ogged dropped me a line this morning pointing me to a discussion taking place over at Crooked Timber this morning about the potential conflicts between class blog projects and the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA).  Eszter, who originated the discussion, suggests that the provisions of this act might be used to say that class blogs cannot be public, because FERPA prohibits educational institutions from releasing student information, possibly including information about what courses students are enrolled in (and, by implication, the presence of a student posting on a course blog reveals their* enrollment status).

Ezster goes on to argue that, should course blogs be forced to retreat from the public sphere, most of what is good about them would be lost.  Indeed, one of my key goals over at The Literary Machine this semester is asking my students to see what happens when they write in an environment that is not simply machine-mediated, but public.  One possible solution, suggested in the comments, is allowing students to post under pseudonyms (but requiring that they distribute those pseudonyms to other members of the class).

None of these issues occurred to me as I started up the blog—just as none of them occurred to me when I had students participate in any number of other web-based projects in the past.  Are there other such ethical concerns that we ought to be thinking through about the relationship between blogging and the classroom?

*Via Languagehat, a defense of the singular “they.”

As you know, I have a new iPod.  (No, this is not another gloating entry.)

I have also had for a while now an eMusic account.

I have no facility, however, for keeping up with the music the kids are listening to these days, particularly that indie scene that seems to exist just beneath my radar.  (Which might, of course, be intentional, as I’m well into the realm of those Hoffman said not to trust.)

Anyhow, here’s what I’m seeking:  suggestions of bands I might like.  The genies at eMusic keep recommending the same stuff to me over and over again, and I want something new.  Here’s a quick list of a few things I’ve snagged that I’ve really liked:

Cat Power, You Are Free
The Decemberists, Castaways and Cutouts
Apples in Stereo, Fun Trick Noisemaker
Belle and Sebastian, If You’re Feeling Sinister

I’ve also gotten turned on to The Notwist, Neutral Milk Hotel, and Sarge.  So who else should I be listening to?

Via the New York Times comes news of the death of Edward Said, who had been fighting leukemia for several years.

The obituary interestingly reflects our current cultural obsessions, I think; “Leading Advocate of Palestinians” makes the headline, while Orientalism doesn’t appear until paragraph 21.

His loss will be felt deeply, both within the academy and in the political realm.

I have just discovered something that has completely freaked me out.  Ordinarily, I am pretty unfazed by the whole passage-of-time, getting-older, good-lord, what-happened-to-my-early-thirties thing.

However, I’ve just discovered through a random blog-connection that a former student of mine—a student who wrote what was without question the best essay I ever got from a freshman-writing sequence student back at that Private University in the Public Service—is now an Assistant Professor.

I’m still trying to do the math on this one.  The good news, I guess, is that he managed to go from B.A. to Ph.D. in four (count ‘em:  four) years.  But this discovery nonetheless reminds me that, if all goes really well over the next couple of months, I’m going to wake up one day in December to discover that I’m no longer a junior faculty member.

The sound you hear is me hyperventilating.

(Thanks to Languagehat for the lead.  Really.  I mean it.)

An update to last week’s petard-hoisting news:  the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals reversed itself yesterday, ruling that the gubernatorial recall election should go forward as scheduled on October 7.

Perhaps more strikingly, though, Representative Darrell Issa, the mastermind behind this political debacle, likewise reversed himself yesterday, saying to his supporters, “When you vote, if there are still two major Republicans on the ballot, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Tom McClintock, then I advise you to vote no on the recall.” His reasoning is, of course, that if Schwarzenegger and McClintock split the Republican vote, the election will go to Lieutenant Governor Cruz Bustamante—and Gray Davis will certainly make a better whipping-boy, come the 2004 election season.

I finally got my hands on my new iPod this morning, after a series of nail-biting delays.  I’d paid for the two-day express shipping when I ordered it, and it shipped on September 12, so I’d expected to have it by the middle of last week, and certainly in time to have slick music portability for this past weekend’s trip to Louisiana.

What I did not take into consideration was, first, that the iPod was shipping from China.  That Airborne’s recent merger with DHL had resulted in, not more efficient overseas shipping service, but total discombobulation.  That DHL/Airborne would ship the iPod from China, through the Port of Los Angeles, to their distribution center in Fresno, to the local branch in Ontario, and then on to me.  And, finally that, upon encountering an shipping address that appeared to be unavailable due to construction, one with clearly posted signs redirecting deliveries, rather than actually redirecting the delivery, or even calling to ask what’s what, Airborne would opt instead to return the package as undeliverable.

In a fit of what I can only describe as “pique,” I sent a very terse e-mail message to the Apple Store’s customer service folks, telling them how displeased I was with the situation, after which I got on the phone with Airborne and attempted to have the package redelivered.  Half an hour after sending the e-mail message, I had a response from Apple, telling me not only that they would refund the amount of the two-day shipping charges (which refund appeared on my credit card the same day) but that they had contacted Airborne and gotten a commitment that the iPod would arrive the next day.

