• Amanda French defines the digital humanities as “open access”
• How can student work be put online? WordPress, PBWorks, etc
• Digital Humanities Quarterly given as example of open access
• Should give students option to take down work at the end of the semester
• I am going to try out commonplace blogs with my eng102 classes next semester
• Utell: Digital humanities is essential to keeping the humanities alive
• Some discussion about establishing comment policies
• Crowd sourcing comment policy to students
• Peer review is important before work goes online
• Instructor comments on blogs tapers off as semester goes on
• French and Siobhan Phillips bring out Google’s ngrams, wordles
• I’ve had students A/B an Obama speech to a Jefferson speech
• More incorportation of audio, video, etc into literary classes
• Modernist Journals Project
• Amanda French stresses the need to teach bibliographic software like Noodle, Evernote, and Zotero

Recently read: The Audacity Of Hope by Barack Obama.

Early this summer I picked up a cheap first edition and the audio book of Obama’s second book. He has such a nice speaking voice that I figured the audio version would be a pleasant experience.

The book itself is alright. Some parts are dull, inside baseball, stuff about life in Washington I could care less about. Parts where he discusses policy points were nice, even if I don’t agree with a lot of them.

Overall, I’m not impressed and did not vote for him (I voted for one of the real, not make believe, Socialists on my state’s ballot). So far, almost a month into his administration, I am even less impressed by it. There are plenty of other sites to do detailed analysis of that, however.

As an aside, I am growing tired of a lot of those. I’d rather talk about books. I don’t except much "change" or any of that hocus pocus stump speech crap anytime soon.

Nevertheless, it’s pretty cool to have a president who loves Miles Davis.

Is there ever a time when a leader shouldn’t sit down and talk with an enemy?

If you want peace, you don’t talk to your friends. You talk to your enemies. The apartheid government in South Africa used to say they didn’t talk to terrorists, and they said Madiba [Nelson Mandela] was one of those. But of course, there’s no point in talking to someone else—someone who is not a leader, who has really no constituency—when that “terrorist,” so-called, is almost certainly the person that the oppressed regard as their leader. If you choose to talk with somebody else, the people will say, “That’s a stooge.” Any agreements you have with that one will have no credence.

How does peace come? Peace doesn’t come because allies agree. Allies are allies—they already agree! Peace comes when you talk to the guy you most hate. And that’s where the courage of a leader comes, because when you sit down with your enemy, you as a leader must already have very considerable confidence from your own constituency. Then, when you do things that are risky, your people know that you are not likely to do something reckless. If you are doing something that is a bit dodgy, they will give you the benefit of the doubt.

This week’s video is from Black Flag’s very hard (as in, I can’t even find a full copy on the Internet hard to find) “Live 86″ video.   Here they are playing the song In My Head:

Another disaster lies in hiring one reader to do all the book’s voices. DiMeo cites Jim Dale, who reads the Harry Potter series, as the rare talent who can successfully portray more than one character without sounding hammy. I recall David Sedaris doing this well too, but then, Sedaris is another rare talent.

My favourites so far have been the actual authors reading their work. Whether Barack Obama (Hmm, need to get a post up about that) or Richard Dawkins (currently listening to The God Delusion) I think I have had the most success when the author is also the reader.

• The New Yorker endorses Barack Obama in very strong terms.
• …and on Emily Dickinson.
• The interesting looking First Wall Rebate podcast interviewed Nick Montfort recently.
• Literary Kicks on John Ruskin.
• Welcome back, Michael Berube.

I have to say, this looks pretty good.  The dialouge stays very true to the series and the animation reminds me a lot of the excellent Batman: The Animated Series.

• Amy Goodman writes for Mother Jones about librarians in Connecticut who fought, and defeated, a National Security Letter.
• I am pretty excited that Bob Mould is writing an autobiography.
• The Complete Review reviews William Goldbloom Blooch’s The Unimaginable Mathematics Of Borges’ Library Of Babel.

Meanwhile…

• The New Yorker piece on Obama’s early years in Chicago politics is another indicator he is just as scummy and slimy as the next politician. Making the right friends, the right votes, the right influences; you might counter by saying “that’s politics” but I say that if you take part in that crap, I blame you. I’d rather have no government than one filled with slimeballs. None of the above…yet again…in 2008.

• Alexander Solzhenitsyn recently passed away. When we moved to Manahawkin, I remember the first friend I made was reading The Gulag Archipelago at the time. We started to bond while discussing that and other books.

• Io9 offers a guide for fans of the modern Doctor Who series who wish to get into the classic series.

• Scott Esposito comments on the amazing ending of The Mill On The Floss and links to a review of the novel from a 1860 issue of The Atlantic.

• PETA still sucks as much as I remember.