What are Students Thinking?

Writing teachers are full of pet peeves. This is perhaps inevitable since every time we experience writing habits we find distasteful, we do so while grading a huge stack of papers. This means that we experience these over and over so that it seems like language is infested with these things. The common response of many who teach writing is simply to complain a lot. We create lists of freshman cliches, which we share with one another or sometimes with students (I once had one such list designed to help students find these in their own writing. It was tellingly entitled "Ugh Words"). We create elaborate jokes, send terrible students sentences back and forth to each other, and create snarky internet memes (ironically, about the terrible things the internet is supposed to be doing to student writing). I myself have written a series of five-pararaph essays about why the five-paragraph essay is so bad.

What we often forget to do, to our own shame, is to try to figure out why students do these things. Perhaps this is because we assume that these problems in our students' writing exhibit some kind of natural deficiency in their processes, work ethic, or with the students themselves. In other words, we assume that the problem is with our students, and not with our ability to teach them. Students have these problems because they are lazy, waiting until the night before the paper is due without time to really revise or evaluate their own writing, because they simply aren't listening to us in class when we tell them what [not] to do, or because they just don't care that much.

I, on the other hand, prefer to eschew utterly pessimistic views of our students and the work they do, mainly because such views are not particularly helpful with regard to my own teaching. It is, instead, much more helpful to look at these common problems in our students' writing, not as natural deficiencies or personal attacks against me personally, but as rhetorical choices our students make. In other words, when these students go awry, what were they trying to do, why did it fail, and how do we help them do what they were trying to do in more acceptable ways.

With that in mind, I'm beginning a new segment of this blog that deals especially with these peevish problems in student writing with the goal of theorizing what students are doing when they make common mistakes, or rather, when they write in ways which seem totally acceptable and appropriate to them, but which we hate. Assuming that students aren't doing these things because they hate me and wish to attack me, or because they are idiots who can't be helped, or because the golden age of my university years has given way to the incoherence of net-speak, the goal of this series will be to try to develop our own pedagogies so that we may respond to these problems in ways that are optimistic and constructive.

The first is already in the hopper; it will deal with students who quote dictionaries, and it will drop later tonight or tomorrow. So be watching for it. Now, I'm off to eat tacos.

The Rhetoric of My Office

This year, for the first time ever, I have my own office at the institution where I teach. Having to choose things to hang on the walls and deciding which books would need to come from home to sit on the bookshelf in my office was a new experience for me. So, as I added things over the course of the first semester, I became aware of just how conscious I was about the choices I was making (I don't know why that should have been surprising to me, but it was). Mainly, I was aware of how aware I was (meta-awareness?) about what these choices would communicate about me--my preferences, philosophies, and even my teaching style. My office is, as it turns out, a rhetorical device. This, I admit,  rather juvenile realization was re-enforced when a student came into my office for a conference, sat down on my hand-me-down love seat, looked around for a few seconds, and said, "I'm judging you by the things on your office." It is (and I told him so) appropriate for him to have done so. This is because my office communicates definite messages, some purposeful, some haphazard, about me as a teacher and as a person.

There are relatively obvious, and certainly purposeful messages being communicated through the things I've hung on the walls. I expected these things to be an expression of the way I see the world, the things I care about, and ultimately the ways that I wish to be viewed. These include Warhol themed nick-knacks like a calendar with a Warhol quote and Campbell's soup cans designed after the famous Warhol paintings (an interesting inversion in which the actual Campbell's soup brand drew inspiration from an artist who drew inspiration from their own graphic design). I added these art themed elements to go along with the one wall hanging in my office that I didn't go out and find, which was a poster print of a Kandinsky painting. I chose this poster out of a stack of things hanging around which had been abandoned by previous faculty. These things included a lot of classical themed stuff (Shakespeare stuff, mainly). I chose the Kandinsky piece because I prefer the modern over the classical, the pop over the cultured, the deconstructive over the refined. I added to these pieces a Dali style melting clock I bought at Hobby Lobby, so that my office is full of references to Modern art.

In addition to these, I hung a TOMS shoes flag (which the company smartly includes in the purchase of every pair, with a note encouraging buyers to take pictures with their flags in the exotic places where they where TOMS shoes. A bit of marketing brilliance). I also have a concert poster from a Cake concert, which is printed using vegetable based dyes on recycled paper, and which explicitly says so on the bottom of the poster, a Kurt Vonnegut themed piece of graphic art, and a poster sized copy of the mural at 826 Valencia, a youth literacy center in San Francisco. These all operate to give the office a sort of pseudo-hispster vibe which is in keeping with the way I see myself and wish to present myself--a hopefully unpretentious, socially aware hippy type guy, disguised in preppy clothes.

Of course, these things aren't very big and the office is actually, despite all these accoutrements, relatively sparse. I haven't changed the wall color, so the office is a drab, institutional off-white. The pictures on the wall are of relatively uniform size and are hung in a more or less straight line around the office, and I have, for a member of the English faculty, relatively few books on one rather cheap book shelf (which was already in the office when I moved in). I have only 45 of my own books in my office, all of them Comp/Rhet themed. This is compared to the many hundreds I have crowding our office at home. I also have a couple binders of research articles and some small books left on the shelf by a previous tenant. Though these decisions were not purposeful, they do communicate an understanding of my own position. I am contingent faculty, on contract for one semester at a time. Though the English department and I are happy with each other, and don't plan to break up any time soon, it is nevertheless possible that any one semester could be my last (especially since we keep getting our budget cut). And even if I remain on board, the university could hire a tenure track faculty member who needs the office, and so I could be shipped down the hall to share with another adjunct. So it would be rather presumptuous, and possibly a waste of time to pound too many holes in the walls or to haul too many books up the stairs. These decisions were not really purposeful, and so perhaps they're not strictly rhetorical, but there is a clear connection between these decisions and my own understanding of who I am. Thus, understanding my position provides a proper lens for understanding my decorating decisions.

This piece admittedly serves little particular purpose other than giving me something fun and interesting to think about. But it does provide an example that indeed there are many texts that can be analyzed outside of those we think of an technically and traditionally academic. Indeed, applying this type of analysis to other, larger forms of space commonly reveal important lessons about the politics of space, the symbology of urban/suburban design, and the assumptions that guide the way we live and move in our environments. These types of analysis, in short, teach us a great deal about ourselves.

Nike Celebrates [Under?]Achievement

We all know what sneaker commercials are like. A freakishly talented celebrity super human performs amazing feats of strength or skill, usually against either a minimalist silence or against an expensively produced, raucous rock song.  Time will likely be slowed so that we can appreciate the agility and poise of our Superman, as flash bulbs momentarily silhouette his amazing physique. Then, in close up, we see his shoes. And on the shoes, the swoosh, or the swish, or the basket pattern, or some other form of highly recognizable iconography. And maybe we're supposed to think, "it's gotta be the shoes that make him fly." Or maybe we're just supposed to see that he's wearing these shoes, so they must be the best.

We all know this commercial, because it's every commercial. Through these ads, companies exploit our own wish to be great by showing us those who truly are and then drawing connections between that greatness and their product. NIKE has been a master of these type of ads at least since the introduction of their Air Jordan line in 1985. A prescient example of this style is this early commercial for the Air Jordan I.

