Author Archive for Bing

Journal of a Writing Teacher

Published
by
Bing
on March 20, 2010
.
First Class: Attendance low. Students worked on papers with their peers. We broke early.
Second Class: Attendance lower. Students worked on papers with the peer(s) who showed up. We broke early.
Third Class: Attendance good. Asked students if they really wanted to work on papers. They said not really. I broke off class immediately. There were cheers.

I was saying to my students a few weeks ago that after I give a lecture, my audiences never seem to break out in rapturous applause, but they did when I told them that they were not going to have to listen to me at all.

Funk dat. And this mere days after after I received the following feedback from one of my peers who attended a talk about incorporating science into the writing classroom that I and a colleague both presented at. It was sent out to the entire department, which was a nice bonus.
Fellow Smarty-Pants--

I wanted to send a note about the talk organized by Kendra the Vampire Slayer today. I unfortunately had to miss the [other campus event] due to teaching, and I know many of you missed [their presentations]. I was so inspired by what I heard from Bug Girl and Bing McGhandi that I felt compelled to share.

Bug Girl and Bing both gave papers that really demonstrated how exciting teaching composition can be (it's true!) and gave specific examples of how they've managed to capture the imaginations and intellects of our particular students here at Pretty Good Univeristy. Both of their talks clearly demonstrated the potential we have as Smarty-Pants to have our students re-think science (and arguments, evidence, and claims) in ways that are quite revolutionary for them. Although I had to go teach before Bug Girl's excellent talk concluded, I'm totally writing her an email to ask her about these awesome online discussion blogs she's having her students make...

The talks were witty and smart, and reminded me of my grad schools days when I got to hear speakers several times a month talk on topics that really mattered to me. Thanks to Bing, Bug Girl, and Kendra for taking me back to that space today!
I just had to crow a little bit. Skepticism can sell, folks, this is what I am saying.

Finally I have a few days before other obligations drag me kicking and screaming back into the real world. I will be giving a variation on the paper I gave the other day in St. Louis at the end of the month, and I will be there for the next St. Louis Skeptics in the Pub, which is a fortuitous bonus. I've been thinking about the logo contest that they are having, and I actually have an image that, if edited properly (maybe morphed in with a photo of the Gateway Arch?), would work really well for a skeptical organization in St. Louis, MO:
It's a bent spoon! Get it? The Arch as a bent spoon! How about that shit? If I can get access to Photoshop, I'll have a submission for the contest during the Skeptics in the Pub thingy. Last, I finally have some time to work on the WorldviewNightmare podcast.

Neat.

HJ

Standing on a Bible Campaign

Published
by
Bing
on March 19, 2010
.

I am stunned to see how this has taken off. Thanks to a suggestion by tengrain, we have promoted the I-Am-Who-Am Is Ashamed by Your Slogan campaign from "whim" to "global movement." So far we have submissions of people standing on their Bibles from people all over the planet, and we are going to publish the best photos during the upcoming "Blog Against Theocracy" (April 2-4). Stand up for secular governance by standing on a Bible!

. Chat it up at atheist sites. Do a little post at your own blog. Send a spam bomb to your enemies. And be creative. We have some really clever ones so far.

HJ (loves the idea that AiG inspired this)

Looks like Bodie Hodge is writing slogans now.

Published
by
Bing
on March 19, 2010
.
Animala pointed this out to me over at the new website of the "I Am Not Ashamed" campaign, Answers in Genesis' new slogan-for-sale (seriously, it's on everything):

(Click to embiggen.)

Ah! The fruits of Christian homeschooling!

I am hereby starting my own campaign, the I-Am-Who-Am Is Ashamed of Your Slogan Campaign. It is my hope that we will show the world that we too can be ignorant, pigheaded literalists.


Send me a picture of you standing on a Bible--but only unashamedly and uncompromisingly!

Send your photo to littletinyfeardemon at yahoo.com, and we'll show Answers in Genesis who is unashamed-er and uncompromisingly-est!

HJ

UPDATE: I am going to do the showcase of people standing on Bibles in concert with the Blog Against Theocracy (April 2-4). It was tengrain's idea. I'm all over it.

