I'm going home!
So there may not be anything major posted today. However, I will leave you with a piece of interesting news, that also fits in with the fact that I'm flying today-- researchers may have found Amelia Earhart! Or at least what's left of her. She did disappear quite awhile ago.
Researchers in Kiribati found a bone that they think may belong to Earhart and are hoping to run DNA tests that will prove it. You can check the article out here.
If you're also traveling today, have a safe trip!
Sunday, December 19, 2010
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
Writing A Paper that Will Be Graded
I am currently grading final papers for a class and was reminded of all the small things that make being a teacher or grader just a little bit more difficult than it has to be. Here's some advice on things you can do to make life easier for the people that determine how you do in school. Might want to pay attention.
(Note: These suggestions do not all come from the papers I'm grading now, so don't think my current class is terrible. They come from combined experiences as a grader, editor, teacher, and Model UN Committee Director.)
1. When submitting papers electronically (either on a classroom website or through email), don't just label your paper "Final Paper" or "Class Name". We're getting dozens of papers, and it's really hard for us to keep them straight if they're all called the same thing. It's not difficult to change the name of your file when we download it, but it starts to add up when you have to change 30, 60, 100 different file names. So try something like "Last Name_Final Paper". I know I at least use a roster sorted by last name to make sure I have received and graded all papers. Therefore, if your file name starts with your last name, you will make me very happy, because that's how I store them all anyways.
As a side note, a late shout out to some members of my video game class. It you changed the way you named your files because you noticed that I always added your last name to the label, you are awesome. You really don't know how much easier that made my life.
2. I know a lot of you have newer computers, so you don't even think of this, but if you're working in Word, it's really helpful if you take the extra second to make sure your file saves as a .doc rather than a .docx file. Not all of us have the newest version of Microsoft Word, because we have older computers and are too poor to justify updating something that works perfectly well, but .docx files don't open in the older version. This requires us to do one of two things-- email you for a new copy of your paper or do a complex work around using something like Google Docs to convert the file through a series of (again) somewhat time consuming steps. When we just want to start working our way through grading the stack of 600 pages your class just sent us, we don't want to have to do this.
3. Even if we haven't seen it, we can tell you what was on the rubric your professor gave you for your paper. You know how? Because the majority of you will go through each element that the rubric listed, in order, to make sure you don't miss anything. We know you think you're doing the right thing here, but when your paper and everyone else's reads like a to-do list, it's hard for us to make it through a whole class's worth without wanting to die. I want to give you a good grade. Really, I do, as much as you might think otherwise. You can make it easier for me to do this by including transitions between paragraphs and words like "therefore", "as a result", "on the other hand" or "in addition". All of these help us see that you've managed to connect the ideas of the class both in your head and in your essay, and a lot of times, that more than makes up for forgetting one small thing that was on the rubric.
4. Expand on your ideas. I should never see a paragraph that takes up only three lines. This tells me that you don't remember what the purpose of a paragraph is (to present and explain an idea) or you just completely neglected to provide any evidence for what you think and why. This is also really easy to fix. Before submitting your paper, look at it in print preview format. From this view, all paragraphs should be roughly the same size. If one is too short, see if you can just drop it into another one or expand on it. If one is way too long, try to split it into two ideas. This makes your readability much higher and my life much easier.
5. Please, please, please at least pretend that you proofread your paper and have some grasp of basic grammatical rules. Know the difference between "their", "they're" and "there" and use them properly. Same thing with "affect" and "effect", "less" and "fewer", "you're" and "your", and "its" and "it's". Even if you capitalize things incorrectly, do it consistently. You should not have a word starting with a lowercase letter in one sentence, an uppercase in the next, and another lowercase in the third. That being said, proper nouns are always capitalized. Same thing with commas-- you can choose whether or not to use the serial comma, because both are grammatically acceptable, but make sure you use them consistently. One list shouldn't have a comma before the conjunction if the next list does not. Check your spelling and grammar-- those tools exist for a reason.
6. Use a normal font, font size, and standard margins, especially if you're submitting electronically in Word format. We know these tricks. You're not fooling anyone. Frankly, it's a little offensive that you think we're dumb enough not to notice that you changed all your punctuations to size 16 font, and I'll admit I'm much more likely to grade you harder when you try it.
(Note: These suggestions do not all come from the papers I'm grading now, so don't think my current class is terrible. They come from combined experiences as a grader, editor, teacher, and Model UN Committee Director.)
