tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35713092024-03-07T00:39:13.143-05:00Wormtalk and SlugspeakMy life among the invertebratesMichaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07566889846240013567noreply@blogger.comBlogger481125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3571309.post-57129171921452031852020-01-26T16:19:00.003-05:002020-01-26T16:21:23.488-05:00Eulogy for my father, David I. Drout, MD<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<br />
The eulogy I gave for my father on Saturday.<br />
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David I. Drout, MD<br />
1946-2020<o:p></o:p></div>
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When my daughter Rhys was about six years old, we took her
to a faculty party at Wheaton. She was talking to one of my colleagues and told
him how excited she was that her grandfather was coming to visit. “He’s a
doctor,” she said. My colleague, trying to be nice, said “Well, both of your
parents are doctors, also.” Rhys gave him this withering look, sighed, and said
“No, my grandpop is the kind of doctor who can <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">do</i> something for you.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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I can’t say she’s wrong. Indeed, because I’m not in
medicine, if my students call me “Doctor” I say: “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Doctor</i> Drout is my father, dude.” (Those of you with kids will get
the reference).<o:p></o:p></div>
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I’m just a teacher, not a doctor. My dad was both. And since
almost everyone here already knows what a great doctor he was, I am going to
talk about what a great teacher and father he was.<o:p></o:p></div>
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You know someone is a great teacher when they teach things
that other people say can’t be taught. Among the many things Dad taught us was
the supposedly impossible skill of creativity. There was never some kind of
formal lesson, but he taught us all the same: by letting us be creative, by
almost never shooting down even the craziest ideas, but instead supporting us
in developing them, believing that if anyone could pull it off, it would be us,
and showing us how much fun there was in trying. And even if you failed—and
boy, did we fail—he at least got a good story out of it.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Examples: at some point in the 1970s, I read an article
about ecology and how we needed to compost to save the planet, and so I
insisted that we not throw out all the carcasses of the fish we’d caught on our
favorite Belmar party boat—the Captain Bill Van—but instead put the fish in the
compost pile I’d made in my grandmother’s back yard. Well, it wasn’t the most
well-constructed compost pile, and it was the middle of July and about 100
degrees out, and there were a lot of cats in the neighborhood—or at least it
sounded that way when in the middle of the night they decided to fight over the
fish heads, which started to really smell bad after the cats had dragged them
all over the yard, and so my dad had to go out at 3:00 in the morning and bury
stinking fish carcasses by flashlight. But he didn’t shoot down my idea and he
helped me come up with better execution of it (without fish heads).<o:p></o:p></div>
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Then there was the time I had read, in one of his books on
big-game fishing, how to rig a squid bait. So I insisted that Dad buy a whole
squid from the bait shop and bring it home with us. I carefully slit it open,
put multiple huge hooks inside, sewed it up with black thread and kept it
overnight in the fridge, so it would stay supple. And the next morning we went
down to the breakwater in Asbury Park to fish. Now, this squid bait was about
ten inches long and probably weighed close to a pound, so I could not really
cast it very far. But I’ll tell you, if a blue marlin had happened to swim
within five feet of the breakwater, that fish would have been mine! Dad didn’t
make fun of me about this until 20 years later.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
When we lived in New York, my father took me to the Museum
of Natural History every Saturday he had off, and he never let on how
exhausting that must have been, back when interns and residents worked every
day, and then every other night as well—I remember how happy I was when he was
“just” working every day and every third night. Luxury! But on Saturday
mornings we’d go all the way from New York Hospital to Central Park West and
head straight to the 4th floor of the Museum so we could start with the
dinosaurs. Then we’d explore. We did this so many times that I still know the
entire museum by heart.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
When I wanted to build a darkroom in a two-bedroom
apartment, we did. When it seemed like a good idea to try to cryogenically
freeze and revive beetles in Dad’s refrigerator, we did that. When my brother
and I wanted to set plastic models on fire—indoors—in order to make a realistic
diorama of the Iranian Rescue Mission crash, he helped us (and made sure we
didn’t burn the house down). When we wanted to make candles, we made many, many
candles of many colors and scents. For some reason, Dad always joked about the
color Chartreuse, which, in retrospect, was not an attractive color for
candles.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
One day I showed up with twenty-two frozen mackerel in a
hefty bag. I’d caught the fish the day before and didn’t know how to clean
them, so I froze them and brought them to Dad, who drove us over to my
grandparents’ house so we could try to clean them (we were not successful, and
he had to dispose of 22 frozen mackerel). Another time he came home from Sunday
dinner with Grandmom and Grandpop to find me, back early from a Boy Scout
fishing trip, sitting at the front door with a bag full of albacore and bonito
I'd caught (I’m just noticing how many of these stories involve dead fish...).
So we drove back to Neptune and cleaned them under the streetlight.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The only time my Dad balked at a crazy plan was after I
talked him into signing me up for the Cornell Ornithology correspondence
course, and chapter one said I should get a dead pigeon and keep it in the
refrigerator to study avian anatomy. (However, when I showed up with a live
pigeon that I’d caught at the beach, he let me keep it—though I don’t think he
was terribly upset when Menelaus the pigeon flew away and stopped crapping all
over the apartment).<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
You get the point. My Dad developed creativity in me and my
brother by not shutting things down too soon, by letting us explore and make
mistakes without fear, and by laughing rather than getting angry when things
went wrong.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
When the baboons at Great Adventure ripped the all the rubber
molding off of his Honda Civic and pooped on the front window, or when we tried
to pull a bush out of the front yard with the Pathfinder but really only
succeeded in putting tire tracks across the lawn, or when he and Jonathan had
the adventure of a lifetime trying to get a stuffed sailfish through customs
and then out of a giant wooden crate... (Jonathan can tell you that story), Dad
didn't get angry. He laughed.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Making a career about writing about <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Lord of the Rings</i> was a crazy idea, but my dad said “Who in the
world knows more about that than you?” And he was right, and that’s how the
books that he read to me again and again—so that I still only hear them in his
voice—turned into a part of my career.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Learning to skate when I was a senior in college and then
trying to walk on to the hockey team at Stanford was a crazy idea. But Dad got
me started in hockey by taking me to Devils’ games, bought me my first hockey
equipment, and didn’t tell me I’d probably embarrass myself trying to play
varsity college hockey with no previous experience. And you know what happened:
I ended up on the intramural team, where I met Raquel. So the best thing that
ever happened to me started as a crazy idea that Dad facilitated.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Dad’s sense of humor helped him teach more serious lessons
as well. One night in the summer after my freshman year at college, I had a
long, drawn-out phone argument with an ex-girlfriend, during which I took,
perhaps, one or two drinks of rum from a bottle that I shouldn’t have been
touching. Dad didn’t say anything about it—though I must have been pretty
loud—but he did wake me up at 7:00 in the morning the next day to help him dig
post-holes in the back yard. It was the middle of August, the humidity was 100%
and the temperature was around 90, and I dug post-holes for about three hours.
