Dave Update #1423

First a few words from Andrew at this exact moment in time:

"Is this a camel Daddy?" "I fix it"
Mom [walking in with Isaac]: "Flying naked baby! ... Wow! Did you draw something on here Dave?"
"Yeah, I drew a camel."
"Wow, he's coloring it in exactly."

Nice. My boy's got skills. Earlier this week he actually drew a recognizable face inside the circle I had drawn for him. Two eyes, a mouth, two ears, and a neck. He can count to fifteen (on a good day), say the ABCs, and, of course, translate the majority of Cicero into the most beautiful of French.

What does that have to do with the fact that we are about to go and find out if we are going to be able to buy a house? I'm glad you asked. Absolutely nothing. But yes, we are just about to leave to witness a little town lottery for a low income housing option that is selling six units in a new Hamilton townhouse development for under a third of the regular price. I'll let you know.

And yes, the rumors are true; I'm leaving here a semester early (with just one M.A., not two) so that I can start web-programming full time. Who'da thunk? But there it is. Maybe Logemann's close behind! Some day we'll start our own little online education mecca. Coye, you in? No? Shoot. Well, you can at least have a regular Fishesque column.

I just noticed that little "add video" icon up there. Man, am I behind the times or what? These days, I have to rely on Andy to keep me up to date on all the technological news. I mean, I'm a web developer now, not a tech-nerd like the rest of you.

Well, that's about all I have time for. Nice chatting. For those of you hiding in the bushes [I can see you on Google analytics!] come out and tell us what's happening; otherwise we'll keep forgetting about each other. And it is good to remember each other. And, it would be good to talk from time to time : )

Obama and the Fam

OK, this is either a commentary on the unhinged nature of our political system, the unbelievable strength of coincidence, or, my favorite option, proof that the Masons really do have a nefarious plot to rule the world. It is, in a word, bizzare.

From the Chicago Sun Times: "Barack Obama is related to both President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney." Yeah, that's right. Related. The brief article continues: "Obama and Bush are 11th cousins" because "they share the same great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandparents -- Samuel Hinckley and Sarah Soole Hinckley of 17th century Massachusetts."

And the Cheney connection? "Obama is related to Cheney through Mareen Duvall, a 17th century immigrant from France. Mareen and Susannah Duvall were Obama's great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandparents and Cheney's great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandparents. That makes Obama and Cheney ninth cousins once removed."

Oh Let Not Time Deceive You

Hey everyone

I'm currently spending the month in the great state of Louisiana,
flying and doing other things while support an infantry combat brigade
as they go through combat validation at Jrtc. I gave in to Jobs and
purchased an apple iPhone, something that I will admit was definitely
worth it! I'm still enjoying army life. I still live in TN. On Nov 6
I will be having my jaw surgery and will have a somewhat different
looking face. I will be spending that month at home. My mom will be
flying up to make sure I'm ok for the first week or so. I can't wait
to get these braces off though.

Towards Perpetual Peace

I am in the early stages of designing and proposing my own Rhetoric course here at UT. The standard convention is teaching a course named "The Rhetoric of..." fill in your topic here. It will come as no surprise to you that I am thinking of teaching the rhetoric of political violence. My interest will be pushing the concepts of peace, war, oppression, security, violence, retribution, resistance, revolution, protest and the like. (I am also thinking about the practices of war and peace, national security and civil rights, captial punishment and torture, peaceful protest and revolution.)

I have ulterior motives in telling you this. I want to exploit you as resources. I am wondering what kinds of texts-- poems, novels, songs, films, essays, etc-- you might recommend for giving undergraduates a conceptual vocabulary to think and write about violence in the political sphere-- particularly violence that is framed as necessary and/or instrumental. A text that justifies violence could be as useful as one that presents my own personal pacifist views (although I will, of course, appreciate that kind of suggestion). Particularly, does anyone know of fitting texts by MLK or Ghandi?

[My second choice might be a rhetoric of profit, so if you have any great ideas in that direction...]

Bonhoeffer's Ethical Imperative

Thought for the day:

"If we want to understand God's goodness in God's gifts, then we must think of them as a responsibility we bear for our brothers and sisters. Let none say: God has blessed us with money and possessions, and then live as if they and their God were alone in the world. For the time will come when they realize that they have been worshipping the idols of their good fortune and selfishness. Possessions are not God's blessing and goodness, but the opportunities of service which God entrusts to us." (From A Testament to Freedom, p 197.)