In this example, we see all the genre conventions that have come to typify sneaker ads (Spike Lee's internal rhymes and Looney Tunes character cameos have, thankfully, fallen out of favor). We see His Air-ness on an outdoor court, alone of course, like a tragic Greek hero. The soundtrack is silent, save for the sound of a jet engine, throttling up before take off. As the pitch of the engine rises, so too does Jordan, flying through the air in slow motion, assuming the pose that became the apparel line's universally recognizable logo. Finally, as he slams the ball through the hoop, we hear a thunderous echo, and we hear Jordan ask, "who says man was not meant to fly?"

The ad hardly talks about the product at all. We don't hear anything about how light the shoes are, how springy the heels, how solid the ankle support. Instead, we are shown only the very epitome of greatness, followed by the simple statement "Air Jordan. . ." NIKE sees no need to sell us the product based on its merits. They needed only to connect the shoe to Jordan's greatness (a connection Jordan was all too happy to help make. He was fined $5000 every time he wore the shoes in a game because they did not fit uniform standards. If he's willing to pay so much money to wear the shoes, they must be good.)

Because this strategy is so well known to us all, and because it is so tried and true, NIKE's 2011 "Find Your Greatness" campaign might be a bit of a surprise. This is because the "greatness" the ads in this campaign celebrate are nothing like the greatness that we would associate with a Michael Jordan (or even his counterfeit copy, LeBron James). The "Jogger" ad, which might have been the most memorable ad of the campaign, provides a good example of NIKE's much different kind of greatness.

This ad shares a few noticeable things with it's 26 year old predecessor. It's remarkably silent; we hear nothing but the sound of crickets at dusk and the crescendo of footfalls on asphalt. It features a human being in solitude. This seems to be the mark of discipline. The characters in these commercials are still out working, alone in their determination, while others have gone in.

And yet, there is one profound difference in these ads. As he gets closer to the camera, it's clear that the lonely character in the "Jogger" ad is not Michael Jordan, the world class athlete--the best to ever play his sport.  Rather, he is a morbidly obese fourteen year old from London, Ohio named Nathan. He runs awkwardly and sweats profusely, but he's catching up to the camera, which is also moving along the deserted road. And, as he runs, a voice proclaims that ". . .greatness is no more unique to us than breathing. We're all capable of it. All of us."

The brilliance of the ad is that it celebrates the un-athletic, the un-talented, the banal. What's more, it calls it "greatness." So, these ads present NIKE apparel, not as the apparel of the elite, winning championships and MVP trophies, but as the apparel of the kid, winning a battle against himself and against his own body. Greatness in these ads isn't the super-human talents of the superstar. Greatness is a kid having the courage to change the direction of his life, against all odds and against the doubt of others. This, perhaps ironically, makes the ad very powerful, because it celebrates the Everyman. It speaks to the consumer that doesn't want to be a superstar, but instead wants to be healthier, wants to live without being ashamed, wants a date to prom, and it says, "we've got the apparel to support that, to support whatever 'greatness' means to you."

Electoral Maps and Visual Rhetoric

Maps were very important Tuesday night. A ubiquitous feature of network coverage of elections is the large digital map, coded with the now definitive red and blue. As networks reported races and results, they invariably used touch screen maps to zoom in on states to look at county by county results. As the evening started shaping up, analysts used maps to explain scenarios that would get each candidate to the magical 270. So, as important as maps have become in these discussions, it is smart to examine these maps. They are, despite seeming to be object graphs of voter behavior, discursive in nature, and thus worthy of analysis.

The rhetorical nature of these maps is evident in the fact that, in the morning after the election, my Facebook news feed was full of this map:

This map seems to be an objective graph of how each county voted. Surely, there's no way to spin this map; it simply is what it is. Yet, it's not surprising that this map was being shared by my Republican friends, rather than my Democrat friends. The attractiveness of this map to my Republican friends is simple to explain: it contains a lot of red. The implicit argument, then, is that a huge section of this country is conservative, or at least Republican, and last night's results are a product of those slightly-less-American coasts. I had one friend even make the comment that "ninety percent of the country is red." But of course, square miles don't get to vote: people do. In this way, this map, as a graphic representation of the electorate, is a bit misleading.

Here is a different picture of the country:

This Rorschach Test looking map is a map of the United States, distorted to account for population. It is a county map, like the one above, except that the sized of the counties is adjusted so that they reflect population rather than land area. The colors on this map reflect the election results, by county, of the 2004 election (here is the county map from 2004. It looks nearly identical to 2012). This map is topical rather than topological.

On this map, the red isn't near so overwhelming. And, obviously, the blue is much more prominent. As one of my students said of this map, "this map is a lot more magenta." The highly divided nature of the country is much more evident in this map, and it is easy to see that the population centers of the country  are solidly blue.

The point here is that no piece of information, even a seemingly objective map, is devoid of rhetorical construction. The way that a map as a graphic representation is constructed, presented, and passed around must be interpreted. These two maps contain different assumptions about the information they present, and thus imply different arguments about the political picture of the United States. Understanding these may greatly inform our understanding of the nature of the electorate and last night's results.

Here's one more, just for fun. What are the [barely] implicit arguments imbedded in this graphic?

Gotye and Digital [Pop] Culture

This post is intended to argue that the Gotye mash up above is evidence of Gotye's understanding of the mindset of digital culture. But instead of jumping right in, I intent to enter the conversation through the back door, in order to provide some theoretical background to what I am going to argue about Gotye's piece.

A couple years ago, Steven Hopkins, a graduate school colleague of mine wrote and presented a paper for a graduate seminar in which he presented the Gregory Brothers as an example of web 2.0 success (I hope I don't mis-state his argument. If I do, I look for him to correct me in the comments section). The Gregory Brothers, a musical group made up of a set of brothers and one of their wives, are now known for Autotune the News, the Obama Kick Ass Song, and of course the Bed Intruder Song (a phenomenon that I've addressed in the past).

Understanding the Gregory Brothers' success relies on two concepts important to theorists of digital culture and literacy. The first is Alexander Reid's concept of Rip/Mix/Burn. Reid cites Lawrence Lessig as the originator of the idea, which states basically that participatory digital culture relies on the ability of participants to rip material from other sources, and to combine these artifacts until a new artifact is produced through these combinations. Reid argues that this is, in fact, how cognition works. If this is the case, all cultural artifacts (whether art, discourse, or any other intellectual endeavor) are culminations of the artifacts, attitudes, ethics, and tropes that influenced them. This understanding, to Reid, problemitizes our understanding of issues like copyright, since nothing can truly be the product of one author/artist. All intellectual work is communal.

In the digital era, this process of Rip/Mix/Burn is exemplified in artifacts like fanzines, YouTube mash ups, and so on.  This is, of course, what the Gregory Brothers do on their websites. In order to make their videos, they bring together news clips, soundbites, and images and set these to music. So, they start with other people's copyrighted material, mix it up, add their own creativity, and produce something new.

