Meandering Musings

This is just a partial of the book/workshop (it's missing the other lecturer entirely, and the stuff outside the 'turning points' part of the lecture), but since I find myself often referring to it (and having found parts of it on YouTube), I thought I'd share.  I always thought he had some interesting points.  ( Read more... )

I'm very behind on a lot of things.

Re: Sister:  She's back at work and feeling somewhat better.  They've hired a temp to replace the crazy man.  Reading the stuff on the shooting in Huntsville is scary because of its similarities with what happened to my sister.  A lot of the student complaints about the teacher and the Huntsville professor are frighteningly similar. What if he'd had a gun?  ::shudder::  At any rate, Sis is doing better.

Re: Kitchen Reno:  Finished grouting.  The buttercream was the right color grout and totally worth having to scrape out of the part I had grouted previously.  Now the tile looks like it's supposed to look.  The kitchen still needs painting in areas where I had to do drywall work after the old countertop was removed, and I'm still debating between kinds of under cabinet lights... but completion is closer!

Re: Being Human:  Downloaded this week's episode but have yet to find time to watch it.  It's on my list.

Re: Fanfic:  Have actually made some small, incremental progress.

Re: Reading: Have been reading Connie Willis's Blackout   Interesting premise (historians, doing research, time travel to WWII and inadvertantly begin changing history in small ways that could mess up the timeline).  Unfortunately, I have quibbles with execution.  For one thing, I question who in their right mind would fund such a thing.  Sending historians back in time to observe things that were actually fairly well documented in the first place seems difficult thing to justify.  I understand their 'convergence' points won't allow them to intervene/witness pivotal events first hand (though I can see that's being set-up to be blown out of the water), but who in the hell would fund sending people back in time to work as shop girls during the Blitz or to babysit measle infecting evacuees? (BTW, far too many annoying children with measles in this story and that particular historian never seems to do anything but babysit and try to catch transport back to the year 2060.  Thus far, I don't even know what the purpose her plot serves. ) The guy researching the evacuation of Dunkirk, I get.  Just wish there was more of his plot and less of the measel infected obnoxious tykes. If I want kids evacuated to the countryside during the Blitz, there had better be a wardrobe that leads to Narnia.  

And, quite frankly, other than their having different research assignments, I have a very difficult time telling the two female historians apart.   

Anyway, interesting premise.  Hope the story picks up.  I'm only a third of the way through so there is time.

Re: Lost  Yet again this week's episode inspires thinky-thoughts about fate and free-will.  I don't know if I will get around to posting about them, but I find I like the way the sideways-verse is forcing us to question what in Lost-verse was made to happen, what was 'destined' to happen no matter what--with or without interference--and what is legitimately up to the characters' free will to choose. Looking forward to watching how this pans out. 

Oh, and I found EW's episode recap The Man with the Plan  to be intriguing (though with far too many quotes from other material).

I'm very behind on a lot of things.

Re: Sister:  She's back at work and feeling somewhat better.  They've hired a temp to replace the crazy man.  Reading the stuff on the shooting in Huntsville is scary because of its similarities with what happened to my sister.  A lot of the student complaints about the teacher and the Huntsville professor are frighteningly similar. What if he'd had a gun?  ::shudder::  At any rate, Sis is doing better.

Re: Kitchen Reno:  Finished grouting.  The buttercream was the right color grout and totally worth having to scrape out of the part I had grouted previously.  Now the tile looks like it's supposed to look.  The kitchen still needs painting in areas where I had to do drywall work after the old countertop was removed, and I'm still debating between kinds of under cabinet lights... but completion is closer!

Re: Being Human:  Downloaded this week's episode but have yet to find time to watch it.  It's on my list.

Re: Fanfic:  Have actually made some small, incremental progress.

Re: Reading: Have been reading Connie Willis's Blackout   Interesting premise (historians, doing research, time travel to WWII and inadvertantly begin changing history in small ways that could mess up the timeline).  Unfortunately, I have quibbles with execution.  For one thing, I question who in their right mind would fund such a thing.  Sending historians back in time to observe things that were actually fairly well documented in the first place seems difficult thing to justify.  I understand their 'convergence' points won't allow them to intervene/witness pivotal events first hand (though I can see that's being set-up to be blown out of the water), but who in the hell would fund sending people back in time to work as shop girls during the Blitz or to babysit measle infecting evacuees? (BTW, far too many annoying children with measles in this story and that particular historian never seems to do anything but babysit and try to catch transport back to the year 2060.  Thus far, I don't even know what the purpose her plot serves. ) The guy researching the evacuation of Dunkirk, I get.  Just wish there was more of his plot and less of the measel infected obnoxious tykes. If I want kids evacuated to the countryside during the Blitz, there had better be a wardrobe that leads to Narnia.  

