Saving The Modern Era

A short post today; I have much to do, and not much time to do it in (Quick! Everything EVERYTHING into the end-of-semester boat! Double-time!)... but I thought this was cool. It is also a cautionary tale about digital media, throwing things away, and making fun of geeks who love technology.

From Old Dirt-New Thoughts, a description (with photos!) of saving the digital archive of the Lunar Orbiter missions in the late 1960s.

Boxes, Oxes, Geese, and Meese

From World Wide Words, a poetic presentation of the perils of plurals in English. By the great author, Anonymous, ca. 1896.

The Poem begins:

We’ll begin with a box, and the plural is boxes,
But the plural of ox should be oxen, not oxes.
Then one fowl is a goose, but two are called geese,
Yet the plural of mouse should never be meese,
You may find a lone mouse or a whole nest of mice,
But the plural of house is houses, not hice.

and, after several further examples of the wonkiness of English pluralization, concludes,

We speak of a brother, and also of brethren,
But though we say mother, we never say methren,
Then the masculine pronouns are he, his and him,
But imagine the feminine she, shis and shim,

So the English, I think, you all will agree,
Is the queerest language you ever did see.

You can read the whole poem via the link above. It made me smile.

Frontloading Wonderment

Now that would be a good blog name, "Frontloading Wonderment."

I love teaching. And I'm always looking for new things to try, new ideas, new ways to present information. I need to break myself of the powerpoint, even though I have good reasons for using it the way I do. The reason, actually, it still good (to give the students an outline of the lecture so they can pay attention to the content and not to copying stuff verbatim)... but perhaps the format for that is wrong. Maybe I'll bust the outline stuff into a separate word document they can download for class, and liberate my powerpoint... Terminal Degree has a post about Using Powerpoint Effectively. The class liked the study guide questions? Huh.

Powerpoint Liberation will have to wait, though. If my class runs this summer, it will be Very Small (as in, PERHAPS 10 students, vs. the 30 I usually have). I hope it runs; I would love to teach this class (even though it's a 101 Drive By Intro to one of the Anthropology subfields) as a seminar. I'll get to try lots of different things, starting with ditching the powerpoint, I think...will see what happens.

Inside Higher Ed recently ran an article about effective lecturing. There is some good stuff in there for me; I especially liked the idea of "Frontloading Wonderment." It's the hook that gets them paying attention (fait attention!). I need to frontload more wonderment in my lectures.

My Desk Drawer

There is so much going on I am overwhelmed, and I wanted to write more here than that. So, I will play the My Emergency Stash (aka personal stuff jammed into my desk drawer). I ran into this meme over at The Bitter and the Sweet and at Terminal Degree, both of whom target Flavia at Ferule and Fescue as the source of all this.

From memory:

• Half box of business cards, top missing
• One mug (after both of my others mysteriously vanished...)
• One bowl and one metal (not disposable) tablespoon for lunch at the computer (no pilfered silverware, though... Flavia's equipped for higher-class emergency lunches than yours truly)
• One teabag for some random flavored tea
• A small container of pushpins (which is remarkable, as there is no corkboard in sight)
• An extra key to a post office box
• Napkins
• An unopened bottle of salad dressing (it has worked like a charm; the salad place up the street has never forgotten to include my dressing-on-the-side since I brought this puppy in!)
• Advil
• Benadryl (1)
• Band-aids
• A tube of Cortisone-10 (hey, I'm an archaeologist with crazy sensitivity to Poison Ivy!)
• A half bottle of Burts Bees Milk and Honey Skin Lotion

I still remember a former colleagues' desk drawer.. it had EVERYTHING. She could be locked in her office for a week and not starve nor suffer, and come out refreshed and coiffed. Compared to the others, I am a piker when it comes to office stashery. My car, however, is another story. I don't call it the Rolling Accumulation for naught!

Edit: Apologies to Flavia for suggesting she pilfered that silverware! I just read her comments, and it was purchased.

Edit 2: I checked at work. I also have a pack of tissues and a small box of Tea Tree Chewing Sticks (aka toothpicks).

Jobs! Fellowships! Negotiating!

There are several excellent and helpful posts out there regarding applying for, negotiating, &tc. academic jobs. I'm currently an adjunct in addition to my regular gig, so I'm not completely disassociated with life in the U. I found much in these posts useful not just for academic jobs, but also in planning educational trajectories (whee!) and even negotiating for regular gigs (and wish I'd read before taking said regular gig).

Historiann and her blog commentators offer advice to Lucky Louie who has been offered a Fellowship, but has other job applications pending. Discussions include: the value of a PostDoc Fellowship vs. non-t.t. jobs (like lectureships) that pay more; how to approach those who are deciding on your applications to encourage a response; and why those with tenure dream of Fellowships.

Dance at Prone to Laughter and several commentators get into the nitty gritty of remuneration that may not appear on your paycheck. Things to ask about: moving expenses, photocopier allowances, travel/conference allowances, new computer, rent credit, course-releases, &tc. Take these into consideration while reading the next post...

Dr. Crazy at Reassigned Time lays it on the line about how important negotiating your salary is. Even if all you get up front is a "lousy" $1,000 (think compound interest). She also makes a pretty good argument for why it really is worth bucking for Full. The discussion in the comments tackles gender disparities in how negotiating is seen by those being negotiated with: bitchy vs. savvy, and also suggestions for women in making a good negotiation argument (i.e., how not to be "bitchy"). Yes, the fact that such a discussion even needs to take place seriously blows. Forewarned is forearmed, as they say... I just wish I'd read some of this stuff before I took my regular gig!

More discussion about Sex and Salary Negotiations at Historiann.

I do realize I've left out the all-important interview! But I should be grading, not writing, so I will tackle the interview stuff another time.