The second important concept in understanding Web 2.0 success is Michele Knobel and Colin Lanksheare's idea of a Web 2.0 "mindset." For Lanksheare and Knobel, print culture was built around a "scarcity model." Hemingway was valuable because there was only one of him, and his success relied on his having been signed by Scribner. In order to become a successful writer, one must do so through the professional mediator of a publishing house. If one was to become a successful musician, one must be signed to a record deal. In this mindset, value came from an artifact's rarity, and the dissemination of that artifact was carefully controlled by professionals who supposedly knew what was good, and what would sell.

Web 2.0, on the other hand, functions according to a proliferation model. One becomes successful in digital culture by "going viral." And this relies, not on the professional wisdom of publishers and recording studios, but on the mouse clicks of viewers who like what they see and hit the share button. The Gregory Brothers, a band, became popular not when they were noticed by a studio for their "original" pieces, but when they were noticed by Internet users for their mash ups. Culture, according to Lanksheare and Knobel is shifting in such a way that this mindset will become dominant.

The entertainment industry proper, however, has been reticent to the changes this second mindset calls for. The entertainment industry, and the music industry in particular, has in fact, engaged in open warfare with the second mindset through  anti-piracy movements and PSAs, and law makers have responded with bills like the SOPA. The recording industry, including many musicians, has often militantly protected copyright. In this way, the industry has been rather retrograde with respect to its response to digital culture.

Because of this,I was a bit surprised and also pleased with this video by the recording artist Gotye. To produce this video, Gotye (who signs the video with the shortened form of his given name "Wally") trudged through the numerous parodies and covers of his song "Somebody that I Used to Know" that had been posted on YouTube and pieced together a new rendition of the song using these clips. Rather than circling the legal wagons and going after all of these video makers for copyright violation, he has instead himself ripped these samples, mixed them, and produced something from them. He has helped write his own fanzine.

This suggests that Gotye has adopted what Lanksheare and Knobel call the "second mindset." He hasn't just allowed the remixing of his song, but has in fact participated in the remixing process himself. In this way, he shares authorship with his audience, in much the same way as a blogger does when he enables the commenting function on a blog, then responds to commenters. He's allowed his sing to become an artistic wiki. Furthermore, he acknowledges that the form of the remix was ityself "inspired" by [ripped from] a Kutiman YouTube video. He also provides a link list to all the "original videos" of the "Somebody" covers he has used, and admits (in a tone that looks like apology) that he could not include all of the covers  he found.

What Gotye seems to understand is what the rest of the industry seems to have missed with regard to the new mindset: that the parodies and samples of his song did not harm him by violating his copyright. Rather, they brought attention to the song and they added to the conversation about its value. He seems to understand that art is a communal process, in which artists (and consumers) inspire and react to one another. The image of a solitary genius is a myth. Authorship is always shared. And the result of this shared authorship, in this case, is a haunting and aesthetically beautiful piece in its own right.

Looks Like Mad: Imagery and Mediation

Last week, at a training class for public officials I attended, someone brought a newspaper which had a montage of four pictures (like the one above) of James Holmes, the accused gunman in the Aurora, CO movie theater massacre. Holmes's appearance in court had been the conversation du jour for the twenty-four hours or so before. The descriptions from the media of these images and video clips included words like "strange," "detached," "bizarre," and so on. These reports seemed to lead inevitably to speculation about whether or not these images suggested that Holmes was mentally insane or if he was, perhaps, acting in order to prepare for an insanity defense.

During a break in our class, one of my fellow attendees showed me the front page, pointed out the photos, and said something like, "look at him. Do you think he's crazy?" Always one for pedantry, I said "well, I think that the editors of this paper were able to choose four photos that made him look crazy." I then added, "I think these photos say more about how the editors wish for us to see Holmes than they do about Holmes himself." I don't intend to argue about whether or not Holmes is mentally ill (to tell you the truth, I don't watch the news much and don't have any interest in engaging in those kinds of discussions anyway), but rather I want to use the conversation to discuss the reliance on  imagery as evidence, and to interrogate it a bit.

What's interesting to me about the discussion in my training class, and with similar discussions in the media, is that we (viewers/discussants) were being asked to decide whether or not Holmes was mentally ill based on the evidence of how he "looks" in photos selected for us by editors, rather than on the immensely anti-social nature of the crimes of which he's accused. Our impressions about the way he "looks" seems to carry more rhetorical weight with regard to the question of his sanity than does his actual behavior.In a way, we were being asked whether or not the way he looks might serve to explain, or even excuse the way he actually behaved.

For me, this is a testament to the power of visual evidence on our culture. We readily assume that visual evidence, in the form of photographs and especially in the form of video, is an unimpeachable and unmediated form of proof. After all, if we can see something, we can assess it's truth ourselves. If one wanted to prove a particular person broke into a store, for instance, a copy of the surveillance tape settles is. We know the actions of police in the Rodney King assault were abusive because we saw the assault on tape. And with the proliferation of cameras in modern public space in the forms of camcorders, media crews, police car dash cams, traffic light cameras, surveillance cameras, and cell phones, we have been acculturated  into the understanding that anything can be recorded, and recordings tell us the truth. Seeing is, as we say, believing.

We, therefore, tend to accept visual proof of any concept, event, or phenomenon as unmediated truth. Thus, we fail to interrogate visual imagery in any significant way (except maybe to argue about whether or not an image was staged or Photoshopped). We must learn to be careful, though, when considering visual evidence, just as we would be with any other kind of evidence. We must learn to ask who recorded this image. What was their purpose in doing so; what did they include and what might they have left out; how was it edited and why was it edited this way; what is the context of this image? These kinds of questions help us to determine just what a visual image is actually evidence of. They allow us to determine how much of the truth a visual image actually shows us. It is not enough simply accept that, because we see an image, we are privy to the whole truth of any situation.

One of the readers I have used to teach composition contains an interview by textbook authors David Rosenwasser, and Jill Stephen with photographer Joseph Elliott. In this interview, Elliott makes reference to a distinction he makes between artistic photographers as "Stagers and Recorders." Recorders, like Andreas Gursky, attempt to capture reality as they see it in front of them. Their photographs are somewhat journalistic--one might say "slice of life." Stagers, such as Gregory Crewdson on the other hand, well, stage their photographs. They plan them ahead, set lighting, build sets, use posing actors, and so on.

Stagers, according to Elliott, see themselves as "more honest" than Recorders because they are willing to show their hand in their photographs. Elliott explains, "any photographer is clearly implicated by the process of taking photographs." He goes on to say, "a photographer is inevitably selecting what to shoot and thus what not to shoot, and he or she is always framing the shot in various ways." In other words, the photographer necessarily acts as a mediator between the subject and the viewer, simply by choosing what to photograph. For instance, in the examples I've provided in the hyperlinks above, Crewdson's photographs are obviously staged in order to capture his artistic vision. But even Gursky, a Recorder, has framed the photo in order to capture a certain geometry, chosen a time of day that best suited the lighting he wished to capture, chose from some number of prints that which best fit his aesthetic sense of composition, and so on. So, though his photo may provide a "slice of life," it is necessarily a carefully chosen slice.

This concept has application when considering non-artistic images (those which we may use as evidence) as well. A newspaper photographer, a crime scene detective, or a cell phone user photographing a police officer on a traffic stop all, like an photographer/artist, chooses what to photograph, and by necessary extension, what not to photograph. There is always something going on in the margins, outside the frame. The photographer is always deciding that this is the thing he wants to photograph, and this is when. Even the most objective photographer is choosing what to photograph and when to snap the shutter, and in this way mediates the "truth" that the image captures.