I was as quiet as I could be each time I threw up into the stream, and he
pretended not to notice and never said a word about drinking or taking stuff
that didn’t belong to me or being loud and obnoxious when he and Roberta were
trying to sleep. I learned.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Dad also showed me how to be a good father by putting his
sons in front of even long-cherished dreams. Ernest Hemingway’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Islands in the Stream</i> was one of my
dad’s favorite books, and catching a big game fish like a sailfish or a marlin
or the broadbill swordfish was one of my dad’s lifetime goals, what we’d now
call a “bucket list” item. But when he finally had a chance to catch a
billfish, when he took us fishing in Mexico, he let me sit in the fighting
chair first and have a shot at a big fish, which I lost, and then he let
Jonathan sit in the chair and catch a small mahi-mahi. Only after he’d given
both of us our chances, and the fishing day was nearly over, did he take his
turn in the chair. I’ll never forget the look of happiness on his face when he
caught his sailfish, and I’ll never forget that he was willing to sacrifice
that joy for his sons.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There is no precise moment I can point to in which I learned
the single most important lesson my Dad taught me, because he taught it by
example every single day. That lesson was: “the individual patient is God.” He
believed that the person sitting right in front of him, the person who had come
to him for help, deserved—and from him, always received—all of his attention,
all of his effort, all of his skill, and his knowledge and his art. No matter
if Dad was tired or hungry or worried or not feeling well, he treated that
patient in front of him as if God Himself was sitting there. And that’s how he
treated us, also: when my father was talking to us, teaching us, loving us,
nothing was more important than the person in front of him. And if I have had
any success as a professor, as a teacher, and as a father, it is because I try
to emulate him and perhaps occasionally succeed in doing so.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I’ll end with this: one of my most treasured memories is of
playing catch with my dad in the backyard at his house in Tinton Falls. The sun
is going down, it’s getting cooler, and the ball is harder to see, but neither
of us wants the game to end. Every time you throw the ball, it comes back, just
right, just perfect; it smacks right into the glove, right into the pocket, and
you throw the ball again, and it smacks into the glove, and it comes back, and
you catch it perfectly, and you throw it and it comes back and the sun sinks
further and the sky gets darker and your father, who loves you, keeps catching
the ball and throwing it back and you understand, you truly understand, the
promise of eternal life in the arms of the Father.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<!--EndFragment--><br />Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07566889846240013567noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3571309.post-61620453281563042742015-05-27T20:46:00.000-04:002015-05-27T20:46:30.963-04:00Summer 2015 Lexomics Research Team<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgch5YsGy1ZvcAMrpMvAUcregIAS3ruSWR6oecmE_TgZ8y0UtO-htMHSc5OYl6DGxbflZBKb5UlRY9kvlZ7wBzoBcOhn9XfLClgGRM9ZwUhKxxfTG9RyovBJV8BbM6i2JGyNvK5aw/s1600/LexomicsTeam2015.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgch5YsGy1ZvcAMrpMvAUcregIAS3ruSWR6oecmE_TgZ8y0UtO-htMHSc5OYl6DGxbflZBKb5UlRY9kvlZ7wBzoBcOhn9XfLClgGRM9ZwUhKxxfTG9RyovBJV8BbM6i2JGyNvK5aw/s320/LexomicsTeam2015.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07566889846240013567noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3571309.post-86597946649181155842015-03-31T13:09:00.001-04:002015-03-31T15:13:38.378-04:00Anglo-Saxon MedicineBy now you may have heard about the team from Nottingham that tested an Anglo-Saxon remedy for an eye-stye and found that it killed methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus<i> aureus </i>bacteria<i>. </i>There's an article in New Scientist about the research <a href="http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn27263-anglo-saxon-remedy-kills-hospital-superbug-mrsa.html">here</a> .<br />
<br />
Some readers may remember that ten years ago our Anglo-Saxon Medicine research group at Wheaton tested the same remedy. The article is on Google Books at <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=FRHUkn6pGIYC&pg=PA183&lpg=PA183&dq=brennessel+drout+and+gravel+anglo-saxon&source=bl&ots=iMQ0BAlMKk&sig=Rkp43Lf6hPRvASDwmUicM-ysD6g&hl=en&sa=X&ei=mM8aVbXGEouzggTTrIKYDA&ved=0CCUQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=brennessel%20drout%20and%20gravel%20anglo-saxon&f=false">this URL</a>. Full cite is: Barbara Brennessel, Michael D.C. Drout and Robyn Gravel. “A Re-Assessment of the Efficacy of Anglo-Saxon Medicine,” <i>Anglo-Saxon England</i> 34 (2005): 183-95.<br />
<br />
We, however, found that the compounded recipe did not kill bacteria. Although the ingredients (garlic, leeks, ox gall, wine and leached copper) were efficacious on their own, when we let them sit in the copper vessel for nine days, as the recipe says, they turned into a loathsome slime that did not inhibit bacterial growth. We used the Kirby-Bauer method of growing "bacterial lawns" of Staphyloccus <i>aureus</i> in petri dishes and then placing filter-paper disks impregnated with the remedy to see if they produced a zone of inhibition greater than 10 mm. They did not.<br />
<br />
So why are our results at such variance with that of the Nottingham team?<br />
<br />
One major possibility is that they tested the efficacy of the remedy <i>in vivo</i> on strips of infected mouse skin, while all of our testing was <i>in vitro</i>.<br />
<br />
(For the first and probably the last time in my life, I am wishing that there had been some infected mouse skin lying around the lab).<br />
<br />
It also may be that some small variable turned out to be important. Perhaps we had microbial contamination of the remedy where they did not (or vice versa). I'm very excited to read their paper.<br />
<br />
And to the question that a few people have asked: if I'm upset that this group got the glory of finding something that is about as effective as Vancomycin on MRSA. I can honestly say "no", that rather, I'm excited to see follow up and improvement in human knowledge (though, honestly, that's probably because the team was led by a good friend of mine, Christina Lee -- if it had been someone I don't like....)<br />
<br />
More importantly, this research demonstrates quite forcefully one of the major points of the 2005 paper: that there's an enormous amount of tacit information that is absolutely essential to the cultural practice but is not found in any recipe book. The things that go without saying, because any intelligent Anglo-Saxon <i>læce</i> would have known them, are those most likely to be lost over the centuries. It's very exciting when we can use scientific methods--or any approaches, really--to recover that lost knowledge.<br />
<br />
<br />Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07566889846240013567noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3571309.post-63946334499993965352015-01-21T19:04:00.003-05:002015-01-21T19:04:43.728-05:00Stare at it long enough, and you can see through a brick wallThe data has been staring me in the face for a year or more and it just didn't sink in until today:<br />
<br />
The rolling window analysis of <i>thorn</i> and <i>eth</i> shows that lines 1924-2138 of the Anglo-Saxon poem <i>Genesis A</i> had a <b>written, Old English</b> source.<br />
<br />
It has long been known that at least lines 1982-2005 and perhaps 2039-2095 are not drawn from the Latin Bible like the rest of <i>Genesis A</i>. But I hadn't realized the implications of my own data: that only a written source in Old English could account for the anomaly in the<i> thorn/eth</i> ratio at that part of the poem.<br />
<br />
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<br />Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07566889846240013567noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3571309.post-31052956876811404332014-12-18T22:36:00.000-05:002014-12-18T22:36:06.452-05:00The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five ArmiesMany variants of the story Sigurd the Völsung survive from the Middle Ages, and all of them are not quite right. Taking the texts and references all together, you can piece together the general idea of the story, but it seems as if none of the poets were really familiar with what they were writing about. They knew the characters' names and that there was something going on with Sinfjotli and poison, and that the two queens had a dispute that led to death and destruction, and that the hero killed a dragon and took its treasure, but they weren't entirely clear on how all the pieces should fit together. <div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Peter Jackson's Hobbit films give the same impression. It's as if he and screenwriter Philippa Boyens had heard an oral traditional version of the story of Bilbo Baggins, which they supplemented with information from some partially burned leaves of the text in a museum and a few chapters of a very old Chinese translation, but had never actually read <i>The Hobbit </i>for themselves. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
And maybe that's the best way to think about <i>The Battle of the Five Armies</i>, not as an adaptation of Tolkien's book, but as a reconstruction of someone's recollection of a lost text for which no original exists. Because that if this were the case, the immense flaws in the film, flaws which are not present in Tolkien's text, would at least be understandable. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Now, before I become too much of a curmudgeon, let me say that I don't object in principle to converting a somewhat light-hearted story into a full-on epic more in the tone of <i>The Lord of the Rings</i> than <i>The Hobbit</i> as it is written. Tolkien himself thought to revise<i> The Hobbit</i> in the style of the later book, and the "Quest of Erebor" shows that he had thought about the geopolitical implications (in Middle-earth) of the dragon, the mountain, the exiled dwarves and the ruined town of Dale. Adding the War of the Dwarves and Orcs and the assault of the White Council upon Dol Guldur was a good idea, as these events provide context. Nor do I have a problem with side stories, the development of additional characters or the conversion of formal speeches into more colloquial character interaction. Every one of these changes could have been incorporated into an effective film that extended beyond the journey of Thorin and Company to the Lonely Mountain. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
