I simply can’t resist:
Wonka on Religion and Atheism
I’m not sure why I find the “Creepy Wonka” memes to be so amusing, but I do. Here are a few gems on religion and atheism. Enjoy.
Overused Words and Phrases in Prose
I have a tendency to overuse certain words and phrases in my writing. My approach to writing is typically to get as much on a page as possible in one sitting and then go back and fix it later. This involves, among other things, not getting too hung up on using words such as “namely, moreover, that is, for example” or the like. These are my “comfort words,” those that enable me link thoughts together that would otherwise just be sprayed all over the page.
The problem, for me, is that when I go back to “fix” my prose, in terms of removing oft-repeated words, I tend to fix some things and gloss over others. It’s not the case that I decide some words are fine…it’s that I simply don’t see every word that I tend to overuse.
My dissertation director has an uncanny knack for seeing these almost immediately, at which point he will say something like, “Have you realized how often “X” occurs on this page?” He is correct nearly 100% of the time, and my writing is better because of it.
So, lately I have been trying to find ways to highlight words that may appear in a document more often than they should. To my knowledge, Word has no feature that makes this an easy process. I have begun keeping a checklist of words to go back and search for later in the editing process, and this has helped to a certain degree. However, as I am constantly replacing old “comfort words” with new ones, it is becoming difficult to keep track.
Enter Wordle.
I’m not sure if you’re familiar with this tool, but if you’re not you should be. I have used it in the past as a means of procrastination. I realized today that it might be useful in pinpointing overused words in my documents. Simply cut and paste a block of text into the proper field, and Wordle will generate a “word cloud” that will then enable you to see which words you use most often. The larger the word in the cloud, the more often it appears. Cool, no?
I suppose this may also be useful to those who have just written something and yet have no idea what it is actually about.
Here is a cloud generated from the text of my dissertation proposal (sans bibliography). Click for larger version:
How do you cope with overused words?
Unreading Narrative
Lately I have been asked by more than a few people to explain, in plain terms, what precisely my dissertation is about. The exercise is a good one, yet difficult.
The object of my study is the Protevangelium of James, an “infancy gospel” that was likely composed in the second half of the second century (150-200). It tells the story of Mary’s birth, her betrothal to Joseph and the birth of Christ, among other things. The text was banned in the West, presumably because certain aspects of it were deemed heretical (or something along those lines)
.
My approach to the text is one that examines its relationship to the New Testament. Many in the past have noted the ways in which the Protevangelium uses material from the infancy narratives of Matthew and Luke to tell its story. My interest in the text is in the ways that it changes one’s reading of the New Testament. This is where I end up having to explain myself.
At the heart of my project is the notion that it is difficult to “unread” something once you have read it. In the age of Gmail, “unreading” is simple enough. You read something, and then you click “unread.” This is not exactly what I have in mind, however. I’m certain that at some point in your life you have had someone perform the following “experiment” on you: you are told that, for the next minute, you may think of anything that you like, as long as you don’t think about an elephant. When faced with this exercise, most will have difficulty thinking of anything but an elephant. Even when you think of “not an elephant,” you are thinking of an elephant. Perhaps this is a strange example, but it is fitting nonetheless.
I first read the Protevangelium in the Spring of 2010. Like many, I was fascinated by the story. Despite its simplicity, or perhaps because of its simplicity, something about it stuck with me. Shortly after I had read the text, Ellen and I decided to start reading the Bible together a couple of times a week (cute, right?). We started with Luke, and we took turns reading the gospel aloud, one paragraph at a time. To her amusement dismay, I started saying things like, “Well you know, in this text I just read, this actually means that.” Or, “Hey, in this text I just read, there is a character named X and they do Y.” I remember thinking to myself how silly this was, as Luke was much older than the Protevangelium. What use could this newer text be to interpreting the older? The answer, of course, is complicated, and my dissertation is an attempt to answer it.
This example serves to illustrate the idea that it is difficult to unread that which you have read. Narratives have a way of sticking with us and altering the way that we perceive reality (and texts, for that matter). Even those narratives that we try to “unread” crop up from time to time when they are triggered by various elements we encounter. So, one who reads the canonical gospels after having read and internalized the Protevangelium will see certain things that the evangelists themselves may not intended or foreseen. The goal of my dissertation is to articulate what such reading might look like.