1. When submitting papers electronically (either on a classroom website or through email), don't just label your paper "Final Paper" or "Class Name". We're getting dozens of papers, and it's really hard for us to keep them straight if they're all called the same thing. It's not difficult to change the name of your file when we download it, but it starts to add up when you have to change 30, 60, 100 different file names. So try something like "Last Name_Final Paper". I know I at least use a roster sorted by last name to make sure I have received and graded all papers. Therefore, if your file name starts with your last name, you will make me very happy, because that's how I store them all anyways.
As a side note, a late shout out to some members of my video game class. It you changed the way you named your files because you noticed that I always added your last name to the label, you are awesome. You really don't know how much easier that made my life.
2. I know a lot of you have newer computers, so you don't even think of this, but if you're working in Word, it's really helpful if you take the extra second to make sure your file saves as a .doc rather than a .docx file. Not all of us have the newest version of Microsoft Word, because we have older computers and are too poor to justify updating something that works perfectly well, but .docx files don't open in the older version. This requires us to do one of two things-- email you for a new copy of your paper or do a complex work around using something like Google Docs to convert the file through a series of (again) somewhat time consuming steps. When we just want to start working our way through grading the stack of 600 pages your class just sent us, we don't want to have to do this.
3. Even if we haven't seen it, we can tell you what was on the rubric your professor gave you for your paper. You know how? Because the majority of you will go through each element that the rubric listed, in order, to make sure you don't miss anything. We know you think you're doing the right thing here, but when your paper and everyone else's reads like a to-do list, it's hard for us to make it through a whole class's worth without wanting to die. I want to give you a good grade. Really, I do, as much as you might think otherwise. You can make it easier for me to do this by including transitions between paragraphs and words like "therefore", "as a result", "on the other hand" or "in addition". All of these help us see that you've managed to connect the ideas of the class both in your head and in your essay, and a lot of times, that more than makes up for forgetting one small thing that was on the rubric.
4. Expand on your ideas. I should never see a paragraph that takes up only three lines. This tells me that you don't remember what the purpose of a paragraph is (to present and explain an idea) or you just completely neglected to provide any evidence for what you think and why. This is also really easy to fix. Before submitting your paper, look at it in print preview format. From this view, all paragraphs should be roughly the same size. If one is too short, see if you can just drop it into another one or expand on it. If one is way too long, try to split it into two ideas. This makes your readability much higher and my life much easier.
5. Please, please, please at least pretend that you proofread your paper and have some grasp of basic grammatical rules. Know the difference between "their", "they're" and "there" and use them properly. Same thing with "affect" and "effect", "less" and "fewer", "you're" and "your", and "its" and "it's". Even if you capitalize things incorrectly, do it consistently. You should not have a word starting with a lowercase letter in one sentence, an uppercase in the next, and another lowercase in the third. That being said, proper nouns are always capitalized. Same thing with commas-- you can choose whether or not to use the serial comma, because both are grammatically acceptable, but make sure you use them consistently. One list shouldn't have a comma before the conjunction if the next list does not. Check your spelling and grammar-- those tools exist for a reason.
6. Use a normal font, font size, and standard margins, especially if you're submitting electronically in Word format. We know these tricks. You're not fooling anyone. Frankly, it's a little offensive that you think we're dumb enough not to notice that you changed all your punctuations to size 16 font, and I'll admit I'm much more likely to grade you harder when you try it.
Monday, December 13, 2010
Presidential Pardons
I'm so overwhelmed with finals work and grading that I didn't even put something up yesterday. Eek!
In lieu of that, today you get a link to some work by my little brother, who's been spending this semester writing for his college newspaper. Check out his newest article here! Gives you some illuminating insights into the powers of the presidential pardon.
Pretty good writer for a freshman! (Good job, Dave!)
In lieu of that, today you get a link to some work by my little brother, who's been spending this semester writing for his college newspaper. Check out his newest article here! Gives you some illuminating insights into the powers of the presidential pardon.
Pretty good writer for a freshman! (Good job, Dave!)
