NBA Draft

Yellow Dog had an interesting post on whether the NBA draft is overrated, looking at the lineups ofthe teams in the playoffs. This really sparked my interest, since I initially assumed the NBA draft to be the most important in all sports: since you only start five players, adding one quality player must be important, right?

To add further research, here's a quick glance at the top 8 lottery picks of the last four drafts.

I almost wanted to include the 2002 draft just to show how special the 2003 was... but coding this kind of table is pretty boring. I don't think it is easy to draw any clear conclusion, other than Darko being the worst pick in the history of the NBA draft (in context). Besides that, even in 2003, half of the top picks failed to make the all-star team. So, Jeff's probably right--the draft is overrated. Still, given how bad the Celtics have been, chances are I'll be watching. I just hope I only have to watch one pick:

With the first pick in the 2007 draft, the Boston Celtics select G. Oden, center, Ohio State University

Introductory Blogging... I mean Composition

This fall a few colleagues and fellow bloggers have decided to network our introductory composition classes (at least four classes). The idea is to structure our course around blogging, having our students write often for "real" audiences, on a specialized topic of interest to them. The idea is to increase the quantity of writing and to expose them to each other's writing. The classes will divide into 15-20 topics with 3-5 members each. Topics will be voted on by students, we will provide them with a list of suggestions. Each student will be expected to produce three posts per week.

I worked with three other teachers last fall on a similar format--in which students from multiple classes posted on the purpose of education. We're presenting on this topic at Computers and Writing (we're meeting to work on our presentation tomorrow). We had success last semester with creating forum roles (launch posts, query posts, extension posts, etc)--and we might try something similar in the Fall. Essentially, I want students to understand the logic of a post--either a pointed pointing at an online object, an informed opinion built around a claim (you should look at "x" because) and evidence, or a query/exhibition, where an idea is worked out in public (like, say, this post).

Besides the blog load, we have a couple of project possibilities in mind. I am really tied to a Wikipedia reliability check--having students fact check a wikipedia entry that has something to do with their blog subject. I'd also like to see some kind of internet/cultural "map" of their subject area. We'll probably do a paper as a guide introducing their subject. And I think I'd like to see a podcast/documentary film for a final project.

I'll post more details as they develop, but I'm also interested in ideas, and cool blogs. We're going to spend the first few weeks reading sample posts. Here's some ideas I have so far (possible sites in parentheses).

• Video Games (Gamasutra, Joystick 101, Penny-Arcade, Slash.dot Games)
• Sports (Baseball Toaster)
• Web design (see my blog roll)
• Music (Pitchfork, Last)
• Movies (DailyFilmDose)
• Celebrities
• T.V. (no idea--but can't be a single show, I don't think you'd get enough out of it--it could, however, be a genre of shows)
• Fashion (no idea)
• Politics (is this a bad idea?)
• Photography
• Art
• Poetry
• Cooking / Restaurants (do freshman eat enough to do these?)
• Major (I know that I've learned as much about rhet/comp from reading blogs as I have from reading articles!)

If any of you have suggestions for good, topic-oriented blogs for anything above (or if you'd like to propose your own topic), hit up the comments! Here's what I know: I want to make sure students are exposed to "quality" blogs, ones perhaps they are as of yet unfamilar with.

Clemens: Can You Go Back (and forth)?

Some quick thoughts on Clemens as a Yankee (again): he's undoubtedly the greatest regular season pictcher in baseball history (give me Gibson or Schilling in game seven), and the Yankee rotation needs a player to solidify that rotation. Roger's conditioning is unparalleled, he will be in shape and should remain injury free.

I don't think he will be the force he was in the national league--between the DH, the monster AL East lineups, and his increasing years, we can probably expect an increasing E.R.A.. Here's my prediction: 11-5, 3.98 E.R.A.