And I'll also excuse Jackson for being trapped on the Hollywood escalator. George Lucas faced the same problem of needing to make each film's action sequences be bigger, faster, brighter and louder than the previous film's. Even though the Battle of the Five Armies was never intended to be larger than the Battle of the Pelennor Fields, Jackson had to continue to escalate, and so we we get even more elaborate set-pieces, choreography and cgi. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Nevertheless, it was frustrating to watch these films because they could have been better. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Some of the failures in the Hobbit film are the same as those in Jackson's <i>The Lord of the Rings </i>and spring from the same root problem: Middle-earth is much too small, physically, temporally and demographically. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Physically, Middle-earth seems to be not a continent, but a theme park, the size of Disney World, or maybe, if we're generous, Rhode Island. Legolas and Tauriel make a (completely useless) journey to Mt Gundabad, about 300 miles from Erebor, in what seems like, maybe, a half hour of traveling. They return even more quickly to warn everyone of the army that is 10 minutes behind them. Dain arrives on his Armored War Pig (which is awesome) seemingly less than an hour after Thorin sends a raven message. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Time-wise, everything from the death of Smaug to the final battle is compressed into 2 or maybe 3 days. Since there are many cinematic methods for passing rapidly through days, weeks or months, I don't understand the rush. Armies on the march can be terrifying. They don't have to be running faster than Usain Bolt the whole way. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
And everybody knows everyone else -- even people who aren't on screen. My favorite example was that Thranduil knows that Arathorn's son Aragorn is likely to be an important leader some day (at first I thought it was just a lucky guess by the Elvenking, but then I realized that Thranduil probably just had copies of the books). Having the characters already know each other and thus be able to give a quick disquisition on background does speed up the pace--so that there was more time for slow-motion shots of flying rocks, I guess--but it also serves to make Middle-earth seem to have about the same size population as a large high school. You might not know everybody, but all the cool kids know each other. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
However, these flaws were baked into the original cake of the films, and some, at least, are probably the result of Hollywood playing to the lowest common denominator of audience--people who are watching distractedly and do not want to figure anything out. That's unfortunate but explainable. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
But what was incomprehensible to me were the times that a perfectly good scene in the book was replaced by a really dreadful one in the script. For example, the immensely touching and powerful scene at the end of <i>The Hobbit</i> where the Elvenking lays Thorin's sword on his tomb and Bard places the Arkenstone on his breast, saying "there let it lie til the mountain falls" is replaced by an awkward exchange between Thranduil and Legolas that accomplishes nothing more than the Aragorn name-drop. Thorin's dragon-sickness isn't just overpowering greed, but outright insanity, and so the sadness of his fury at Bilbo is lost in an unconvincing scene in which he orders the other dwarves to throw the hobbit over the wall. The audience never for a moment believes that this will actually happen, so there's no drama the way there would be if the scene in the book had been followed. There are many more examples: having Thorin die on some frozen waterfall away from the main battle undercuts the emotional power of the scene (which is acted extremely well by both Martin Freeman and Richard Armitage). No one will ever care about Lake Town politics and so all of the screen time spent developing it, putting <strike>Inigo Montoya</strike> Bard in prison, etc. is wasted: Tolkien's version, where no one believes Bard until it is too late is quite enough drama when you also have a fire-breathing dragon. The confusing geopolitics of the kingdom of Angmar, Mt. Gundobad, Sauron's plans, etc., are much worse when made up in unconvincing fashion than if Tolkien's points had simply been followed. The side plot of the multiple threats to Bard's children wasted screen time that could have been spend on the main characters or simply used to shorten the film. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The nicest thing I can say about the script is that it demonstrates very clearly how remarkably tight, sophisticated and effective Tolkien's original story is. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
But I don't want to end on such a negative note, because there are many good things about the films as well: </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<ul>
<li>The landscape, the architecture, the artifacts and the attention to detail is even more superb than in the original films. </li>
<li>The actors are, for the most part, excellent and in fact their performances save a number of poorly written scenes.</li>
<li>Smaug's attack on Lake Town is far more horrifying than in the book. The suffering of the people in the face of the aerial assault is emotionally powerful. </li>
<li>There aren't a lot of lore Easter Eggs, but those I noticed were nice, especially Gandalf wearing the red ring at the Dol Guldur fight, the use of the term "were-worms" (though they themselves were superfluous), the mention of the Cold Drake in film two...</li>
<li>Although I don't think what we see in the film is what Tolkien envisioned when the White Council expels Sauron from Dol Guldur, I enjoyed Galadriel going all scary. </li>
<li>Armored Battle Pig, War Elk, Military Goats. </li>
<li>And to me the best lore-related element: Thranduil is a Silmarillion elf. Arrogant, contemptuous of mere mortals, emotionally incomprehensible, deeply scarred and flawed: he's not Thingol (Tolkien's very early idea for the identity of the Elvenking), he's Curfin or Celegorm, one of the sons of Feanor in all their power, beauty and total jerkitude. I give Jackson for credit for making an elf different than those we have seen before. </li>
</ul>
</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
It was good to <i>see</i> Middle-earth again. The price paid in terms of story was high, but if that's what it took to rebuild the world and let us have another glimpse, it was probably worth it. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
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Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07566889846240013567noreply@blogger.com20tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3571309.post-81793738099045371522014-07-17T09:51:00.003-04:002014-07-17T09:51:44.467-04:00A major source of problems on campusResolved: That treating college students as children rather than adults is the cause of many significant problems in contemporary higher education.<br />
<br />
Over the past three decades student freedom and autonomy has been steadily eroded, as an administrative superstructure has steadily increased in size and power.<br />
<br />
This reduction of freedom and expansion of administration has been justified in terms of alleviating campus social pathologies, but problems associated with alcohol and drug use, sexual assault, cheating and poor academic performance, student disengagement and dissatisfaction have, at best, remained unchanged.<br />
<br />
The evolution of campuses from self-governing, non-coercive intellectual communities towards regimented "complete and austere institutions" has also been correlated with a massive increase in costs.<br />
<br />
There is no evidence that these increased costs or the increased surveillance and regulation of student life have generated higher intellectual achievement or greater student satisfaction. In fact, the reverse appears to be true.<br />
<br />
Therefore: the experiment of increasing the size and power of the administrative apparatus and reducing the freedom of students to organize and govern themselves has failed to produce its promised results. Current problems will not be solved by making colleges more like high schools, but instead by respecting students as adults with all the freedom and responsibility that should attend that status.Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07566889846240013567noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3571309.post-45910048382615076222014-05-26T19:46:00.001-04:002014-05-27T08:59:30.100-04:00J.R.R. Tolkien's Beowulf TranslationSome quick thoughts (more to come as I think more about the volume):<br />
<br />
The translation itself is not a great piece of art. It is not poetic (although in some places it is rhythmical), and the still-unpublished alliterative translation is much better, quite similar to the "Mounds of Mundburg" poem in <i>The Return of the King</i>. You can get a feel for that translation in the short bits that have been published in <i>Sigurd and Gudrún</i>, "On Translating <i>Beowulf</i>" and <i>Beowulf and the Critics</i>. But there were only about 600 lines of translation made, which is why I originally proposed presenting it synoptically with the prose translation (i.e., poetry on the left leaf, prose on the right, shifting to prose on both where there existed no poetic translation). I can only hope that the poetic translation is scheduled to be published some day, perhaps with all of Tolkien's early poems, the <i>Trumpets of Faerie</i> collection that has been rumored for many years. The prose translation is valuable for two reasons: (1) It lets us figure out more of what Tolkien thought about <i>Beowulf</i>, the subject of his lifelong study; (2) It probably brings us in terms of <i>content </i>closer to what the <i>Beowulf</i> poet intended than any other translation.<br />
<br />
The Commentary materials are straight-up brilliant, a pleasure to read, and a significant contribution to <i>Beowulf</i> criticism. I can't tell if they will shape the field, but they should. Tolkien had incredible insight into the poem because he could combine his philological acumen with his creative abilities. At times I worry that he is inventing something that isn't there (his treatment of the thief entering the dragon's barrow is extremely good, but I'm just not certain it is supported by the fragmentary evidence). But other times he shows that the words in the manuscript, rather than being clumsy or cliched, are in fact precisely perfect to describe a scene.<br />
<br />
To me the best example is Tolkien's interpretation of the scene of Beowulf's swimming contest with Breca. After the swimming match itself, a sea-monster seizes the hero and:<br />
<br />
Me to grunde teah<br />
fah feondscaða, fæste hæfde<br />
grim on grape; hwæþre me gyfeþe wearð,<br />
þæt ic aglæcan orde geræhte,<br />
hildebille; heaþoræs fornam<br />
mihtig meredeor þurh mine hand.<br />
<br />
"Fast the grim thing had me in its grip. Nonetheless it was granted to me to find that fell slayer with the point of warlike sword; the battle's onset destroyed that strong beast of the sea through my hand" (JRRT trans.)<br />
<br />
