http://curtisheimbuck.com/recentfollies Recent Follies typecinch en-us 2008-05-08T00:00:01-07:00 hourly 1 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00 http://curtisheimbuck.com/recentfollies:47 ]]> I have really been into six-word syntheses lately. Maybe it was the book 2008-05-08T17:35:39-07:00 Recent Follies http://curtisheimbuck.com/recentfollies:47 http://curtisheimbuck.com/recentfollies:46 ]]> The self-righteous columnists' response to Grand Theft Auto IV has been pretty muted thus far. But Tim Rutten from the LA Times had some things to say about the game earlier this week (part of his column ran in today's Denver Post).

Rutten argues that GTA is different from past artifacts of renegade youth culture in that its sole purpose is profit. That seems like some shaky history to me. Granted, Rutten is a lot older than me, but were other mediums of youth culture (such as comics) really interested in doing much besides making money for their publishers?

I'm interested in manga because I have so many students who love the stuff, and it was nice to see Rutten offer the medium some credit (or I guess blame): 'One of the most interesting things about this game is that it's the product of a global youth culture whose frame of reference has been shaped by mindless American action films, by post-apocalyptic Euro-American fantasy fiction and Japanese graphic novels.'

And Rutten closes with this line: 'With this game, the interactive video industry has turned an aesthetic corner and is now an art form in search of an artist.' This seems to me a classic example of Rutten trying to make today's art forms conform to yesterday's notions of art. It seems that Rutten is looking for the sole artist, who is toiling away in solitude, making art as art is meant to be: the vision of a lone individual. That conception of art just doesn't fit the things that people are creating today. 2008-05-04T07:39:54-07:00 Recent Follies http://curtisheimbuck.com/recentfollies:46 http://curtisheimbuck.com/recentfollies:45 ]]> The first Saturday in May is Free Comic Book Day, so this morning I went up to Mile High Comics in Thornton to pick up a few comics. A few of my students met me there and they left the store with armfuls of free comics.

It was my first time in Mile High Comics, and it was a sort of surreal experience. There were a lot of white guys gaming on one half of the store, and an employee had to keep reminding them to keep their language clean with all the kids there for Free Comic Book Day. I think the sole female employee was hitting on me a little bit. There was way more comic paraphernalia than actual comics there, and I spent most of my hour there just wondering around, looking at the same things over and over.

I was clearly out of my element in the comic store, and comics is a subculture that is really hard to enter. There are so many comics published and they are so self-referential that to make any sense out of it all, you have to spend a lot of time building background knowledge. And a lot of the comics are awful. Maybe that's just my pretentious opinion, but I'm not too interested in much of what Marvel or DC put out. But again, a lot of my distaste for it has to do with how difficult it is to get into the them.

In other comics news, this week I checked out two comic compilations from the library, both of them edited by Chris Ware: McSweeney's 13 and The Best American Comics 2007. A friend let me borrow Ware's Jimmy Corrigan book in the past, but I didn't really get it. In looking deeper at Ware's work, I'm starting to recognize his genius. And it's genius in the true sense of the word: not the result of an inborn gift that manifests itself at the drop of a hat, but the result of complete dedication to craft. 2008-05-03T16:27:44-07:00 Recent Follies http://curtisheimbuck.com/recentfollies:45 http://curtisheimbuck.com/recentfollies:43 ]]> A caveat to my last post in which I urged Tulo not to attempt too many steals: do it against the Padres.

Last year the Padres allowed a major league worst 189 steals and that was out of 209 attempts for a SB success rate over 90%. I'm not sure why the Padres were so bad at controlling the running game, but it didn't seem to hurt them too bad. According to The Bill James Goldmine, Chris Young, who thieves were a perfect 44-44 against, only cost himself an extra 5 or 6 runs. James also added this musing on Young's dubious distinction of the perfect 44-44: 'That's hard to do; you'd think somebody would fall down or something.'

Padre pitchers simply found ways to mitigate the stolen bases: Young walks lots of batters, but last year he only gave up 19 doubles; Peavy strikes out tons of batters; and Maddux pitches to soft contact and gets tons of groundball outs (Maddux led the league in assists by pitchers in 2007 with 51. It's the 11th year he's led the league in that category. I just think that's an interesting stat. I'm curious which pitcher led the league in putouts in 2007. I might have to do some looking.)

So maybe that caveat should go out the window. Despite opponents' success at stealing against the Padres, it did not get them much. What is the value of a stolen base? I'm sure smarter people than me have figured it out, but it's still an interesting question. Because like all questions in baseball, it's impacted by countless variables and the games played everyday just add more and more information. 2008-04-13T07:22:02-07:00 Recent Follies http://curtisheimbuck.com/recentfollies:43 http://curtisheimbuck.com/recentfollies:42 ]]> I was at Coors Field the other night, and I heard people around me lamenting the loss of Kaz Matsui (he signed a big deal with the Astros in the off-season). These fans' gripes come largely out of Jayson Nix's sub .150 batting average, but it made me think about how valuable Kaz Matsui was to our team.

In my mind, Matsui had two values for the Rockies: great defense and a high stolen base success rate. Nix is going to replace the first one, and I'm now wondering how valuable the second one really is.

When I was first thinking about this, I thought Helton followed Matsui in the lineup last year. He didn't. It was usually Holliday in the three spot, and then at the end of the year, when Matsui was batting lead-off, Tulo was in the two hole.

I seemed to remember times last year when Matsui stole second, followed by a walk by Helton. Looking back at game logs on retrosheet.org, I see that did happen occasionally, but not as often as my eyes had led me to believe.

Regardless, there were many times that Matsui's stolen base was followed by a walk or a homerun, which makes the risk taken on the stolen base a waste. Obviously, Matsui doesn't know the person behind him is going to walk, and there were a few times when a Matsui stolen base was followed by a single, which allowed Matsui to score, but I'm curious: what variables enter into a base stealer's head when he takes off to second.

This season, Tulowitzki is trying to make up for all 32 of Matsui's stolen bases. Thus far in the season that is not working out, but I would caution against the Rockies doing it regardless. This season, Helton is batting behind Tulo. Why do you want to take the risk of stealing second when Todd Helton is batting? The likelihood of him getting on first is over 40%. And coming up after him is Matt Holliday. It's just a foolish risk. I'm going to boo every time Tulo tries to steal second.

