Industry "for dummies"

I glance over at my quartet of Billy bookcases, stuffed with books two layers deep, to the last white and birch centimetre of space. Full of books of all descriptions -- vampire fiction, classical literature, textbooks, my prized personal collection of books about digital culture. But in and among that admittedly eclectic company are a half dozen or so bumblebee coloured "For Dummies" books, on topics ranging from "NFL for Dummies" to "Pilates for Dummies" to "GRE for Dummies".

Apparently I'm not alone in having a few of these on my shelves. There are over 150 million copies in circulation...and growing. It would seem that there are over 1000 titles in this series, and most titles are written in a little under three months. The New York Times claims that "The list of Dummies topics is like a parallel history of contemporary consciousness". Perhaps it is.

Should this worry me? What does this say about the human race?

Finding the Bard online

When I was in high school, I was in love with English. The subject and the language. Despite the extra long near-daily English classes the Manitoba government stipulated as a requirement for university-entrance-level students and despite the constant grumbling of my fellow students, I loved that course. In particular, I loved Shakespeare.

Heading into university that first time around, as a fresh idealistic 20 year old, I majored in English and I deliberately took every Shakespearean-themed course I could find. Of course, it meant long hours in the library reading the secondary literature around the Bard.

I'm curious as to what a difference to me then it would have made to have had access to online resources such as this Shakespeare search engine. How much better would my papers have been?

Convergence

Not sure if it will be as good as it sounds, but this book is one I think I should read this semester, in addition to all of my chewy social and political theory for my courses. If Jenkins truly brings his concept of participatory culture to an examination of digital culture, as he claims in this Business Week interview, it might be a useful notion to add into my thoughts for my upcoming thesis proposal.

Finally a positive

While this article at Alternet about the positive educational potential of videogames in schools is interesting in and of itself, what I find noteworthy about the article is the positive spin itself. It isn't often these days that we hear anything positive in the media about video games. Most reports are dire, full of doom and gloom. Granted Alternet is supposed to be different in its mandate, but it isn't always.

Plagiarism and honesty

Being in academia, I am constantly exposed to the messages from faculty and the 'deme as to what would happen if I were to cheat or plagiarize. I don't know if I'd ever understood just how serious a problem it was, probably because in a rather odd but typical way, I assumed that since it has never entered my head to do so, it is over-reported as a phenomenon.

But according to various experts, including Susan J. Douglas, a feminist academic that I respect and whose work I've used, as high as 70% of undergraduates have cheated or plagiarized. That number is astonishing!

Douglas' most recent column in one of my favourite alternate current affairs magazine, In These Times, brings to light another form of plagiarism that is apparently just as practiced but is also made acceptable by corporate greed and message spin. It is done under the guise of journalism, reporting, news and platform promotion. The strident anti-Democrat and anti-progressive words of Ann Coulter are just one more example, Douglas says. Unlike for undergrads and others, it is acceptable for Coulter to directly plagiarize because she's big business for her publisher.

I was taught early that, while researching and writing, "when in doubt, cite". It is a rule I live by. I'd rather litter my work with references to their idea seeds from others than be a thief, liar and poseur. Sadly, too few others apparently share this belief and motivation, and corporate power is making acceptable to ignore it altogether, if it brings in money and fame.

My point here isn't to glorify or vilify plagiarism per se, but rather to show the double standard yet again at work in North America. And to point at another potential cause and effect relationship that is partly responsible for the continued disenfranchisement of youth and degradation of moral character in society in general.

Stuttering starts

As I was hefting 20 lb free weights at my new-to-me gym today, and having trouble with it, given the 2+ months hiatus I've had from regular workouts, it occurred to me that my life these days seems to be a series of stuttering starts. I was gung-ho to get into the gym this morning, having noticed that my "fat jeans" were starting to fit me snugly and my face was starting to pack on the baby fat. But once there, I was frustrated by my inability to find some of the things I needed and by the snickering chauvinism of some of the other male members at my desire to do decently weighted shoulder squats using a long bar and 30 pound weight plates.

The same is true of my emerging graduate student life. I arrived in Toronto all geared up to plunge into school, only to find that I didn't know what courses I'd be allowed to take and even once I did, that most of my classes for this week are cancelled. It seems as if the faculty are mainly all overseas attending conferences. So I hit a brick wall and find myself here, in the middle of September, with entirely more time on my hands than I had expected. Since I haven't yet been assigned to an RAship, I don't even have that to fall back on.

What have I done? Well, of course I've read. For my Techno Politics course, I've read much of Heidegger's illumination on Nietzsche's "Will to Power as Art". I don't get what the ruminations on art have to do with techno politics, but I guess I'll find out in class next week. I'm also halfway through Habermas' "The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere" for my Public Space and Political Culture course. But I've also read a new Nora Roberts book about vampires and a newish somewhat unsatisfying book on consciousness, AI and the nature of consciousness from one of my fave sci-fi writers, Robert J. Sawyer. I've read magazines and newspapers, and a few cookbooks too.

I've drank a lot of coffee, hung out a lot in one of my local Starbucks (oh the luxury of now having four within a five minute drive!). I've unpacked, decorated, redecorated, repacked, stored, unstored, restored all kinds of stuff. I've sold stuff too, through Craigslist, my new fave community site for such activities. I've bonded with my new housemates and argued with my new landlord. And still I've got time.

I really do feel as if I'm stuttering along here, jerkily carving out this new graduate student life in this city that I adore. It isn't working out as I'd hoped/dreamed (e.g. my pro seminar has over 60 students in it! 60! where I expected to find maybe a dozen or so). But I'm trying to keep an open mind and an optimistic heart and I keep reminding myself that, at worst, this stage of my own becoming will last a scant two years. I hope.

Beginning a new beginning

I just got back from The World's Biggest Bookstore, where I picked up yet another weighty tome of social philosophy, namely Habermas' The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. This one is for my Public Space and Political Culture course in the sociology department at York. I've got to read both this and Nietzsche's Will to Power as Art via Heidegger in the next week.

This is just the beginning of what will be a definite brain pretzling semester. But much has happened to me lately. Some snippets? ok..here goes...

I've fallen in love with Craigslist. I'd tried it while in Montreal and never had much success with it. Well, considering the fantastic success I've had with it here in Toronto, I must conclude that the Montreal problem was either linguistic (despite my posting in both languages) or cultural in general. Since moving here, I've found a house and two roommates (each separately from one another), and I've sold a couch, a bed set, a dog kennel and a few sundry books and decorative items. It's putting money in my pocket and I've met some super nice people too. Very cool.

I've had less of a love affair with York University to date. I won't go into details, lest one of my professors stumbles on my piece of the I-Space here. I'll just say that they're disorganized, somewhat lax and rather perplexingly uncaring of the idea that some MA students not only might *want* to finish their Masters' degrees in two years, they are fully *capable* of doing so! This latter comment stems from the fact that I was completely unable to register in any core, foundation or required courses this semester because, as a first year entering student, I'm at the bottom of the barrel in terms of course selection priority. Somehow it seems just fine that I work on my thesis and do electives prior to getting the strong grounding in my new discipline area.

So academically, it has been less than stellar so far (don't even get me going on the topic of how impossible it is for me to get my books from the bookstore!). But on the upside, the campus is gorgeous! It is a true campus, full of buildings scattered about in a relatively natural green setting. Though it is waaaaay up northwest of the city, making it a bit weird to get to, the cohesion that campus feeling gives to the school experience is very welcome to me, after spending five years in a few large office towers plunked down in the heart of Montreal.