This holds true of video as well. This is an important point because we give video an even greater evidentiary weight than we do still images. After all, videos are real time. If I want to test whether or not the photo editor who put together the four photos of James Holmes had fairly represented his demeanor for the whole of his court appearance, I might watch watch the video of the entire proceeding.

But in video, as in still photos, mediation occurs simply in the act of pointing the camera alone. Then, the act of editing the video adds another very important level of mediation. For instance, look at the effect editing had on the video below.

This is a very chilling example of the ways in which editors of video can more or less create truth that may or may not fairly represent the "reality" that the camera filmed. Of course, most camera operators and editors are not so unfair as the editor of this video, but the process of mediation remains the same even when editors truly wish to present images fairly. She still must edit a video based on what she believes is important, based on how she interprets the event.

Even an unedited video is subject to the limitations of framing, camera angle, video quality and so on. For instance, the cameras from a police dash cam might lead to an entirely different understanding of an event when viewed from one camera angle than when viewed from another. What if you were asked to decide whether or not the shooting filmed in these hyperlinks was justified based on the first video alone? You would believe you had seen the event as it really unfolded. After all, you saw it happen--from the officers own camera. The first video seems to clearly show officers shooting a man who was simply walking away. But of course, when you watch the second video, the limitation of the first becomes clear.

It is, therefore, important when judging the value of an image to ask why this photographer took this particular image at this particular time and in this particular way. Was this taken by a journalist who wishes to sell copies? An advocate of some particular cause hoping to make a certain emotional impression? Might this photographer have left something out, and if so, what and to what effect? What context might we be missing when viewing the images alone?

By positing these questions, I don't mean to turn readers into conspiracy theorists, assuming that photographers are trying to trick us. The point is that all photographers, videographers, and editors must make decisions about what the viewer will see and how they will see it, simply by the limited nature of what they are able to show. Furthermore, the choices choices are rhetorical. They take specific images, at specific times, and for specific reasons. An image is not an unmediated and inherently subjective window into truth, but rather a limited and controlled argument. Visual images are certainly very powerful pieces of evidence, but they must be treated as what they are--pieces.

Remember this next time you're presented with an image that is said to be indisputable truth of something.

Being Really Useful: A (sort-of) tongue-in-cheek analysis of the Thomas and Friends series

As a father of twin sons, I have been subjected to hours upon hours of Thomas and Friends episodes. My sons also have Thomas the Tank Engine models (two of which actually propel themselves and pull wooden train cars), and Thomas blankets. In fact, my wife discovered a potty training breakthrough for our son Beckett by buying him Thomas underwear. She explained to him, "Thomas is our friend. We don't pee on our friends." After this, Beckett, who is innately logical, tried very hard not to wet his pants and, when he had an accident, he would sulk and say "we don't pee on our friends."

Their Thomas craze has subsided some in favor of Veggie Tales and Elmo, but during the height of their Thomas fandom, when we were watching the show constantly, I would make fun of the oft repeated phrase "really useful engine," a phrase repeated ad nauseam in the Thomas and Friends series. I, somewhat jokingly, insisted that the show was designed to brain-wash children into accepting the ethos of being "really useful" as sacrosanct. Of course, I made these assertions in jest, mostly because there is nothing so particularly insidious about teaching children to be useful.

Then, yesterday, I was picking up the horrifying mess my boys hourly make when I came across their "Thomas & His Friends Help Out" DVD. While I walked the DVD back to the living room (I found it in the bathroom, of course), I haphazardly read the back of the sleeve. The description of the stories contains a quote ascribed to the railway director, Sir Topham Hatt: "Helping out is one of the best ways to show that you're a Really Useful Engine." I instantly noticed the divine capitalization used in the phrase Really Useful Engine. This capitalization, usually reserved in modern English for proper nouns and pronouns for the deity, suggests that the ethos of being Really Useful is, in a very interesting way, treated as sacred within the context of these stories. Since this is the case, I thought, perhaps this ethic deserves a little attention. What does is mean to be Really Useful? What makes this ethos culturally appropriate, and what cultural systems does it privilege?

It may be tempting to think it silly to analyze a children's television program, that it is, on it's face, an over analysis, a pedantic intellectual exercise. I admit that this is true. I am, in fact, writing this blog mostly in jest. But, I would also argue that our children's television shows are indeed worthy of scholarly analysis. This is because, considering how much time our children spend watching television, educational and otherwise, it's reasonable to argue that these shows are one of the important activities through which we enculturate our children. In a way that probably ought to make us uncomfortable, it makes perfect sense that the nation that produced the ghastly Struwwelpeter stories also produced the Holocaust (see Katz, Steven B. "The Ethic of Expediency: Classical Rhetoric, Technology, and the Holocaust." College English 54.3. 1992). This is because a society's cultural productions, especially those considered didactic, inculcate its members into the society's organization, ethics, and systems. So, what ethics and what systems are being privileged when we teach our children that it's important to be "Really Useful Engines?"

First of all, understand that within the context of the Thomas the Tank Engine TV shows (I confess, I haven't looked at the books, so I cannot speak for them), the goal of every character is to be regarded as "Really Useful," especially by Sir Topham Hatt, the Director of the Railroad. It is indeed, their only form of payment. The phrase "Really Useful" appears in nearly every episode and is, in fact, part of the theme song of the show. An engine becomes Really Useful in the ways one might expect: by being on-time, by working hard, and by performing well at difficult, work-centered tasks.

This is a decidedly industrial ethic. Work hard, and you shall be regarded as Really Useful. And, of course, to be called Really Useful is the ultimate compliment in these stories. Thomas and Friends, then, privileges an ethos that is undoubtedly industrial rather than, say, one that is relational. In the quote I gave from Topham Hatt earlier in this post, the reader may notice that one "help[s] out" (relational) in order to show that we are "Really Useful" (industrial). This quote, which succinctly provides the moral of these stories, seems to privilege the industrial over the relational. We do the work of relationship (helping out) in order to become industrious (really useful). The relational serves the purposes of the industrial, rather than the other way around.

This seems to fit well with cultural ethic of the industrialized west, specifically the UK and the US where these shows are produced. In many eastern cultures (especially middle-eastern), which are more relational, one might expect an inversion of this moral. One tries to be "really useful" (industrious) in order to "help out" (foster relationships and cohesion). In the west, we tend to privilege industriousness in an extraordinary way. We place great personal value on industrial value. That is to say, we often judge others by their ability to contribute through work. We introduce ourselves to strangers by telling them what we "do," which always means what we do to make money. Indeed, a good puritan work ethic is part of the fabric of our society, a society that counts on its members' ability and willingness to work. Industriousness is an important ethic with regard to the the maintenance of the military-industrial complex, which is, after all, the core of a capitalist society.