“The perfect search engine would be like the mind of God.”

This blog (with the probable exception of Coye—in fact, that’s mostly the reason why we keep you around, Coye, to smash up the normativity of our assumptions. Or something.) is populated by fans of the range of apps Google has developed and made freely available. I myself use Google’s Gmail, Calendar, Reader, Notebook, Docs and Spreadsheets, oh, and that little-known search engine they cobbled together. Siva Vaidhyanathan is not one of these, and he’s working on a book called The Googlization of Everything: How One Company is Disrupting Culture, Commerce and Community—And Why We Should Worry. An interesting sample:

“The damage Google has done to the world is largely invisible. Google got big by keeping ads small. It carefully avoided pinching our marketing-saturated nervous systems and offered illusions of objectivity, precision, comprehensiveness, and democracy. After all, we are led to believe, Google search results are determined by peer-review, by us, not by an editorial team of geeks. So far, this method has worked wonderfully. Google is the hero of word-of-mouth marketing lore. Google guides me through the open Web, the space that Microsoft does not yet control. Yet Google must get bigger to satisfy its new stockholders. It must go new places and send its spiders crawling through un-indexed corners of human knowledge. Google’s mission statement includes the rather optimistic and humanistic phrase, “to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.” But Google co-founder Sergey Brin once offered a more ominous description of what Google might become: “The perfect search engine would be like the mind of God.””

[h/t Alan Jacobs]

The Hastert Center

Coye has got us started in this spirit of channeling Dusty in his absence (where are you Dusty, when so many interesting things are happening at our alma mater?), and in just a casual search for something I might contribute to this spate of Wheatoblogging, I discovered a very interesting fact. Do you happen to know the fate of our beloved MSC? The former home of CPO, the Stupe, and various coffee house performances featuring our own Dave Jones as frontman for the AKP is slated to become The J. Dennis Hastert Center for Economics, Government, and Public Policy.

According to the press release, "In recognition of the large number of Wheaton graduates in public service both in Washington, D.C. and at the state level, The J. Dennis Hastert Center for Economics, Government, and Public Policy at Wheaton College will advance the study of market economies and representative democracies, both within the campus community and in the general public. The Hastert Center will affirm the values, institutions, and policy interests that characterize the Honorable J. Dennis Hastert’s career in public life. Specifically, the activities of the Hastert Center and the holder of the Kvamme Chair will uphold the principles and qualities evident in Speaker Hastert’s career as teacher, coach, state legislator, and Member of Congress."

Saga

I know it might seem like a bit much, but this girl I see sometimes heard this on the radio and pointed it out to me tonight, and I couldn't resist adding another item under our shiny new tag:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=14748873

It is, after all, in the byline of our blog's title. Remember student appreciation dinners?

V. Raymond Edman

Here's a news story a friend of mine in the Episcopal seminary here in Austin pointed out to me.

Dusty hasn't given us any Wheaton news of late, so I thoght I'd go ahead and post it.

http://www.suburbanchicagonews.com/couriernews/news/571549,3_1_EL24_A4ANGLICANS_S1.article

Alzheimer’s: Type 3 Diabetes?

I am an avid (even voracious) consumer of news and cultural commentary, much of which is daily delivered to my Google Reader. The upside of this is that I usually know a little bit about a lot of things. Emphasis on a little and a lot, in the right proportions (reverse those positions and you have a dissertation project). The downside is that few things surprise me, and even fewer make me stop everything else I'm doing to pay attention.

This story did just that. There is a growing body of evidence that suggests that Alzheimer's disease has a lot to do with how the brain processes insulin, and that the disease itself may be productively considered as a form of diabetes. Add this to the nearly overwhelming incidence of Type II diabetes among the world's population, which is projected to effect nearly 1/3 of America's population in the next few decades, and you have the most pressing public health crisis of the 21st century.

In case you're too lazy to click the link (you know who you are), a few highlights:

"Now scientists at Northwestern University have discovered why brain insulin signaling -- crucial for memory formation -- would stop working in Alzheimer’s disease. They have shown that a toxic protein found in the brains of individuals with Alzheimer’s removes insulin receptors from nerve cells, rendering those neurons insulin resistant. (The protein, known to attack memory-forming synapses, is called an ADDL for “amyloid ß-derived diffusible ligand.”)