Where Matsui really hurt the Rockies last season was the 60 games he did not play, which had to be covered by the diminutive Jamey Carrol. Now Jamey Carrol had a fine 2006, but that was because he hit .300. If you hit .300, you're going to contribute to the team. In 2007, Jamey Carroll hit .225. 75 points of batting average is a whole lot for a player with few other skills to make up for. 2008-04-12T07:28:10-07:00 Recent Follies http://curtisheimbuck.com/recentfollies:42 http://curtisheimbuck.com/recentfollies:41 ]]> I know I'm not the first to point this out, but the Diamondbacks truly had no right winning 90 games last year. That's not sour grapes (the Rockies actually won the season series and that seven game series in October that really mattered)it's just stats. Offensively, the only thing the D-Backs did better than their opponent was steal bases--109 to 88. (They also out homered their opponents 171 to 169, but that's basically a wash).

This season is a different story, however, and I think the D-Backs can win 90 games legit, which means they might end up closer to 95 or 96. I'm not just saying this because the Snakes just got done sweeping the Rockies. Chris Young and Justin Upton are scary good. Young isn't going to hit under .240 this season (he'll probably be closer to .270) but he is going to hit 30 home runs (at least) and he is going to steal 30 bases. I don't even want to think about Upton's upside. He's scary good. Not many players are regulars at age 20. A lot of them end up in Cooperstown.

Conor Jackson and Eric 'the hair' Byrnes are both overrated with vaule, but Hudson is underrated and Stephen Drew surely can't be as bad as he was last year. Snyder is primed for a good season, provided Hammock doesn't steal too many at-bats, and the D-Backs have two of the 4 or 5 best starters in the division (I'd go something like this: Peavy, Webb, Cain, Young, Penny, Haren, and Lincecum, with Haren lower because of the league switch and Lincecum having the possibility of going to the top of the list.)

While their bullpen isn't great, it is deep, which is good because I cannot imagine Lyons lasting much longer as the closer.

I expected the Rockies to have a bit of a disappointing year after last year's euphoric ending; I just didn't think it'd happen this soon. 2008-04-06T22:07:31-07:00 Recent Follies http://curtisheimbuck.com/recentfollies:41 http://curtisheimbuck.com/recentfollies:40 ]]> I'm not a big fan of opening night; baseball should be played under the sun, but in the wake of baseball at 4am in Japan (with the Red Sox no less), I'll take opening night

Ryan Zimmerman hit a 2out walkoff homer for the Nats. I'm expecting big things from Zimmerman this year, but you should know that my baseball predictions are almost always wrong. I'm still expecting breakout years from Zach Duke and Jorge Cantu. 2008-03-30T21:58:18-07:00 Recent Follies http://curtisheimbuck.com/recentfollies:40 http://curtisheimbuck.com/recentfollies:39 ]]> This is a project I just finished for a my writing methods course.

2008-03-15T11:12:17-07:00 Recent Follies http://curtisheimbuck.com/recentfollies:39 http://curtisheimbuck.com/recentfollies:38 ]]> We now have custom made premium pine bookshelves in our living room courtesy of my father-in-law. They're beautiful.

2008-03-11T19:28:32-07:00 Recent Follies http://curtisheimbuck.com/recentfollies:38 http://curtisheimbuck.com/recentfollies:37 ]]> Jesus Christ can light up three on the gun
He can make the rooster miss the sun.
He turns bats to plows and spit to wine.
He smites them batters like Philistines.

Down in Tuscon Jesus's looking swell.
His 12-6 is giving them batters hell.
He'll come up with the team and take us far
World Series Savior and all-star.

Opening Day, Jesus takes the mound
First three batters make a whiffing sound.
Three up three down is the new trinity
Father, Son, and victory.

The crowd's in awe, they're converts all
Even Herod applauds Jesus's curtain call.
They throw their coats out on the grass,
He takes the mound in the second on an ass.

Score's knotted at naught, Jesus throws the next pitch,
But flinches when he feels his elbow twitch
Jesus's arm went pop and the stuff is gone.
And Jesus Christ needs Tommy John.

The rehab was to last just three days
But when they rolled the wraps away
The stuff was still gone and but Jesus just grinned
And said, 'surely it will come again.'

Next spring sees Jesus back on the hill
But his fastball looks like it's standing still
So Jesus now throws a knuckleball
Cause deception is the best weapon of all 2008-03-10T21:32:19-07:00 Recent Follies http://curtisheimbuck.com/recentfollies:37 http://curtisheimbuck.com/recentfollies:36 ]]> Yesterday was the first day in a while that I had the space to really waste time on some of my passions. Unlike others, my passions are incalculably accessible. Some people ski, snowshoe, hike, or other things that are expensive of time and money, my passions I can do sitting on my couch--reading, listening to good music, playing guitar, and writing.

So that's what I did yesterday. I listened to Bright Eyes's Lifted album, which has lines that make my eyes start to well up. Lines like: 'All I know is I feel better when I sing.' or 'How grateful I was then to be part of the mystery, to love and to be loved. Let's just hope that is enough.'

Then I picked up Kent Haruf and Peter Brown's book, West of Last Chance at the library, and had the pleasure of seeing them talk about it at the Tattered Cover last night. Haruf is maybe my favorite writer, and listening to him read was a pleasure. No one writes so well about life on the High Plains. Haruf's writing clearly shows the qualities that he prizes: it is clear and unsentimental. But the best thing about Haruf's stories is the respect and compassion he gives to his characters.

He also shows compassion, respect, and admiration for the arid, bare, desolate land that is the Great Plains. This line from p. 68 of WoLC is an example: 'People arriving here from the east begin to notice the insides of their noses.' 2008-03-08T12:14:08-07:00 Recent Follies http://curtisheimbuck.com/recentfollies:36 http://curtisheimbuck.com/recentfollies:35 ]]> In the aim of bringing something to transitions in the classroom, I was doing a quick internet search for kid jokes. What I could find ranges from pretty lame to really lame, but I found it is fun to create your own punchlines to these jokes.

'What is a tornadoes favorite sport?' The typical answer is 'twister,' but I much prefer my own punchline: 'pin the trailer on the honky.'

No, I didn't share that joke with the students. 2008-03-06T20:05:09-07:00 Recent Follies http://curtisheimbuck.com/recentfollies:35 http://curtisheimbuck.com/recentfollies:34 ]]> Despite the wind and snow that I see outside my window, baseball on the radio makes it feel like spring.

