jliedl.ca

Some historians carve out a clear and distinctive niche, becoming the recognized expert on X, Y or Z. Not me!

My research is like a crazy quilt of different eras, regions and approaches. I have three projects on the go right now and two others off with the editors (one accepted, one with readers). Of those five projects, only two are in the same century (my Kzoo paper and the article off with readers): the sixteenth in Britain (which I consider my personal home base for research purposes as in I never met an early Tudor humanist text I didn’t have something to say about). But even with these similarities, they’re very different histories: one being more of a biographical study and another work in comparative textual analysis.

The next project awaiting polishing is a pedagogy piece for an exciting summer conference. My paper’s dealing with a resource that spans the 17th to 20th centuries and how it can be used to teach elementary statistical analysis. (Which is nothing I do in the rest of my work but I’m personally committed to the idea that no one can be a historian and not be able to minimally interpret and understand statistical analysis. Consider this a legacy of my years in science and engineering.)

Yet another project builds off research interests in the late nineteenth to early twentieth century but crosses the Atlantic to deal mostly with Canada and the US: regions which I wrote off as overdone and boring when I got to grad school but which, for this subject, are now strangely compelling and vital. And the project that’s farthest along in press is the least secured to any time, applying, as it does, historical analysis to a science fiction series.

I can trace commonalities across most of what I’m doing. I can see where congruencies between the second, fourth and fifth point to interesting ideas about the way in which people construct their relationship to the past. But I’m damned if I can see where the next big project (i.e., the book) is going to come from. Stay tuned!

• I’m making vegetarian lasagna. I’m just letting the sauce cool before I start the layering process. Then, a few hours later? Yum!
• It’s sunny and outrageously warm for the third day in a row. The windows are cranked open and a gentle breeze occasionally intrudes. Considering that a week ago we were in the midst of a snowstorm? This is unbelievable.
• Eldest and I took the dogs on an extra-long walk this morning. Another thing that I appreciate about this neighbourhood is that you can always add on a extra few kilometers on your walk by wandering around one or more of the many crescents.
• Mike took eldest and a friend out to see a scary movie. I hope they’re all having fun but I’m glad it isn’t me at the theatre!
• I’m on my second book from the pile though I really have to concentrate more on the remaining freshman essays. But I’m making progress there, too.

It’s sunny. The birds are singing sweetly outside my window, left open for the first breezes of what could really, truly be spring. I’ve reveled in the moment, taking the dogs for a quick walk in the early morning before settling down to my marking.

I could easily ignore the lovely weather and get on with my work, except that there’s been two knocks on my door. Two parcels of books have arrived! (One large box from Labyrinth Books’ Sales Annex as recommended by The Little Professor and one slim mailer from an Abebooks reseller.)

Sadly, there’s still marking to be done, but feast your eyes on what awaits me once the grades are in for both of my classes!

Another email query received seeking marks for papers handed in less than a week ago. Sheesh!

Students? The exam’s not until the 24th. Relax! You will know your marks before then.

Ah, the joy of seeing an email promising my inter-library loan request for an article has been filled!

Oh, the sorrows felt upon opening the PDF file to find it is someone else’s requested article and not mine. (And that someone else is a professor in a different discipline at a different university — all information which is quite apparent in the front matter of the file.)

So who the heck is going to untangle this mess? I bounced back an email to the ILL service pointing out their mistake and reiterating what was requested. Let’s hope they can actually get this sorted out and don’t simply count my request as fulfilled. Not that the article they sent me wasn’t interesting (and, hey!, I can always work on my Italian!) but it won’t help me with this particular line of research. And I can’t help but worry that the poor fellow who requested this article might be left high and dry.

Final essays were handed in on Thursday in Western Civ. I received email on Saturday inquiring as to how soon one student could expect their grade for the same.

Sadly, not too soon as my seniors handed in their portfolios on Wednesday and those marks are due to the registrar first. Maybe the next week (which is still well before the exam on the 24th). Until then, please relax, dear students! I’m marking as fast as I can!

Oh, Overcoming Bias has raised a subject near and dear to my heart: “what makes research topics ’silly.’” Having been charged, since my grad school days, of pursuing something completely irrelevant, ’silly’ seems a small step down the line.

The discussion gets even better, by the way. Anders Sandberg lays out the four major categories of silliness: epistemic, practical, social and political. Great fun and not really silly!

If you’ve ever gotten a tiny bit fed up with the sanctimonious reviews of video or PC games that start and end on a note of “why don’t parents just send their kids outside to play?”, here’s a mock MMO review tailored for you by the deft hand of aeschenkarnos (nabbed from Boing Boing):

I’ve been outside. It’s overrrated.

Traditionally Outside receives extremely high ratings by those who like to see others play it, and these people are in many cases comfortably ensconced Inside themselves. Outside was released many years ago, it was in fact the first massively multiplayer game, and yet it has always managed to avoid the double-edged Retro tag. In its favor, continual user updates have kept Outside current; there are always new things to see and do Outside. Participants are permitted, to some extent, to modify their own areas of Outside, which is a large part of the fun of the game. However it seems that in the end one is modifying Outside largely for the sake of it, and having done it, there is a distinct feeling of “now what?”

In terms of the traditional target age content metrics, Outside is remarkably high in sex, violence and challenges to traditional values, despite the strong child-focussed marketing it receives. Many would go so far as to say that for a child to develop the ability to cope with Outside is essential, as long as the harm incurred is not too debilitating. Children injured playing Outside are usually comforted by parents, and soon encouraged to go Outside again; this leads to the conclusion that somehow Outside has escaped any and all of the usual moralizing that surrounds the videogaming industry. One might say that Outside gets a free pass from the Jack Thompsons of this world.

That aside, how does Outside actually rate? The physics system is note-perfect (often at the expense of playability), the graphics are beyond comparison, the rendering of objects is absolutely beautiful at any distance, and the player’s ability to interact with objects is really limited only by other players’ tolerance. The real fundamental problem with the game is that there is nothing to do. (read the rest of the review on Metafilter)

*chortle*