right. It isn't that Hairston doesn't think leftist views are correct, it's just that she recognizes that it's not the place of composition teachers to force it on their students. She's halfway to really seing the issue, which, to her credit, is much closer than a lot of people get, but still not close enough.

You know, it's really easy to convince yourself that you're right about an issue when the only people you have around to argue with you about it are eighteen-year-olds who are uninformed/underinformed/don't care about the issue at all.

taxes

2005-04-22T08:32:00.000-07:00

Yeah, so I had to pay out $650 more dollars at tax time this year. Got punished for the having three jobs thing.

I think that everyone should actually have to get their income first and then write a check to the government once every three months. Having to actually part with your money rather than just never see it makes you a little bit pissed off about what some of your money goes for. I don't think we'd be voting people into office that want to spend money on every little thing that comes along.

Personally, I would like to see us go to the Fair Tax/National Sales Tax plan because this would be the most fair to everyone.

The Trouble with Primaries

2004-11-04T11:28:00.000-08:00

So I turned out to be basically correct in my guesses about the Electoral College counts. Everything was right except for the two I gave to Bush but acknowledged at the bottom might be the two to swing for Kerry.

And I've been behaving myself and resisting the urge to gloat.

Some people were surprised, others were not. But through the course of various discussions yesterday, I realized something about the primary system and how it is essentially what failed the Democratic party this time around. I'm also it may fail the Republican party in 2008 if people are not careful.

The problem is this: in the primary, the main people voting are the ones who solidly identify with a particular party. Moderates and undecideds, I believe, tend to stay out of it. And this results in people being nominated who are more extreme in their beliefs and less electable when up for election by the country at large. This is what hurt John Kerry. A more moderate democrat running against Bush would have appealed to undecided voters more easily. Kerry tried to present himself as a moderate once he was out of the primary and into the race, but he had had to present himself as more liberal in order to gain the nomination in the primaries, so he was on record doing both and people who were on the fence didn't trust him enough to go with him. Joe Lieberman was demolished in the primaries, but would have been more electable as a presidential candidate, I think. Heck, I may have voted for him.

This is exactly what got John McCain in 2000. He would have defeated Gore in a landslide, probably, if he had been the Republican nominee instead of Bush. But primary voters didn't think he was conservative enough and chose Bush, but Bush in turn probably lost a lot of votes in 2000 from moderates because he was too conservative.

I'm afraid that this same thing may be what does in Republican chances for keeping the presidency in 2008. I think it's pretty much accepted at this point that Hillary Clinton will be the Democratic nominee. Rudy Giuliani should be the Republican nominee, and I certainly hope he will be, but I question his ability to make it out of the primary. The people voting in the primaries that year will likely be the more conservative voters, and conservative voters tend to have a real problem with Giuliani being too moderate, especially on the issue of abortion. This is my major qualm with him, too, though it wouldn't stop me from voting for him. He's probably the only chance the Republicans have of beating Hillary Clinton in 2008, and I truly believe that if he is the one running against her that he will stomp her, but if when primary time rolls around people are voting for who is the most conservative rather than who is the most conservative candidate with a chance to beat Clinton, then he will not make it into the general election. So some real efforts will have to be made by Republicans to urge primary voters to choose the candidate with the best chance to win.

I'm still looking forward to a Giuliani-McCain ticket in 2008. I just hope they can both make it that far.

Election Day 2004

2004-11-02T13:05:00.000-08:00

Well, I voted this morning. For Bush, of course. Also for Johnny Isackson for US Senate and Lynn Westmorland for Congress. I also voted against the Traditional Marriage amendment, though I strongly suspect that it won't make much difference.

And now for my Electoral College predictions:

Bush
Alabama
Alaska
Arizona
Arkansas
Colorado
Florida
Georgia
Hawaii
Idaho
Indiana
Iowa
Kansas
Kentucky
Louisiana
Mississippi
Missouri
Montana
Nebraska
Nevada
New Mexico
North Carolina
North Dakota
Ohio
Oklahoma
South Carolina
South Dakota
Tennessee
Texas
Utah
Virginia
West Virginia
Wisconsin
Wyoming

EV Total: 300

Kerry

California
Connecticut
Delaware
Illinois
Maine
Maryland
Massachusetts
Michigan
Minnesota
New Hampshire
New Jersey
New York
Oregon
Pennsylvania
Rhode Island
Vermont
Washington

EV Total: 238

Ones I'm not as sure about: Hawaii, Wisconsin may go Kerry; Slight possibility of Minnesota, New Hampshire, and to a lesser degree Pennsylvania and/or New Jersey going for Bush.