Will work for money…

Published
by
Bing
on March 18, 2010
.
Hi, all. I just got word that my plans for summer employment have fallen through, and I'm going to be eating my cats to survive over the summer. I'll be talking to my colleagues to see about employment on campus, of course, but Georgia public higher education is not exactly expanding these days. I don't really have many connections in Atlanta (except for some skeptics...hm), and I was wondering if anyone had any hare-brained money-making schemes that are so crazy they... just... might... work? (Both serious and humorous suggestions are welcome. People with depressing suggestions can fuck themselves.)


HJ

I have huge balls.

Published
by
Bing
on March 18, 2010
.
I don't like to brag, but they are gigantic and made of concrete. I have decided to "wing it" tomorrow at my lecture. I am drawing up lecture notes to guide my discussion, but in direct conflict with the cherished tradition in the humanities of reading your paper verbatim in public, I'm going to improvise. We'll see how far you can go with blind, stupid enthusiasm and charm.


Like I said, my balls are huge.

Hopefully nobody shows up. I feel uncomfortable when everyone is looking at my balls.

HJ

True story…

Published
by
Bing
on March 18, 2010
.
"Get the hell out!" I yelled. My father was on the other end of the phone.

"Yep. That's what everyone says when I tell them. It scared the hell out of the nurse who was with her."

"Who did you hear it from?"

"Dr. Hilarius, a very funny lady, and she tells a good story too."

"How did it happen?"

"Well, the woman who was in labor had a bit of _____, you know, so her eyes bugged out a little bit, like Barbara Bush."

"Her eyes bug out? I never noticed, but then again I can't look at her face directly."

"The patient was getting oxygen. The mask was over her face and it pulled down on her eyelid, and her eye popped out."

"That's foul."

"That's what I thought. So the nurse called the opthamologist on call, and he said it happens a lot. You just pop it back in. You can put some anesthetic drops on it first if it hurts."

"That's still so foul."

"They said that the woman caught it."

"Stop."

HJ (going to wear goggles from now on)

It’s official. I’m almost as musically talented as a zebra finch is on the guitar.

Published
by
Bing
on March 17, 2010
.
This is a pretty cool little bit of modern art, I have to say.


All that's missing is a bunch of Robert Palmer girls bopping mindlessly to the beat. Maybe a bunch of woodpeckers head-banging.

Also, the fucking finches have a better guitar than I do.

HJ (via David Dobbs at Neuron Culture.)

Maybe if I pee on the VLA radio telescope, Jodie Foster will love me!

Published
by
Bing
on March 17, 2010
.
I just watched the movie Contact for the first time since I saw it in the theater, and, wow, what a turd-burger. I'm sorry, but I'm giving a lecture tomorrow (well, tomorrow by the time you read this) about the novel, but there is nobody in that movie who is not bad. I understand the changes that a fan must suffer through in order to see their favorite books translated to the screen. I went through 12 stages of grief when they put Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide on the big screen and they put Arthur and Trillian in a relationship. But this Palmer Joss and Ellie Arroway made me barf a little. Oh, and all of the acting was nightmarish. Nobody looked good.

But, I did have a moment of nostalgia during the movie. They seem to have filmed at the Very Large Array radio telescope in Socorro, NM. I once peed on that telescope. True story. Well, not on the telescope itself, but one of the things about having a line of radio telescope dishes is that you increase the wavelength that the telescope can detect. (I don't know if they ever went through with the plan to coordinate radio telescopes globally so that we had an earth-sized dish, but you get the idea.) So, if you want to imagine that the dish of the telescope is really whatever is along the diameter of the array of scopes, my peeing on the ground put me well inside that dish.



But I really had to go.

Oh, apparently the Very Long Baseline Array is a real thing. I've peed on that one many times too.


Hey, don't you judge me. I drove a long way to see the VLA, and they put it in the middle of this huge basin with mountains all the way around and not a place to piss for miles. Also, I have a bladder the size of a peanut, as anyone who was at the Atlanta Skeptics Meetup last week can testify to.

At any rate, I must cut this short. I have class in the morning and need to get my 5 hours of sleep. Also, I have to pee.

HJ

Bing sees his opportunity…

Published
by
Bing
on March 15, 2010
.
Oh, yeah...

