Archive for category Academics
What Google Thinks of Me
Posted by Michael Livingston in Academics, Homelife on February 2nd, 2012
A friend and colleague kindly passed along this link to a blog containing a link to the “Ads Preferences Manager” that Google associates with a given user.
In other words, following the link on your computer shows you what/who Google thinks you are.
I followed this link on my work computer, and it turns out that Google thinks I’m a Male (whew!) between the ages of 25 and 34. I apparently don’t surf my age at work, which is nice to hear.
I also have interests in Arts & Entertainment, Games, Law & Government, and Shopping. All true to a degree, I suppose, but I would have thought sports (Go Broncos!) would have been in there, or something picking up my academic research interests (though those could be construed under Arts & Entertainment).
On a lark I typed “Male 25-34″ into Google Images and received the following as the first hit:
A Male, aged 25-34
Nice to have hair in Google’s eyes!
Unfortunately, this image happens to come from a Microsoft website (feel the irony) that describes my supposed age group thus:
At a time of near-constant change, Males 25 – 34 flirt, play, relax and stay on top of the social scene, normally all through the internet and digital media.
… which frankly makes the Google-me sound a bit like a hipster loser.
So then I tried seeing what Google thinks of me on my home computer. Interestingly, it there declared me a male (whew x2) between the ages of 35 and 44 — got me! — with additional interests in Autos & Vehicles (that’s 4xGuard, I suspect), American Football (Broncos!), and three cities: Charleston, Denver, and Orlando.
All in all, it’s pretty fascinating.
What’s Google think of you?
Publicity and the Lecturer: Beowulf, The Hobbit, and … Brunanburh?
Posted by Michael Livingston in Academics on February 1st, 2012
I’m giving a lot of public lectures this spring, so news about them will be popping up here from time to time. Yesterday, for instance, Kelly DeVries and I did a videotaped interview about our upcoming (in three weeks, egads!) Robin Hood lecture, and I’ll probably want to link to whatever results from that if/when it’s available.
Today, though, I wanted to pass along the first bit of publicity I’ve received for a later lecture on Tolkien. Here’s what the organizers have sent out as a press release/advert:
Wednesday, March 14, 2012 – 6:30 pm – Bond Hall 165
Michael Livingston is an Assistant Professor of English at The Citadel and holds a master’s degree from the Medieval Institute and master’s and doctoral degrees from the University of Rochester. Dr. Livingston’s medieval research interests include Chaucer and the military history of the Middle Ages. He is also an award-winning writer of speculative fiction, with an additional scholarly expertise on Tolkien. In 2011 he published two books, including The Battle of Brunanburh: A Casebook. Dr. Livingston’s talk, “Tolkien’s Creation by Edition: The Medieval Origins of The Hobbit,” will focus on the ways in which Tolkien’s career-long interest in Beowulf interacted with his fiction writing. Book signing. Free admission. Refreshments will be served.
Nice, right?
Only … what’s this about a book signing? It’s the first I’ve heard of it. I mean, a book signing is fine — great even — but what book am I signing? Will folks interested in Tolkien be lining up for my edition of The Middle English Metrical Paraphrase of the Old Testament
I’m guessing, therefore, that what they’re thinking about is having some copies of The Battle of Brunanburh: A Casebook
And if that is the case, I’m wondering if maybe I should somehow try to work Brunanburh into a Tolkien-Beowulf lecture. Would be an interesting leap, for certain!
The Average Ordinary Day Today
Posted by Michael Livingston in Academics, Homelife, Teaching on January 30th, 2012
Recently, someone suggested that I write posts here more often. This was without doubt an incredibly kind thing to say — a writer first and foremost, after all, wants to hear that his or her work has been read — but it was also an unpleasant reminder of how busy my life has become.
That said, it did spur me to write a post here today … on how busy my life has become. I’m not looking for pity or anything of the sort, and I have no doubt that most of us have lives that are twice as busy as they ought to be. I don’t think I’m special, in other words.
That said, here’s my day in an nutshell, not counting a lot of “little” interruptions. The times are rounded off but pretty accurate, since I was keeping notes:
GTeaching: A Medievalist Goes Google
Posted by Michael Livingston in Academics, Teaching on December 15th, 2011
[The latest issue of EDUCAUSE Quarterly Magazine features the article "GGrading: Digital Grading Made Free and Easy with Google Apps," an overview of the ways in which I am using Google Apps to grade student papers. That essay is a relatively limited look at the digitization of my teaching life, however, and I thought I would present here a more complete look at my "GTeaching."]
GTeaching: A Medievalist Goes Google
Start by doing what’s necessary; then do what’s possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible. — Francis of Assisi
Digital what-not is all the rage these days. Digital natives. Digital literacy. Digital classrooms. Digital futures. Digital humanities. The world, it is safe to say, is changing faster than we can imagine.