Most translations (and most teachers) treat "orde" [with the point] as just a metonymic reference for "sword" and move along. Tolkien, on the other hand, gets inside the scene and shows that in fact the language isn't a repetitive, dead metaphor but is instead technically precise. You are not just supposed to read the line as "Beowulf killed the monster with his sword," but instead to imagine Beowulf struggling against the coils of the beast to bring the point around to where he could pierce the creature through with a pressing motion; the resistance of the water would have prevented swinging the sword:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"We are, or at any rate I am, not familiar, as actor or onlooker, with savage infighting with the sword. Nor indeed with swords in their variety. But it does not take a great effort of imagination to get some idea of Beowulf's predicament. He was seized by a sea-beast of great strength, and no doubt held close. It took great strength to resist the grip sufficiently to prevent himself being gored or bitten; he he had only one hand; the other held a naked sword. That is a weapon at least two feet long. Only by a great effort could he retract this so as to level the point at his enemy; there would be little if any striking-distance, and to thrust this through the tough hide would require very great strength of hand and arm" (255). </blockquote>
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Now, it may be that Tolkien is here creating a scene rather than interpreting one, that the poet meant no more than "he killed it with his sword." But if this be invention, let us have more of it. Either the poet's lost artistry is recovered or new artistry is born. Either way, the world is richer.Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07566889846240013567noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3571309.post-22507454295140299182014-03-27T21:19:00.002-04:002014-03-27T21:19:16.366-04:00Tolkien's Beowulf: The Real StoryThe Tolkien Estate recently announced that J.R.R. Tolkien's translation of <i>Beowulf</i> will be released in May. Since there seems to be a little bit of incorrect information floating around the web (thanks in part to some careless work by more than one reporter for British newspapers), I figured I should clarify things.<br />
<br />
First, I have nothing to do with this edition. I did work on Tolkien's <i>Beowulf</i> translation about ten years ago and was putting together an edition along the same lines as the one the Estate has described, but the Estate withdrew permission for that project and I have done no new work on it since then.<br />
<br />
Second, I did not "discover" the <i>Beowulf</i> translation, not even in the sense that I found it in the Bodleian Library. This claim is a conflation of a story about one manuscript with information about a totally different text.<br />
<br />
The real story is not quite as exciting.<br />
<br />
I went to the Bodleian Library in 1996 to finish up my dissertation research, which included work on the evolution of Tolkien's 1936 lecture "<i>Beowulf</i>: The Monsters and the Critics." From the catalogue in Modern Papers I knew that there were notes and drafts of that lecture in MS Tolkien A26. What I did not know was that not only did the box of manuscripts contain marked-up carbon typescripts and proofs of the British Academy lecture, but also two substantial handwritten texts that were Oxford lectures about <i>Beowulf</i> written in the 1930s. These lectures were obviously preparatory to "<i>Beowulf</i>: The Monsters and the Critics" and were quite a bit longer and more elaborate than that text. These were what I "discovered," not Tolkien's translation of <i>Beowulf</i> (which I actually did not examine). <br />
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Obviously a text preserved in a library and mentioned in its catalogue is not a "discovery" in the sense that it was ever "lost," but it was a discovery to me and also, as best I can tell, to Tolkien scholarship and Anglo-Saxon studies, since neither I nor the field knew that such lectures existed. Although Christopher Tolkien obviously knew what they were when he donated the manuscripts in 1986, as far as I know, no mention of the lecture drafts had appeared in any publication in the decade between the donation and the date I read them. So that's was the "discovery" I was talking about. <br />
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The Tolkien Estate very graciously gave me permission to have the texts microfilmed and to quote from them in my 1997 Loyola Chicago Ph.D. dissertation, and after I successfully defended and had started teaching at Wheaton, the Estate gave me permission to produce the edition that became <i>Beowulf and the Critics</i>, which was published in 2003.<br />
<br />
[Note: the release of the edition was absolutely <i>not</i> timed to coincide with the Peter Jackson films, and there was no coordination at all with the Estate. In fact, my publisher had the manuscript for over two years before the edition appeared. I was nagging them to try to get the book released in time for <i>The Fellowship of the Ring </i>(and my tenure case!), but the queue of previously accepted works was so long that <i>Beowulf and the Critics </i>was not released until around the time of <i>The Two Towers</i>, and then they printed only 300 copies, so it sold out in about a week and new copies were not available until after the hype had passed. My total royalties from the edition have been something like $75.00 -- though I haven't received a royalty statement in a few years; I should check. The Tolkien Estate's total royalties have been $0.00. So much for the claim that Christopher Tolkien allowed the edition to be published for financial reasons].<br />
<br />
In 1999 (I think), I had traveled to Oxford to proof my edition of <i>Beowulf and the Critics</i> against the manuscripts. While there, I had a very pleasant meeting with the Solicitor for the Tolkien Estate and expressed my interested in producing an edition of J.R.R.T.'s <i>Beowulf</i> translation and commentaries. The Tolkien Estate arranged to have all the manuscripts microfilmed and sent to me, and I ended up doing a "feasibility study," proposing an edition that combined the partial verse translation, the complete prose translation and the commentaries. The Tolkien Estate approved this project, and I began working on my edition in early 2002.<br />
<br />
Important Note: I did not "discover" Tolkien's <i>Beowulf</i> translation and never made any statement to that effect. The existence of the <i>Beowulf</i> translation was known to Tolkien scholarship long before 1996. Some of it had appeared as early as 1940 in "On Translating <i>Beowulf</i>," and two passages (one verse, one prose) were quoted by Wayne Hammond and Christina Scull in <i>J.R.R. Tolkien: Artist and Illustrator</i>. The translations, MS Tolkien 29, were identified in the Bodleian Library's Modern Papers catalogue, and their existence and possible quality were at least a tangential topic of conversation among Anglo-Saxonists at ISAS 1995 at Stanford. Furthermore, I have never seen or touched the physical manuscript of the <i>Beowulf</i> translation, having done all of my work from the microfilms sent to me by the Estate in 2002.<br />
<br />
In 2003, my college put out a press release about my work on Tolkien in which the publication of <i>Beowulf and the Critics </i>was announced and my continuing work on the <i>Beowulf</i> edition was mentioned.<br />
<br />
On the day after Christmas in 2003 (I think), just after the release of <i>Beowulf and the Critics</i>, a reporter from a British newspaper called me to follow up on the press release. Having had no serious experience dealing with the media, I spoke to him unguardedly and for a long time. I was very excited about the publication of my first book, and I also talked to him about the new project that I had begun. Several days later the story "Tolkien's Last Great Work is Discovered" appeared on page 3 of the paper. The reporter had conflated my story about the <i>Beowulf and the Critics </i>lectures with the <i>Beowulf</i> translation, and then it was off to the races. Because of the hype surrounding <i>The Two Towers</i> film, the story went global, with well over a hundred newspaper articles appearing. Interestingly, exactly <i>zero</i> reporters contacted me about the story in that first rush of stories, as everyone simply lifted the quotes from the original article but wrote as if they had interviewed me themselves (important lesson about journalism).<br />
<br />
By New Year's Eve things had gotten out of hand, and I faxed the Tolkien Estate asking for guidance. They were not happy, especially because they thought I had given a copy of the unpublished translation to the reporter. I was confused by and angry at being accused of leaking the translation, and it was only after quite a bit of mutual misunderstanding that I understood that the Estate had not realized that the passage of the translation quoted by the reporter had been one of the papers in MS Tolkien 26 included in the material I published in the appendix. I had pointed the reporter towards this material and then helped him convert my diplomatic transcript into a readable text (by the way, this was the same passage of text that appeared in "On Translating <i>Beowulf</i>," and in hindsight I should have just directed the reporter to that text). The confusion and misunderstanding led to a somewhat rancorous exchange of letters, and the Tolkien Estate withdrew their permission from my edition. I returned their microfilms and have not worked on my edition since then.<br />
<br />
In the years since, the Tolkien Estate in general and Christopher Tolkien in particular have been very helpful with other projects, from giving <i>Tolkien Studies</i> timely permission to quote from and publish previously unpublished works, to helping me decode J.R.R.T.'s handwriting for the revised edition of <i>Beowulf and the Critics</i>. I am glad that I did not follow the advice I received to pursue legal action over the withdrawn permission but instead focused my energies on other projects.<br />
<br />
Although I have obviously already read (and edited) the translations themselves, I am still very much looking forward to the release of the book in May. I am interested to see how Christopher Tolkien has put the entire edition together, and I look forward to reading his commentary (especially if it is anything like the excellent apparatus that he created for <i>Sigurd and Gudrún).</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<br />
The above story is not as exciting as "discovering" Tolkien's "last great work" would be, but it has the benefit of being true.<br />
<br />
And in any event, I now know that the low-level "discovery" of finding something in a box of papers could never come close to the thrill of a real intellectual discovery. Thanks to the "Lexomic" methods our research group has developed at Wheaton over the past few years (<a href="http://lexomics.wheatoncollege.edu/">http://lexomics.wheatoncollege.edu</a>), I have experienced the joy of recovering information that was lost for over a millennium and making discoveries about <i>Beowulf</i> and other Anglo-Saxon texts (at least one of these discoveries has been confirmed by an archeological find). The pleasure of finding things out is much greater than the pleasure of just finding things. <br />
