resources for students – Thinkers Link

Resources for Odyssey Research

Quick hit:

Students who are doing research on Homer’s The Odyssey may find it difficult to uncover valuable Lit/Crit resources online. Below, you will find links for PDF versions of books and articles we have available in our collection. Because our resources are so limited, I have created these files for our students hoping that they find them useful.

P.S. I will be adding a few more in the coming days as I scan other relevant books and articles, so please check back.

Thank you for stopping by, and I hope these prove valuable.

Digital Tourism

……………I was watching the SkyDive from the Edge of Space on CNN last Sunday afternoon, and rather than listening to the talking heads explain to me why this was so important, I decided to go to Google Maps to do a little digital tourism. I’ve been wanting to take my wife and children to Puerto Rico to visit my mother’s side of the family before all of my elders disappear.

……………While looking at the map of the Caribbean, I noticed the little island of Montserrat. An island I only know because of a volcano that erupted there back in 1995. I hadn’t thought much about that place since the stories appeared in the newspaper 17 years ago. (Newspapers were still a daily staple back then, and I’ve always been an avid reader). I decided to visit.

……………Using Google Maps, I zoomed in, noticing along the way that the island is a little more than 5 miles wide and perhaps as much as ten miles long. While the whole island could still fit on my computer screen, I could begin to see where the volcano had spewed its gray ash. Zoom in one more click and now I can see the names of the cities and towns that were in the way: Molyneux, Tuitts, Bramble Village, and the former capitol, Plymouth. As I zoom in, I am continually amazed at the amount of detail that I can gather from the satellite photos. The direction of the ash and lava flow; the formation of new beaches, new lands. Along with the map, I also viewed the photos that people attach. An amazing little feature and easy to use.

……………Here’s where I took a break in this search, and left for about six hours of the day to do other things. Shopping for food and cleaning the kitchen, clearing the fridge of unusable leftovers and spoiled produce that never manages to push the bad food off our plates. Cooking Sunday meals and getting everyone ready for the week, I forgot about my earlier search until I returned to my computer. I remembered having a virtual tool, that looked more 3D that Google maps, so I searched and found Google Earth, which I quickly downloaded.

I was not disappointed. Google Earth is Google Maps on a serious training regimen (Notice I didn’t say it was on steroids, because that’s like saying Google Earth cheated). Using Google Earth, I was able to do some serious Digital Touring, visiting my old neighborhood in Brooklyn, checking out the new Barclay Center (home of the lowly Nets), seeing how the rebuilding was going along in downtown Manhattan at the site of the World Trade Center attacks, and even admiring the 3D sonar mapping around New York City … I just finished reading Mark Kurlansky’s The Big Oyster, which recounts the long and prodigious history of clamming in New York waters, and seeing these online maps with so much information allowed me to see my hometown in a completely different light.

……………Needless to say, Google Earth is a wonderful and powerful tool that can easily become a huge time vortex, mindlessly consuming hours of your time as you hop around the world digitally. Could I check out China, I thought? Sure I could. How about Cuba? Or North Korea? Why not, says Google Earth. It’s just information. So off I went. Scanning miles and miles of endless rainforest in Brazil (there’s tons of missing information there … not too clear). I went from thought to thought, checking out places that popped into my mind. Next I checked out Abu Dhabi and their crazy land formations. Unlike other nations in the Middle East, the leaders of Abu Dhabi are hoping to court Western visitors and investors to their country and they are looking forward to a time when their oil and petroleum profits literally dry up. They are building up a resort wonderland that aims to rival anything anyone in the world has ever envisioned. (Those palm trees in the picture below are actually man made islands, and all the way to the right there is a mini earth where wealthy people can purchase an entire island in their favorite part of the “world”).

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……………It’s been a week since I started writing this post, and I can’t stop using Google Earth to visit places that pop into my head or that just look interesting from space. I’ve visited my father’s small town in Ecuador; my mother’s birth place in Ponce, Puerto Rico; I gazed at the Bering Sea and saw the underwater profile, and imagined how a few degrees of cold could lock the whole area in ice, allowing the ancestors of my ancestors to cross long ago … to populate North and South America. As a kid, I heard that the Great Wall of China was the only man-made object visible from space. Even though I thought I knew where I should find this “obviously” visible structure on Google Earth, I couldn’t find it. Sadly, whenever I typed Great Wall of China in the search box, what I got was directions to Chinese restaurants by that name. In the end, I was not able to see it from space, and I found out that it was an urban legend.

……………I turned to visit towns on the edge of deserts, wondering how people can resist the relentless onslaught of the sands. I viewed a winding river curving through the Congo (-3.493203,17.532806) creating an amazingly fluid and beautiful shape that made me want to get up and start painting. But I didn’t. I remained and kept zooming in and out, exploring whatever caught my eye; a remote corner of Australia, and the huge and apparently orange sands of the Simpson desert. Using the 3D building feature, I visited Rome and the neighboring Vatican City.

……………Google Earth’s 3D models are created by volunteers, amateurs and professionals, who upload their Sketch Up renditions of real buildings to a warehouse. After that, a team at Google Earth selects those models that will be placed on the maps. Information about the works and creators is available by clicking on the model, and you can even visit the warehouse and check out all the models people have uploaded. Another incredible store of digital information that is completely free and available for anyone to explore and use.

