The Future, that is.  Go have a look at Modern Mechanix.  So many cool things there I really don’t know where to begin linking (here? here? here?).  (via Exploding Aardvark)

This past semester I taught three sections of freshman composition. One of these was in a “residential learning community,” aka a dorm where students with some shared interest live together and take some of their classes together in the dormatory. 

It was interesting–it was quite clear that although I have many sharp students in all my sections, that the students living in the same dorm together had some advantages over those who did not.  They were able to meet easily outside of class, they had an easier time discussing things in class, and they were, I think, a bit more inclined to be competitive with one-another, since they knew each other’s work more fully outside of class.  Another way to put it might be that it was a bit less easy to fall out of the class by not showing up or doing the reading, etc. 

This comes to mind as I think of a paper I read this semester from a student who came to UI, rather than accept a fellowship to attend a community college.  His argument was that the community college was a better deal.  And he made some very good points, and of course it’s true that community colleges (and the one here is town is an especially good one), are often the better choice for undergraduates, rather than four-year schools.

But what also struck me while reading his paper what that what he was saying about the impersonality of education at UI was *too* true.  Or more true than necessary.  Schools like UI have I think tended to coast on the presumption that all students will always sign up for four years and take their gen eds and so on, despite the fact that better and better community colleges, as well as access to distance learning courses are making the general education courses at places like UI seem less and less compelling.

The combination of teaching in the dorm, and reading this regretful essay from a student in one of my non “residential learning community” classes, impressed upon me the fact that there’s a lot that big state schools like UI could be doing to improve the experience of undergraduate education.  Residential campus life should be a richly rewarding experience—enough to justify four years of expensive physical presence.  I don’t think UI tends to see its campus as a lived environment for learning nearly as much as it could or should, if it’s serious about making the 4-year degree a really worthwhile experience.

So, my question then is this: why not make everyone’s classes like that class in the basement of Easton Hall?  What can the University do to make eveyone’s experience like that of those kids who lived and attended class in the same dorm?

One easy solution:  Sign students from the same dorms into the same course sections (there might be a hundred or more class “sections” of freshman comp, for example here at UI).  We have computers doing registration nowadays—why can’t they take into consideration where students live when grouping them into sections?  That way, despite being at this big impersonal school, you’d be likely to have some people from your own dorm, or your own floor in each of your gen ed. classes.

Of course this wouldn’t solve everything.  Courses with fewer sections would be less able to group students by location, and students will need to choose classes that fit their schedules.  But even so, a registration program smart enough to take students’ places of residence into account could do a lot to promote a less alienated learning environment and give students a more worthwhile first two years at the four year university.

Awhile ago I came across this list of 80’s videos that are hosted over at YouTube.  It’s pretty long and great fun to browse, despite the fact that it lists only one video per artist.  YouTube however hosts many music videos that aren’t on the list–so if the list doesn’t include your favorite video, you should try searching for it.

Questions (links go to sound and video clips):

There’s a jillion cool videos there.  See anything else interesting, on or off the list?

[And ok fine, a bonus from YouTube: Hooray! Nowadays, gay people can do almost anything!]

In an odd coincidence, I saw the video footage just released of American Airlines Flight 77 hitting the Pentagon, on the same day I was watching the old Dino DeLaurentis film, Flash Gordon.  (This splenidly weird film warped my childhood in numerous ways.)  It actually took a bit of doing to watch this film.  You can only get it on DVD’s encoded to work outside the United States.  Fortunately, my local video store carries these, and my desktop computer will play them. 

Our clean-cut America Hero Flash Gordon finally saves the day by hijacking a plane and flying it on a suicide attack into the fortress of the evil Emperor Ming (who you can see above as a desperate blur, trying to escape the incoming plane).

Despite its multiform splendors (including of course the soundtrack by Queen), I don’t expect we’ll see Flash Gordon released in the states any time soon.  Easier to get, but also impossible to create today is Red Dawn—that perfectly Reaganite film of the mid-80’s about American highschool students who become heroic terrorists after the US is occupied by Socialist forces (gasp!).  Our teenage heroes learn to make the tough moral choices—shooting friends who become informers, and detonating bombs in crowded clubs frequented by Communist soldiers.  Freedom fighters, whether in Nicaragua or Afghanistan were more appreciated in the 80’s than today.

Can anyone think of other films (aside from this one, of course) that are similarly “unthinkable” today?  We could assemble an interesting fesitval, perhaps.

We hear that the Champaign City Council last night passed an ordinance banning smoking pretty much everywhere except outside and in private houses and cars.  It will go into effect, I understand, in August, as long Urbana passes a similar ordinance (which everyone assumes they will).

If you’re really interested, you can read the text of the resolution here.