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<br />Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07566889846240013567noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3571309.post-76154619562727478852014-03-20T17:24:00.001-04:002014-03-20T17:24:09.442-04:00Anglo-Saxon Aloud: Greatest Hits now on iTunes, CDbabyResponding to people who have asked "Who buys physical CDs any more?" I have put <a href="http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/michaeldcdrout">Anglo-Saxon Aloud: Greatest Hits</a> up on <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/michael-d.-c.-drout/id840098462">iTunes</a> and <a href="http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/michaeldcdrout">CDBaby</a>.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1NVDYjsXy93_Eq4-rVjMYm-t_t-GTnHE8-2PW2IMPWNM4ZKtspboHT-0d9RCK0GTUir9qSMpGQXv09yQb39thlLi09RaTh1gk69GwM-NLB5GdIzGUdKNOKhLzlcSfvidOKL9cYQ/s1600/AngloSaxonAloudCover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1NVDYjsXy93_Eq4-rVjMYm-t_t-GTnHE8-2PW2IMPWNM4ZKtspboHT-0d9RCK0GTUir9qSMpGQXv09yQb39thlLi09RaTh1gk69GwM-NLB5GdIzGUdKNOKhLzlcSfvidOKL9cYQ/s1600/AngloSaxonAloudCover.jpg" height="303" width="320" /></a></div>
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The album includes readings in both Old English and Modern English of 10 classic Anglo-Saxon poems: </div>
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Cædmon's Hymn</div>
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The Battle of Brunanburh</div>
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The Wanderer</div>
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The Ruin</div>
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The Wife's Lament</div>
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Wulf and Eadwacer</div>
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Deor</div>
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The Fortunes of Men</div>
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Riddle 47 (Book Moth)</div>
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The Dream of the Rood</div>
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There is a general introduction as well as explanatory introductions for each poem. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhs1NHObwY_rwSloZyfipS5hgNV4ChFTtwsUQc2cyeOW16lB1qqp2dpcopYtrHiNPD1UrSJ089nkJYgv1M7VIT2baYUHLx7iEUJsiHn6kTJKFkIGNZYepfeTjG4VE8wPgJgshqpwg/s1600/ASAloudTrayCard.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhs1NHObwY_rwSloZyfipS5hgNV4ChFTtwsUQc2cyeOW16lB1qqp2dpcopYtrHiNPD1UrSJ089nkJYgv1M7VIT2baYUHLx7iEUJsiHn6kTJKFkIGNZYepfeTjG4VE8wPgJgshqpwg/s1600/ASAloudTrayCard.jpg" height="253" width="320" /></a></div>
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I am working on putting up a downloadable version of Beowulf Aloud as well, but right now I only have physical copies for sale of that 3-CD set at <a href="http://beowulfaloud.com/">BeowulfAloud.com</a> .</div>
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I hope you enjoy listening to the poems as much as I enjoyed translating and recording them. </div>
Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07566889846240013567noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3571309.post-43112630474774965272014-03-12T09:20:00.000-04:002014-03-12T09:20:00.194-04:00The Value of a Medieval Studies Degree<br />
<u>Parent:</u> I'm really proud of my daughter's success in medieval studies. It's amazing how she has learned these languages and knows so much about literature I didn't even know existed. And being a co-author on an academic paper... no one in our family has ever done that. <br />
<br />
But I'm worried about her majoring in something so specialized. She doesn't want to teach, and the economy is still terrible, and we're not a rich family. She has to get a job when she graduates. Wouldn't it be better to major in Psychology or Business, something practical? What is a degree in medieval studies going to do for her?<br />
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<u>Professor:</u> Show potential employers that she is really, really smart.<br />
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[<i>pause</i>]<br />
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<u>Professor:</u> I'm completely serious. Success in medieval studies is incontrovertible evidence of intelligence, self-discipline and the ability to solve complex problems.* Employers aren't allowed to give IQ tests (which don't really work that well, anyway), but they want to hire really smart people. Medieval studies is a big, bright flag that says "Smart Person Here."<br />
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Joking aside, it's probably a safe bet that any undergraduate who can do original research in a centuries-old academic discipline dominated by prickly Oxbridgians, grumpy Germans and in-bred Ivy-types is going to be able to handle something like banking or administration.<br />
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[<i>pause</i>]<br />
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<u>Parent:</u> That's a really good point.<br />
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[<i>pause]</i><br />
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<u>Parent:</u> [<i>sounding frustrated</i>] Why don't liberal arts colleges ever just <i>say</i> that? Why all this vague "critical thinking" stuff that is obviously b.s.?<br />
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<u>Professor:</u> Colleges are run by administrators, not medievalists. Administrators like vague phrases like "critical thinking," because the same group of words can mean different things to different constituencies. So "critical thinking" can mean "criticizing aspects of current social organization" to the people who care about that stuff and "being able to think in a disciplined manner" to people who care about that stuff. But the very vagueness that makes the cliche appealing to administrators robs it of rhetorical power.<br />
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However, some of us non-administrators are trying to get the word out: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Modern-Scholar-Think-Liberal-Enduring/dp/B00DTWCYA0">How to Think: The Liberal Arts and Their Enduring Value</a><br />
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* Two of my student research partners, both of whom concentrated in medieval studies and wrote honors theses on Anglo-Saxon topics, recently graduated from a top-25 law school. They didn't study pre-law or political science but were nevertheless perfectly prepared for the academic challenges. Why? Well, honestly, mostly probably because they're both ridiculously smart and self-disciplined, for which their parents get the credit, not me. But also because medieval studies prepared them to handle complicated, ill-defined problems--just like the kinds of things they had to deal with in law school. The difference? The law-school problems are all in Modern English, so they're a bit easier. Also, their undergraduate focus in medieval studies demonstrated to law schools that they were extremely smart, which helped get accepted into an elite school in which they could then prove themselves.<br />
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<br />Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07566889846240013567noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3571309.post-54193878476344132502014-02-17T20:51:00.000-05:002014-02-20T16:33:08.678-05:00Lecture at SwarthmoreGiving a talk at Swarthmore next week: "Tolkien and <i>Beowulf</i>: Towers and Ruins," Feb 26, at 8:00 p.m. in Science Center 101.<br />
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<br />Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07566889846240013567noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3571309.post-80552904590215532082014-01-12T23:13:00.003-05:002014-01-15T17:11:27.142-05:00A Football StoryThis was my first season coaching football. I learned a lot. I also came to love the game far more than I ever expected I would. This little story is one reason why.<br />
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The Dedham E-team is made up of seven- and eight-year-olds as well as the "older, lighter" nine-year- -olds (an 8-year-old can weigh 90 pounds and still stay at E; a 9-year-old has to be under 75).<br />
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A kid that we will call "Martin" was one of the smallest 7-year-olds on the team. He was a little shy, a little nervous, and not yet very physically developed. He was always one of the last two runners in from a lap, and he often would excuse himself to get water, ask his parents about something, go to the rest room, get his equipment fixed. I don't know if he was playing because his parents were forcing him to (I don't think so) or because once he had signed up they weren't letting him quit (more likely).<br />
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Part way into our season we had a game against South Boston on their home field. For some reason, the veterans on the team were talking up Southie, telling the rookies how tough they were, how mean they played, how they had a tree growing in the end zone of their field that you could run into and kill yourself (that part is true), how the parents and spectators always went crazy.<br />
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"Martin" seemed to take this talk very seriously. When he arrived at Southie, tears were streaming down his face and his father had to force him onto the field. He was absolutely terrified, and he kept sobbing "I don't want to play. I don't want to play."<br />
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Arthur was one of the senior assistant coaches on the team. To give you an idea of how much Arthur knows about football: his first year coaching Pop Warner was the year I was <i>born</i>.<br />
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Arthur saw Martin crying, walked over to him, and didn't try to talk him onto the field. Instead, he picked up a football.<br />
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"Hey, Martin, play catch with me," he said, and began tossing the ball back and forth.<br />
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Arthur is at least 6' 6" and 250 pounds. He is a retired police officer. He has a very deep voice and a commanding presence.<br />
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But he just kept tossing the ball back and forth with Martin, slowly edging him out onto the field by stepping away, so that Martin had to follow him in order to play catch.<br />
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When they were in the middle of the field, near where the team was warming up, some of Martin's teammates saw him and called out "Hey, Martin! We need you over here for cals."<br />
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Martin looked up at Arthur.<br />
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"You know, Martin," Arthur said. "I threw up before every single football game I played until I got to high school. I was that nervous." Pause. "I'll bet you didn't throw up today, did you?"<br />
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Martin shook his head.<br />