I hope March is the only month that sees Scott Podsednik in the lineup, but it sure is good to turn on 850 and hear the familiar voices of Jeff Kingery and Jack Corrigan.
2008-03-02T13:06:10-07:00 Recent Follies http://curtisheimbuck.com/recentfollies:34 http://curtisheimbuck.com/recentfollies:33 ]]> In a recent class, the instructor asked us if we had each gotten copies of the new book. A few of us raised our hands that we had not, but I was the only one who was not waiting for a copy in the mail. The instructor saw this as a problem, but I was a unperturbed: 'I have book connections,' I said. 'I'll get my hands on it.'

Unfortunately, this book was not at the Denver Public Library nor the DU Penrose Library. I also did not see it at Barnes and Nobles where I was trying to spend the multiple gift cards I received for x-mas (I ended up buying The Design of Everyday Things with one of my cards).

As a last resort, I typed the book's title and author into Google and found that Google Books had the entire book available. I'm not sure how this is possible, as I'm pretty sure the book is under copyright, but I'm not going to complain. I'm just going to read it.

I think the huge selection of books available to me has more to do with living in a large city than it does with any movement we've made closer to the Universal Library, but regardless of the causes, I'm hugely confident in my ability to find any book I want.

This ability to find any book is one that I love to share with my students because it is something that is so foreign to them. They're not used to having this amount of choice, and a lot of them have relegated themselves to the slim selection that is available.

Perhaps there's something to be said for the 'liberating constraints' that a small town library or parents' home library offers, but I think many of the narratives we hear about people reading every book in their small town library are untrue and exist more as palliatives for maintaining the status quo. For me, the unread books at my small town library crafted my reading identity as much as those I actually did read. I'm thinking of the Frank Slaughter books that I always saw and quickly looked past when I was looking for Kurt Vonnegut books. As a reading instructor recently shared with me, 'Choice equals voice.'

So I'm trying to connect students to texts that they are deeply interested in and that they can connect to. In doing that, I hope not only to spur an interest in reading, but to show them how the world and its knowledge is available to them. That is a revolutionary idea. Perhaps it's the only revolutionary idea. 2008-01-02T21:13:30-07:00 Recent Follies http://curtisheimbuck.com/recentfollies:33 http://curtisheimbuck.com/recentfollies:31 ]]> I'm currently reading two big, beautiful books about maps--James Ackerman's and Robert Karrow's edited volume entitled Maps: Fidning our Place in the World and the even larger Cartographia by Vincent Vega.

I've been thinking a lot about maps and how to use them in instruction. We're preparing to teach an expedition on Ancient Cultures and I see maps as a wonderful resource for understanding the ways that Romans, Egyptians, and Aztecs saw their world and their place in it. Because maps are always constructed in very specific contexts, they always tell us way more about those contexts than they do about the landscape. And even though we like to think that today's satellite images are the ultimate in scientific mapping, I have an inkling that they remain cultural constructions, especially in the way we view them.

As a child (and still as an older person) I loved maps. I could pore over them for hours, with no purpose in mind, just getting lost in them. The number of hours I devoted to studying maps was foundational for my own cognitive map not only of what the world looked like, but also how the world worked.

The act of turning the world into a two dimensional visual image is one of the most human things we do, and it's an art that I want my students to continue. Perhaps in the past it was enough to teach students how to read a map to figure out practical things like wayfinding, but I don't think that's enough now. Whereas in the past we may have taught maps to illustrate the categories we put our knowledge into, now we have to use maps to create new categories for the knowledge that is never content to stay in one place.
2007-12-27T09:06:38-07:00 Recent Follies http://curtisheimbuck.com/recentfollies:31 http://curtisheimbuck.com/recentfollies:30 ]]> As I'm sitting here browsing the internet, listening to the radio, perusing the newspaper, watching television, and thumbing through books, I'm thinking about information overload.

I'm always impressed when I read the Sunday Best Buy ad and see the 160GB Ipod. It claims to hold 40,000 songs. Back of the envelope--three and half minutes per song, I figure that's close to 100 days of continuous music. Please check my math.

My first question is how does one get so much music? Obviously, you rip it, download it, steal it, etc. But is it really stealing? In the digital realm, I can steal something from you without you losing anything. And in the digital realm, consumption of a product does not result in that product changing state, but only in me giving it my attention. So if you have lost nothing, and I have consumed nothing, can it really be stealing?

I picked up The Best American Essays of 2007 because David Foster Wallace's name is on the front. I've not read much of Wallace's stuff, but what I have read I've greatly enjoyed. In his introduction to the Best of... he has this money quote: 'In sum, to really try to be informed and literate today is to feel stupid nearly all the time, and to need help.'

I'm thinking about this in my work as a teacher. I've long thought of myself as an information broker for my students. I think that role is relatively new for teachers, and it has been made necessary by the huge amounts of information available to us. This means more than just hooking students in to information. To only do that is to be a broker of taste. Learning happens when we learn to access information from its sources, integrate it into our lives, and begin to participate in the collective creation of more. It means teaching the process of finding information to connect new experiences in the world to the old ones.

Maybe this isn't new to teaching. Maybe good teachers have been doing this for a long time, but I know that the changing information landscape has made it more urgent. We can no longer give students the answers. We can only get them to start asking the questions. And as Wallace states, sometimes that leaves you feeling stupid. 2007-12-10T08:58:43-07:00 Recent Follies http://curtisheimbuck.com/recentfollies:30 http://curtisheimbuck.com/recentfollies:29 ]]> I had a coursework day today, so I wasn't at school. That means I should have been working on upcoming papers and projects, which I did a bit of. But why do I get a coursework day when Major League Baseball's Winter Meetings are going on? Much of the day consisted of me checking all the different websites covering the happenings in Nashville (where the meetings are taking place) and swapping e-mails with my baseball friend. I'm hoping the Rockies move Fuentes, Carroll, and Barmes. We need a starting pitcher--Capuano from the Brewers would be a nice fit--some relief help--although I'd also like to see them resign Affeldt and Hawkins--and a second baseman--Mark Loretta and Chris Burke might be nice fits, but I wouldn't mind seeing Stewart get a bunch of plate appearances next year.

The Winter Meetings were distraction enough, but what did I happen to see at the library? The first season of The Wire. A friend burned the first four seasons for me on DVD, but he did it so I could only watch it on a computer DVD player. My laptop with a DVD player is a bit on the slow side, so I didn't even want to mess with it. Although when I'm home over the holidays I plan on watching seasons 2-4 on my parents' computer.

All the ballyhoo I've heard about the Wire is well-deserved. Just a great show. It's not surprising. It is David Simon after all, and Homicide: Life on the Street remains one of my favorite shows. From what I've seen so far, the Wire is even better.