I am a medievalist, which perhaps explains why I get the feeling these days that we are all a bit like the kindly owner of the parchment store a couple doors down from the newfangled printing press of Johannes Guttenberg. We have a sense that something important is happening, just around the corner. We don’t know what it is, exactly, and we have no idea what it really means in the bigger scheme of things. We are quite sure it is going to affect us, though, for good or ill, and we are equally certain that we can’t do much to stop it. The fact that Mr. Guttenberg was probably just as ignorant of what it was that he was creating, the revolution that he was unleashing, does not give me much comfort.
Consider:
Something out of Nothing: Dynamic Casimir Effect Observed
Posted by Michael Livingston in Academics on November 17th, 2011
As many of my students are aware, I have a rather strange (for a medievalist) side interest in quantum mechanics. I dig me some Schrodinger’s Cat:
(If you want a shorter and more amusing version, check out this scene from Big Bang Theory.)
Anyhow, I bring this up to illustrate why I think it’s so awesome that I just read the news that scientists have confirmed the Dynamic Casimir Effect, which was first predicted by G. Moore in 1970.
Among the many oddities of our working models of quantum mechanics is the postulation that a vacuum is not really a vacuum: that “empty space” is actually filled with quantum particles that are popping into and out of existence so fast that they cannot be directly observed. They are thus called virtual particles. Anyway, back in 1970 Moore theorized a way to directly observe these particles, though the experiment was not one that could be performed.
Until now. 40 years later, building on Moore’s theory, scientists have experimentally proven this quantum oddity to be reality (just like that alive-and-dead cat). In the nothingness of a vacuum they watched the somethingness of a photon appear.
Extraordinary.
Spring Lectures: Tolkien, Beowulf, Robin Hood, Jordan, oh my!
Posted by Michael Livingston in Academics on November 14th, 2011
Looks like I wrote about a lecture break too early! As of today I’m lined up to give four more public lectures next semester:
February 21: Every year our History Department hooks up with a visiting professor, and this year it’s Kelly DeVries of Loyola Marymount. Kelly is a medievalist, specializing in military history (which is all kinds of cool), and he’s also a bit of a star in our little academic world: he’s a regular expert on History, Discovery, National Geographic, and other such educational programming. Anyway, he and I will be giving a joint lecture on the topic of Robin Hood. We’re still working out the details, but we’ll either be talking about the depictions of Robin or the historical origins of him. Or both. We’ll see.
March 14: My recent Phi Kappa Phi lecture on Tolkien and Beowulf was enough of a hit — apparently it was one of the biggest crowds they’d had in recent memory, which is fun — that I’ve been asked to do a bigger, more formal encore. This time it’ll be in the evening, complete with refreshments, and sponsored by the Friends of the Daniel Library. I also hope that this time I won’t be losing my voice.
April 20-22: I’ll be at JordanCon IV in Atlanta, where at some point I’ll be giving a major lecture about Robert Jordan and mythology. There’s a decent chance I’ll do some additional speaking, sitting on panel discussions and the like, but that’s yet to be determined.
May 10-13: I’ll be at the International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, where at some point I’ll be giving a run-of-the-mill conference paper (no big lecture this time!) on the poet John Gower and his quiet resentment of the Lancastrian crown.
There’s also a decent chance I’ll be going to another academic conference at the end of March (this one on the Honors Program side of things), but my attendance is not certain right now. If I do go, however, I will not be giving a lecture!
Lecture on Tolkien and Beowulf
Posted by Michael Livingston in Academics on October 26th, 2011
November 7, starting at noon, I’ll be talking at The Citadel library on the topic of Tolkien and Beowulf. It should be a low-key affair, but it should also be a fun one: I’ll mainly be presenting my current work on this subject, including my discoveries in the Tolkien Archive this summer.
In the past few weeks I’ve been at conferences in Decatur, GA and Phoenix, AZ, and I’m getting pretty tired. Thankfully, after this upcoming lecture I think I’ll be taking a speaking break until JordanCon in Roswell, GA next April. Not long after that, in May, I’ll be speaking about John Gower at the International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, MI.
And then … I don’t know. Thoughts?
Guest Appearance: JordanCon 4, April 20-22, 2012
Posted by Michael Livingston in Academics on October 24th, 2011
As announced here, I will be a featured guest speaker at the next JordanCon, a convention devoted to the works of Robert Jordan. I’ll be speaking about the impact of mythology on Jordan’s Wheel of Time series.
Adding to my excitement, the author Guest of Honor will be good friend Mary Robinette Kowal.
So if you’re a fan of Jordan or Kowal, come on down to Roswell, Georgia this April!
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