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"You want to go warm up with your friends?"<br />
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Martin nodded. And he did.<br />
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And he got through the game without incident and was smiling from ear to ear when we ended up winning in a blow-out.<br />
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*<br />
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But the story doesn't end there.<br />
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A few weeks later, we were playing Ashland, a team that was absolutely enormous. They had 12 nine-year-olds, compared to our 6, and they towered over us. But things went well, and we were tied in the last two minutes of the 4th quarter with the ball on the 50 yard line.<br />
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Coach Paul, our offensive coordinator, is Arthur's nephew and has been coaching for 20 years. He is a football genius, able not only to teach a bunch of little kids the full high-school play book, but to read a situation and know exactly what play our team could pull off against the particular opponents on the field.<br />
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This time he saw something and set up a play for a long pass and a touchdown, talking it over during a time-out. The kids all seemed to understand what they were supposed to do. Paul went over their roles again, and then:<br />
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"The one thing that has to happen in this play," he said, "is that the Left End has got to hold the block for more than a full second. Otherwise the Quarterback is getting hit before he can throw. Who is Left End on the black offense?"<br />
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"Martin!" various kids called out. Paul did a bit of a double-take, because, remember, Martin is tiny and these Ashland kids were huge.<br />
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"Martin," he said. "You've had a great game. The guy you're blocking is really tall. If you want, I can put Mitch in your spot and you can play his position. Do you want me to move you?"<br />
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You could see Martin swallow hard. And then he said, in his high-pitched, little boy's voice: "I can do it, Coach."<br />
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And the team started chanting "Mar-tin! Mar-tin! Mar-tin!"<br />
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When the kids ran out onto the field and got themselves lined up, I turned to Paul and said, "Well, no matter what else happens, it's now a successful season." He nodded.<br />
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(It doesn't matter than the QB fumbled the snap, Martin never had to block anybody, and the game ended in a tie). <br />
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From that day forward Martin was a different kid. He laughed and goofed around, he no longer came in last when we were running laps, he hit the tackling sled like he actually wanted to move it. He's still tiny, but when I see him at basketball he's playing with a smile on his face and jumping for rebounds and taking shots. And he told Mitchell that he can't wait for football next year. <br />
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That's why I have come to love football so much: the game creates opportunities for kids to be heroes to their teammates and heroes to themselves--not necessarily because of their athletic prowess, but just because they've tried to do something difficult.<br />
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Great coaches, like Arthur, Paul and our head coach, Jay, work to help every kid succeed and put that kind of achievement ahead of wins or stats or promoting their own children. They may not know it, but they are teachers (which probably explains why I enjoyed being around them).<br />
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<br />Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07566889846240013567noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3571309.post-32178620898787579682014-01-07T15:11:00.004-05:002014-01-07T15:11:44.197-05:00Metaphor Alert: History of the Field<div class="MsoNormal">
Cuts from the in-progress book on Lexomics:</div>
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The very best traditional philologists, people
like Lapidge and Gretsch, can collect widely scattered shards of information
and piece together enough to get a view of a little piece of lost culture. But scholars like this are rare, and their very brilliance shows how much the scholarly world has had to change because the great philologists of past
generations have worked out the mine. </div>
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Back in the Age of Grimm, scholars like Kemble
and Grundtvig could casually pick the best nuggets right from the tunnel floor,
the dust of diamonds on their shoes. And although the next generation might
have needed picks and shovels, Thorpe, Müllenoff, Sweet and Köhler and still found riches. There was still high-grade ore for Sweet, Sarrazin,
Sievers and Skeat, but the lode was beginning to be depleted, so Olrick,
Panzer, Chambers and their contemporaries had to be miners rather than
prospectors, following the dwindling veins deeper and deeper below the surface. In the post-war
period scholars were reduced to panning for glistening flecks, and by the 1980s
the field was reduced to mechanically processing vast piles of low-grade ore in
hopes of eventually extracting a small amount of metal from the overburden.</div>
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To push the metaphor perhaps further than I should: The
introduction of lexomic techniques allows us to find riches even in the tailings piles of
previous generations. What was for them un-useable is for us, with new
knowledge and technology, a new source of wealth. <o:p></o:p></div>
Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07566889846240013567noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3571309.post-49122456646307986312013-12-11T10:04:00.000-05:002013-12-11T10:04:11.794-05:00A good trick? (and is it legit?)Every couple of years I team-teach the lit half of a "Connected" pair of classes with my friend, the mathematician Bill Goldbloom Bloch. "The Edge of Reason" links my SciFi class with his Math Thought class over the course of an entire year, with us alternating teaching days and each prof sitting in on and participating in all of the other's classes. It's incredibly fun, and I learn a lot about math and, maybe more importantly, about how mathematicians think. Bill says that most mathematicians have 1 or 2 "good tricks," ways of conceptualizing the world or handling problems, that allows them to make multiple discoveries. Going beyond mathematicians: physicist Richard Feynman had his "integrate over all paths" trick, Einstein had his visualizations, etc. My own "good tricks" have included "read the whole thing" (you'd be amazed by how few scholars do) and "push the metaphor until it breaks."<br />
<br />
Now I think I have a new one. And it's mathematical.<br />
<br />
This summer our research group was working <a href="http://wormtalk.blogspot.com/2013/11/a-little-formula.html">on the problem of thorn / eth distribution </a> . We were having trouble visualizing the data. I don't know why, but suddenly into my mind popped the notion of a rolling average, something I think I'd learned way back in high school and which had shown up when I was being creative with budgets to avoid laying people off during the financial crisis: it turns out that the amount of money you are allowed to draw from an endowment's revenue stream is based on a rolling average of the returns in several previous quarters. This saved me during the crash, as we had a little more money right at the beginning—since the the previous quarters were propping up the average—so we could at least give visiting and part-time faculty a year or two to try to find something else instead of just dropping them into a terrible economy (my sole accomplishment as department chair was that I didn't lay anyone off or fail to renew a contract). <br />
<br />
So I started calculating the rolling ratio of θ (total number of þ divided by total number of þ plus total number of ð) through a text: choose a "window" of words or letters, add up all the thorns and eths in that window, calculate θ, and then move the window one unit to the right and re-calculate. The plots of the rolling ratios turn out to be very interesting. I'm just finishing up a paper now on what they might tell us about a work's textual history.<br />
<br />
But I have been worried--following a chance remark by Janet Bately at ISAS Dublin--that all we were detecting with θ was the frequency of first-, second- or third-person plural present tense or plural imperative verbs. These forms end with an interdental, and there certainly seems to be a correlation between terminal interdentals and scribal use of ð (most famously by the B-scribe of <i>Beowulf</i>, but elsewhere as well). I wanted to know if θ was just a complicated proxy measurement for portions of the poem in the plural present tense or the imperative.<br />
<br />
So we developed another measure, τ, which is the ratio of terminal interdentals (þ and ð) to the total number of interdentals in a passage. We calculated τ as a rolling ratio as well, and then compared the plots of τ and θ.<br />
<br />
Sometimes these plots appear to be negatively correlated with each other: when τ goes down, θ increases, but other times, not so much. And just looking at the graphs wasn't entirely satisfactory. So I calculated Pearson correlation coefficients between τ and θ. It turns out that these are pretty ambiguous when applied to whole texts, generally being on the order of .3 (1.0 would be perfect correlation and 0 would be no correlation at all). That wasn't entirely helpful: with an r of .3, tense and number <i>could</i> be contributing to θ, but other things (textual history) could be as well.<br />
<br />
Then last night I was staring in frustration at the τ and θ graphs for the Old English <i>Genesis</i>, and it hit me: there was a visible correlation between τ and θ in <i>Genesis B</i>, but not in <i>Genesis A</i>. I quickly calculated the Pearson correlation coefficient for each poem and indeed, <i>Genesis B</i> is highly correlated, with an r of .69, while<i> Genesis A</i> is only weakly correlated.<br />
<br />
And here's where both the "good trick" and my question of legitimacy comes in. I realized that I could do the rolling window trick with the correlation coefficient. Calculate τ and θ, then choose a window length and calculate the correlation coefficient for that window. Then shift to the right and recalculate r. Plot the whole thing.<br />
<br />
Except that it was hard to read the plot, since you ended up with both positive and negative correlations (negative correlation just means that when one variable goes up, the other goes down. It's just as much a correlation as a positive one). So I had idea of taking the absolute value of r and plotting that. When you do so, you get very interesting results. <i>Genesis B</i>, for example, jumps right out of the <i>Genesis</i> plot. So too does the canticle-sourced material in <i>Daniel</i> and the section of <i>Christ III </i>that's based on the sermon of Caesarius of Arles.<br />
