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.

Time Personified
Friday, 11 May 2007 :-:

When, in Midnight's Children, the character "Saleem Sinai" writes,

My grandfather does not trouble to explain that a stethoscope is more like a pair of ears than a nose. He is stifling his own irritations, the resentful anger of a cast-off child; and besides, there is a patient waiting. Time settles down and concentrates on the importance of the moment.

there is a comic element not found in the statement by Sophocles' "Philoctetes",

Time came and went for me. In my tiny shelter
I must alone do everything for myself.

or Aeschylus, in "Agamemnon",

Time cleanses all- Time, the coeval of all things that are

This is, in part the result of a kind of linguistic playfulness by Rushdie, one which heightens our attention to the shared space between the literal and the figurative. Within this space, Rushdie achieves a merged bathos and pathos, a critic might say.This may be true - but how does Rushdie do it?

In the quotations by Sophocles and Aeschylus, time only does one thing. For Philoctetes, it comes and goes. In Aeschylus, it cleanses. But in the Rushdie quotation, Time "settles down" and "concentrates" on something abstract. The statements, "Time settles in the importance of the moment" or "Time concentrates the importance of the moment" are serious, almost philosophical. But "Time settles down and concentrates on the importance of the moment" borders on comedy. A truly comic line might read like Pratchett: "Time settles down, concentrates on the importance of the moment, and opens a beer." Rushdie's semi-characterisation, however, leaves us hanging -- half chuckling, but also serious about this statement on time. Because for Aadam Aziz, this chance to expand his clientele is critical. On this day, slowness means intensity, not relaxation. Time settles down because Aziz cannot.