"With other research showing that levels of brain insulin and its related receptors are lower in individuals with Alzheimer’s disease, the Northwestern study sheds light on the emerging idea of Alzheimer’s being a “type 3” diabetes.

"The new findings, published online by the FASEB Journal, could help researchers determine which aspects of existing drugs now used to treat diabetic patients may protect neurons from ADDLs and improve insulin signaling in individuals with Alzheimer’s. (The FASEB Journal is a publication of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology.)"

Road Rage

Now, I get as annoyed as the next guy when traffic slows down for miles at a toll plaza. Particularly in Chicagoland. But these two took things to a new extreme...

September, September

I think this month will be hard for me for quite some time.

Six years ago. Six years ago I found myself marked, compelled to think and to speak about whatI would prefer to leave in silence. I am afraid to speak, I open my mouth in terror because my words cannot-- words cannot-- even now, here, in this sentence cannot say or be or do what is needed. I would pray for silence, but I am not allowed. I speak in terror, knowing I cannot do what I must. That I must do what I cannot.

Six years ago the eleventh of September was a Tuesday. I remember the English class I had that Tuesday, in the shocked afternoon that followed the clear, terrible morning. I sat in a classroom devoted to words on a day that words cannot approach, a day that words must approach, even when to do so is unholy.

Six years later, tommorrow, I will go to a Tuesday afternoon class devoted to words, once again on the eleventh of September, and I will teach. I was reminded today that most of my students were twelve years old in 2001-- children, only children! What do they remember, what can they remember? How do I stand before them, teaching them language, on the day I would devote to silence?

I sent the final copy of my essay on memorials and the World Trade Center to the Wallace Stevens Journal today, today the tenth of September-- that date sounds almost edenic in its innocence! But my uncle died yesterday, on the ninth, in the quietly unseen space of his own home. Et in Arcadia Ego. And my cousin's long-planned wedding follows hard behind.

The wedding will follow the funeral. My twelve year olds are now in college. I teach and publish and live.

Oh, September

I thought I'd give you fellas a personal update before the craziness that will be my fall semester totally subsumes my life. Unlike the midwest, September in Austin is still very much the summer, so this will be a quick, sweaty email sent from deep in the heart of Texas.

I started teaching a new class in a new department this week. I think it will be good and rewarding, but it's going to be a hell of a lot of work. [profanity used advisedly] I'm sort of writing the syllabus as I go along, so there's a certain seat of the pants uneasiness that I'm trying to turn into some sort of thrilling ride. I'll let you know how things go on that front.

I met two girls this week. Well, one I had chatted up several months ago and then lost track of, and she turned up again when I went for a drink with a friend of mine. The other I'd been wanting to talk to at cafe I frequent, and she showed up at a random party that another friend's roommate talked us into going to. Anyways, I guess I'm pulling that whole resilient, "get back on the horse" thing. It's either very brave or very stupid... but you've gotta try, right?

I also moved into a house with a roommate, so my old address is bad and you'll need to get my new one from me if you need it. Redundant, I know. I'd like to leave you all by pointing out that my city is better than everywhere the rest of you live, so you might as well come visit me. But not on September 17th: I'll be watching Bob Dylan play in Zilker Park that night. Bon nuit.

Lost email addresses

Hi, those who still read this. My laptop died, and it was the sold depository that I had for many of your email addresses. Please email me at my usual address at either yahoo.com or gmail.com so that I can reach you be email.

Thanks!

New city. New job?

Hi everyone (Dave, Coye, Andy, and anybody else who still reads this thing),

How is everybody? I'm breaking radio silence, because I now have a job offer in the Chicago area. And I would like prayer as to whether or not I should take it. For those of you not aware of the situation. My job in DC ends this upcoming Friday, and I'm moving to Chicago whether I have a job to start or not. I have not been as active in job searching as I wish I would have been, yet I have a job offer from a firm that does fixed-income investment software. The job sounds fairly interesting, but I'm not sure what my next step career-wise would be if I ever left it, and the commute would be over an hour long if I want to live close to Kari (my girlfriend), which is the biggest tangible reason that I'm moving out there. Prayers for wisdom, guidance, and a sense of God's will is appreciated. I'm thinking that I should maybe hold out for something more econ related with a shorter commute, but I'm unsure.