What we learn from this (which will not really be a surprise) is that we begin inculcating cultural values at a very early age,a and through seemingly innocuous, even wholesome, media. As an individualistic, capitalist society, we teach our children from a very early age the importance of individual achievement and industriousness. We want them to want to be Really Useful, because our society requires useful members--that is, members who do good work. If these lessons aren't exactly purposeful (I abjure the thought that Reverend Awdry was purposefully brainwashing children into good little corporate slaves) it is only because these ethics are so naturalized that these lessons happen automatically any time we write something we believe to be educational. These lessons just seem seem right and good in and of themselves. The ethics they teach are, for better or worse, sacrosanct.

I hope you've found this analysis Really Useful. Even better if you're a publisher who finds it industrious.

Ron Artest and the Language of [non]Apology

Yesterday, perennial basketball villain and recidivist Ron Artest (who I refuse to call Metta World Peace) made the bad kind of news again with his flagrant foul against OKC Thunder guard James Harden, a vicious and unprovoked elbow to the head of a player not even involved in the play. Artest, who has attempted to change his image in part with a ridiculous name change, issued a pretty shallow apology in the locker room. He's also offered some further apologies/excuses via twitter since the incident (how people apologize in 140 characters or less is a subject worthy of study in its own right).

As a language and rhetoric person, I find Artest's apology, as a discursive act, very interesting. As a Thunder fan and Artest hater, I find it rather hollow. Here is the apology:

During that play, you know, I just dunked on, you know, Durant and Ibaka, and I got real emotional, real excited and it was unfortunate that James, you know, had to get hit, you know, with an unintentional elbow. And I hope he’s okay, you know. The thunder, they’re playing for a championship this year, you know, so I really hope that he’s okay. And, you know, I apologize to the Thuder, you know, and to James Harden. It was such a great game, and it was unfortunate, you know. So much emotion was going, going on at that time so. . .That’s it for today [smiles, apparently having been directed not to answer any questions].

There are some interesting rhetorical moves imbedded in this statement--moves which rather remind me of the spontaneous utterances (a legal term) offered by people I've arrested as a police officer. Here's what I notice.

1) "I got real emotional, real excited."
Here, Artest offers the excuse for his actions. His implicit argument here is that the incident was simply an expression of Artest's emotions, which are of course universal and involuntary human reactions. Again, this mirrors the excuses offered up by many who have just committed crimes who wish to minimize their culpability by blaming their own emotions with statements like "he was talking noise and I just lost control." I'd be interested in a study of such use of emotion as excuse is a feature in the language of apologies in other cultures. I have a sense that such moves are made possible by our culture's privileging of emotion.

Our culture views emotion as central to decision making, and in fact we assume that such a view is natural common sense. We base our decisions about who to marry (and divorce) on how we "feel" about another person. We judge whether or not we are in the right career based on how the job makes us "feel," and we assume that the "right" job carries with it the intrinsic reward of feeling good during and after the work. It is, then, not a surprise that appeals to emotion appear in our expressions of apology and excuse as well. Somehow, we are bad people if our trespasses are logic based (think of the concept of "premeditation). But if they are emotion based, we are just people who make mistakes. We didn't behave out of evil, but rather, we just over-reacted to our own emotions. Artest implies this here as well. He minimizes what he has done by making sure we understand that he did not draw up a plan on the bench to strike Harden and take out the sixth-man of the year. Rather, his action was an unplanned emotional outburst-- natural reaction to just having out-performed the likely league MVP (KD) and on of the best interior defenders on the league (Ibaka).

2) "It was unfortunate that James, you know, had to get hit. . ."
There are a couple things going on in this sentence. One is embedded in the word "unfortunate." Here, Artest transfers agency away from himself and onto the concept of fortune--fate, destiny, Moira. The elbow wasn't the action of a person but rather of plain old bad luck.

The second salient feature of this sentence is the use of passive voice. That is, in the structure of this sentence, no one does any hitting. Harden simply was hit. In fact, he "had to be" hit. Artest conspicuously leaves himself out of the action of this sentence. My sister Tina, a Spanish translator for an insurance company with a highly sophisticated and nuanced understanding of the language, once talked about her occasional frustration in dealing with insurance claims based on a cultural reluctance in many Spanish speaking countries to admit wrong-doing (as we all know, in auto-insurance claims, "fault" is a big deal after an accident). In Spanish, she says, it would be very uncommon for a person to say "I did such and such," but rather "such and such was done [by me]." So, the syntax of the language is actually structured in such a way that actually forces speakers to distance themselves from action.

Since she's told me about this feature, I've been more sensitive to this occurring in English, a language that privileges agency and active voice verb constructions. In English, if someone is leaving themselves out of a sentence, is is conspicuous and telling. And this is exactly what Artest does here. No one hit Harden. Rather, it is simply something that happened. In fact, it is something that "had to" happen--again, an act of fortune, or misfortune, as the case may be.

And all this happens even before he finally simply claims that it was "unintentional." All the features I've pointed out here function to distance Artest from his own actions. He minimizes his own agency, deferring instead to emotion and to fortune (twice each, as it turns out). It's an "apology" that, again, shares the features of confessions made by a criminals who make admissions with their defense still in mind. So, to those of us who were already critical of Artest, his statement hardly seems like an apology at all. These are not the words of a contrite man who had been trying to change his image only to have this setback. Rather, they are the words of a man who had really not changed that much at all.

Because I'm (sort of) a Rhetorician Who Was Once a Music Major

Several weeks ago, this digital poster made the rounds especially among my artsy, hipster friends. Of course, graduate school ruined me so that I can't look at anything without performing a miniature Toulmin analysis, so I quickly analyzed this poster, questioned it's assumptions, and filed it away in my brain to deal with it later. Well, it's later. I won't do a line by line Toulmin analysis here, because it wouldn't be particularly interesting, but I will address the implicit argument of this digital poster and the assumptions on which such an argument relies.

The argument itself is relatively straight forward. The poster first shows lyrics from the song "The Way You Look Tonight" which, if the adjacent photo denotes authorship, it mistakenly attributes to Frank Sinatra (the song was written by Jerome Kern and Dorothy Fields and originally performed by Fred Astaire for the 1936 film Swing Time. Sinatra recorded a version in 1964, by which time the song was considered a standard.) Underneath these lyrics, the poster lists the much less interesting, highly reductive (dare I say, stupid) lyrics of Justin Bieber's "Baby." Underneath these lyrics, in the popular style of the (de)motivational poster, is the line, "Music, w..what HAPPENED!?"

The argument here is easy to discern. Music (judged by lyrics) was at one time rich, complex, and good. Now, it's simplistic, stupid, and bad.

This claim presents as its grounds the lyrics of these two songs. Of course, this is a digital poster, so it has little time for a nuanced portrayal of the music of these two eras (either the 30s or the 60s depending on if the poster intends the actual song, or the Sinatra remake, and the early 21st century). A complete historical picture of these two eras obviously cannot fit onto a digital poster. The claim of this poster, then, relies on the assumption that each of these songs is representative of its era. The quality of each era can, therefore, be judged based on the quality of each of these songs.