Cheers.
Dissertations, Fonts, and Wasting Time
From the outset, I should admit that I’m somewhat of a “font junkie.”
I haven’t always been this way. In my undergraduate years, I was mostly satisfied with Times New Roman, unless of course I needed to make my paper a bit longer, in which case I would gravitate toward Courier or Arial (I was convinced that this trick was undetectable to my professors). I never needed a font to make a paper shorter…a testimony to how much I despised the act of writing.
Things have changed. Now, I gravitate toward new fonts like a shark to blood. Initially, my fascination began in seminary with Greek fonts…I wanted to make the Greek text in my papers stand out better, so I began downloading various fonts to help make this happen. Then, with the advent of Unicode fonts some years back, things got more interesting. Now, there was no longer a need to have separate Greek and Roman fonts. The joys! Of course, this led to the frustration of liking the Greek character set but not liking the Roman character set or vice versa.
Over the years I discovered Linux Libertine, Garamond Premier Pro, SBL Greek, Minion, Cambria, among others. I’ll admit that my excitement has waned a bit. Nowadays, I have two fonts that I use on a fairly consistent basis: GentiumAlt and Palatino Linotype. Both are serif fonts and have a nice, clean look to them. Plus, both are Unicode and have smart looking Greek character sets.
Yesterday evening, as I was chipping away at some dissertation-related business (not writing yet, just piddling), it occurred to me that some fonts may be more acceptable to others when it comes to a dissertation…could it be that I would have to return to Times New Roman? The horror!
My alacrity rekindled, I began to compulse. A simple Google search on the topic led me to a discussion forum in which someone had asked a similar question: “What font should I use for my dissertation?” One of the responses is simply too good (and poignant) not to share. Despite my love for fonts, I’m inclined to agree with this:
Spending time choosing fonts is not productive work, and is one of the absolutely classic time-wastes of graduate students that make advisors beat their heads into the wall.
The probability that anyone but you and your committee will ever read your dissertation in its form as a dissertation is very low, and your dissertation will look like shit no matter what fonts you choose because the required formatting is functional, not aesthetic.
The probability that anyone but you will care in the slightest what fonts are in the dissertation is exactly zero.
Is the Internet Making Us Stupid?
Maybe.
I’ve been reading a somewhat recent book by Nicholas Carr, The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains (an expansion of an earlier article). His thesis is simple: the internet is changing the way we think and the way that our brains process information, and not in a good way. At the end of the preface, Carr leaves the reader with a daunting statement:
The computer screen bulldozes our doubts with its bounties and conveniences. It is so much our servant that it would seem churlish to notice that it is also our master.
I am barely three chapters in, yet I’m convinced that he is on to something.
In the first pages of this book, Carr recalls the frustrating experience of realizing that he 
doesn’t read as well as he once did. Whereas he used to be able to sit for hours with a single book, now he feels restless if he spends too much time with a single text. He recalls that he used to wander the library stacks at his university and feel a sense of peace: the books weren’t going anywhere, and they seemed to whisper, “take your time.” Now, things have changed. Libraries are now intimidating places, and book stacks serve only to remind one that they do not have enough time to process it all. Something has changed, and that something, he argues, is our dependence on the internet, a medium that promises to dish up as much information as we want, and to do so at whichever pace we choose.
As I read these reflections, I felt as if I had found a kindred spirit. I share the frustration of not being able to focus on one thing for an extended period of time, especially when that one thing is a book or an article (I can, for example, clean my kitchen for hours on end). I get caught up in chasing footnotes, and many times I find that I am skimming entire chapters in search of key words and concepts. To be fair, part of this is the nature of graduate studies. If you read every sentence of every book twice, you will in fact never make it through the works necessary to your research. I realized in reading just the beginning of The Shallows, however, that I have begun to see books like I see websites…footnotes have become hyperlinks that must be clicked (as a case in point, did you click one of the links at the beginning of this post?), and long chapters have become burdensome and leave me wishing that someone would just get to the point and write a blog post.
