The Painful Nowning Process

Noted science fiction author Sir Arthur C. Clarke has died. When I started reading sci-fi in fifth and sixth grade, it was all Clarke, Asimov, Bradbury, and Heinlein.

Clarke lived a good portion of his adult life in Sri Lanka, and continued writing and encouraging other science-fiction writers until his death. He seems to have hoped at least somewhat seriously for the possibilities of extra-terrestrial life such as those described in his stories and books:

Clarke did not rule out the prospect of resurrection – cloning by highly advanced aliens being, predictably enough, his favoured method.

In the late 1990s he donated a few of his remaining strands of hair to be launched into space as part of the AERO Astro Corporation’s “Encounter Project” which, after a boost from Jupiter, was intended to travel deep into the Solar System.

Clarke hoped that, “maybe a million years from now, some super-civilisation will capture this primitive artefact from the past. Recreating its biological contents might be an amusing exercise for their equivalent of an infants’ class.”

To which we respond with the words of Don Henley:

To this garden we were given
And always took for granted
It’s like my daddy told me, “You just bloom where you’re planted.”
Now you long to be delivered
From this world of pain and strife
That’s a sorry substitution for a spiritual life

They’re not here, they’re not coming…

But the stories were entertaining and intriguing, all the same. C.S. Lewis explained the appeal long before Clarke began writing them (thanks to Jeffrey Overstreet for the link.)

Santiago Ramos comments further on Clarke’s “faith.”

Fortune reports Apple sales up 60% in February. Can there possibly be a link to several colleges’ decisions to offer all incoming freshmen free MacBooks or iPods? I’ve learned to be computer bilingual, but it doesn’t mean I have to like it.

Micah demonstrates why MS-Word spellcheck isn’t particularly useful for serious scholars:

Hasmoneans: suggest replacing with Tasmanians, Houstonians, Harmoniums. Really, what good is a spell checker that can’t keep Hasmonians straight from Harmoniums?

Such a good question.

Pre-registration for fall is just around the corner. Time to think about whether majoring in English is really a good idea. Careerbuilder.com compares English majors future earnings prospects with economics and electrical engineering. Turns out English majors end up having more fun, so they feel fine about making an adequate, if not exorbitant, amount of money.

“The lowest earning English majors continue to have more tolerance for careers that just do not pay well, while an electrical engineering major is a guarantee of at least a good, if not great, salary,” says [Al Lee, Ph.D. and director of quantitative analysis for PayScale.com].

I’m sure electrical engineers really enjoy their jobs, too.

Beautiful spring day. Let us now praise famous authors:

Claire Tomalin admires John Milton:

Paradise Lost has held me in thrall ever since I first read it in my teens. I have reread it at irregular intervals, always with pleasure and renewed astonishment. I was no more a believer in the Christian myths when I first read it than I am now, but Milton sets out his version of the creation and the fall of man with such assurance and vigour, he invests the story with so much passion, the scope of his imagination is so wide, that the great structure of the poem carries you along with an irresistible momentum. Even the dim patches and the thinness of the figures of Jesus and God hardly slow you down. The vastness of the spaces through which his aerial beings move; the brilliant ambivalences of the villain who is Satan, soliloquising dramatically; the enchanted perspectives of paradise with its two freshly formed residents who busy themselves pruning roses, heaping up vegetarian meals for the entertainment of archangel visitors, and setting out the ground rules for marriage - none of this has any parallel in English poetry. Milton makes you think, provokes you into arguments about power, good and evil, about responsibility, innocence and the right to knowledge.

A new edition of Shakespeare’s poetry is reviewed:

Is the greatest writer in the English language primarily a poet or a dramatist? The easy answer, that he is both, is no answer at all. The better one, which most practicing poets of whatever age have endorsed, is that he is a poet who, wonderfully well equipped at adapting stories and devising theatrical situations, also can tame the lightning of poetry for stage performance.

…Why, they ask, do convenors of Shakespeare conferences, academics in general and almost all authorities of sententious disposition ignore the poems, concentrating on the plays? He arrived at fame and consciousness first as a poet, and a remarkably realistic and accessible one. The introduction puts this directly – “Although both Venus and Lucrece are more patterned and verbally complex than the plays, they are considerably more naturalistic”. Viewed together, the two poems offer unique opportunities to link Shakespeare with the great Renaissance painters of Italy and France.

And speaking of Shakespeare, Henry Jaffa argues in “Macbeth and the Moral Universe” that

 In Macbeth Shakespeare presented the moral phenomena in such a way that those who respond to his art must, in some way or another, become better human beings.

Some literature seems to invite immorality, however, in the form of theft:

The coin of the realm is now, and has always been, the fiction that young white men read, and self-satisfied young white men, the kind who love to stick it to the man, are the majority of book shoplifters.

So obviously literature (and other arts) won’t necessarily make you a better person, so what’s the point? Robert Fulford explains his faith in the arts:

Rebecca West, a great journalist of the last century, remarked (rather like Antonio Salieri discussing Mozart in Amadeus) that “the power to create a work of art, like a good complexion, is frequently bestowed on the undeserving.” So my faith, rather like Christianity, comes with no guarantees of virtue or enhanced intelligence.

What, then, does it guarantee? Those who give it their time and love are offered the chance to live more expansive, more enjoyable and deeper lives.

“Offered the chance”—that’s all. We still have free will to reject the offering, just as with the grace of God.

Every semester we tell students that plagiarism can have serious consequences. Maybe this latest cautionary tale of the White House official will strike a nerve. On the other hand, the journalist whose work was plagiarized seems to need a bit of guidance himself if he thinks using others’ words and ideas without attribution is only serious in academic situations.

And while we’re discussing writing faux-pas, Lomagirl pointed me to this “celebration” of misused quotation marks. Laugh and learn, people.

I gave up some other writing obligations last month with the intention of devoting more time to this blog. So far, not much has changed. Let’s see…what else can I give up? A somewhat famous writer once said, “A real writer is one who really writes.” One writing technique I suggest to students comes straight out of the 10th century Japanese writings of Sei Shonagon, The Pillow Book—make a list.

As an antidote to the all-too-familiar list of “favorite things,” I offer a list of my least-favorite things:

Finding the middle book of a multi-volume series at the library…but no other books by the author are in the collection.

Worse: reading books one and two of a series, and then the next volumes never turn up. Don’t tell me to go out and buy them myself—I’m a poor scholar!

People who spit their gum on the sidewalk or street.

Cruelty to animals—but that’s on everyone’s list, I suppose. Or if not, it should be. Hmm.

People who ask me when my colleague across the hall will be in his office, apparently mistaking me for his secretary despite two signs on my door identifying me as another professor.

People who expect me to remember dates and times off the top of my head (e.g., “When is the church supper?”)—see above. If I had wanted to be an administrative assistant, I would not have gotten a doctorate. Wait till I’m near a calendar, at least.

Obsolete media—I have some computer files I’ll probably never be able to retrieve, and it looks as if hi-definition may obliterate my old DVDs before too long.

Good TV shows that are canceled before finishing even half a season, or just as they start hitting their stride: Firefly, Wonderfalls, Drive, Joan of Arcadia…

Novels and/or films that are supposedly set in ancient times, the Middle Ages (Renaissance, 18th Century, Regency), but none of the characters behave remotely like people of that era. To compound the annoyance, long passages of historical exposition are sprinkled awkwardly throughout to showcase the author’s research. Current example: The Other Boleyn Girl. Not so recent example: 300 (caution: rated R for language and adult mocking).
Movies based on Beowulf that seem to feel the original plot isn’t good enough.

Feel free to add your own!