Super Bowl Ads

Okay, two things at once here.

First, for years, the Super Bowl has been the one television event I know of for which I didn't mute the commercials. Rather, during the Super Bowl, many of us tend to go for snacks during the game, but sit riveted during the commercials. There are no instant replays on the commercials, but anything worth seeing in the game will be the topic of endless highlight reels.

Well these days, I have no TV. Well, I have a TV, it's just not connected to a signal source other than my DVD player. But, have no fear, at this site, you'll find, collected in a single place for your alphabetical viewing pleasure, the entire collection of commercial spots from this past weekend's Super Bowl. I've no idea how long it will remain up and running--perhaps forever, perhaps only for days--but for now, you'll need a chunk of time if you want to watch them all. Or, if you had a favorite that you need to show someone, look no further.

Second, I've been meaning for some time to post comments about a book I read over the Christmas break: Susan Jacoby's, The Age of American Unreason. I've lots more to say about this book, but for now, I'll simply assert that if Jacoby--for whom I think it's fair to say, video, in all its incarnations, amounts to the technological Anti-Christ heralding intellectual Armageddon--were watching when the commercial below came on, I would have loved to have been there to watch her. "That's it!" I imagine her saying excitedly, "That's exactly what it does! Exactly! You think he's kidding, making fun of my views as extreme and ridiculous, but really, that's what videotainment does to your brain!" More on Jacoby's heavy-handed indictment of technology later, but for now, enjoy:

Bugatti Veyron vs Eurofighter Typhoon

Just a quick & fun something to share from a friend:

The two will start side by side from a standstill, the car will go 1 mile, slow down enough to turn around on a full width runway, then come back the 1 mile. The fighter will take off as quickly as possible, go straight up 1 mile, turn around and come back down to about 100' off the deck to fly parallel to the car to attempt to cross the Finish Line first.

Who will win? Click on link below

http://www.snotr.com/video/568

Hat tip: JPL

Your biggest problem as a superhero

Your Superpower Should Be Mind Reading

You are brilliant, insightful, and intuitive. You understand people better than they would like to be understood. Highly sensitive, you are good at putting together seemingly irrelevant details. You figure out what's going on before anyone knows that anything is going on! Why you would be a good superhero: You don't care what people think, and you'd do whatever needed to be done. Your biggest problem as a superhero: Feeling even more isolated than you do now.

What Should Your Superpower Be?

Hat tip: Enrevanche

Umm . . . Like, check this out

As an English professor, you cannot help but love this:

The just announced “Umm Like All-Star” list includes Britney Spears, who was caught uttering 73 “likes” and “ya knows” in a five-minute video interview on YouTube.

Read the whole article here, to find out which celebs like, you know, um, can't string, like, five, you know, words, like, together in, like, you know, a row.

Or check out the whole Umm . . . Like website.

Blog Roll Catch Up

One of the things I like about IE7 is the ability to open a slew of websites with a single click from the favorites menu. Accordingly, I have a "Blog Maintenance" folder, and a "Blog Reads" folder. Part of catching up since vacation has been to peruse some of the posts on the Blogroll since I left. A few are worth recommending.

This from Indexed made me laugh out loud.

This shifting map of the Middle East on Acute Politics is worth watching.

Audible.com

I first encountered Audible.com when I purchased a Zire-72 back in 2003. The Palm M100 that I carried to Afghanistan didn't survive the dust. With the Zire, came a subscription to Audible. I fell in love. I've been lucky never to have longer than about a 20-minute commute to work each day, but that 20 minutes flies by listening to a book. On average, I can get through a book a month, though tomes like Master of the Senate, or Don Quixote, take a while longer. (I don't do abridgements.) In addition to books, they offer subscriptions (periodicals, TV & radio shows, daily newspapers). I found that, in addition to listening to a book during the drive each day, I could get through the weekly Science News during my runs.

What spawned this post was that this morning's paper contained an article titled, "MP3 Revolution: Teaching Tools Adjust to the Times." It's topic is the growing trend for students to put their MP3 players to work to help them learn. Books have long been available, but get this:

Schools including Stanford University and University of Wisconsin-Madison now belong to iTunes U, a service launched a year ago by Apple Inc. that lets professors post lectures and students download them for free.
In response, new products have been popping up.
Audible Inc., the biggest audio book seller, and Pearson Education, the biggest textbook publisher, teamed up last summer to launch Vango-Notes, textbook chapter summaries and reviews in MP3 form.
The companies declined to give specific sales figures. But they said thousands of students have downloaded the more than 100 titles, which should grow to 200 titles by fall.

Right on.

Last spring, I used something similar in my own class. I was teaching Shakespeare's As You Like It, in my lit survey class, and recommended to my students that, especially if they were having trouble grasping the Elizabethan English, they listen to the play. That's what I did nearly 30 years ago as an undergrad. I still have a box of cassette tapes made from the library's LPs of the BBC series. You can grasp the nuances far better if you can hear the lines read. You can tell what's funny, what's insulting, what has lewd second meanings far better when you can hear emotion in the lines--something you can't do, just reading them, at least not as a newcomer to Shakespeare's tongue.

Happily, Audible had the full play. I sent all my students an invitation for a free trial. (Here's Audible's spiel for that trial: "They'll let you try a free 14-day trial of the Audible Listener Platinum plan, which includes two free digital audio downloads. You'll also get other benefits like free audio samplers and a 30% discount off the non-member price on all digital audio purchases. You can cancel anytime and keep your free downloads.That's a $22.95 value-free.") That may be available to anyone, or you may need an invite. If you need an invite, drop me a line, and I'll send you one.

My point: Anyone who loves books, has a computer, iPod, or Palm, and spends time commuting or working out every day, by vehicle or by foot, will love this service. And if you need somewhere to start, ask me for a recommendation in any category (non-fiction, classics, science-fiction, biography, self-help) and I'll be happy to make a recommendation. If you're curious where my own listening has gone, there'll be a new frame in the sidebar shortly dedicated to the books I've listened to, vice read.

Happy listening. Doc.

Library Thing

I'm not fully decided on this Library Thing quite yet. I still cringe a little every time I share something about myself on the web. But this seems a pretty cool tool, and some time spent surfing for privacy concerns surrounding it didn't turn up anything untoward, so . . . for a while, we'll give it a try. You'll find a new window on the right margin with some info from my own library. I entered only a few things for now. Enough to play with the sites capabilities and report back. So, more to follow.