In one of my in works papers, I'm talking a lot about how all learnings happens in discourses. The hot stove season and the Wire are two of my learning discourses. I see my job as a teacher as encouraging my students to be active and critical participants in their own chosen discourses. 2007-12-03T17:16:51-07:00 Recent Follies http://curtisheimbuck.com/recentfollies:29 http://curtisheimbuck.com/recentfollies:28 ]]> It's frustrating when people in your chosen field seem to have such divergent beliefs from your own. I'm thinking of the school librarian in New Jersey who put flyers over all the computers in the lab that read: 'Just say no to Wikipedia.'

I use Wikipedia all the time in the classroom. Whenever a student has a question, I do a google search and usually the top hit is a Wikipedia page. Then I tell the student the relevant information. Ideally, we'd have more than one computer in our classroom, and the students would do this on their own. And while I would love to have more computers in my classroom, I'm confident that before the school district is able to put more computers in the classroom, the students will already have computers in their pockets, either as phones, pens, or music players.

I want to know what teachers did before they had an internet connected computer in their classroom. I think maybe my teachers just lied to me or made things up. I'm not saying I don't do that now, but usually the students' questions are ones I want the answer to as well. And I can find that answer in less than 10 seconds.

I like Wikipedia because it's a starting point. The most powerful thing about Wikipedia is the links at the bottom of the page. Wikipedia is the beginning of a conversation, not the end.

So when I want breadth rather than depth, I just read the Wikipedia entry. When I'm looking for depth, I click on the links at the bottom of the Wikipedia page. Those links lead me into a discourse, which is the place where learning happens.

As for the title of this post, it's in response to something I've been feeling about my own pop culture consumption: it's enhanced by the information gleaned on Wikipedia (and the links found there).

Before I went to American Gangster, I read the Wikipedia entry to learn the historical details on Frank Lucas. I also bought Jay-Z's new CD and read the Wikipedia entries on both. Before I read the 7th Harry Potter book, I read the plot on Wikipedia. I'm currently on a bit of a comic book craze, and before I picked up Fables and League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, I read about them on Wikipedia. The thing that turned Casino from a second tier gangster movie into one of my favorites was learning the historical details about the film on Wikipedia.

This is about transmedia storytelling. It's about living in a mediascape that are made up of many different mediums all telling the same story. In a way, it's changing the concept of a story. What we have instead of stories is a world. Using these different mediums makes for easier and more satisfying ways to enter and explore these worlds. 2007-12-01T17:05:15-07:00 Recent Follies http://curtisheimbuck.com/recentfollies:28 http://curtisheimbuck.com/recentfollies:27 ]]> Yesterday and today have reminded me how much I love Thanksgiving. My most vivid memory of Thanksgiving is eating pie and playing cards with grandpa on a vinyl tablecloth. What's great about Thanksgiving is what happens after the dinner. Sure, the actual dinner is nice, but it's rather scripted--roast turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, green bean casserole, cranberries, etc. It's a very formal affair with the napkin in the lap, required utensil use, and forced conversation with old people. The leftovers, however, require a bit more ingenuity.

The sandwich is the apex of leftovers. And the beautiful thing about a sandwich is that its only limits are that its contents must fit between two slices of bread. (The open-face presents an interesting taxonomic dilemma. I say if you can't eat it with your hands it ain't a sandwich.)

I've seen people (namely my older brother) put ungodly things between two slices of bread, so the plethora of thanksgiving leftovers offers us many options. Personally, my favorite is turkey and cranberry sauce between a dinner roll. It adheres to the first rule of leftovers--it's simple. I don't want to have to do a lot of slicing or grating, and cooking, even in the microwave, is out of the question. A good variation on the above sandwich, which I refer to as the Turkerry, is to use cherry relish rather than cranberry sauce.

Another sandwich I had today was what I call the Father in Law because it's my father in law's favorite sandwich. Bread, turkey, sliced or diced onion, mayo, and black pepper (lots of black pepper).

My older brother is a sandwich mad genius, so I'm expecting him to share a few sandwich recipes. Bonus points if he can find a way to include pumpkin pie. 2007-11-23T16:11:27-07:00 Recent Follies http://curtisheimbuck.com/recentfollies:27 http://curtisheimbuck.com/recentfollies:26 ]]> I recently picked up a few CDs. I know that sentence reads quaint in November 2007, but that's what it is.

While I know that Bright Eyes has been around forever, I've never listened to him/them closely. A friend burned Lifted for me and it's quickly become one of my favorite albums. It's just lyrically great, and that's really what I want in music. That this record has been out since 2002 and I'm only now listening to it in 2007 is upsetting. Why didn't anybody make me listen to this album? I feel the way I did when I first saw Annie Hall: Woody Allen is hilarious. Why has no one ever told me about this?

It's also the way I felt when I first listened to Jay-Z, thinking to myself, 'This guy's a genius. Why have I not listened to this before?' Speaking of Jay-Z, his American Gangster is another CD I picked up. Again, it's great.

And while it may be strange that I mention Bright Eyes and Jay-Z in the same post, it's really not strange at all. Both artists are geniuses with words. In that sense, these albums remind of some of my favorite folk songs and singers. To draw genre lines between these lyrical geniuses seems foolish.

An illustration of the similarities between folk music and hip hop is in one of Kanye's new tracks--'Big Brother.' When I heard this line: 'If you admire somebody you should go ahead and tell them/People never get the flowers while they can still smell them.' That sounds an awful lot like the hymn 'Give Me the Roses While I Live': Give me the roses while I live/trying to cheer me on/useless are the flowers that you give/after the soul is gone.' 2007-10-20T09:52:57-07:00 Recent Follies http://curtisheimbuck.com/recentfollies:26 http://curtisheimbuck.com/recentfollies:25 ]]> And that is why I watch Broncos games by myself. My wife was even out of the house picking up McDonalds, so she didn't witness me going absolutely crazy when Elam hit the field goal that won a game I had already given up as lost.

While the game was a let down, the ending was perfect. It was so chaotic that I didn't really know what was happening until it was over. I thought the 3rd down pass to Walker was enough for a first down, allowing the Broncos to spike the ball and then bring out the field goal unit. But while I'm waiting for the officials to measure, the field goal unit is running onto the field, and I'm running up to the TV, eyes bulging out of my head, watching the clock tick down. 04, 03, 02....snap. The kick is right down the middle. And I jump up in the air, throw my arms up like a maniac and start running around my living room, yelling and screaming.