This past summer, as I was studying for my qualifying exams, I made the conscious decision to do most of my work without aid of a computer. I know that I have a tendency to get distracted easily, and I figured that taking notes by hand would eliminate at least one distraction and, to some extent, slow me down a bit. I found the process of studying to be tiresome at first, but after a couple of weeks of leaving my laptop at home, I found that I was able to read faster and for longer, and that I was actually retaining information more efficiently. I attribute this at least in part to the fact that one becomes a more efficient reader by practicing. In light of this book, however, I now can’t help but wonder if my lack of technology while studying had anything to do with my studying more effectively.
Carr’s argument in The Shallows is more eloquent than what I have relayed here, and he backs up what he says with articles from neuroscience journals and researchers that I’ve (obviously) never heard of. I will look forward to seeing what else he has to say, as well as if he offers any advice on how to counter these effects.
In the meantime, I shared some of this with Ellen the other night, and we thought it might be an interesting experiment to try spending two hours per night “unplugged.” No phones, no internet, no TV. We can read, play games, sleep, talk, etc., but we can’t use anything with a screen. We’re both looking forward to this little “experiment.”
If you’ve made it this far, I’d love to hear your thoughts. Do you feel the need to “unplug” from time to time?
R. S. Thomas – Pietà
Always the same hills
Crowd the horizon,
Remote witnesses
Of the still scene.
And in the foreground
The tall Cross,
Sombre, untenanted,
Aches for the Body
That is back in the cradle
Of a maid’s arms.
Andrew of Crete and the Immaculate Conception
The focus of my research, the Protevangelium of James, is often cited as the earliest expression of Mary’s Immaculate Conception. As a consequence of my research, I have been reading many Patristic homilies on Mary, some of which speak of her birth and childhood.
Today, on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, I decided it may be fitting to share one. This is from an eighth-century homily, the Canon on the Nativity, by St. Andrew of Crete (translated by Luigi Gambero in Mary and the Fathers of the Church, 394):
Let all creation dance; let David dance as well, for from his line and his seed arose the branch that will bear the Flower, the Lord and Redeemer of all…
Anna was sterile and barren, but not childless in God’s eyes. For from all eternity, she was predestined to be the mother of the chaste Virgin, from whom the Creator was to come forth in the form of a servant.
Unsullied Lamb, who alone, from your womb, gave Christ the wool of our nature, we all celebrate your birth from Anna with songs.
Graduate Studies and Time-Out
Once when I was around 10-12 years old, I remember yelling at my mom and telling her that something she did wasn’t fair. I can’t remember what exactly she had done, but it probably involved justly punishing me for something I had done. Regardless, I told her it wasn’t fair, and she said, “Go ahead, send me to my room.” I gasped. Why would anyone want to be sent to their room? Being sent to one’s room in my house meant that you were in trouble. It also meant that you were about to spend a good deal of time bored. Why would anyone want that? Why would any sane person wish to be sent to time-out?
Yesterday as I sat in my study pouring over this research proposal of mine that continues to grow more unwieldy by the day, I thought to myself that post-coursework graduate studies is much like an adult version of time-out.
When you’re still in coursework, you are constantly surrounded by peers, and you look forward to getting together to play. You have lunch and coffee with one another, you talk about fun things that are happening, and you share your projects. Occasionally you may have a play group that you don’t particularly enjoy, but even these have their moments.
After coursework is finished, things change. You find yourself spending more and more time alone, shut inside small spaces and having to amuse yourself. Sometimes you emerge long enough from the depths of the library to see many of your friends still playing together, but ultimately this is short-lived.
What distinguishes this adult version of time-out from that which we know as children is that we have in some way chosen to be in time-out. Graduate school is, after all, voluntary. What’s more, the solitary life that follows coursework is regarded as reward for work done. You have done well in coursework, passed your qualifying exams, and now you are trusted to amuse yourself and stay out of trouble. In some respects, you begin to look forward to time-out.
This version of time-out is thus different from that which we knew as children. I suppose at least one thing is similar…all time-outs are temporary by nature, and eventually you get to rejoin the ranks and resume playing with others. Until then, I’m sending myself back to my room.
Nothing
I’m tempted to buy this, just so I can say that I own an introduction to nothing. Wonder what the “very long” edition is like.