Here's my other prediction: his "I-only-have-to-show-up-the-days-I-pitch" clause will be a media nightmare. That might fly in Houston, but it won't in New York. It wouldn't in Boston or Phily, either. It might in Chicago. In these baseball worshipping cities, everything is analyzed under a microscope. And the first time the Yanks lose four in a row, here's the media backlash: why pay 106 dollars per MINUTE for a pitcher who isn't there to lead? The first extra inning game where Roger isn't available "just-in-case." The first time he gets racked around for a couple of runs in the first inning.... you get the point. In NY, as in Boston, there has to be a reason everytime you lose. 150 million (Boston) and 215 million (Yanks w/Clemens) dollar payrolls don't just lose. They lose for a reason. Roger's absence will become first a backpage and then a frontpage reason, whether it is or not.

Two Conversations?

Finally got around to creating a link list today: included every blog currently in my RSS. God I love Safari's easy RSS folder organization. Yummy. I decided to "segregate" the conversations: one list for English / academic discussions and another for design / technology discussions. Some of these, such as work/space or sbj cover both, but for the most part I would say these distinction hold up (perhaps not along everyone's interests, but certainly along what they write about). This threw up (albiet a small one) a personal ethical dilemma: is it o.k. to classify, exclude, or differentiate in the name of usability? Let me explain: I differentiated bewteen these conversation on the basis of "usability": it both makes it easier for me to find a link and for visitors to find like-minded sites (I have a few friends that have no interest reading about conditional comments for IE 6.x and a few friends who have no desire to read about the metaphysical underpinnings of J.C.I. in comparision to classical, modern and postmodern philosophy). So, in the name of others, I seperate others into groups of the same. This might seem like useless babbling, but this is the shit that keeps me up at night: the intersection between postmodern ethics of the other, web design, and rhetorical considerations of audience. And I stayed up late last night reorganizing my office, overslept, and missed two advertised sales for a Nintendo Wii.

A List Apart

http://alistapart.com/articles/webdesignsurvey

Three posts in one day? Clearly a record. I even managed to mow the lawn today. Victory is mine.

A Friendly Response: Fuck theory and leave Derrida Alone

A friend sent me this video on Derrida this morning. It is funny, and I encourage my friend and others to send me such things. But I do want to make a response, a response perhaps too serious for the kairos, but a response that I am forced, by affection, to post. And, yes, it requires some adult language, sorry to the censors. Here it goes: O.k., sure, some might say Derrida deserves this. Derrida is intentionally difficult. We've been over this before: if he presented linear, ontological, easy to interpret prose arguing against the possibility of easily interpretible prose, then he would be dismissed or ignored, or even worse: mis-interpreted as interpretable. See Kenneth Burke and Burke-lovers arguments that Burke was doing "deconstruction" years before Derrida--did-ya notice how no one noticed? What Derrida produced is, in many ways, illogical. Unreadable. An utter interuption of our daily practices. And there lies much of its profundity. It produces an affective response ("what the fuck is this shit?") and that affective response engenders a wave of activity. Productive activity. Activity that does not merely reproduce, but still inventive activity ("maybe it could mean..."). And, I would add, that Derrida is not empty of thought, or of original thought. Yes, his thought connects to pre-Socratics. That's why, as a rhetorician, I am drawn to him. But I don't think such a connection devalues his ideas or his rather unique critiques of Heideggerian ontology, Hegelian teleology, and Kantian / Platonic metaphysics. He contributes to the move from truth as Being to truth as Be-coming. And he brought this movement "to the people" of the academy. People who are/were/will choose to particpate in a very specialized, historic conversation over the meaning of life, relation to God/Otherness, and the possibility of peace, consensus, community, and relation. This discussion, he reminds us (as many others have), takes place in.through.with.around language. And language is not "full" of meaning. And language continues, infinitely, through a series of ands in a constant struggle to erase its limitations. I relish Derrida's difficulty. It is a poetry. I don't necessarily read it for transferable meaning. To do so is to ask it to BE as I see it and to force it into the tradition which it seeks to deconstruct (define: expose the underlying assumptions). Rather, I strive to participate in a mutual be-coming (semination, a semination that dis-es traditional phallologocentric BE(cum)ings). What becomes? Both wreader and text--impossible to Rightly write, a differAnce (this is the worst part of the clip--the book is Writing and Difference and painstakingly introduces the complexities of differance--a neologism that simultaneously expresses the difference between signifier and signified, the impossibility of distinguishing between the different signifieds for a signifier, and the infinite, repressed deferal (deference) of these impossibilities). Differance -> Impossibility -> I am impossible. "I think therefore I am" or "I desire an I (think therefore I am)" or"desire seeks embodiment, I get in the way" or something Otherwise than Being altogether. I rarely read fiction. I haven't purchased a volume of Poetry in more than eight years. Instead, I invest my interpretive/inventive/imaginative energies in theory. While I recognize this might not be for everyone, I am sick of the "because-I-don't-get-it-it-must-be-empty-and-worthless" stuff. Just a little bit. And, of course, this video has created an affective response (raised heart-rate, sweaty palms, nervous shifting) that has triggered my more "logical" machinations. And, volia, post. Constructive participation with others in light of Other engenders production--a.k.a., Fuck theory. Was it as good for you as it was for me?