You know a football game is good when afterwards you are just emotionally exhausted. That's how I felt for the entire afternoon. I couldn't do anything that required focus. I was just too tired.

Javon Walker was the stand-out player. I say that knowing that Champ Bailey is probably the stand-out player every game. It's just that him having a good game means us never hearing the announcer call his name. He did have 3 tackles, and watching Dre Bly 'tackle' makes you really appreciate how good a tackler Bailey is. Here's the stat that matters--Lee Evans 2 catches, 5 yards.

Henry had almost 140 yards, but it just never felt like he got into a rhythm. Cutler made lots of good throws, but he usually followed them with a bad throw the next play. He's got a rocket though. He's fun to watch.

And although I've cursed Jason Elam quite a few times over the last few years (including two times today) I was pretty confident in him hitting that last field goal (assuming the snap beat the clock).

So don't invite me over to your house to watch a Broncos game and don't be expecting me to invite you over to mine. It's just better for everyone if I watch these games by myself. 2007-09-09T20:06:46-07:00 Recent Follies http://curtisheimbuck.com/recentfollies:25 http://curtisheimbuck.com/recentfollies:24 ]]> I'm visiting family in Southwestern Wyoming, so we took a trip to Ft. Bridger.

I'm a big fan of Western American History, so this was a treat. And though the aptly named fort was founded by Jim Bridger, it never was a fur trading fort. It was a trading stop for emigrants on the various trails that came through, then the Mormons 'bought' it in 1855, and the federal government took it back in 1859 and turned it into a military post. 2007-07-28T06:26:38-07:00 Recent Follies http://curtisheimbuck.com/recentfollies:24 http://curtisheimbuck.com/recentfollies:23 ]]>
I had thought about writing up a lengthy rebuttal to Andrew Keen's book (subtitled 'how today's internet is killing our culture.') But the book doesn't really deserve it.

The book is short and shallow and uses lazy, clumsy language to make points that are simplistic, dated, and elitist.

Others have written rebuttals. Check out Lessig's and also check out Keen's recent conversation with Kevin Kelly.

I thought reading the book would be useful in that it would sharpen my pro-Web 2.0 viewpoints. Unfortunately, it won't even do that. Your only response will be to shake your head and sigh, as Keen brings out another example of Web 2.0 malfeasance that you've already heard.

Unless you're one of the people who think that addiction to gambling, pedophilia, identity theft, and uncivil discourse are good things, this book probably won't change your mind.

Speaking of Kevin Kelly, that guy's real smart. (which is really only a way of saying I agree with what he's written). I would highly recommend reading the Scan This Book! article he wrote last year. It's the type of article that will make you really excited about being a 21st century thinking being.

Kelly's article caused quite a stir, especially among those who still make a livelihood from the dying business of selling copies. Out of that stir came an interesting quote from author/dinosaur John Updike, which I've spent a lot of time thinking about. Said Updike at last year's Book Expo: 'For some of us, books are intrinsic to our human identity.'

I love books. I spend a lot of my life not only reading books, but thinking about what book to read next, passing my finger along the spines of books that sit on a shelf, telling other people to read books that I've read, and ignoring their suggestions of books they've read. In short, I love books beyond what is between their covers.

And that worries me a little because it makes me think that I fetishize books. What ought to be 'intrinsic to my human identity' is not books themselves, but the ideas that exist within and between them. By placing too much value on the book itself, we assume that the book is the most efficient form that ideas can take. As I think about the future of information, I know that is not true.

Nothing in history is inevitable. And nothing in history is eternal. Losing the book will not threaten our human identity. In the short term, the loss of the book might threaten John Updike's identity as a relevant, rich, and successful author, but for the rest of us, I think moving away from the book will let us fulfill our human destiny: the creation, dissemination, and recreation of knowledge. 2007-06-20T13:51:43-07:00 Recent Follies http://curtisheimbuck.com/recentfollies:23 http://curtisheimbuck.com/recentfollies:22 ]]>
I've noted in the past my love of folk music, but I just haven't been playing, listening, or reading much lately. Myself and a few others are planning a hootenanny this weekend, so I decided to read up and practice a bit.

I got Carl Sandburg's American Songbag from the library, along with Dan Zanes' CD of twenty-five songs from the book. I was familiar with the book, but I never gave the book its due because it didn't seen comprehensive enough. It just wasn't as a big as some the Lomaxes' songbooks, and like song collectors of long ago, I was under the belief that it was possible to comprehensively collect all of these songs, write down their lyric and tune, and spread them as far as Gutenberg's gift will reach.

I've realized that there are all sorts of factors that influence collecting--taste, style, flukes of history, and mistaken ideas of what the folk look like and sound like. We have no option but to embrace these songs in whatever translated form we find them, and try to leave them a little better than we found them.

And really, you can do no better than to hear these songs as translated by Carl Sandburg. He's a great poet, becoming one of my favorite, and I'd rank him up there with Mark Twain, Andrew Jackson and Benjamin Franklin as American archetypes.

This is a great book. As Sandburg says in his Apologia, 'It is a book for sinners, and for lovers of humanity.' 2007-06-15T06:57:26-07:00 Recent Follies http://curtisheimbuck.com/recentfollies:22 http://curtisheimbuck.com/recentfollies:19 ]]>
David Weinberger's new book is probably the best non-fiction I've read yet in 2007. It expanded on a lot of the ideas about knowledge and order that my clumsy words have only been able to hint at. This book is a must read for anyone who is interested in the way we will order information in the coming years.

It's an optimistic book, and while I would hesitate to call myself a Web 2.0 evangelist, I'm excited about the possibilities that the social web offer, especially in education and learning. However, I'm optimistic about the technology not because it's going to make our lives more convenient, but because it's going to make our lives more difficult. But isn't that what technology should do: challenge us to do great things?

Everything is Miscellaneous took me a while to read because it's one of those books that you have to read with pen and paper in hand, trying to right down all the choice quotes and big ideas that you want to savor for later. Here are a few of the lines/ideas that caught my eye:

1) First, I'll give a two sentence synopses, because the title isn't very self-explanatory. Everything is miscellaneous means that we no longer have to order things in ways that are limited by physical space. When we live in a world of bits rather than atoms (see Chris Anderson) where abundance is the rule (see Daniel Pink) we can dump all of our information in a big pile, tag it up with lots of metadata, and let people filter on the way out rather than the way in.

2) Which leads to the first wonderful quotation: 'Now we know that not everything has its place. Everything has its places--the joins at which we choose to bend nature' (45).