HJ

Peter Graves Dead. Is Peter Graves Alive?

Published
by
Bing
on March 15, 2010
.
Clearly, it's the beginning of the end of Peter Graves.

Peter Graves Conquered the World:



HJ

This week in conspiracy…

Published
by
Bing
on March 15, 2010
.
Conspiracy abounds this week. Actually, there is a lot of abounding when it comes to conspiracy theories. It's almost as if we can't unabound when it comes to conspiracy theories. Indeed, I seem bound to abound with conspiracy and it's bound to put me in a bind.

I could totally tongue kiss Barbara Walters for putting the hurt on Jesse Ventura, novelty governor:

Useless media whore Uri Geller is saying the Michael Jackson may be alive. I, of course, actually scooped Geller on this, proving without a doubt that I am more psychic than Uri Geller.

Dick Armey, sponsor of numerous right-wing think tanks (I would say a load-bearing strut of the Tea Party Platform), gets huffy about his folks' inane central bank conspiracies, etc.

Glenn Beck picked up a hilarious new sponsor, which leads me to believe that market research indicates that Beck's audience is batshit.
Oh, and Obama's going to ban fishing, dickhead Beck says. Oh, and he got temporarily out-crazied by a lefty conspiratorial fondler of other men's bottoms.

Wow, Jesse Ventura has been aggressively making himself look like an ass this week, on both The View and on Larry King Live.

You can't unstupid someone, Georgia professor finds.

ThinkProgress has a montage of the weird speculation surrounding textbook revisions in Texas on Fox.

Did we talk about the new conspiracy that the CIA made French people the way they are, you know, high on LSD?

The Belfast Telegraph has clearly been bombed once too often. They are discussing the merits of moon hoax conspiracies.


HJ

UPDATE! It seems that they have lost James Brown's body. This is, if he was ever really dead.

Oh yeah! Phil Plait reported that McCarthyism is getting rehabilitated in the new Texas Social Studies standards. And he followed his original post up, I see.

It’s 7:48 already?!?

Published
by
Bing
on March 15, 2010
.
I mean, c'mon! I just woke up! (Atlanta Skeptics in the Pub went a little long, heheh.)

I finished grading for tonight, and I am contemplating my next move in the war against my ever-dirtying collection of clothes. I'm thinking of washing them.

Wash time is a very special time for der Bingle, because it is one time where I am in a sort of self-imposed exile with nothing to do but a little bit of work. I usually bring a paper or something that I am working on to pass the time. Tonight, however, I think that I am going to bring along a book and prepare my class for tomorrow. Or maybe not. I don't know. I might just take a walk around the neighborhood and catch up on some of my podcasts. That would be relaxing. I have a lot of stuff to do in the next couple of days. And I was just given an extra bonus project, giving a 3rd paper (actually a poster presentation) in as many weeks. This means that things just got a little more hectic, and I did not think that was possible.

Anyway, over the next few days, I am going to be disappearing down a hole that I dug for myself. Wow, there is so much to write.

HJ

Hey, Bill Donohue, why so quiet?

Published
by
Bing
on March 14, 2010
.
Professional bigoted victim Bill Donohue of the Catholic League is strangely quiet in the Pope's complicity in protecting child-fucking priests. What's wrong, Bill? Have you finally seen the light? Finally realize that your misguided crusade was completely bonkers and that your pontiff deserves a prison cell instead of a house-that-is-a-city?

Probably not.

I like the big conspiracy story that the Vatican is spinning. Dude, it's wrong. They are corrupt. Infallibility, inshnallibility.

Who does the Pope confess to?

HJ

Texas, something is wrong with you…

Published
by
Bing
on March 13, 2010
.
I'm not even going to talk about the ransacking of history by idiots hell-bent on making the Texas Education system a laughing stock.


HJ

It came from the deep…of my ass!

Published
by
Bing
on March 13, 2010
.
Roger Corman is still at it. I had no idea. I would have figured that some cinema student would have gunned him down by now. It's called "Dinoshark." Dinoshark. Dinoshark. Nope, can't make it sound respectable to myself.



Ouch. That's what happens when you give Corman a budget. He wastes it.