Do have lots of extra time and bandwith?  You might have a look at the Wikipedia Featured Pictures Page, if you’d like to see a whole bunch of images that the folks at Wikipedia found especially good.  However, as they say, if you aren’t careful you just might learn something.  As I learned for example after looking at this picture that Geoffrey Chaucer had written a treatise on the Astrolabe.  Who knew our old friend was such a technologist?  Perhaps I was supposed to.

Anyway, I note that I now have a grand total of two friends on Flickr (which has made some neat improvements just lately).  And both of them have posted pictures of the same sign.   

Imho more TDQ readers should sign up for Filckr accounts, since it appears that they’re running out of objects to photograph out there in D.C. …

Oh here’s a brilliant idea.

Only one couple I know is cool enough to coordinate the design of their blog with their printed stationary.  (Or is this a bit worrying?  )

In any case, yestersday I received in the mail a lovely (union-printed) Happy May Day card from Janna and Sanjay.  We here at tdq do love May Day.  While it has in the past ocacsioned some infamous displays of military hardware, the holiday is really about giving credit to the work that people do to sustain our species, and (in a nice pagan turn) the extra-human elements of the cosmos that we also appreciate.  So, bully for May Day.

But that’s not today.  Today is Cinco de Mayo.  Which everyone is quick to point out isn’t Mexico’s Independence Day, although it sort of is. 

In 1862 the European Colonial powers were  demanding debt paymets from Mexico and threatening to invade.  Only France’s Napoleon number 3 followed through with this plan however, sending 6,500 French soldiers to sieze Mexico city.  The confident French were defeated at the Battle of Puebla (on the 5th of May, 1862) by a smaller Mexican force, who (with the aid of a cattle stampede started by loval villagers) managed to defeat the superior French force.

Complicating the comparison to the American “Independence Day,” is the fact that an angry Napoleon III then sent over 30,000 more soldiers, seized Mexico city, and installed a puppet government. 

But that defeat at the Battle of Puebla was not only a source of symbolic inspiration to those who opposed Colonial occupation, but an oppritunity for the Mexican Liberals, under Benito Juarez (Mexico’s only Native American leader) time to organize a fierce resistance that, with help from other countries, quickly made Maxmillian’s rule untenable.  In 1867, just three years after landing in Mexico, Emporer Maxmillian was executed by firing squad.

Cinco de Mayo isn’t an official holiday in Mexico, and its story is murky and little-known in the U.S.  But it is possible that without the defeat of the French on May 5, 1862, that Maxmillian I might have succeded in consolidating his rule in Mexico.  This would have made quite some difference to the United States, since Napoleon III was sympathetic to the Confederacy in the American Civil War, and interested in using Mexico to give aid to the South.  But defeat in Mexico discouraged France from interventing on behalf of the Confederates, and prevented the use of Mexico as a means of resupplying the South, which was collapsing under the Northern naval blockade.

The Battle of the Puebla may well have been decided by native farmers who, armed only with machetes, chose to stampede their cattle through the muddy fields that were bogging down the well-trained French war machine.  I may also be that those indigenous farmers made possible the Northern Victory in the American Civil War.

Happy Cinco de Mayo!

Noted:

The first new theory for the evolution of aging to come along in thirty years appeared in the March issue of Evolutionary Ecology Research. Current theories are based on the idea that aging could not logically evolve on its own, so it has come to us on the coattails of some other powerful incentive – most probably fertility. But these theories have run afoul of reality, in the form of recent experiments. The new theory, by Josh Mitteldorf of the University of Arizona, models aging as an adaptation in its own right. Mitteldorf presents a computer model in which aging is selected for its role in taming unsustainable population growth. [. . .]

These evolutionary arguments are more than academic exercises, because evolutionary theory plays a role in guiding medical research. For decades, evolutionary theorists have warned that treatments to combat aging may be too difficult to develop, because so many of the body’s systems fail simultaneously in old age. But suppose these systems aren’t just wearing out – suppose that aging is really like an organized program of self-destruction. Then it may be controlled by just a small number of master genes, some of which have already been identified. To thwart the action of a particular gene pathway is something that pharmaceutical researchers have done in the past with great success. Blocking our aging genes may be a manageable task. In fact, some upstart pharmaceutical companies are already picking up on this idea.

Death as survival adaptation?

Not all of my progressivey friends like the MTD’s idea to put a tram in CU, but I do.  Those who regard the whole idea as a whimisical impossibility do however have to contend with the fact that the beast’s been here before. 

[Also, be sure to browse around the site I link to above (using the links at the bottom of that page).  Lots of amazing old CU transit pics there, including even the sole surviving image of a CU horse trolley, and the story of that mysterious little stone bridge near the Salvation Army.  The captions of photos there are full of the simultaneously pleasant and disturbing vagueness of reference that one often finds in local history.]