3)'The solution to the overabundance of information is more information' (13). The only way we can find something in a big pile of information is by tagging it with lots of information. Since space is no longer a constraint, those labels can be as big as we like.

4) 'Everything is metadata and everything can be a label' (104). Knowledge is about making connections between things. On the web, it is extremely easy to make and powerfully demonstrate the connections between information. All we have to do is make it blue.

5) 'For 2500 years, we've been told that knowing is our species' destiny and its calling. Now we can see for ourselves that knowledge isn't in our heads: It is between us. It emerges from public and social thought and it stays there' (147). 2007-06-04T18:06:31-07:00 Recent Follies http://curtisheimbuck.com/recentfollies:19 http://curtisheimbuck.com/recentfollies:18 ]]> It seems like everyone's calling for a boycott of the NBA playoffs in the wake of the Suns-Spurs suspension series. But nobody's really watching anyway, and the people who are calling for the boycott probably couldn't name the starting five for any of the teams remaining in the playoffs because they stopped watching NBA basketball four or five years ago. There's really no direction but up, and all this boycott talk is going to do is bring more attention to the games.

I'm still planning on watching, and while I wish it were the Suns playing in today's game, the Spurs are an excellent team and they are actually pretty fun to watch. I'm just hoping we see a few triple digit scores. I'm also hoping to see Utah win. I'm pulling for the Cavs in the East, but I fully expect to be watching a Pistons-Spurs finals. And you know, despite my claims to the contrary, I'll probably watch that too.

Following the NBA playoffs this year has been even better because there's been a lot of good stuff written about it. King Kaufman over at salon.com, Bill Simmons at espn.com, True Hoop also at espn, and an interesting exchange between Paul Shirley and Neal Pollack over at slate. I'm also looking forward to getting my hands on Pistol by Mark Kriegel. 2007-05-20T11:36:05-07:00 Recent Follies http://curtisheimbuck.com/recentfollies:18 http://curtisheimbuck.com/recentfollies:17 ]]> -June 30th. My favorite band at my favorite venue.

-Yesterday, I was cruising down East Colfax in Aurora, and I kept ogling all the cool signs on the old, run down motels. Later that day, I see the Westword cover story is about some of those same motels. Interesting topic. Denver history fascinates me.

-I'm pretty excited for the Colfax Marathon on Sunday morning. I plan to be there bright and early, coffee in hand, partaking in the festivities. We'll see if I actually do. Man makes plans and God laughs, but when Man makes plans on Sunday morning, everyone laughs.

2007-05-17T12:57:13-07:00 Recent Follies http://curtisheimbuck.com/recentfollies:17 http://curtisheimbuck.com/recentfollies:16 ]]>
I really feel like I need to say something profound about the Encyclopedia of Life because it's so cool, but I just don't have the words.

I love acts of hubris like this (knowledge creation is nothing but an act of hubris). And because Simon Winchester's The Professor and the Madman is one of my favorite books, in my mind I compare this endeavor with the making of the Oxford English Dictionary.

A major similarity I see between the EOL and the OED is the motives that were behind each project's origins. There were and are lots of motives, but it seems in the case of the OED, one of the major motives was to document the superiority of the English language. Historical context had a hand in this. Fortunately, we know longer look at the OED as an example of the English language's superiority. We look at it because it's so cool and comprehensive. Notice I didn't say useful. While I'm sure it is useful for some people, I've only looked through an OED once or twice. I just like to know that it's there.

Similarly, it seems like a major motive behind the EOL is bio-diversity and how to ensure it in the future. I most definitely think it's a worthy goal (our own survival as a species depends on it), but I make the prediction that the EOL will quickly become more than a tool to ensure bio-diversity: it will become knowledge for its own sake. If you ask me, that's the highest thing for which knowledge can reach.

2007-05-15T06:51:44-07:00 Recent Follies http://curtisheimbuck.com/recentfollies:16 http://curtisheimbuck.com/recentfollies:15 ]]>
I've been reading it slow for a few reasons: I'm expecting big things from it; it's got a lot of characters who inhabit a fictionalized world, which makes it difficult to follow; and I want to savor it.

I loved The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay because Chabon was so good at recreating a place. In this new book, Chabon gets to do away with that pesky prefix. He just gets to create this place. I like how Chabon summed up his mindset in this recent interview: 'When I was a kid, what it meant to write books was to make maps and create chronologies.' Watching him make maps and create chronologies is a pleasure.

2007-04-29T10:02:38-07:00 Recent Follies http://curtisheimbuck.com/recentfollies:15 http://curtisheimbuck.com/recentfollies:13 ]]>

I've been on spring break this week, so I've had a little time to myself. Rather than just waste that time, I've decided to do something productive: watch lots of TV. But I'm not staring droopy eyed at daytime rubbish. I checked out the first two seasons of Deadwood on DVD.

Deadwood combines two of my favorite things: history of the American West and television. I believe television is the perfect vehicle for portraying western history because there is no better medium for real, in-depth storytelling. And the American West is all about big, epic stories.

Television is so suited to westerns because television allows the space to explore context and characters. Each episode of Deadwood is a variation within and about those two things, while still weaving a few plots through each episode. And that's exactly what is so wonderful about Deadwood--the place was unique in American history and the characters were diverse. And that diversity was not like the aesthetically pleasing diversity that we think of today. That was true diversity--people from many different backgrounds gathering in one place because they each wanted to make a fortune.

I could be wrong, but I think the ability to use television as a great storytelling medium is relatively new. The cause, in my mind, is the technology. Now, because of syndication, DVD, webisodes, and DVR, we have access to all episodes. We're no longer bound to what is available between the commercials.

On an American Life episode a few weeks ago, Ira Glass called this the golden age of television. I could not agree more. It no longer resembles television that we used to know, but the greatest stories are told on the small screen. 2007-04-06T06:46:28-07:00 Recent Follies http://curtisheimbuck.com/recentfollies:13 http://curtisheimbuck.com/recentfollies:12 ]]>
Coors Field. Scorebook in hand, just as I had promised. A beautiful day, but a disappointing game. Some good and some bad. In all, I'm still optimistic about the Rockies' chances this year. 2007-04-03T09:09:06-07:00 Recent Follies http://curtisheimbuck.com/recentfollies:12 http://curtisheimbuck.com/recentfollies:11 ]]>
April 27th and April 28th @ Bender's Tavern

Everyone should see Slim Cessna live. 2007-04-02T07:37:04-07:00 Recent Follies http://curtisheimbuck.com/recentfollies:11 http://curtisheimbuck.com/recentfollies:10 ]]> Just an update on the Jonathan Lethem article I mentioned a few weeks ago. One of my favorite people/bloggers/academics/thinkers, Henry Jenkins, links to and briefly discusses Lethem's article in a post today.

