-there were many hell week interruptions, including: frequent manical laughs and a ghost reading bad poetry  

-our guest that day was Paul Robstein, who started off with a silly little poem 

-at first, I was confusing 'b-ing' with 'being'

-he asked us why we talked vs. why other people talked

-a horse whinny interruption

-asked us why we read and write

-then, a hellee performance interlude: an argument, then another poem and finally a condom application lesson

-robstein said another poem

-discussion of intersections

-"Keep your mouth shut unless you know what you're talking about" -Ludwig Wichenstein (I agree[ed])

-Life is mundane until you delve into it-- then, it's constant excitement

I wanted to tease out here a couple of things that have been emerging in the in-my-brain intersection of our last two class sessions: Paul Grobstein's conversation about conversation, and Tim Burke's description of the evolution of his blogging persona.

 The class was visited by the Easily Distracted "citizen intellectual", Professor Tim Burke. Several questions were asked and topics covered:

I have been re-thinking my thoughts on originality and its cultural connotations, especially in light of the recent readings. I realize that I have been somewhat indoctrinated by the romantic, yet still prevalent (despite the influence of postmodernism) notion of originality being the attribute of the solitary, creative genius. I think, as a cultural ideal, we still have the tendency to make the individual monumental, to emphasize the individual discovery of an idea while neglecting the influence of countless others in the emergence of that idea.

As I was reading the Digital Humanities Manifesto I found myself respecting the authors who wrote it and intrigued by their rational. I thought that some of the statements made were rather bold. For example, "The digital realm [is] open source, open resource...anything trying to close space is the enemy." I think it may be a bit extreme to call anything trying to somewhat privatize the internet an enemy, yet I do believe it can be moreso something of a progress blocker?

 I think it's great to post papers online.  When Paul Grobstein visited our class last week, he talked about how "chatter" is what gets things going.  If you submit a paper just to your professor, there's no room for chatter between anyone but you and the professor, and that probably isn't a good thing.  You need more ideas.  Posting a paper online grants access to anyone who cares to read what you've written, and that may be a bigger audience than you think.  Personally, I like people reading my writing and giving me criticism on it, so why not open that up for more?