And, quite frankly, other than their having different research assignments, I have a very difficult time telling the two female historians apart.   

Anyway, interesting premise.  Hope the story picks up.  I'm only a third of the way through so there is time.

Re: Lost  Yet again this week's episode inspires thinky-thoughts about fate and free-will.  I don't know if I will get around to posting about them, but I find I like the way the sideways-verse is forcing us to question what in Lost-verse was made to happen, what was 'destined' to happen no matter what--with or without interference--and what is legitimately up to the characters' free will to choose. Looking forward to watching how this pans out. 

Oh, and I found EW's episode recap The Man with the Plan  to be intriguing (though with far too many quotes from other material).

:
Fanfic discovery:
Be very, very wary of staging a scene in AtS's White Room. There's nothing for characters to do there except look at each other in an array of ways. Take my word for it. Don't do it. It's very frustrating.

Audible has picked up The Modern Scholar lecture series which is kind of neat. They're recorded lecture series on a variety of topics, and if you're geeky enough, they're rather interesting.

I've listened to Archeology and the Illiad: The Trojan War in Homer and History and I thought it was pretty darn good. It went from questions regarding whether Homer was an individual or a title and the problems involved with oral histories turned into printed ones. It also covered the archaeological excavations of "Troy" in Hisarlik, the debate over which layer of the excavation could plausibly be "Troy" of Homeric legend, and whether Homer had telescoped history. It also covered the anecdotes of the archaeologists who have done the work (a few of which were quite colorful). If you're a history geek, it's worth the listen (and though the lecture series is listed as about $70 on the Audbible site, if you're an audible member, it's just one monthly credit and monthly membership is only $15 dollars (a little less than $8 for the first three months of membership).

Am currently listening to A Way With Words, Part II: Approaches to Literature. The professor seems quite enthusiastic (and clearly loves his genre fiction... particularly Tolkien as he's using LOTR for a lot of his examples. And I laughed as his discussion of Elizabeth Bennet turned into her being attacked by trolls, isn't there some zombified Austen-thing coming out? I think I read that recently). Many of the discussions of interpretation of text and authorship falls right into some of the more interesting fandom debates (which I don't think would bother this professor as he seems like the type who would wade into those discussions himself). It's been interesting so far, and I'm thinking that I might download his next lecture series Rings, Swords, and Monsters: Exploring Fantasy Literature where he covers the likes of Tolkien, Rowling, Ursula Le Guin, and Terry Brooks.

On a different note, I saw this story today which... you know, even the picture accompanying the article provokes some questions for me. What does a Creationist teacher say to his students when standing next to a dinosaur skeleton? Pay no attention to the huge thing looming over me? ( Read more... )

Audible has picked up The Modern Scholar lecture series which is kind of neat. They're recorded lecture series on a variety of topics, and if you're geeky enough, they're rather interesting.

I've listened to Archeology and the Illiad: The Trojan War in Homer and History and I thought it was pretty darn good. It went from questions regarding whether Homer was an individual or a title and the problems involved with oral histories turned into printed ones. It also covered the archaeological excavations of "Troy" in Hisarlik, the debate over which layer of the excavation could plausibly be "Troy" of Homeric legend, and whether Homer had telescoped history. It also covered the anecdotes of the archaeologists who have done the work (a few of which were quite colorful). If you're a history geek, it's worth the listen (and though the lecture series is listed as about $70 on the Audbible site, if you're an audible member, it's just one monthly credit and monthly membership is only $15 dollars (a little less than $8 for the first three months of membership).

Am currently listening to A Way With Words, Part II: Approaches to Literature. The professor seems quite enthusiastic (and clearly loves his genre fiction... particularly Tolkien as he's using LOTR for a lot of his examples. And I laughed as his discussion of Elizabeth Bennet turned into her being attacked by trolls, isn't there some zombified Austen-thing coming out? I think I read that recently). Many of the discussions of interpretation of text and authorship falls right into some of the more interesting fandom debates (which I don't think would bother this professor as he seems like the type who would wade into those discussions himself). It's been interesting so far, and I'm thinking that I might download his next lecture series Rings, Swords, and Monsters: Exploring Fantasy Literature where he covers the likes of Tolkien, Rowling, Ursula Le Guin, and Terry Brooks.

On a different note, I saw this story today which... you know, even the picture accompanying the article provokes some questions for me. What does a Creationist teacher say to his students when standing next to a dinosaur skeleton? Pay no attention to the huge thing looming over me? ( Read more... )