This assumption is relatively easy to attack. After all, it relies on the related assumption that ridiculous lyrics, like those of the Bieber song, did not appear in songs of the earlier era. Such a claim disregards lyrics like these from the Johnny Mercer song "I'm an Old Cowhand" (also remade by Sinatra):

I know all the songs that the cowboys know
'bout the big corral where the dogies go
'cause I learned them all on the rad-ee-o
Hey, yippie-yi-yo-ki-yay
Yippie-yi-yo-ki-yay

Furthermore, this assumption suggests that our current era does not include lyrics of more sophistication that the Bieber song, thus discounting lyrics like those of Anna Nalick:

Cause you can't jump the track, we're like cars on a cable
Life's like an hourglass glued to the table
No one can find the rewind button, girl
So cradle your head in your hands

In other words, in order to support the claim of this poster, the author relies on a biased sample, a logical fallacy in which the arguer makes generalizations which cannot be supported by the evidence provided because they are purposefully biased.

Furthermore, claims like the one made by this digital poster tend to discount one very important aspect of history--that is, history will ultimately remember the things that were the best of the era. Every church in the Baroque era large enough to hire one had a church composer and organist. But they didn't all become Johann Sebastian Bach. Indeed, an extraordinary majority of them, though they may have been popular at the time, have been forgotten by history. We remember Bach because he was the best of the era. The same has been true of the music of the 1930s and will be true of current music as well. It is, therefore, inappropriate to compare the relatively banal lyrics of one particular Justin Bieber song to the songs that have survived because they held some quality that made them classic, and use this comparison as evidence of some kind of devolution of music.

Claims like the one made in this poster ultimately belong to the narrative of the "golden age." Such narratives are often presented for rhetorical reasons by folks who wish to show that their own generation had it right and that "kids these days" have it all wrong, or by people who wish to show that they are aware that things used be be better and that their awareness of this fact makes them more sophisticated than others of their own generation. In other words, there is an element of pop-culture elitism inherent in these arguments. To the careful observer, however, these arguments do not show the sophistication of the arguer, but rather, the arguers historical ignorance, or at the very least, the arguers abuse of rhetorical strategy.

What Toothbrushes Taught Me About Ways of Seeing

Since our boys were brand new, we have organized things by color in order to keep straight what belongs to which kid. The phrase "Blue is for Beckett," has been a mantra in our house for the last two and a half years. When they were newborns, we would dress Beckett in blue so that others knew which kid was which. Though we have pretty much dropped color coding their clothing (Beckett, as it turns out, likes much brighter colors), we still use this to organize items that they should not share.

Beckett's milk cup is still blue because Aodan needs lactose free milk, so the coloring helps us keep the two types of milk separate. We also keep their toothbrushes separated by color. Blue is for Beckett. But we recently learned that even this simple system is not fool-proof. Even something as seemingly straight forward as color scheme is, as it turns out, subject to interpretation.

I learned this when we were both in the bathroom at the same time while I was brushing the boys' teeth. Charissa said something like, "oh, you switched their tooth brushes. I guess it doesn't matter." Of course, I hadn't. I was using the blue toothbrush to brush Beckett's teeth, so I replied, "blue is for Beckett." I then learned that she thought the other toothbrush was the blue one. We had been using opposite toothbrushes the entire time we've had this set. She is not, by the way, color blind. Nor am I. But we saw these two toothbrushes very differently, obviously.

Every geeky kid with an existential streak will remember the moment when he began to wonder whether or not people really do see colors the same way. What if what I see as blue, you see as red? We would never know that what we saw was different because we would both always call what we were seeing blue. This is the kind of question that is interesting from a theoretical perspective but that really doesn't matter much. As long as we consistently call that color blue, it doesn't really matter what it looks like to us, we can still communicate about the color consistently. But what was happening here was something different.

When I asked Charissa what she saw when she looked at these toothbrushes, she said that the one on the left was a green toothbrush with blue trim, and the one on the right was a blue toothbrush with purple trim. This is because the bases and the very tops of these toothbrushes are green and blue, respectively.

But I see these completely differently. I see the long necks on these toothbrushes and the fats parts on the handles, so I see them as blue (on the left) and purple (on the right). So, though we both see the same colors, we define which color is predominant, and thus definitive, in different ways.

This hints at a fundamental difference in the way my wife and I see things. What I see as trim, or background noise, she sees as defining characteristics. From my perspective, it seems like she sees a negative image of the same world I see. What's unimportant to me, is definitive to her.

Of course, to what extent our way of seeing toothbrushes is analogous to our ways of seeing the rest of the world is not settled. But the lesson here is still an interesting one. My wife and I, despite sharing our lives together, and despite the fact that we agree on most things and have an extraordinary number of things in common, see the world through different eyes, and may perceive it completely differently.

And ultimately, we name things according to how we see them. We see things according to how we define their characteristics. So, which characteristics we see as important--as definitive--has everything to do with how we name the world.

Who's Kelly Dodson? One year after the Bed Intruder

July 28th was the one year anniversary of the original airing of the WFF-Huntsville story that made Antoine Dodson a household name. The story itself became a viral notable. Then the story became a commercial success for Dodson when the Gregory Brothers auto-tuned the interview, creating the Bed Intruder Song. The song propelled both Dodson and the Gregory Brothers (who had been auto-tuning news clips for some time already) into Web 2.0 fame.

In the year since, I've shared both versions of the video on Facebook, talked about the Gregory Brothers remix in PhD level rhetoric and composition courses, shown the video to four sections of English Composition, read articles, papers, and blog posts about what the phenomenon means with regard to old notions of authorship/copyright/creativity and so on.

As interesting as the phenomenon has been as a student of rhetoric, there is one element of the story that has always troubled me--that is, the exploitative element of the story itself.

When the original story first became a meme, I was troubled by what I saw as an act of exploitation by WFF in its piece. I worried that what made the story so compelling, the reason it was being passed around the internet so much, and indeed the reason WFF edited the interviews in the way they did was that Antoine Dodson is so laughable. The troubling thing is that what makes Dodson so laughable is that he seems to fit into so many stereotypes. We instantly peg him as a ghetto-dwelling, Ebonics-speaking homosexual--proof that the inner city really is inhabited by the something-less-than-humans that middle class suburbanites think it is.

Of course, the part of me that was troubled by the fact that a news station would take advantage of these aspects of Dodson's persona was soon silenced by Dodson himself. It was quickly apparent that he was soaking up the attention, and loving it. And as soon as the Gregory Brothers song began selling on iTunes, he began to make money off the story as well. So, if the story was exploitative, it was at least co-exploitative. Dodson gained from it as much as WFF did.

But what gets lost in a discussion of whether or not Dodson was exploited is what is lost in the original story as well. That is: the victim, Kelly Dodson.

When the story first aired, I noticed the discrepancy in the amount of time the 2 minute, 3 second story devoted to Antoine Dodson (three clips for a total of 31 seconds) versus the time given to Kelly Dodson, his sister (two clips for a total of 7 seconds). So, the brother of the victim gets three times the air time as the victim herself. At the time, I took this as evidence that WFF was exploiting Antoine Dodson's compelling ghetto character at the expense of Kelly. I'm ashamed to say that it was not until much later that I considered whether or not this was a disservice to Kelly more than it was to Antoine. We know that Kelly must have had more than 7 seconds worth of stuff to say, because the story itself contains a clip of her talking and pointing, but this is dubbed over with the voice of the reporter. So, what of Kelly's story is edited out to make room for Antoine's ridiculous, self-aggrandizing rant?