Jenkins, a Comparative Media Studies professor at MIT, dabbles in many of the issues in which I'm growing an interest: fan culture, comic culture, games in education, and children's culture. He's a must read if you want to make sense of the cultural changes that technology is shaping and vice versa. He's also a passionate fan of many of the cultural subcultures that we might not think of as 'academic.'

Lethem's article was a mash-up of sentences, phrases, paragraphs, etc. on the topic of copyright from a litany of writers and thinkers. Not coincidentally, Lethem borrowed a paragraph from Jenkins' book, Textual Poachers, a book I have not yet gotten my hands on, but hope to soon. I also want to read his most recently published book, Convergence Culture.

Here's Jenkins' line that Lethem borrows, a line that Jenkins elaborates on with an analogy he borrowed from Michel de Certeau:

'Active reading is an impertinent raid on the literary preserve. Readers are like nomads, poaching their way across fields they do not own--artists are no more able to control the imaginations of their audiences than the culture industry is able to control second uses of its artifacts.' 2007-02-25T20:55:57-07:00 Recent Follies http://curtisheimbuck.com/recentfollies:10 http://curtisheimbuck.com/recentfollies:9 ]]> I recently subscribed to Garrison Keillor's 'Writer Almanac,' so everday I get a poem and a few literary tidbits in my inbox. It's a nice start to the day, bnd it's strange that I like it so much because I used to have a fairly strong aversion to Garrison Keillor. It was unexplainable. I just thought he was kind of cheesy. And, you know, I think he probably is, but maybe I've just gotten old enough to enjoy it. So now, the first thing I read in Saturday's Rocky Mountain News is Keillor's column and the first thing I read in my inbox is his 'Writer's Almanac.' I still don't regularly listen to Prairie Home Companion but I don't consciously avoid it any longer.

Speaking of people whom I enjoy who most people probably don't think of as cool: Tina Fey. I'm fairly certain nobody thinks Tina Fey is cool, but I think 30 Rock is the funniest show on network TV. If you haven't watched it, I would recommend it. Or better yet, just read these lines from previous episodes. Like most art, I like 30 Rock not for its totality, but for the small things it does exceptionally well. I'm willing to put up with subpar plot lines if they're a vehicle to get Alec Baldwin lines like this: (when explaining to Tina Fey why he was wearing a tuxedo) 'It's after 6pm Lemon, what am I, a farmer?' That's a paraphrase because the above link doesn't include that line. But it does include this one, from Tracy Morgan: 'Affirmative action was designed to keep women and minorities in competition with each other to distract us while white dudes inject AIDS into our chicken nuggets.'

Anyway, the point of this was to wish Wallace Stegner a Happy Birthday, an occasion I was alerted to by today's Writer's Almanac. You know, come to think of it, when I saw Angle of Repose on my parents' bookshelf as a teenager, I thought it was somehow uncool as well. Now, it's one of my all-time favorites. Somewhere in my meandering thoughts, Garrison Keillor and Tina Fey got thrown in. A while that's not a cool thing. I think it's a good thing. 2007-02-18T07:24:30-07:00 Recent Follies http://curtisheimbuck.com/recentfollies:9 http://curtisheimbuck.com/recentfollies:8 ]]> I've got two interesting articles bookmarked on delicious that I'm trying to slog through. Jeffrey' Toobin's 'Google's Moon Shot' from the New Yorker and Jonathan Lethem's 'The Ecstasy of Influence' from Harper's Weekly. The first is about Google's attempts to scan every book from university libraries across the country (and the backlash against those efforts) and the second is about plagiarism, influence, art, etc, etc. Two fascinating topics that have a lot of currency right about now. 2007-02-15T07:39:02-07:00 Recent Follies http://curtisheimbuck.com/recentfollies:8 http://curtisheimbuck.com/recentfollies:7 ]]>

I spend a lot of time thinking about learning, how it happens, how schools can better make it happen, etc. In doing so, I've been trying to ask people about their most powerful learning experience from their childhood in the hopes of figuring out how I can better encourage such experiences with the students I work with now.

There's so many, but if I had to pinpoint one, I would say being an uber-intense football fan as a child. Immersing myself in the football culture through watching, reading, collecting football cards, and creating my own football world was a powerful learning experience. Some of my most refined intellectual skills--finding patterns, connecting history to the present, reading graphs/data--I can trace to my experience as a child football fan.

What I see in this powerful learning experience are a few things that I think will be true of most people's response:

1) The learning happened outside the classroom.

2) The learning happened in a 'virtual' realm where I could feel like an active participant and I could 'play' with the system. An example of my play would be creating all-star teams, creating simulations of myself playing and accumulating statistics of that simulation, etc.

3) On a related note, the learning experience allowed me to assume an alternate identity, such as above, when I would simulate my own statistics.

4) The experience was collaborative. Even though I didn't have the technology to engage in discussions with lots of different people (like we do now with the web) my enjoyment of the game depended on my discussions with other fans.

5) I'm sure there are more learning principles, but we'll talk about them later.

I'm interested in reading others responses. I know that of the tiny amount of people who read this site, there are some gamers, programmers, etc. who probably had immensely powerful learning experiences. I want to hear about them.

Update

I've wanted to respond to Austin's examples for a while, but here goes.

Those are two great examples that show two other powerful learning principles: 1) collaboration ('okay yall...make this as lound as you can without distortion') and transgression in safety--the ability to make mistakes without the full consequences. Good learning exists in a virtual world where those consequences are blunted and experimentation is encouraged.


2007-02-07T06:29:10-07:00 Recent Follies http://curtisheimbuck.com/recentfollies:7 http://curtisheimbuck.com/recentfollies:6 ]]>
I asked myself that question after reading the Time cover story from January 29th. Steven Pinker wrote an article called 'The Mystery of Consciousness,' and it included this line: 'Identifying it [consciousness] with information processing would go too far in the other direction and grant a simple consciousness to thermostats and calculators....'

I stopped reading and said, 'Is it possible that thermostats have consciousness?' As I love to be the devil's advocate (he has me on permanent retainer) I decided to pursue the idea in conversation and thought.

If our consciousness is just the result of a physical process (which I believe), why can't a thermostat or a lamp or a calculator or a computer, also have consciousness? The most common response is, 'Yeah, but we designed those things.' That's correct, but they're still made out of physical properties like our brain? They still go through a process. What we do when we design it is limit the informational input that these things receive. If we design these machines to learn, can they learn consciousness?

