Required viewing for fans of Foucault's "Panopticism."

I Love this Comic

I don't know why, but I find this comic hilarious--even after a decade. It was a student panel at the University of Texas' Daily Texan.

Reason # 134 That I am a Giant Dork

Above is one of the best and funniest examples of circular reasoning that I have ever come across. It works really well in the classroom, too, because you can block it out and show how a counterargument forces Peter to come back around and use the premise for his claim as his support, too.

Tim Tebow's "Jump Pass" is Like the Wishbone in the 60s

I just watched Tim Tebow score a touchdown against Tennessee, and he did it with a variation of the "jump pass" from last year. The pass looks for all the world like a weak basketball move, and I think when Tebow "invented" it, it was a totally improvised back-yard football move.

Tebow's 1st Jump Pass


The cool thing about this is that Urban Myer was smart enough to see its effectiveness and construct an actual play around it. Tebow, who's such a threat to run already, heads up toward the line of scrimmage and pulls the defensive secondary up into run support. It's the greatest play-action fake in the history of football, if you think about it. There aren't any reasons not to think he's going to try to punch it in the end zone.

And then what does he do? He continues him momentum forward, pulls the ball out, and makes a jump shot into the end zone. The secondary doesn't have a chance to react. Tebow doesn't stop and plant his feet. He doesn't pull out the ball out and strike that ubiquitous upper-body pose for throwing the football.

It's, as I said, a perfect fake that is really hard to defend against. Your secondary has to trust in the D-line and backers not to just charge into run support. Only a good, disciplined, stay-at-home defense is going to diffuse that play. There aren't too many of those defenses around these days, so expect to see more and more QBs trying this out. And since there aren't too many QBs around with the athletecism of Tebow, also look for some painfully inept versions of this coming to a TV screen near you.

Grendel Gets Dissed and his Mama Gets a Bad/Worse Rap

The Daily Telegraph has a list of the 50 greatest villains in literature. Grendel's Mama is number 42 (just behind O'Brien from Nineteen Eighty-Four) but Grendel is nowhere to be found. I find that rather odd. Grendel harries Heorot for 12 years, kills numerous thanes, and eats them and drinks their blood. Ellen (what I call his mom since OE ellen means "power" or "might" and since Sigourney Weaver's character in the Alien series is named Ellen Ripley...and she identifies herself as "the monster's mother") kills one guy in vengeance for her son's death and defends her own home against Beowulf, almost killing him. How in the hell is she 1) a villain and 2) a greater villain than is Grendel? It seems to me that the compilers of this list are letting her gender unfairly tint their view of her. The fact that she is female is the only other difference between her and Grendel, so that must be what makes her more "monstrous." I'd expect to hear that from a Klaeber or Chambers because they were writing so long ago, but I didn't expect to see it in the 20 Sept. 2008 posting for a British newspaper.

Also, I am not happy with the capsule for Ellen:

There's nothing in the poem to suggest that Grendel's old mum looked anything like Angelina Jolie. Hellbent on revenge, this inhuman hag drags Beowulf down to her lair at the bottom of a pond. Despite having been written at least a millennium ago, Beowulf has proved enduringly influential, inspiring the 1983 film Jaws 3-D.

Now those of us in the know see the glaring error: Beowulf dove at least half way to the bottom of the mere and was dragged by Ellen the rest of the way, whereas the nicors dragged him unwillingly to the bottom of the sea in his swimming contest with Breca. Ellen wasn't taking him somewhere he didn't already want to go. (Also, points are deducted for referencing the movie for a third of the blurb. Pitiful.)

Personally, I Think it's a Bit Generous

I could survive for 1 minute, 16 seconds chained to a bunk bed with a velociraptor

Bloom, The Beatles, and Bill O'Reilly

How's this for cognitive dissonance? I'm reading the first half of Bloom's Closing of the American Mind because I'm dead set on including something from it in my composition class this term.

For those of you who know me, this is odd enough already. But the really weird thing is that I realized that last night and this morning, I've been reading it whiles listening to The Beatles' Let it Be and the Grateful Dead's Skeletons From the Closet. If Bloom could see me now!

The other strange thing? Some of what he's saying is starting to make sense. I think part of the reason people react so negatively to Bloom's book is that he's essentially calling us all stupid and relying very heavily on essentialist notions. The other reason, though, is that I think people like Bill O'Reilly are (mis)using his notions to further their own agendas. For instance, Papa Bear:



But, Bloom does make some valid points--especially the indictment of so-called "openess." Now I think it was an interesting piece of legerdemain to twist open-mindedness into the new close-mindedness, but that's another day, perhaps. My point is that Bloom's criticism of cultural relativism has a valid foundation, but I think he takes it too far.

Of course, I think my culture is the best (he asserts that I wouldn't because I've been inculcated in cultural relativism since gradeschool, but he obviously isn't thinking of small-town Texas gradeschools). My definition of "my culture" is likely much more narrow and local (ooooooo, more PoMo for Bloom), but I think it's the best...for me. That qualifier is incredibly important in this definition since I'm not claiming any knowledge over other cultures outside of my experience. But again (since this is coming off more critical than I wanted it to), I think he's hitting on an important point--even if his wording and further arguments fail to convince. There is (or should be) an agreed-upon common bond for the United States. Now, if I'm reading him right--and I'd like to think that I am--he's asserting that the commonality of US citizens is going or gone. I disagree. It's there. It's very, very different than the commonality that Bloom imagines, but it is there. It came to the surface in the days after 9/11 (which is why politicians strike that note so often in their speeches, I think) and most anniversaries of the date.

I have no larger, magisterial closing for this post. Just a random, fragmented thought about Bloom's book. Maybe after I teach it and discuss it with my class further, I'll have some new insights to share.