I have little doubt that the story was edited the way it was to feature Antoine because Antoine was, frankly,more fun to watch--because he was so laughable. But the fact is, this was supposed to be a story about an attempted rape. A man violated the sanctity of Kelly Dodson's bedroom, in an attempt to violate her body as well. Such a crime is not and should not have ever been a joke.

The fact that it has become one is certainly an interesting academic phenomenon. But it also ought to trouble us. A news station may very well have robbed a woman of her story in order to amuse its viewers with the antics of her brother. And we lapped it up and laughed it up. Should we be okay with this?

Notes on Hedging and Introversion

A friend recently pointed me (via Facebook, of course) to a Carl King blog in which he outlines ten "myths about introverts." He bases these on his reading of the book The Introvert Advantage by Marti Olson Laney and on his own experiences. As an introvert myself, the list struck a chord with me, but I was especially interested in his third myth. He says:

Myth #3 – Introverts are rude.
Introverts often don’t see a reason for beating around the bush with social pleasantries. They want everyone to just be real and honest. Unfortunately, this is not acceptable in most settings, so Introverts can feel a lot of pressure to fit in, which they find exhausting.

This one stands out to me because I am often thought of as rude, aloof, and any number of other horrible things. It's something about myself that I have hated and that I have made concerted efforts to change. But the fact is, I don't ever even know when I'm doing something that others think is rude. And I am, in fact, far from being aloof; I am actually extremely emotional, though I am completely out of my element when trying to figure out how to express emotion in a socially acceptable way (so, I simply don't).

With regard to my accidental rudeness, I recently had an experience that I found enlightening, as I figured out what my misstep was, and why one particular person thought I was being rude, when I in fact, had no intention of being so.

Recently, while on a call, a coworker with whom I rarely work approached and asked "do you need anything?" I was extremely busy: I was on the phone with my our crime information unit, I was having an IM conversation with my dispatcher, and I was talking on the radio to our helicopter all at the same time. None of this, however, was anything she could do for me, so I said simply "no." She said something I didn't really hear in a tone of voice that was clearly perturbed and she drove away quickly. She then sent me a message that said "sorry I asked."

She apparently found my very terse answer to be rude. Of course, I had not intended to be rude. I was very busy, so I answered her question as directly and as quickly as I could. As a student of rhetoric, I was instantly interested in why my intention has miscarried. The fact is, and this is something I had not thought much about until this incident, there is an awful lot of hedging in our day to day communication.

"Hedging" is the process through which we qualify our language in order to soften the points we make, or the things we say. Our modern American culture seems to prize hedging a great deal. We are expected to use softening expressions like, "in my opinion," "I think," "but thank you anyway," and so on. It's a linguistic cue that is designed to be somewhat self-effacing ("this is what I believe, but it's only my opinion"), and thus exalting the other interlocutor.

Of course, these are dense, unspoken (and arbitrary) conventions designed to provide communicative context, especially with regard to how the speaker positions himself relative to the listener. In other words, by softening one's language, one in essence shows that he is not aggressive. Hedging is the linguistic equivalent of a dog's refusal to look her owner in the eye, in order to show that she is passive. And in a culture that presumes everyone to be equal, it's very important to us that we show through these cues that we are not trying to be the big dog.

It is this sort of dense communicative rule that is often lost on introverted folks like me. Perhaps this is because we tend to be fiercely interior and thus it does not occur to us that we will not be interpreted by our language alone, but also by these linguistic and contextual cues that we don't quite get--because we don't quite get other people.

Of course, while it has been a fun intellectual exercise for me to think about the importance of hedging, I don't expect that I'll start doing more of it. That is because I will continually fail to realize that I'm not doing it already.

Bin Laden's Death and the Discursive Use of Scripture in Social Media

One of the interesting things about being both a Christian and an academic, particularly one whose interests lie in digital rhetoric, is getting to watch the interesting discursive practices of lay Christians as they navigate life. For this reason, the conversations in response to the death of Osama Bin Laden have been particularly interesting to me. So, here, in the midst of the moment, I'm dropping in to make some notes about this rhetorical event even as it unfolds.

Because social media sites allow such instantaneous, unreflective, and unrevised communication, it's a prime site for watching the ways in which people react to and discuss events, like the death of our current greatest enemy. For this reason, I've been watching facebook posts from my Christian (and a few former-Christian) friends.

I've seen three different threads running my friend's facebook posts. They are:

1) God does not delight in death, even of evil men, so celebrating Bin Laden's death is inappropriate (Ez 18:23, for example).

2) In this, I'm including variations on one theme: God is just and therefore it is right that the evil should die, and the emotions attached to retributive justice are human and natural and therefore cannot be judged (Psalm 137:8-9)

3) People shouldn't be using the scripture to make these arguments, since we must, by definition, argue these scriptures out of context.

I'll address the first two by critiquing the third. The view that we should not be using scripture to back our thinking on this issue seems to rely on a couple of assumptions. First, that the authors of the status updates falling into the first two categories intend to use scripture as evidence that their view point is the correct view. And, second, that they shouldn't do so.

This first assumption may very well be correct. Certainly, I've been watching a lot of arguments and implications that the author sees his or her view as the correct one and that others must get on board. The authors of the first category seem to be the bigger offenders in this regard. Some (by no means all, and probably not even most) of these authors wish to prove that those who rejoice in Bin Laden's death do not show the love of Jesus, and that rejoicing over death, even of a man as evil as Bin Laden, is therefore sinful. Implicit in such arguments is the suggestion that because I do have this kind of love, my Christianity is superior to your's. Certainly, I understand the critique of this type of argument. Such presentations of Christian thought make us look narrow, and completely out of touch with human experience/emotion.

Authors of the second category often seem instantly defensive, expecting or responding to the arguments of the first category. I can likewise understand the objection to this category. Such presentations of ourselves may make us seem unrepentant, showing a lack of understanding for how bad people become bad, and perhaps downright hypocritical (I'm supposed to love my enemies after all).

So I understand the objections to people using scripture to justify their own feelings on what is an extremely important national event. But I do not share it. This is because I question assumption number two.

One colleague of mine noted that this is evidence of why people ought not use the Bible as evidence in an argument. She says this from the perspective of a composition teacher in the Bible belt, where we are constantly trying to convince our students that there are very few academic arguments that benefit from citing scripture. That's just not the way academic writing works.

Indeed, the Bible is not written in such a way that it can work for arguments of scientific (social or natural) proof. Instead, the Bible is about the stuff of life. This is why I critique authors in category three. Writers in this category understand that the the Bible cannot be used to decide which side is right and thus they argue that it should not be.

I, however, think that this is exactly what scripture is for. Scripture is not helpful in arguing objective truth; it is, however, designed to help us navigate the subjective experience of human life.

The reason writers in both categories are able to find scripture that seems to back up their own feelings is because the Bible does in fact support both views. Jesus was the prince of peace, but he also came to bring division. As one friend of mine wrote "The Bible says not to get drunk. It also says God makes wine to make the heart glad. The Bible says God hates divorce and also says God divorced Israel. Go Figure." The Bible contains such contradictions (and they are contradictions) because life itself is contradictory. The Bible is complex because people are complex.