Which it did—two hours after I flew out of town.  Apple, 1; Airborne, 0.

I’m forced to admit, however, that it was worth waiting for.  The packaging itself is worth seeing—to the extent that I really wish I had a digital camera so I could post some pictures of this box, or at least better pictures than the images I found of the 30GB version’s packaging.  The basic package is a cube, the outer vertical edges of which are wrapped in a thin cardboard sleeve.  Slide off the sleeve, and the cube splits in half; fold the top half over to the left so that it sits beside the bottom half, and each of the interior faces opens to reveal the neatly packed iPod, dock, and other accessories.

Once unpacked, I plugged one end of the FireWire cable into the dock and the other into my Powerbook, and then put the iPod in the dock.  iTunes started automatically and brought up a dialogue box in which I was asked to name the iPod, and after clicking OK, the program automatically transferred my music library.  No hassles; no settings; just did it.

It took just a minute or so to figure out how to use the iPod as a FireWire disk and how to sync my contacts and calendar to it.  It’s certainly no replacement for a PDA (happily, I have another toy for that purpose), but it’s nice to have the extra backup.

Enough gloating.  Suffice it to say I’m happy.

This was for many semesters the end of my week; I had in front of me a blissful four-day stretch until the next occasion on which I had to walk into a classroom, four days in which I could read, write, and generally fulminate.

Fulminating takes time.  Long, uninterrupted stretches of time.

Instead, I’ve got classes in the morning, then a much-too-quick two days, then classes in the morning again.  I’m not complaining, mind you. 

Okay, I am complaining, but not about the classes themselves—my students this semester (hi, students!) are fantabulous, and their discussions of the material have been (mostly) energetic and (always) thoughtful.  What I’m complaining about is the frequency and the timing thereof.

Rather than finding myself alive with the thought of imminent fulmination, as I have been (or at least as my fuzzy nostalgic memory tells me I have been) for the last several years, I instead find myself exhausted, whiny, in need of many hours sleep, some inspiration, and a good whisky.

Hence, this post:  whine, whine, whine, for I have nothing else of substance to provide.

(Except a program note:  I’m headed to Louisiana for my step-grandmother’s eightieth birthday celebration.  Since my parents have invested in the DSL, I may be able to post over the weekend, but if not, know that I’m there, enjoying a beer on the river, while listening to my beloved Tigers [sadly, still in double digits, according to the coaches’ poll (don’t even get me started on those yo-yos at the AP)] teach the Bulldogs a thing or two about how it’s done.)

Some of you may have noticed the new link that appeared a couple of days ago, unannounced, under “Other Obsolescence.” I’m happy to make the announcement, if belatedly, that my class blog is up and running, having overcome the technical obstacles that were preventing its debut.  The blog is group-authored, and my students have been instructed that they should make at least one front-page post each week, and should comment on at least two of their peers’ posts as well.

The course they’re enrolled in, entitled, appropriately enough, The Literary Machine, has as its focus the different representations of and experimentations in the interface between computers and writers.  We’re thus studying some cybernetic (print) fiction, a good bit of new media theory, and electronic texts of hypertextual and other varieties.  But it was important to me that my students experience this negotiation of the computerized writing environment directly—that they not merely study the relationship through its representations, but also through its enactment.

All this by way of saying that they’ve been told to consider the ways that their writing changes when—among other kinds of shift—they are suddenly writing for an audience that is much larger than, well, me.

I hope that you’ll stop by, see what they have to say, and contribute to the discussion.

From the good people who brought you Badgers Badgers Badgers Badgers MUSHROOM MUSHROOM, comes the inexplicably-titled Scampi.

Warning:  make sure your volume’s not too high.

More Important Warning:  the new tune may never leave your brainspace, once admitted.

The big news around these parts today is the potential delay in the Election of the Century (TM), resulting from a ruling released today by the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals.  The judges argue that the October 7 election date does not provide enough time for a number of counties (counties with a high percentage of minority voters) to move from error-prone punch-card ballots to high-tech voting machines, ordering that the election be delayed until such machines are in place.

But that’s not the good news.  The good news is that the rationale used by the judges in their finding stems in part from the Supreme Court’s ruling in the 2000 Bush v. Gore case.  As Richard L. Hasen of the Loyola Law School in L.A. argues, “The holding of Bush v. Gore is that you cannot in an arbitrary manner value one person’s vote above another’s.  This is an easy case under that rule.”

Of course, the Ninth Circuit’s decision is being appealed.  But there’s a further downside to all this, one which all right-thinking Californians must weigh with great seriousness:  this ruling sets the stage for another six months of campaigning.