It was with these thoughts in my mind that I came across Marvin Minsky's book The Emotion Machine. The coolest thing about this book? A draft is available on his website.

I've just started reading this book, but I'll try to leave thoughts about it here. If you get a chance to read it, I'd welcome you to do the same thing. 2007-02-05T17:55:08-07:00 Recent Follies http://curtisheimbuck.com/recentfollies:6 http://curtisheimbuck.com/recentfollies:5 ]]>
I've seen talk of this book on associated websites, and I wanted to join in the conversation because this is a book that I love to talk about.

Anytime I start talking books with somebody, I'll inevitably bring up this one, especially if that person is a vegetarian or thinking of becoming one.

It's probably the best book I read last year. If you're into it, you should probably read Michael Pollan's new article from the New York Times Magazine. It's long and it probably will hide behind a subscription wall in a few days, so quickly clear a good chunk of your Saturday.

Change in our food system will most likely come about through millions of personal decisions conglomerating. I find that exciting. But I also find it difficult. After reading this book, you promise yourself you'll 'eat less, but pay more' and that you'll take it easy on the meat, and maybe you'll think about buying cage-free eggs, etc, etc. Doing so is a lot tougher.
Good luck in your journey.

I'd be interested in criticisms of Pollan's book. If you come across anything good, share it. 2007-02-03T08:07:38-07:00 Recent Follies http://curtisheimbuck.com/recentfollies:5 http://curtisheimbuck.com/recentfollies:4 ]]>
Sometimes I like to come home from work, usually when I don't have to go anywhere the next day, and I pull out my guitar, banjo, some sheet music--usually of old hymns--get out my limited cd collection, and line up a few Old Milwaukees or other quality cheap domestic lager in front of me.

I'll play a few songs on the banjo, then I'll move to the guitar. I always play 'Just a Closer Walk with Thee' and I always play 'Rye Whiskey' on the banjo and I try to remember all the words to my favorite version of 'Omie Wise' but I never do, and I tell myself that I should learn a good version of 'House Carpenter' and 'Barbara Allen' but I've told myself that for at least five years and here I am, none the wiser for it.

Eventually, I'll open my cd collection and play eeny-meeny miney moe between Dock Boggs, Roscoe Holcomb, and Jean Ritchie. Tonight it's Roscoe Holcomb, but I'm sure that I'll soon move to Dock Boggs and eventually I'll go down to the car and get the Jean Ritchie CD because I'll absolutely have to listen to 'House Carpenter.'

Maybe I'll even pull out the liner notes and read them for the hundredth time, this time finding something that hits me in a different way. Like this line of John Hartford's from the notes to Holcomb's An Untamed Sense of Control:'See, I just really love Roscoe Holcomb's sound...I can't tell you what I feel--I just love it. Maybe there's some deep psychological reason going on that I don't understand with my limited hillability.'

Or maybe I'll pick up Greil Marcus's Invisible Republic, a book that deifies Dock Boggs. Yeah, Marcus too often talks about folk music like it's something elemental that just blooms out of the earth and only uses people like Dock Boggs or Roscoe Holcomb or even Bob Dylan as vessels. And he does write a little too purple sometimes, but when you have a few Old Milwaukees, you like to hear purple prose. It gets you weepy-eyed and excited.

But you know what gets me real excited and weepy-eyed? A well turned phrase. And Folk music is full of them. Try this from 'Old Joe Clark': 'Wish I was in Bowling Green, sitting in the sun/Never met a pretty girl, I couldn't love her some.' Or from 'Shady Grove':'If you're going to catch a fish, fish with hook and line/If you're going to catch a girl, never look behind.'

Bob Dylan, as quoted in Greil Marcus's Invisible Republic: 'Traditional music is based on hexagrams. It comes about from legends, Bibles, plagues, and it revolves around vegetables and death.' That line is ripe for overanalysis--why he uses Bibles in the plural, what he means about vegetables and the agricultural foundations of much of our beliefs--but I'll let it ring out there like an ill-tuned banjo's fifth string raised up to an A. 2007-01-31T20:25:59-07:00 Recent Follies http://curtisheimbuck.com/recentfollies:4 http://curtisheimbuck.com/recentfollies:2 ]]> As I was enjoying Monday's episode of Heroes, NBC showed a preview of the movie 300. I'm a little behind on these types of things, because I'd never heard of the movie and had no idea it was based on a graphic novel by Frank Miller. But while watching the trailer, I started to get pretty excited.

Lo and behold, I walk into my brother in law's house and what's sitting on his coffee table? Yup, the graphic novel. I've enjoyed it immensely. Visiting my brother in law's house is always good for my comic fix. Last time I was there over Christmas, I got hooked on Robert Kirkman's The Walking Dead. That led me to read Max Brooks' The Complete Zombie Survival Guide and I eagerly await when my brother in law lets me borrow Brooks' latest, World War Z.

I feel kind of like a poacher, and I know my wife rolls her eyes when I start talking about the imminent zombie attack, but this is really cool stuff. I love how human beings create and agree on such elaborate rules for fiction. When watching Dawn of the Dead after reading up on Zombies, I just shook my head at all the inaccuracies. I actually found myself saying, 'Why can't they make a realistic zombie movie?' 2007-01-24T06:51:48-07:00 Recent Follies http://curtisheimbuck.com/recentfollies:2 http://curtisheimbuck.com/recentfollies:1 ]]> Library Thing is pretty cool. I've yet to find a real useful purpose for it, but the fact that it's cool will make me want to play with it until I do. For now, you can look at the books I'm trudging through right now. 2007-01-21T20:26:01-07:00 Recent Follies http://curtisheimbuck.com/recentfollies:1 http://curtisheimbuck.com/recentfollies:0 ]]> It seems like most use a space like this to share photos. I'm not much of a photographer, so I won't be doing much of that. Plus, I'm not real keen on uploading and formatting. I'll work on figuring it out.

I just signed up for Garrison Keillor's Writer Almanac and received my first e-mail today. It featured Lewis Carroll's 'The Walrus and the Carpenter,' a poem I haven't read in years. Fortuitously, the poem came into my inbox at the same time that I am reading Lemony Snicket's The Bad Beginning, cluing me into the origin of Briny Beach, one of that book's many literary allusions.

Thus far, that's been the highlight of my day. 2007-01-21T15:19:45-07:00 Recent Follies http://curtisheimbuck.com/recentfollies:0