The purpose of these scriptures, then, is to help us make sense of and discuss the often contradictory emotions we experience in these events. My colleague mentioned to me that half the posts she saw used the Bible to support the idea that we should rejoice and the other half were used to support the idea that we shouldn't. My response was that this is because both were correct.

This is why I applaud the open conversations taking place on this issue. By discussing these events, and by struggling with our experiences and with how scripture relates to them, we gain a picture of the complexity of life and the complexity of God. Some in category three have expressed that these types of public debates are dangerous because they make Christians seem divided. But I have often though that the church's role in a post-modern culture ought to be to show the world that we too are complex and disintegrated subjects. That we too struggle with how we ought to feel and act. That there is room for other people to struggle with us.

We ought to embrace our own multiplicities and wrestle with them. In this way we, like Jacob, wrestle with God.

Where Does a Burger Go When it Dies?

Apparently, it has become the cool thing to collect McDonald's hamburgers, leave them out, and document the progress (or lack thereof) as the burgers [fail to] decompose. The Daily Mail reports a story about artist Sallie Davies and her photo journal of a cheeseburger and fries meal that has lasted six months. And this Youtube video tells the story of a man who began collecting McDonald's burgers in 1989 to watch their lack of change. His story was featured in Morgan Spurlock's Eat This Book, which prompted Len Foley to start his very own "Burger Museum," and to create the Youtube video linked above (which climaxes with a list of trillions [an exaggeration] of chemicals implied to be inside McDonald's meals. . .but in an asterisked comment, Foley says that this is a list of pesticide residues from an FDA report).

It seems that many others are interested in performing similar experiments since Foley gives instructions on how to make your own burger museum and YouTube is flooded with videos of dry, shriveled burgers. But each of these share a similar methodology. Put a value meal on the kitchen counter (Foley warns at-home scientists not to put it in an air tight container because the moisture needs to be allowed to escape, one assumes so that it doesn't mold. Interestingly, for Davies, lack of mold is part of the evidence that something is wrong with these burgers) and wait. The fact that these burgers do not decompose, mold, or change form at all is, it seems, supposed to prove that this food is horribly dangerous. It is so full of chemicals, pesticides, and preservatives that even decomposers won't eat it.

Yet, there is one glaring problem with this evidence. One that is indeed so important that it makes this evidence, well, not evidence at all.

You see, when one eats a hamburger, it does not then sit on a counter top inside your stomach. Instead, you chew it, after which it is squeezed under fairly intense pressure down your esophagus and into a chamber filled with hydrochloric acid, potassium chloride, sodium chloride, and special enzymes. These chemicals work to dissolve the burger as the powerful muscles of the stomach mashs it into chyme, a process that in no way resembles sitting on a counter top.

So, in order to collect more valid results, I have performed an experiment which more closely replicates the conditions actually present in the body. Namely, instead of placing a value meal on the counter top, I placed it into a bucket of muriatic acid, a commercially available hydrochloric acid solution. I didn't design any way to replicate the process of muscular contractions that break down the food in an actual stomach. The little stirring that I did while trying to find pieces of the dissolving burger will have to suffice as a very under-stated simulation for that process.

In addition to achieving more valid result from my experiment, it (I am pleased to report) also took far less effort. Davies has had to take a photograph a day for 170 days, all the while having an aging hamburger stinking up her kitchen. I only took 12 pictures over the course of just over three hours. You can see my results on flikr. In short, the acid made quick work of the meal. . .and so does your body.

Placing a hamburger on a counter top and watching it [fail to] decompose proves exactly nothing, because it's not at all a valid representation of how your body works to dispose of food. The fact that this burger survived on a counter top does not mean that our body will likewise be unable to handle it. In fact, I didn't think about chucking a piece of counter top in there with the burger, but if I had, and if I had left it in there long enough, I bet it would have taken care of that too. Marvelous thing, the human body. We are wonderfully and fearfully made.

I'm not saying that we should all go out and start eating an all McD's diet. After all, Super Size Me alerted us to the dangers of that. Besides, it is fattening, it's high in sodium, and it tastes like what your body turns it into. What I am saying is that we must be more critical when we look at what people use as evidence. The fact that some phenomena is shocking to us does not mean that it proves anything. What we see in these blogs and websites and photo galleries is a fallacious (perhaps even unethical) use of pathos appeal. Because these stories and pictures elicit revulsion, they are used to support arguments that these items really can't support. Perhaps (well, almost undoubtedly) we should change our eating habits. But if we change based on this evidence, we have been duped.

Cavemen and Kindergartners: A Literacy Narrative

In response to research by literacy expert and University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Deborah Brandt, our literacy class was asked to tell our story of how we became literate. I already had my story in mind because, having also been inspired by this research, I had just assigned a similar assignment to my freshmen. I'm writing here because I thought that the story I came up with would be fun to share, and to analyze.

First of all, allow me to qualify this story by saying that my memory is very imperfect, as the event in this post happened when I was only five years old. I have only a cloudy memory that has no doubt been colored by my also cloudy memory of being told the story later by my mother. She may be able to, but should not necessarily feel obliged to, correct any erroneous details. With my disclaimer out of the way, here is my first memory of performing a literate act.

I actually do not remember learning to read (I remember learning to love reading, but that's another post). My earliest memory of the act of writing comes from when I was in kindergarten (I think) and I was quite excited at having learned to write. I parked myself under my baby sister's crib, which must have seemed like a suitable hiding place, and wrote on her walls. In my memory, the writing was very colorful but I have no memory of what I wrote or what I used to write with. I only know, and I may only know this because of my mother telling the story, that I wrote my own name.

When my mother discovered the writing, I told her that it had not been me. Furthermore, I very logically told her that, since the writing was on my sister's walls, it must have been she who had committed this crime of literacy. Against this claim, my mother offered three pieces of evidence. The first was that Tina was not even a year old; she couldn't write. Of course, this proved only that it had not been Tina. It did not prove that it had been me. My mother pointed out that I was the only one of her three kids that had learned to write. Her final piece of evidence was ultimately the death knell of my story. I had written my name on the wall.

What's interesting about this story to me now is how well it fits into what Deborah Brandt has discovered, quite accidentally, in her research. She found that, while reading tends to be a very communal act where our earliest memories of reading are almost always centered around the family, early memories of writing often involve writing which is subversive or proscribed, and solitary (almost every literate person remembers having been read to by family members, but almost no one remembers writing with family members). It's interesting to me that it seems that I must have known that this type of writing would get me into trouble. After all, I chose to write under the crib, a place that seemed safe and cave-like to me. So, in an act strangely reminiscent of prehistoric cave art, I went to a lonely and secret place and wrote, what else, my name.

And this is the very curious thing about the way I chose to write. My act of writing was assertive because it was subversive; I broke the rules. Furthermore, it was my name that I wrote. Such an act seems to be a form of existential genesis. It was as if, by asserting my name, I was saying, "I exist. I have a name." And yet, I wrote it in a place where I thought it would be hidden from view, again, like a caveman who hides his art.

This is the curious irony of writing. It is an act of assertiveness, almost violence even - "here is what I am writing and you must read it. You cannot deny my name" And yet, it is an act of extraordinary solitude, and often loneliness.