We'll see how close I was tomorrow (if we even know tomorrow).

Aren't we teaching English?

2004-10-28T11:25:00.000-07:00

Sort of a rehash for those who read my LiveJournal, but with a new link: Politics 101. Fox News picked up this story and ran this on Fox Report with Shepard Smith on Thursday, October 21st. There's the video version of the story there, as well.

And below is the letter I emailed to this fun fellow. He never emailed me back, but he did change the comments on his class website to reflect some of the things I challenged him on, though I really don't think he gets the copyright laws, or academic freedom.

The letter (sent Friday, October 15th):

Dr. Snider,
In your instructions to your students for your argument paper assignment, you instruct them under the category of "Requirements of Propositions" to "define broad or connotative words such as 'academic freedom.'" Additionally, in the heading you recently added to this page of your website, you claim to "believe in and practice academic freedom." However, after reading this entire page of guidelines for this essay assignment, I would be interested in hearing your own definition of this word.

I am a graduate student in English, working on my PhD in Rhetoric and Composition, and this is my fourth year teaching composition. In this short time, my interactions with other GTA's, instructors, and professors, along with my studies and personal experience, have led me to believe that composition instructors should seek topics besides politics for classroom discussion and essay topics. To hear my colleagues express their opinions that it is their job to help the poor incoming freshmen to shed their backwards, ignorant political and religious views illustrates how the purpose of the composition program seems to be lost on most of the people teaching it. Our expertise is in writing, not in politics, and we should be teaching that which falls in the area of our expertise. There is a fantastic article by Maxine Hairston called "Diversity, Ideology, and Teaching Writing" [CCC 43 (1992): 179-95] which outlines in a clear and logical way the dangers of moving away from rhetoric and composition and into political and social issues. Based on the article and on my own experience, I believe that at least one of the following five things is likely to happen when this line is crossed:

1. Students will lack interest in class discussion and writing. First, most freshmen don't have a strong interest in politics. I like to survey my students at the beginning of the semester to see how many are interested in political or social issues, and usually only three or four out of twenty-five raise their hands. Students who don't have an interest in what they are writing about are not giving it their best effort, and that sort of attitude is not conducive to improving writing. We may think that politics is something they should be interested in because it is so important, and eventually they will realize how important it is for them to take an interest in it, but it is not our job to make them care about it. Additionally, when students are not interested, they are also lazy, so they are more likely to take someone's word for what is true rather than finding out the facts for themselves. A lot of people are irritated that most freshmen just seem to believe what their parents tell them to believe, but is that any worse than them believing what their professor tell them to believe, especially about something that is outside that professor's area of expertise? If we really value their coming to intellectually honest conclusions about these issues, we should wait until they have a genuine interest in them.

2. Students spend more time struggling with subject matter than improving their writing. When students are asked to write about issues as complex as some of these political and social issues, especially while having to tiptoe around additional limits placed upon them by their teacher about which approaches are acceptable and which are not, they are going to spend more time struggling with content than working on and learning about other aspects of writing (which we have a responsibility to teach them), such as organization, transitions, grammar, syntax, diction, and citation. I don't believe that questions should be easy, nor should we ignore content issues such as logic and counterargument, but a difficult question on a topic the student is comfortable with and interested in would seem to provide the best balance of challenging the student but at the same time allowing them to concentrate on other aspects of their writing.

3. Intellectual intimidation in class discussion. When politics becomes the primary topic of class discussion, it creates a situation ripe for intellectual intimidation. If a certain topic is being brought up by the professor, it is most likely something the teacher has an interest in. In this case, the teacher not only knows ahead of time what will be discussed, but in most cases knows much more about the topic than the students, either through their preparation for that class session or just their general knowledge about the topic. Even students who disagree are unlikely to be able to effectively defend their point of view against someone who has had much more time to gather information on the topic, despite the fact that the student's point of view may be equally if not more valid than that of the teacher. The student's failed attempts to defeat the teacher in a debate on the topic make it appear as though the teacher is right, whether or not he actually is. This allows for the teacher's point of view to appear to be more correct than that of the less-prepared, less-educated students.