<br />
My tentative conclusion: because not all scribes consistently followed the "terminal interdental to be represented by ð" rule, the correlation between τ and θ is actually useful data. Instead of simply invalidating θ, the correlation--and its absence--tells you something about the copying history of the text. My hunch is that it's the later scribes who produce segments with closely correlated τ and θ, so when we don't see the correlation, we can hypothesize that we're looking at a text that was written and copied earlier and so in which the inertia of the earlier forms is influencing that final copy.<br />
<br />
But my worry is that a rolling Pearson's correlation coefficient is somehow statistically or mathematically illegitimate. You've got two rolling ratios (τ and θ), each of which over-samples many of the same data points (because the same point is going to influence multiple windows) and then you're doing the same kind of rolling comparison with over-sampling with the relatively complex Pearson formula. I'm worried that my lack of mathematical and statistical sophistication has led me to miss something that should cancel out something else. Unfortunately, it is finals week, so I can't meet with my friend and co-author the statistician for a while at least, so I just have to live with being both excited at a potential discovery and worried that at any moment the intellectual floor is going to collapse out from under it.<br />
<br />Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07566889846240013567noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3571309.post-83347500363431371822013-11-17T21:42:00.001-05:002013-11-17T21:42:05.539-05:00Correlated? <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivN-7h8PjgKuXIIgA-0LwgMBFG4kDNslxy-Bsf62rJ196rXpxitdeRA4Qw5nVysIopT6wQYKeXMmf6moAanm-cjslASpVnIxtiqu7noKsMmBOSWcSHy-fdORblzsbMO-kYnMFkYQ/s1600/Screen+Shot+2013-11-17+at+9.35.48+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="321" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivN-7h8PjgKuXIIgA-0LwgMBFG4kDNslxy-Bsf62rJ196rXpxitdeRA4Qw5nVysIopT6wQYKeXMmf6moAanm-cjslASpVnIxtiqu7noKsMmBOSWcSHy-fdORblzsbMO-kYnMFkYQ/s640/Screen+Shot+2013-11-17+at+9.35.48+PM.png" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
For the overlapping parts, regular correlation coefficient is .349. Spearman's Rho is .357. But all that changes a <i>lot</i> if you correct for that one place in the middle where the top graph goes up and the bottom one goes down. I think this happens because for most of the overlapping section we are comparing apples with apples, but just at that point, an orange or two got dropped in. <br />
<br />
The challenge is to decide when you have reached that magical point where you are manipulating your data rather than evaluating it. <br />
<br />
And that's what I'll be spending tomorrow morning doing. Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07566889846240013567noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3571309.post-21326692699385804962013-11-08T10:59:00.000-05:002013-11-08T10:59:09.335-05:00A Little FormulaTurns out that you can find out stuff about Old English texts with just a simple formula:<br />
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<span lang="gd-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: #043C; mso-bidi-font-family: Baskerville;">For any text of length n<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<!--[if gte msEquation 12]><m:oMathPara><m:oMathParaPr><m:jc
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJEuixEhCHZ19TgVZ084tL3pH7hIrgHDygxiDqOZKqe1NjYOya3K1iTacJIRwoXtxfgvzzuBooyVbfrHyGSbM7hAGrftgiZdeDjo9mN4i9YYLQH-7CtBIoE9pc979nqhH1_GqonQ/s1600/ThetaKFormula.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJEuixEhCHZ19TgVZ084tL3pH7hIrgHDygxiDqOZKqe1NjYOya3K1iTacJIRwoXtxfgvzzuBooyVbfrHyGSbM7hAGrftgiZdeDjo9mN4i9YYLQH-7CtBIoE9pc979nqhH1_GqonQ/s1600/ThetaKFormula.jpeg" /></a></div>
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span lang="gd-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: #043C; mso-bidi-font-family: Baskerville;"><br /></span>
<span lang="gd-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: #043C; mso-bidi-font-family: Baskerville;"><br /></span>
<span lang="gd-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: #043C; mso-bidi-font-family: Baskerville;"><br /></span>
<span lang="gd-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: #043C; mso-bidi-font-family: Baskerville;">where k is the first term in w<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span lang="gd-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: #043C; mso-bidi-font-family: Baskerville;">þ is the total number of thorns in the
segment;<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span lang="gd-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: #043C; mso-bidi-font-family: Baskerville;">ð is the total number of eths in the
segment; <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
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<span lang="gd-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: #043C; mso-bidi-font-family: Baskerville;">and </span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Baskerville;">w+k ≤ n.</span><span lang="gd-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: #043C; mso-bidi-font-family: Baskerville;"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Baskerville;"><br /></span>
<br />
The real tricks are figuring out if what you're detecting is significant or just a product of stochastic variation and, if it is statistically significant, whether or not it is just an epiphenomenon of a less interesting process.<br />
<br />
As Richard Feynman, one of my intellectual heroes, once said “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.”<br />
<br />
Which is why I've been having learning to debug programs in Python and re-learning Stats II from 20+ years ago.<br />
<br />
Unfortunately, at least one of the more striking findings is looking like its just an epiphenomenon. But the good news is that the other discoveries seem like they are pretty robust.<br />
<br />
<br /></div>
Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07566889846240013567noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3571309.post-38023754792223626822013-11-01T08:33:00.001-04:002013-11-01T08:33:31.178-04:00"How to Read Tolkien" lecture from Carnegie Mellon now on line<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/lXAvF9p8nmM" width="420"></iframe>Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07566889846240013567noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3571309.post-49553361010865013302013-09-29T17:25:00.004-04:002013-09-29T17:26:38.862-04:00Father Brag<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
My son's first touchdown. </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiboI6X-ZuvFpb43bZ2bi7TYQU_U9wNk73ZyCwrVllWY-Z-XOjRAhc9UOzqOUbPxz6om8u0z0Fb4DqVJaFi7eJVFS4Du_iJ8FqhKkD30oWPKLa92nZ439yrj_hHatCZ-SAMRAUj4Q/s1600/IMG_2127+2.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="241" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiboI6X-ZuvFpb43bZ2bi7TYQU_U9wNk73ZyCwrVllWY-Z-XOjRAhc9UOzqOUbPxz6om8u0z0Fb4DqVJaFi7eJVFS4Du_iJ8FqhKkD30oWPKLa92nZ439yrj_hHatCZ-SAMRAUj4Q/s400/IMG_2127+2.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07566889846240013567noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3571309.post-25320716187565810232013-09-26T00:24:00.002-04:002013-09-26T08:17:03.287-04:00The Killer-Barney Effect<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Baskerville;">In some of the Icelandic sagas in which he appears, Bjarni Brodd-Helgason is a
generally peaceful man, even though he got the nickname </span>Víga-Bjarni (Killer-Barney) when he had to kill some of his relatives at Bodvarsdalr. In <i>Vápnfir</i><i><span lang="gd-GB">ðinga Saga</span></i><span lang="gd-GB"> he is
reluctant to take revenge; he is eager to reconcile in <i>Voðu-Brands þ</i></span><i>áttr</i>; and he’s clever and honorable in <i><span lang="gd-GB">Þorsteins þattr stangarhoggs</span></i>. So the nickname is somewhat at odds
with the character, especially in these sagas that come from the East, where Bjarni was from. The disjunction between name and personality seems to be the point, especially in <i>Thorstein the Staff-struck. </i></div>
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Víga-Bjarni’s name, however, appears to
have overpowered his character in later sagas from the West, where people either had not known Bjarni Brodd-Helgason, or the transmitted knowledge of his personality was forgotten. In this material, Killer-Barney is now a blood-loving, death-dealing
maniac.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8q90MJkXFN9-_q72NlGELXnoec41wz7x_vd6OVttUtngZSGsip3vkePugnmmhA31KLERJoZWLoPked0MpuJRcc6DHj2XXIQgsSVklAciy3yD_dL0-vOPZczgnag1lbpHfgU5mEg/s1600/KillerBarney.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8q90MJkXFN9-_q72NlGELXnoec41wz7x_vd6OVttUtngZSGsip3vkePugnmmhA31KLERJoZWLoPked0MpuJRcc6DHj2XXIQgsSVklAciy3yD_dL0-vOPZczgnag1lbpHfgU5mEg/s320/KillerBarney.jpg" width="278" /></a></div>
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I hate you, </div>
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you hate me, </div>
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I had to slaughter members of my family....</div>
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We can call
this phenomenon, in which a traditional referent, like Víga-Bjarni's name, loses the link with its original extra-textual and contextual meaning and instead develops as part of a new, intra-textual tradition, <span style="color: #990000;">The Killer-Barney Effect.</span></div>
Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07566889846240013567noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3571309.post-78251934808530692612013-09-23T23:23:00.002-04:002013-09-23T23:23:29.555-04:00How to Think: The Liberal Arts and Their Enduring ValueI have a new lecture course out from Recorded Books' Modern Scholar series:<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">How to Think: The Liberal Arts and Their Enduring Value</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlue9zAi7vjnAZ0N-jClbuyFa9eeKfjqGAKnb6AWPzWKpDqNb5dtsYYmr4M4mAD_q-CcnNK3I0kTs943Qx2yOfDDQiIE6Og9gTauRxFbQkfhmA4k8U5dU-sZv486pEB4Ww4Ogw3w/s1600/51XXS9LoFKL._SS500_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlue9zAi7vjnAZ0N-jClbuyFa9eeKfjqGAKnb6AWPzWKpDqNb5dtsYYmr4M4mAD_q-CcnNK3I0kTs943Qx2yOfDDQiIE6Og9gTauRxFbQkfhmA4k8U5dU-sZv486pEB4Ww4Ogw3w/s320/51XXS9LoFKL._SS500_.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
It's an 8-lecture course:<br />
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1. The Liberal Arts: Where did they come from?<br />
2. Separating Science<br />
3. Tools to Rule<br />
4. Can the Liberal Arts Make you a Better Person?<br />
5. The Best Reasons: Solving Complex Problems, Preserving and Transmitting Culture<br />
6. <i>Beowulf</i>: A Case Study of the Richness of the Liberal Arts Tradition<br />
7. What's Wrong with the Liberal Arts? (And How to Fix it).<br />