Wednesday, December 08, 2010
Gender in the History of Video Games
For today's post, I don't really have time to grab anything out of my old notes-- the end of the semester is packed with things that need to be done, and as fun as it is to keep my blog up to date, it's not really essential to progression in my Ph.D. program. But fear not! What you get instead is an excerpt from a paper I'm writing for my qualitative methods class. A lot of people write about video games and gender, usually not in a complimentary way. They dislike the way female characters are represented and the fact that video games tend to have more male than female players. I'm interested in seeing if these academic perceptions of gender and video games translate to gamers themselves, so I decided to do my research and the required interview for this project around video game consoles, to see if they were conceived of in terms of gender. In short, do gamers view some consoles as more acceptable for girls than others?
I'm still hashing out my own conclusions, but the following is an extract from my textual analysis for the paper, where I address what people have said about gender and games, what is going on now, and where my work fits in. This is the "Gender in the History of Video Games" section, focusing specifically on the narratives academics construct around games. Enjoy and let me know what you think! Sorry if it's kind of long, but I couldn't think of a better place to cut it off. The formatting is also being all wonky on me, so sorry for that.
I'm still hashing out my own conclusions, but the following is an extract from my textual analysis for the paper, where I address what people have said about gender and games, what is going on now, and where my work fits in. This is the "Gender in the History of Video Games" section, focusing specifically on the narratives academics construct around games. Enjoy and let me know what you think! Sorry if it's kind of long, but I couldn't think of a better place to cut it off. The formatting is also being all wonky on me, so sorry for that.
Sunday, December 05, 2010
Mayans and the End of the World
December already! Hard to believe. In honor of how fast the year's vanishing on me and how much this week totally escaped me, today we're going to discuss calendars. Specifically, the Mayan calendar.
Now the notes I'm using for this post come from Astronomy 341, Archeoastronomy, a class that unfortunately sounds far more interesting that it was. Therefore, my notes are not the best, but we should be able to get something good out of them. And it wasn't boring because of the material, just the way the class proceeded, so hopefully you'll enjoy this!
The Mayan calendar has been very popular lately, because everything thinks it says the world's going to end in 2012. I hate to burst your bubble if you were looking forward to this, but it's not really true. The only thing that will happen in 2012 is the end of the current Long Count, one tier of the Mayan system of calendars. As this has happened before and the world is still here, I think we're safe.
What we term the Mayan Calendar is actually three separate but related calendars. There is a religious one (the Tzolkin), a solar one (the Haab) and a third one, which is known as the Long Count.
The Long Count was the Mayan method for keeping track of dates with regards to one another over a long period of time. The other two calendars reset every fifty-two years (more on this later), so they are only able to track things that occur within a single generation or so. The Long Count, true to its name, provides a longer view of things, lasting for 5,126 years. The current Long Count, when matched up to our calendar system, began on or around August 11, 3114 BC-- there is some debate on this among academics and other interested parties. In a way, the Long Count is kind of like our centuries and millennia. We say that the current year is 2010 AD/CE (two thousand and ten years since the birth of Christ or the beginning of the Common Era, whichever you prefer), while the Mayans would say that it's a certain number of days since the Long Count began. Both situate the current moment in a historical context surrounding a past event.
The Long Count date consists of five parts- the kin, uinal, tun, katun and baktun. The kin is the smallest unit, equivalent to a day. A uinal is similar to a month, but consists of twenty kin. A tun is eighteen uinals or 360 kin, so about equal to a year. One katun is twenty tun (twenty years) and a baktun is twenty katun (about 394 years). A full Long Count cycle has thirteen baktun, to make up the 5,126 years. Dates in the Long Count were written in glyphs by the Mayans but can also be translated to numbers, with the largest component, the baktun, written on the left and the smallest component, the kin, written on the right. The day of this post has a Long Count date of 12.19.17.16.13. As you can see, these numbers are all relatively high (remember that there are a total of thirteen baktun and twenty tun in a full Long Count cycle), showing how close we are to the 2012 date when it will reset. Today's date in glyphs can be seen at this website. The textual content of the page is questionably accurate or just plain wrong (i.e. the author's claim that Mayans are extinct), but the date is correct and kind of cool to see. The glyphs represent the components of the dates, with baktun on the left and kin on the right. The bars and dots next to each represents its current number, with bars standing for five and dots standing for one.
The next section of the Mayan calendar, the Tzolkin, is arguably most important. It's a 260 day cycle created as a way to track and decide on dates for religious ceremonies and events. Like the Mayan calendar in general, the structure of it is rather confusing. The Tzolkin has twenty different "named days", and each of these has 13 different segments (what we would call a day). So, for instance, the first named day would be Imix', designated by the glyph below.