Levinas website

I can't remember if I posted about this before, but I finished the new NALS (North American Levinas Society) website a few weeks back. This morning I coded the conference schedule for 2007--an amazingly boring job that claimed 2 hours of my life. And I still have to do standards validation--right now the page has a record 122 errors (I am almost positive that most of them have to do with special characters--a French e with accente-grave being the leading culprit).

As my del.icio.us scroll indicates, I have been reading up on microformats--coding for machines to understand, co-ordinate, and process code/data rather than just render/deliver it. Neat concept. I think this will have to be integrated into 419 next semester (my multimedia writing class), I am going to vamp up the resume project to include more consideration of rhetoric, audience analysis, and framing. If "keywords" were the key concept for the last ten years w/ resumes, I think you'll see micorformats become the next job-search craze. I worked my first microformat into the levinas conference page--using the address property for the conference location. One small step for Marc, one giant leap... oh, whatever.

Few thoughts on the Levinas site (since I still have to" write it up" for my portfolio). The goal for the site was to create an open, inviting space that simultaneously and paradoxically created a solemn and pensive tone. That is, I attempted to invoke Levinas in the site design: his theoretical approach to difference, violence, and o(O)therness. The original site design eschewed idology, and, of course, I wanted to stick with that approach. The society also wanted to maintain the solemn entrance page, although I reformatted it and combined the image of the dove with the image of the deathcamp. I used a few filters on the dove--transforming it into a transparency and washing it with the red used on the site.

I also wanted to create a flexible design--since I think this is the key contribution Levinas can make to coding. Rather than imposing a design / hierarchy upon the user, we (standards motivated designers) can create websites that invite the user. Being a new "mac" user, I am particularly cognizant of screen browsing habits (see this great poll of saavy users over at Berea St.); as a PC user, I almost exclusively maximize windows; as a mac user (Safari), I almost never maximize windows. With the Levinas site, as with my own site, I make a conscious effort to design a layout that works for a number of different heights and widths: anything from 600px to 1200px. No easy task. Height is important, too. Looking at my student websites for 419 (and a post on how awesome these are is coming soon), my one blanket criticism is that they "waste" a lot of header space. I am consistently trying to code sites that have economical headers, thus saving screen space (and no doubt this is connected to the materiality of my browsing: my macBook screen is tinie winnie compared to my old desktop. Don't waste space on me! Don't make me scroll!)

Gotta get better at keeping posts on topic...this post:

• Complains about coding Levinas schedule
• Begins to discuss Levinas design inspiration
• Interjects a thought on microformats
• Discusses browsing habits

What is this, like a hypertext or something...sorry, couldn't help myself.

Anyway, some final thoughts about the Levinas site: I wish CSS 2.x had a "border-image" property. If you look at the page in Firefox, Safari, or Opera (screw IE), you'll notice that the header and footer lines have a very light texture technique, employing a lighter shade of red in a dirty splatter pattern (the same pattern runs over Levinas' name--I wanted to interject a bit of chaos to keep the page from BEING too Modern clean. I would have liked to put the same texture into the sidebar, but the side bar is created through a "border" technique to ensure that it stretches as long as the main content. I've seen a few other work arounds for this, but there is no way to ensure that I know of to ensure that a background-image will "fill" such a space. Perhaps I need to look harder.

Oh, God, how many validation errors was that again? Find and replace, the standards-compliant designer's best friend...