Spidergrrl's Web

blogging in class

ok, i'm writing more on my advanced comp. class blog than i am here and i need to get some metacommentary going. why isn't it just commentary? well, cuz, it's on this blog, the other blogs, blogs in general...meta -- beyond -- occurring separately, after, "Denoting a nature of a higher order or more fundamental kind" OED -- a curious preposition, since it can mean both with and after. not sure how that works.

i'm doing an "Explaining a Concept" paper along with my advanced comp. class and i'm doing it on blogging. i worked through some of the guidelines and resisted many of them...i don't like writing formulas, writing formula-instrutions. but then, i don't like deadlines, either. somehow, writing has to get done if it is to be fixed in publication. hypertext, wikis, blogs...a revisionist's dream or nightmare, an OCD's dream or nightmare. has anyone written anything about revision and obsessive compulsive disorder? i often feel as if i'm thoroughly OCD as i revise my words into perfection, which is never attainable. wonder if julie is reading this...she's my revision expert resource.

ana sent me a way cool link today: misbehaving.net. looks like a typepad template and Mena Trott's name is linked on the sidebar. lots of info on gender and blogging.

i've got a sick son. started out with allergy symptoms and he's full-fledged with stuffiness, sore throat. it's the end of the month and a visit to the doctor's is not in the budget right now. i'm hoping a lot of sleep and fluids today and tomorrow (public schools are off tomorrow) will get him feeling a bit better. he's napping now and bobby mcferrin and yoyo ma are piping softly into the room. i'm off for more coffee. gotta give the kitties food and fresh water.

but before...i watched some of the united for peace and justice rally in d.c. yesterday -- there were thousands of people there, but the camera's lens from the podium made it look like a saturday picnic. i kept track of closeups, since the camera seemed to spend a longer time focused on close-ups of people with orange mohawks, pierced lips, physical tics rather than on the 60-ish couple with the sedate T-shirts. so cnn seems to have covered the entire rally. still pondering the effect of that coverage.

it's strange to see T-shirts with the word "Palestine" on them. it's strange to think of my grandmother's birthplace as a cause.

iraqi universities

It's 7.44am and I've got my coffee. Just barely. Here's my progress on trying to get an authentic audience for college students writing/thinking about the epic Gilgamesh:

• joined the Webheads group at Tapped In and posted a query about setting up some kind of cyberxchange with students at an Iraqi university


• did a search for Iraqi Tapped In members and found one person, whom I have not yet contacted


• googled Iraqi universities and found a reappearing non-functioning link to a list of Iraqi universities


• followed a google link to an article called Rebuilding Iraqi science in The Scientist, in which author Sam Jaffe interviewed Andrew Erdman, ORHA advisor to Iraq's Ministry of Higher Education. Erdman's response to the question "How large is the Iraqi university system?" told me that Baghdad University is the largest with 44,000 students, and the word "universities" was linked to a French list of Iraqi universities.


• went to the French list of Iraqi universities (there are 14 universities) and found no links to university websites


• googled "Baghdad University," which did not lead me to a university website but to numerous articles on the 7 July killing of a U.S. marine at Baghdad University and to descriptions of the damage to the university, which re-opened this past May

I wanted to find out to what extent the damage to infrastructure would impede any kind of cyber exchange and my searches taught me several things. The lack of any university websites does not necessarily mean the information does not exist, just that it has not been available outside Iraq. But I also have absolutely no idea what the IT infrastructure is like there, what it was like under Hussein, what it's like now. Erdman's comments in The Scientist pretty much dismiss Iraqi science labs as neanderthal. How do I read that? U.S. chauvinism and ignorance creates a paternalism that blinds. And, Iraqi scientists have left Iraq over the last 12 years. I'm having a hard time sorting out my thoughts here.

During my search, I also landed at the Purdue International Programs newsletter which summarized a talk by Muhyieddeen Touq, currently Ambassador of Jordan to the International Organizations in Vienna. At the end of his talk, Touq discussed the current status of Iraqi universities and called for U.S. universities to use their "moral and academic powers" to create "a culture of conflict prevention."

first post - recursive

Recursive can be anagrammed into revise u c, r? OK, that might be stretching it. "Revise, you see ... or?" translates nicely as an invitation to write. 4 weeks of a National Writing Project summer invitational institute and I've got recursion on my mind. Circular, spiraling. Life, writing, programming, parenting, spirituality. Seem to all fit in that movement of non-linearity, progress that weaves.

Could I sound any more pretentious? Oi.

Talk about recursiveness...this program has been revised into a piece of art. Ya know the kind of program that works so intuitively that you find yourself saying, "Hey, I wonder if it does this?" and it always does. Better than you thought it could. Dream program. Now that's good writing.

Course one could always anagram recursive (and no, "anagram" is not a verb) into a Yoda-esque metaphysical query: "Revise r u, c?" Gargle a bit in the throat, get that Frank Oz malleable voice and say, "Revise are you ... see?" So one becomes not a revision, not a product -- one becomes the verb. Revise am I, see? Definitely getting late. Definitely didn't need that cup of green tea at 10pm.

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