Notebook of Sand

• Recent Publications
• Recent Projects
• Conferences & Speaking
"Comparing Spatial Hypertext Collections"
  ACM Hypertext '09
"Archiving and Sharing Your Tinderbox"
  Tinderbox Weekend London '09
"The Electronic Nature of Future Literatures"
  Literary Studies Now, Apr '09
"The World University Project"
  St. John's Col. Cambridge, Feb '09
"Ethical Explanations,"
  The New Knowledge Forge, Jun '08
Lecture, Cambridge University
  Tragedy in E-Lit, Nov '07
Hypertext '07: Tragedy in E-Lit
Host for Tinderbox Cambridge '07
Keynote: Dickinson State Uni Conf
Upper Midwest NCHC'07: Speaker
eNarrative 6: Creative Nonfiction
HT'05: "Philadelphia Fullerine"
  Nelson award winning paper
NCHC '05:
 Nurturing Independent Scholarship
Riddick Practicum:
  Building Meeting Good Will
NCHC '04:
  Philadelphia Fullerine
  Lecture on American Studies
WWW@10: Nonfiction on the Web
NCHC '03: Parliamentary Procedure
ELL '03 -- Gawain Superstar
• (a)Musing (ad)Dictions:

Ideas. Tools. Art. Build --not buy. What works, what doesn't. Enjoy new media and software aesthetics at Tekka.

Theodore Gray (The Magic Black Box)

Faith, Life, Art, Academics. Sermons from my family away from home: Eden Chapel!

My other home: The Cambridge Union Society (in 2007, I designed our [Fresher's Guide])

The Economist daily news analysis

Global Higher Ed blog

• Hypertext/Writing

Writing the Living Web

Chief Scientist of Eastgate Systems, hypertext expert Mark Bernstein. (Electronic) Literature, cooking, art, etc.

Fabulous game reviews at playthisthing.

• Stats

Chapter I: Born. Lived. Died.

There is a Chapter II.

Locale: Lancaster County Pa, USA

Lineage: Guatemala

Religion: My faith is the primary focus of my life, influencing each part of me. I have been forgiven, cleansed, and empowered by Jesus Christ. Without him, I am a very thoughtful, competent idiot. With him, I am all I need to be, all I could ever hope for. I oppose institutional religious stagnation, but getting together with others is a good idea. God is real. Jesus Christ is his Son, and the Bible is true. Faith is not human effort. It's human choice. I try to be the most listening, understanding, and generous person I can.

Interests: Anything I can learn. Training and experience in new media, computer science, anglophone literature, education, parliamentary debate, democratic procedure, sculpture, and trumpet performance. Next: applied & computational linguistics, probably.

Education: Private school K-3. Home educated 4-12. Graduated Summa Cum Laude from Elizabethtown College in Jan 2006. As the 2006 Davies-Jackson Scholar, I studied English at St. John's College, Cambridge University from 2006 - 2008.

Memberships: Eden Baptist, Cambridge Union Society, ACM, AIP, GPA.

Alum of the Elizabethtown College Honors Program, sponsored by the Hershey Company.

Colonectomy
Saturday, 31 Jul 2004 :-:

I am going crazy. The last few days, I have been burying myself in academic research. The titles all go like this:

Catchy Whatever: The blah of something in the blah blah something of that after when something blah.

I am sick of it. Sick of IT!!!!

Such titles are fine for undergraduates, but come on folks. You're academics. You're supposed to be capable of thought!

If there were a really good reason for it, I would be happy. True, the title/subtitle allows you to combine a hook and a descriptive subtitle. But surely, that's not the only way to do things.

Titles seem to go in fads. A hundred-fifty years ago, a good title might read:

The truth unveiled;
or
A calm and impartial exposition of
the origin and immediate cause
of the
terrible riots in Philadelphia
on May 6th, 7th, and 8th, A.D. 1844.
By a Protestant and native Philadelphian.

Sure, you laugh at that title. Why? Why not?

Just know, I'm laughing at your titles too. And The Chronicle is laughing along. A recent article denounced the plague of subtitles run amok in academic circles.

I hereby renounce the use of the colon in titles except when absolutely, undeniably necessary. The following titles are among the last you will see me pen/type/think.

(as a side note, I'm also going to flee lists as much as possible)

FHQWHGADS: Studies in postmodern uncraft as pop-culture re-expression defense against irony.

The Man, The Machine, and The Magic Chef: Narratives of technological change and gender placement in postwar American kitchens.

Here's Looking at You, Kid: Panopticism, data mining, and the illusion of privacy after the Dot-Com Bust.

Truth, Trust, and the Textual Camera: Nonfiction on the Web (yes. I admit it. I am actually writing this paper)

Dialectic Narratives: Materialist theory and Baudrillardist hyperreality

Forgetting Marx: Neocultural dematerialism, the semantic paradigm of consensus and feminism

Yes, the last two were from elsewhere. So long as you're looking at the site, you may as well get your discordian tarot reading as well.

Seriously, if you have a thoughtful reason for us all to use those silly title/subtitles, email me at jnm@rubberpaw.com. I would d love to understand the reason.