Say Imix' started on a Monday for us. This means that Monday would be 1 Imix', Tuesday would be 2 Imix', Wednesday would be 3 Imix' and so forth up to 13 Imix'. Then it would become Ik', and proceed from 1 Ik' through 13 Ik', then the named day would be Ak'b'al. For a full list of the named days and the Mayan glyphs associated with them (which are pretty cool looking), check out the Wikipedia page.
Each of these named days and their corresponding numbers has a different meaning. For instance, Imix', the day I was discussing above, is associated with the waterlily and crocodiles. While the way ancient Mayans used their calendars is often under speculation, modern Mayans use these meanings to choose good days for different actions and ceremonies. "For instance, a low-numbered Ak'ab'al or B'en would be a good day for a wedding, whereas K'an would be a good day for building or maintaining a house, " says Wikipedia.
Why a calendar of 260 days made sense to the Mayans when it has no association with astronomical movements, the key factors is our calendar, is unclear. Speculation is that it was created due to the ritual importance of the numbers twenty and thirteen (the Mayans counted and did math using a base twenty system, rather than our base ten. This was one of the hardest things for me to conceptualize during my archaeoastronomy
The last major component of the Mayan calendar system is the Haab, a 365 day cycle that was based on the solar year, similar to our calendar system. The Haab has eighteen months of twenty days each, and then fills in the end of the year with five "nameless days". Like the Tzolkin, days are numbered, although they start with zero (also known for some reason as "seating"). This means that the first day of the first month is Seating Pop, while the second day is 1 Pop, the third is 2 Pop and so forth. That month proceeds up to 19 Pop, then the next day is Seating Wo. The five nameless days, also known collectively as the Wayeb, are similar to our All Hallow's Eve, with the belief that they were a dangerous time with weakened barriers between the mortal world and the Underworld of death and gods. The days were filled with rituals to protect people, and Mayans would generally not leave their houses during this time.
The Haab and the Tzolkin together make up what is known as the Calendar Round, a system of two calendars that resets (the two sync up and have their first day together) every 52 years. Dates in the Calendar Round are listed by Tzolkin day, then Haab Day. For instance, according to calculations from this "Maya Links and Calculators" website, the date of this post is 11 B'en 6 Mak, or the eleventh day of the thirteenth named day on the Tzolkin calendar and the sixth day of thirteenth Haab month.. The day when the Calendar Round resets would be 1 Imix' Seating Pop.
If these three major components weren't confusing enough, there are a number of smaller, less significant calendars and ritual cycles, such as the Age of Moon (the current date within a cycle of six lunations or lunar periods) or the Nine Lords of the Night (a nine-day cycle similar to our week in which each night was associated with one of nine different gods). But I think I've thrown more than enough ancient calendrical information at you for now. The last thing I'll include is an image of what a full date in glyphs looks like and a cool chart I found online that shows what each glyph means.
Now the notes I'm using for this post come from Astronomy 341, Archeoastronomy, a class that unfortunately sounds far more interesting that it was. Therefore, my notes are not the best, but we should be able to get something good out of them. And it wasn't boring because of the material, just the way the class proceeded, so hopefully you'll enjoy this!
The Mayan calendar has been very popular lately, because everything thinks it says the world's going to end in 2012. I hate to burst your bubble if you were looking forward to this, but it's not really true. The only thing that will happen in 2012 is the end of the current Long Count, one tier of the Mayan system of calendars. As this has happened before and the world is still here, I think we're safe.
What we term the Mayan Calendar is actually three separate but related calendars. There is a religious one (the Tzolkin), a solar one (the Haab) and a third one, which is known as the Long Count.
The Long Count was the Mayan method for keeping track of dates with regards to one another over a long period of time. The other two calendars reset every fifty-two years (more on this later), so they are only able to track things that occur within a single generation or so. The Long Count, true to its name, provides a longer view of things, lasting for 5,126 years. The current Long Count, when matched up to our calendar system, began on or around August 11, 3114 BC-- there is some debate on this among academics and other interested parties. In a way, the Long Count is kind of like our centuries and millennia. We say that the current year is 2010 AD/CE (two thousand and ten years since the birth of Christ or the beginning of the Common Era, whichever you prefer), while the Mayans would say that it's a certain number of days since the Long Count began. Both situate the current moment in a historical context surrounding a past event.
