This illuminating Educause interview with Michael Wesch takes "celebrity" to town. If you haven't seen/heard/read about Wesch's work before, you should definitely check it out. He has a youtube account, a blog, and all sorts of cool stuff.

Why You Won't Hear From Me Next Week

Graduate school is not so considerate with the "Spring Break" thing. Here's the assignment/reading rundown. I have included page amounts to induce sympathy:

Literary Criticism

• Read Revolutionary Road 335 pp. *
  
• Prep for research paper *
  
• Write short paper (2 pp.) *
  

18th Cent. Restoration Lit

• Read Evelina 337 pp. *
  
• Read Sam Johnson selections in Norton 117 pp. *
  
• Prep for/design presentation
• Write short paper (1 p.) *
  

English Writers

• Read Turbott Wolfe ~100 pp.
• Read Orwell and Guha essays ~30 pp.
  
• Answer Discussion questions
• Read The Heat of the Day 372 pp.

Totals

• Pages to Read: 1,291
  
• Novels to Read: 4
  
• Essays/Selections to Read: 3
  

*And because Dad always asks, I have noted the assignments that were not on the syllabi, or have had due dates changed.

I honestly love school work, but an assignment list this extensive is a bit much for a week, and indeed, is much more than I typically have to do even when classes are in session. I guess it's a good thing that there's not much at home to distract me, well, except for my nephew :-D.

In Re: "Facebook is Academic"

Hmmm, users are about ready to have more control over the news feed:

NYTimes Bits Blog

I particularly like Zuckerberg's quasi-philosophical mission:

We are going to converge people and public figures to having the same kind of presence on the site.

Socialism may never make it to the White House, but it will make it to Facebook. Take that Adam Smith!

A Brief Observation

Extroverts will always be an enigma to me. Or should that say, "Extroverts will always be enigmas to me"?

Awake

I'm trying to wind down for bedtime by watching King of the Hill, as usual. The accents may be Texan, but somehow they remind me of that Greenbrier County twang. Anyway, in this particular episode, 13-year-old Bobby joins the Quiz Bowl team as the pop culture expert. Of course, the other kids on the team are uptight nerds who are accompanied by Stanford-pushing, pageant parents who view losing as a sign of academic desolation. In my Quiz Bowl days, my parents were supportive enough to break out the mini-van at 4 a.m., but thankfully stopped short of pushing Mountain Dew and caffeine pills.

In fact, while any other similarities between Bobby's Quiz Bowl team and mine of years past are nil, the episode nonetheless remind me of competitive trivia tournaments. Even though I was never the best answer-er, I loved the thrill of the chase, the honest-to-goodness adrenaline rush each time a new round began. And I definitely loved knowing the answers to those literature questions, not to mention that one time I answered a math question correctly before any of the kids from P. South reached for their buzzers. Of course those victories are overshadowed by a memorable incident in which I confused Stephen Douglas with Kirk Douglas and shouted, "Spartcus!" in response to an American history question.

Now, much of the skills and facts I learned from quiz bowl are obsolete, save my Jeopardy! battles with Dad or Lacie. I wish there was a way of harnessing the energy I had back then, just the pure enjoyment of competition. Perhaps when I finally get to the dissertation stage(s) of my degrees, the feeling will be similar, but I still miss sitting at a long table with the guys, and fixating on red or green buzzers, which usually rang in fifths (intervals, that is).

Anyone else have cool/interesting/quixotic/random memories to share?