4. Students take positions they think their teacher wants to hear instead of the ones they genuinely agree with. Intellectual intimidation also comes into play when the students perceive the teacher's point of view on a particular issue and simply tell the teacher what they think he wants to hear instead of coming to their own conclusions. "Telling the teacher what he wants to hear" would be acceptable in a classroom in which a teacher is teaching within his area of expertise and asking for facts, but when dealing with areas in which a teacher has no real authority and on topics on which there is no simple, widely-accepted answer, grades should never be based on whether the teacher thinks the student's position is right or wrong. In a setting in which the students are given the impression that there is a certain answer the teacher is looking for, whether or not disagreeing with the teacher would actually harm the student's grade, the students are not going to feel as though they can express opinions contrary to those of the teacher. This is not an environment of academic freedom.

5. Teacher grades papers expressing positions with which he disagrees in a biased manner. It is our tendency as humans to be more critical of those with whom we do not agree. When presented with papers expressing points of view with which we take issue, we are likely to do one of two things: a) grade more leniently than usual to avoid the student making claims that we are being harder on them because we disagree, or b) grade more harshly than usual because we do not agree with what is being said. Neither of these is serving the student well, so it is better to avoid having students write about topics in which we are so emotionally involved that we have a difficult time being objective.

I am not in your class and will not assume that the complaint made about you on studentsforacademicfreedom.org is completely accurate. My basis for suggesting that you engage in intellectual intimidation, a force in opposition to academic freedom as most of us would define the term, comes completely from the topic descriptions on your website. At least fourteen of the topics you suggest (numbers 3, 8, 34, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 52, 53, and 56) are worded in such a way as to suggest that you see one clear right answer, stifling the freedom of the students to express their true opinions should they not agree with yours. For instance, were I in your class, I would be interested in writing about topic number 40: "Should Justice Sandra Day O'Connor have been impeached for her partisan, political actions in the Bush v. Gore case of December 2000 (she is reported to have expressed a desire to retire but would do so only if a Republican were president; see Newsweek, 25 Dec. 2000-1 Jan. 2001: 46-47)? What about Justice Scalia, whose son worked for the law firm of the lawyer who argued for Bush before the Supreme Court, or Justice Thomas, whose wife was part of an organization selecting people to work in a potential Bush administration?"However, would you be able to grade my paper in an unbiased way if I were to assert that questions about the backgrounds and intentions of Justices O'Connor, Scalia, and Thomas are moot due to the fact that Gore never won any of the recounts, including one conducted by various press organizations that used the standards proposed by Gore himself in determining how to read the ballots? If I were an eighteen-year-old freshman, I would not feel, based on the wording of this question and others, that I could express an opinion like this one, and would probably either choose a different topic or tell you what I wanted you to hear. Is that the type of educational environment you are striving to achieve?

I wanted to quickly address the comments you added to this page of your class website in regards to the column by Dr. Adams. As English scholars, we quote others and respond to their ideas on a regular basis, often publishing articles in which we do this. In my experience, we rarely, if ever, get direct permission from the authors to use their words and ideas; we simply cite the source and give credit to the author. When our words are published in print or on the Internet, they become fair game for others to use legally under Fair Use laws. You can find out more about Fair Use at this website: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use. Take special note of the following from the first bulleted point: "This use is permitted so that copyright holders cannot use their copyright to stifle negative criticism." I fail to see how Dr. Adams quoting you in his column, published on his personal website and on the website townhall.com, is illegal in any way, unless what we do as English scholars when we quote and respond to literary criticism by other authors is illegal as well. I noticed that you included on your page at least seven quotes from outside sources. Did you get permission from the authors who wrote them? And do you expect your students to contact the authors of the sources that they use and get permission to use them, too?

There is more I could say, but I will stop here. I hope you have read all of this, and I urge you to evaluate the environment you have created for your students. Please consider carefully what you believe constitutes academic freedom and do everything in your power to create a classroom for your students in which they feel they have the freedom to express their true opinions as long as they can back them up logically. Remember that we are composition teachers, and that our primary responsibility to the students is to make them better writers. They (or their parents) are paying our paychecks, so it would be good for us to remember that we work for the students.Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,
Kristen Miller

Howdy

2004-10-26T11:37:00.000-07:00

I created this blog to be an outlet for my political rants, sparing my friends on Livejournal from having to read them if they don't want to.

I'm going to be setting up a personal webpage at the beginning of the month to be host to my more in-depth rants. I figure the school probably wouldn't appreciate me using my university webspace for political stuff.