The Long Count date consists of five parts- the kin, uinal, tun, katun and baktun. The kin is the smallest unit, equivalent to a day. A uinal is similar to a month, but consists of twenty kin. A tun is eighteen uinals or 360 kin, so about equal to a year. One katun is twenty tun (twenty years) and a baktun is twenty katun (about 394 years). A full Long Count cycle has thirteen baktun, to make up the 5,126 years. Dates in the Long Count were written in glyphs by the Mayans but can also be translated to numbers, with the largest component, the baktun, written on the left and the smallest component, the kin, written on the right. The day of this post has a Long Count date of 12.19.17.16.13. As you can see, these numbers are all relatively high (remember that there are a total of thirteen baktun and twenty tun in a full Long Count cycle), showing how close we are to the 2012 date when it will reset. Today's date in glyphs can be seen at this website. The textual content of the page is questionably accurate or just plain wrong (i.e. the author's claim that Mayans are extinct), but the date is correct and kind of cool to see. The glyphs represent the components of the dates, with baktun on the left and kin on the right. The bars and dots next to each represents its current number, with bars standing for five and dots standing for one.
The next section of the Mayan calendar, the Tzolkin, is arguably most important. It's a 260 day cycle created as a way to track and decide on dates for religious ceremonies and events. Like the Mayan calendar in general, the structure of it is rather confusing. The Tzolkin has twenty different "named days", and each of these has 13 different segments (what we would call a day). So, for instance, the first named day would be Imix', designated by the glyph below.
Each of these named days and their corresponding numbers has a different meaning. For instance, Imix', the day I was discussing above, is associated with the waterlily and crocodiles. While the way ancient Mayans used their calendars is often under speculation, modern Mayans use these meanings to choose good days for different actions and ceremonies. "For instance, a low-numbered Ak'ab'al or B'en would be a good day for a wedding, whereas K'an would be a good day for building or maintaining a house, " says Wikipedia.
Why a calendar of 260 days made sense to the Mayans when it has no association with astronomical movements, the key factors is our calendar, is unclear. Speculation is that it was created due to the ritual importance of the numbers twenty and thirteen (the Mayans counted and did math using a base twenty system, rather than our base ten. This was one of the hardest things for me to conceptualize during my archaeoastronomy
The last major component of the Mayan calendar system is the Haab, a 365 day cycle that was based on the solar year, similar to our calendar system. The Haab has eighteen months of twenty days each, and then fills in the end of the year with five "nameless days". Like the Tzolkin, days are numbered, although they start with zero (also known for some reason as "seating"). This means that the first day of the first month is Seating Pop, while the second day is 1 Pop, the third is 2 Pop and so forth. That month proceeds up to 19 Pop, then the next day is Seating Wo. The five nameless days, also known collectively as the Wayeb, are similar to our All Hallow's Eve, with the belief that they were a dangerous time with weakened barriers between the mortal world and the Underworld of death and gods. The days were filled with rituals to protect people, and Mayans would generally not leave their houses during this time.
The Haab and the Tzolkin together make up what is known as the Calendar Round, a system of two calendars that resets (the two sync up and have their first day together) every 52 years. Dates in the Calendar Round are listed by Tzolkin day, then Haab Day. For instance, according to calculations from this "Maya Links and Calculators" website, the date of this post is 11 B'en 6 Mak, or the eleventh day of the thirteenth named day on the Tzolkin calendar and the sixth day of thirteenth Haab month.. The day when the Calendar Round resets would be 1 Imix' Seating Pop.
If these three major components weren't confusing enough, there are a number of smaller, less significant calendars and ritual cycles, such as the Age of Moon (the current date within a cycle of six lunations or lunar periods) or the Nine Lords of the Night (a nine-day cycle similar to our week in which each night was associated with one of nine different gods). But I think I've thrown more than enough ancient calendrical information at you for now. The last thing I'll include is an image of what a full date in glyphs looks like and a cool chart I found online that shows what each glyph means.
ISIG just means Initial Series Introductory Glyph, a glyph meant to explain why the following glyph was important. Remember that the bars and dots next to glyphs mean numbers (i.e this image shows a Long Count date with a baktun of 10). This particular glyph image has a number of glyphs for the smaller calendrical components we didn't go over, but hopefully you get the idea. The Mayan calendar can be a remarkably confusing one!
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