8. A Defense and Celebration of the Liberal Arts.<br />
<br />
The CD set is available from Amazon here<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Modern-Scholar-Think-Liberal-Enduring/dp/B00DTWCYA0/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1379992610&sr=8-1&keywords=michael+drout+liberal+arts"> at this link</a>.<br />
The direct link to all of my courses on Recorded Books <a href="http://www.recordedbooks.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=scholar.show_professors&prof_id=44">is here</a>.<br />
<br />
John Alexander, the founder of The Modern Scholar and my producer for all 12 courses, has formed <a href="http://scholarlysojourns.com/">Scholarly Sojourns</a>: beautiful, flawless educational tours throughout the world. In Summer 2014 I am leading tours to Anglo-Saxon Britain, <a href="http://www.scholarlysojourns.com/all-sojourns/anglo-saxon-britain/sojourn-overview/">Iceland</a> and <a href="http://www.scholarlysojourns.com/all-sojourns/imagining-middle-earth/imagining-middle-earth/">Tolkien's England</a>. We could meet up!Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07566889846240013567noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3571309.post-57072655157350122022013-09-03T23:49:00.003-04:002013-09-03T23:49:44.134-04:00Wisdom from Neal Stephenson<br />
Some people try to communicate "out of a conviction that the world must be amenable to human understanding, and that if you can understand something, you can explain it in words: fancy words if that helps, plain words if possible. But in any case you can reach out to other minds through the medium of words." And by doing this, you are saying "<i>here is something cool that I want to share with you for not other reason than making a spark jump between minds</i>."<br />
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From the Foreword to David Foster Wallace's <i>Everything and More</i>.Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07566889846240013567noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3571309.post-62904552270651683962013-08-21T10:13:00.000-04:002013-08-21T10:13:25.501-04:00The book is out! <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCzav5UbktuFuLirJDLlpEVR166QecQZopGsBHpSYwQXOfDOF7dmBjOX3snJ2yZRBjNlu6PX5cVszPI-L_VaOOcR9kpa5L00CDfgNaNyoHzvFAZXTgmQssk2WU7mu-_1VWaKVEhA/s1600/NewTradandInflCover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCzav5UbktuFuLirJDLlpEVR166QecQZopGsBHpSYwQXOfDOF7dmBjOX3snJ2yZRBjNlu6PX5cVszPI-L_VaOOcR9kpa5L00CDfgNaNyoHzvFAZXTgmQssk2WU7mu-_1VWaKVEhA/s640/NewTradandInflCover.jpg" width="416" /></a></div>
The new book is out!<br />
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<b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Tradition-Influence-Anglo-Saxon-Literature-Evolutionary/dp/1137325801">Tradition and Influence in Anglo-Saxon Literature: An Evolutionary, Cognitivist Approach</a>.</b> <br />
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This book was more years in the making than I like to think about. I would never have finished it if it weren't for the unexpected help of Jack Zipes, who, in a kind of Tolkienian eucatastrophe, swooped in right when things were most dire.<br />
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The cover was designed by Wheaton students Leah Smith and Amira Pualwan. From it people of a particular age may be able to guess at what album I most overplayed in the summer of 1982.Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07566889846240013567noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3571309.post-72455428810429226812013-08-05T21:41:00.005-04:002013-08-05T21:41:58.334-04:00Seamus Heaney passes the torch to the next great writer of English<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-NsuU-Za02bky7k-WXgw8UlMcGT47-zY2XUox0NUez2ylNzo1Eu6gj9qayZhcCcEPbv_s9jf1RiZu-aLl8ioDbp1H7Ev6liKxMqvgk46jCXJRaILJ1GvgOH2qRXnKzB5tF6i0yg/s1600/RhysandHeaney.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-NsuU-Za02bky7k-WXgw8UlMcGT47-zY2XUox0NUez2ylNzo1Eu6gj9qayZhcCcEPbv_s9jf1RiZu-aLl8ioDbp1H7Ev6liKxMqvgk46jCXJRaILJ1GvgOH2qRXnKzB5tF6i0yg/s400/RhysandHeaney.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;">(no pressure, sweetie). </span></div>
Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07566889846240013567noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3571309.post-91258205870798699912013-07-21T15:28:00.002-04:002013-07-21T15:29:45.439-04:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
I'm very happy to announce that we'll be hosting the next Mythcon at Wheaton College.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLL5rWZ3CIL3L36g84ntgAhLSNQ0Z_UL76TMDLvA8yGleWU8X6UW784Km086W_j1UMthvQ3rtAJosYBxUekw-XJwMm0zKgNq8OSxZkYGSDIpZFH3eLlyYtTS2WtM_SiWVtmc-WUQ/s1600/MythconLogo2014.tif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="309" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLL5rWZ3CIL3L36g84ntgAhLSNQ0Z_UL76TMDLvA8yGleWU8X6UW784Km086W_j1UMthvQ3rtAJosYBxUekw-XJwMm0zKgNq8OSxZkYGSDIpZFH3eLlyYtTS2WtM_SiWVtmc-WUQ/s320/MythconLogo2014.tif" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Fantasy literature does not fit comfortably into any scheme. Both old and new, traditional and innovative, popular and elite, mainstream and esoteric, escapist and engaged, high-tech and anti-technology, fantasy defies definitions and transcends categories, dramatizing the incompleteness of our understanding of our own imaginations. At Mythcon 45 we will discuss the place of fantasy in our culture, our institutions, and our hearts. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16pt;">Scholar Guest of Honor:</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16.0pt;">Richard West<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16.0pt;">Author Guest of Honor:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16.0pt;">To be announced<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16.0pt;">keep an eye on <a href="http://mythcon.org/">http://mythcon.org</a></span></div>
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Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07566889846240013567noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3571309.post-3923030467902604762013-07-08T23:56:00.002-04:002013-07-08T23:56:21.423-04:00Intellectual EnvironmentsWe've been having another successful season of research in the Lexomics Lab this summer: discoveries made, complex things figured out, methods invented, tools created. And most of all, it has, once again, been really, really fun. Much more fun, and much more intellectually exciting, than anything I ever did in grad school (or in undergrad or as a professor, for that matter). <br />
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I've been wondering why. <br />
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Probably the simplest reason is that English students don't naturally work in a lab environment. Our ideal seems to be lots of solitary time with books and a computer and then a quick chance to show off what we've written in a seminar or at a conference. It's not that we're not social, but that our socialization comes after the fact, not during the research. The daily give and take, the continuously social nature of the lab, isn't really part of our experience. So we get all the way through our studies never knowing that we're missing out on the most intellectual fun you can have. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtztiDonuLZxTB_5NP_8nhgS7cNbKZiWUIsqUngkMD4JrWO0eT14xI9Oup7uvo5uB8Z6rg-WZjtpXkA5IsJxHygS8D5qm-7kPTALTHyXsSIO1QBouKi7nm6BPKbUWyKCeuk2uvJA/s1600/IMG_6150.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtztiDonuLZxTB_5NP_8nhgS7cNbKZiWUIsqUngkMD4JrWO0eT14xI9Oup7uvo5uB8Z6rg-WZjtpXkA5IsJxHygS8D5qm-7kPTALTHyXsSIO1QBouKi7nm6BPKbUWyKCeuk2uvJA/s320/IMG_6150.JPG" width="320" /></a>We were lucky to have the use of a single big room, with one wall of white-board, desks and monitors around the other walls, and moveable smaller tables, which we configured as a "library table" and a work table around which we put our laptops. Since we all worked together, we talked a lot, working through ideas out loud, overhearing the challenges various parts of the project faced (i.e., the <i>Beowulf</i>-focused people hearing the discussions of the Cynewulf-focused people and the Shakespeare-focused people and the Old Norse-focused people and the software people, etc.).<br />
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So it was all shared and cross-pollinated and social and fun. <br />
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But also there was another factor in play, I think. Because my students are undergraduates ranging from freshmen to seniors and ranged in major from English to Computer Science to Chemistry to Philosophy, there was always more than one person in the audience who didn't know something. And so it was always ok to ask for more explanation. <br />
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We completely avoided that most damaging of statements a teacher or mentor can make: "What! You don't already know that!" <br />
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It's a damaging statement, because it encourages the student, in the future, to bluff, to hide ignorance or cover it up. And when you do that, you never end up learning what you need to learn. <br />
<br />
Intellectual bluff is such an important part of grad school, and the job market, and the tenure game, that it's absolutely ingrained throughout academic culture. And it's debilitating, because people aren't willing to ask questions that would expose their ignorance, and so they don't get answers or explanations that could enable them to solve particular problems and make real contributions. <br />
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But in a room with as many computer-scientists as medievalists, everybody is ignorant about lots of stuff and so, over the course of the summer, we've gotten to the point where we can confess that ignorance, get an explanation, and then learn more. It's exhilarating.<br />
<br />
Quick example: I was trying to derive some kind of measure of comparative vocabulary homogeneity for different segmentations of a text. I had an elaborate formula that I thought made sense, but I couldn't get the numbers out that were consistent with what we thought we knew. Finally, my student research partner (the chemistry major) just plotted a bunch of data on a graph, and, uh-oh, it made a straight, diagonal line. I didn't have enough variables in my equation, so x+y always equalled one. So I was being a math doofus. But by doing so, in front of all my students and some colleagues and the computer science students, who were half listening in, I modeled, I think, the way to approach such a problem: take a stab at it, fail, take another stab, fail better, get some help (I dragged a physics professor in from the hallway), take another stab, fail even better, and maybe finally get somewhere.<br />
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And hopefully what the students learned--and their amazing contributions suggest that they did--was that being a scholar is about <i>seeking</i> the answers, not already having them (or pretending to).<br />
<br />
<br />Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07566889846240013567noreply@blogger.com3