Peace.

Question about George Lakoff's Metaphors

Has anyone else read part or the whole of Lakoff's Metaphors we Live By? I remember the portions I read at Wheaton struck a chord with me, the overtones of which have never quite ceased ringing in my ears. So I've decided to go back and look at the thing again and then to try to see where it sits vis the contemporary linguistic/psychological/sociological field today. If anyone's interested in talking about it or reading it with me, that'd be awesome. Otherwise, perhaps some of you could at least tell me if they've heard anything about how Lakoff is read these days. Is he, as one Michael J Edelman (a reviewer on Amazon) claims, "the aging bad boy of structural linguistics," who has unsuccessfully tried to "recast himself in the role of a social theorist" trying to force his linguistic methodology into a new field? [1] Or is the book to be "considered to be one of the most intellectually honest of any book in print, for it unashamedly deals with commonsense notions of how the human mind deals with the world" [Carlson]? Do these somewhat pedestrian analysis equally miss the mark?

Anyway, I'm interested in understanding a bit more about the way we as humans understand the world around us via metaphor (or even if metaphor is the best way to talk about the way we understand and operate socially).

Hemingway: "The Gambler, the Nun, and the Radio"

"Religion is the opium of the people. He believed that, that dyspeptic little joint-keeper. Yes, and music is the opium of the people. Old mount-to-the-head hadn't thought of that. And now economics is the opium of the people; along with patriotism the opium of the people in Italy and Germany. What about sexual intercourse; was that an opium of the people? Of some of the people. Of some of the best of the people. But drink was a sovereign opium of the people, oh, an excellent opium. Although some prefer the radio, another opium of the people, a cheap one he had just been using. Along with these went gambling, an opium of the people if there ever was one, one of the oldest. Ambition was another, an opium of the people, along with a belief in any new form of government. What you wanted was the minimum of government, always less government. Liberty, what we believed in, now the name of a MacFadden publication. We believed in that although they had not found a new name for it yet. But what was the real one? What was the real, the actual, opium of the people? He knew it very well. It was gone just a little way around the corner in that well-lighted part of his mind that was there after two or more drinks in the evening; that he knew was there (it was not really there of course). What was it? He knew very well. What was it? Of course; bread was the opium of the people. Would he remember that and would it make sense in the daylight? Bread is the opium of the people."

Inflammatory Idea of the Week

Hopefully not too inflammatory.

I decided I'd like to know who, if anyone, you guys find interesting out of the field of presidential candidates and, if anyone looks worth voting for in a way more substatial than "at least they're not...", why you find them interesting. This is, of course, just preliminary thoughts about people we won't be voting for or against for months, but I thought it would be interesting to hear what you guys think. That's how democracy is supposed to work, right? Citizens discussing their leaders in the common marketplace of ideas and all that. And since we already fight about religion, why not add politics to the mix. (It would also be a special treat for me and Andy who otherwise only see Republicans on TV or occasionally in business class when we get on airplanes.) We live in the most powerful country ever; we should be doing this kind of thing.

If you don't have any favorites at the moment, what are the factors that will determine who you vote for (or against). What do you care most about in an administration? (This really kind of sounds like an online dating survey, doesn't it?)

Crazy Idea of the Week

In classic Jonesian form, I bring you [dum da da dum]: Crazy Idea of the Week! (Coye, you're right, that font would be super sweet). As such, you can expect never to see [dum da da dumb] Crazy Idea of the Week! again; and if again, then perhaps again in a year and a half.

So without further ado, I bring you [dum da da...forget it]:
Ok, have you guys seen the current trend of video blogs popping up around cyberspace? Of particular note are Rocketboom and Mobuzz, though these both only represent a sliver of the possibilities behind the medium. Well, I was thinking how fun it would be to try our collective hand at writing and producing a little video blog of our own. What would it be and how would it be structured? I haven't a clue, but it is a crazy idea of the week, thus, this has been, [dum da da dum]Daaaaaave's Crazy Idea of the Week! [buy all our play-sets and toys!]