Honestly, however, I like Corman movies for their goofiness. I never got past that ironic smartass phase that teens go through, so I can watch something completely crappy and eek immense pleasure out of knowing I could do it 10 times better without trying. (Isn't it nice when you don't have to put up?)

For all the agony he has inflicted without consequence, he has been instrumental in the careers of a number of big names. Also, where would MST3K have been without Corman to kick around? I am actually sort of pleased that he got an honorary Academy Award last year "for his rich engendering of films and filmmakers." No matter how you slice it, the man is a presence.

HJ

Ruminations on Brannon Howse’s Career Choices

Published
by
Bing
on March 12, 2010
.
I'm back from a walk. I wore a fleece jacket, which was a bad idea. My wardrobe is clinging to me, and my jacket will be soggy at the wrists tomorrow morning. Tonight, as for the last several days, I have been ruminating over the debacle at the First Baptist Church of Snellville, the Worldview Weekend Hate-a-thon. What did I see and what did it mean?

I learned something about Howse that night that I did not know, I mean, besides the fact that he is a tiny person. When he started out his professional career, he was an office cleaner. He owned his own office cleaning business. He and his wife (who either has had some work done or needs some, maybe both) would clean offices at night. And when I heard this, a lot of things clicked into place all at once. This explained a lot to me, because he writes history much like a janitor.

I don't mean to disrespect any janitors out there. Just two of them. Indeed, it explained something to me that I heard many, many moons ago, a moment when Howse almost connected with a paranoid schizophrenic who called in to his show:


Of course, Howse did not actually take this guy seriously, just prattled on about a transparently unrelated topic. But there was that moment where, for a second, "YES, SIR!" came out a little too strong. I think in that moment, well, he thought he saw a brother. A crazy brother that the family keeps away from the dog, but then again, I wouldn't ask Howse to dog-sit either.

I am working on my magnificent octopus, my podcast about the Worldview Weekend Code Blue Panic-fest. I am waiting to hear from the church that sponsored Howse to see if they are on board with his message. I have sent two emails, but they have not returned either message. This is fine and unfortunate. I am going to have to comment on that, and I have loads of commentary. But be patient, little one.

In the meantime, here are some chimps to creep the shit out of you:

HJ

New HBO WWII miniseries!

Published
by
Bing
on March 12, 2010
.
I should never be taken by surprise by something like this. And it looks like they are using Eugene Sledge's With the Old Breed as a source! Fantastic! One of the best things to come out of the war. Seriously, you need to read it. There will be a quiz.

Here's my prediction. You are going to see a much more brutal, unthinkable war in this companion piece to Band of Brothers (Spielberg and Hanks are involved with this one too). Band of Brothers was the best version of the European war so far--by far the most accurate in terms of sets/equipment/etc. I'm sure they are going to bring the same attention to detail to this one, but the Pacific War was in every sense savagery without retreat or mercy. This is going to be a hard one to watch.

I am trying to get a hold of my mentor back in St. Louis. I don't know if he has heard of this yet! Woohoo! I am totally fired up!

HJ

Disappointment…

Published
by
Bing
on March 11, 2010
.
Man, I tried. We left an hour and a half early and we hit the mother of all traffic snarls. There was no way that we were getting there on time.

I hate every single driver in Atlanta individually and collectively. Every single one you is brain damaged. I counted the number of lanes, and there were plenty. We never once came across a single obstruction in the road, which means that all lanes were clear the whole time and that all cars could have moved forward, but for some reason, perhaps a local tradition, everyone decided that they would rather park in front of me. I saw no evidence that anyone had anywhere that they had to be. So pull the fuck over.

As I sat there in traffic, watching my chance to meet Ken Ham evaporate, I noticed how my moving into a different, faster moving lane was the kiss of death for any prospect of forward motion. Now, I know that this is impossible, so I set about figuring how this damned phenomenon occurs, and I came up with a plausible explanation. Bear with me. Imagine that, on average, all three lanes are moving at the same average speed, what with all the starting and stopping. So it averages out. Would you not expect that 2/3 of the time that at least one lane would be moving faster than you? And if you take into account confirmation bias--really only noticing when cars are passing you and not when you are passing other cars, well, you get the "Why is my lane always the slowest effect," or the "McGhandi Effect," which is now its official title.

HJ