……………Finally, I had to stop exploring all these amazing tools and get to posting this. There are other tools that allow you to record and narrate a digital tour. You can also explore underwater areas that have been mapped and even photographed. There are panoramic photographs at every historical site I could think of, and just when I thought I couldn’t take in more information, I discovered that Google Earth also allows you to explore the moon and mars, including all of the landing sites.

……………Thank you for stopping by, and I hope you find somewhere interesting to visit.

Finding a new writing tool

I hope the snow hasn’t been too rough, wherever you are. For me it’s been a mixed blessing, allowing me to recover from my recent surgery without missing too many school days (thank you snow days) … while tempting me to go outside and move some of that white stuff. (I haven’t; don’t worry, I won’t). One of the things I thought I might be able to do while I was recovering was working on that million dollar novel or screenplay. Needless to say, I don’t have a novel or screenplay that I was working on, and worst of all, I really don’t have any idea how to prepare such a long work.

Despite all my years of teaching, and teaching writing in particular, I have never tried to write any kind of long creative work. Maybe I stick to essays, short stories and poetry, because they are so relatively easy to write. With so much time on my hands, however, I wanted to find a tool that might be able to help me write something like a play or novel.

Anyone can use a word processor, I suppose, to properly format a play or novel. What I was looking for was some software that could cut down some of that tedious work. I also wanted something that wasn’t going to be too complicated to use, and most of all, I wanted something that wasn’t going to cost too much … free would be preferable.

I started as usual, by googling a phrase, in this case, “screen-writing tools”. I scanned through the recommendations, and then used CNET’s reviews to narrow down my options. Finally, I settled upon Celtx, because it had a CNET review, a Wikipedia entry with reliable external links and references, and best of all, it was a free download recognized as virus free by CNET and by my McAfee Site Advisor.

I must report that I have only started playing around with Celtx, and already I have learned a great deal. I really like the sample works provided, even though they are not complete. There is a sample of a film, audio and theater scripts which give the user some idea about how to use some of the many features included in the software. According to the Wikipedia entry, “Celtx uses an industry standard screenwriting editor typical for screenplays, stageplays, AV scripts, comic books or radio plays.” I can imagine creative writing students and film students using this software to improve their own scripts.

Now that I’ve found a new tool to use, I just have to get together that million dollar idea. I’ll let you know if I come up with anything. Until then, I thank you again for stopping by, and hope you find something worth exploring.

Last Summer ’09 Post

Boy did I let this last post s_l_i_d_e. I just couldn’t get around to writing it because I kept doing other things, trying to squeeze what I could out of this summer. And now it’s gone and I feel like I have to get this posted before midnight tonight for it to count. Or at least before I show up to school tomorrow. So, I hope that you all had a great summer and that you are looking forward to having a powerful and productive year. Before we get into the serious work, I wanted to share with you some of the web gems that I found over the summer:

Bing: By now I’m sure you’ve heard that some little company is trying to lure you away from the mighty mega giant Google. Bing is claiming to be, not a search engine, but the Internet’s first “decision engine”. Oh, and it includes a cool and different background every day that has little pop up boxes with factoids and links. And stuff. You’ll have to evaluate it for yourself. Right now, I’m not sure I’d start using Bing as a verb to sound trendy or with it as in, “have you Binged it”?

World Wide Telescope: The same spunky startup that launched Bing recently also happens to have a really cool application that lets you peer through the universe and get awesome pictures of all the amazing things our puny little eyes can’t see. Whenever you get tired of this cozy place we call home, take some time to explore the Cosmos in a way that would have made Copernicus’ explanations a lot easier to imagine.

Closer to the Truth: When you’re done exploring outer space, take some time to contemplate the inner space. This site features show length videos of the program by the same name hosted by Robert Lawrence Kuhn (perhaps the prototype for Dos Equis’ “most interesting man in the world”). The series intends to explore “Cosmos. Consciousness. God” by interviewing scholars and leading thinkers to share their thoughts on the deepest questions.

Academic Earth: Still have more questions? Maybe you want to listen to a professor from Stanford talk about the “Modern Freedom Struggle” or let a professor from Berkley introduce you to the human brain and muscular system. Maybe you’re feeling gloomy with summer ending and all, and you want to check out Yale’s intro to the philosophy of death. Of course I went for MIT’s “Introduction to copyright law” … scintillating.

Sporcle: Okay, not everything has got to be so serious. Sporcle’s tagline is “mentally stimulating diversions” and they had me at hello. I figured I was gonna ace such easy topics as “U.S. States”, “Corporate Logos” and “U.S. Presidents”, are you kidding me? I did fine, but I kept forgetting either Warren G. Harding or Martin van Buren. Anyway once I mastered those, I figured I’d move on to the Periodic Table. Yeah, I’m still on that one and I’m up to like twenty elements. Maybe you’d like to try your hand at Uma Thurman Movies or Pokemon Characters. And finally …

Virus Total: Don’t know if you trust that e-mail from a suspicious “friend”? Downloaded an application from a site you’re not really familiar with, and now you’re not sure if you want to run it? Sure you might have McAfee, but not F-Secure. Or maybe you have both plus ViRobot, but not Norton or Virus Buster. Why not be absolutely sure and check out that shady file at Virus Total. They’ll run your file through 39 databases shared by the anti-malware heroes of the connected world. And it’s absolutely FREE.

Hope you find something worth checking out and I will see you all in a few hours. (Didn’t post it before midnight.) Thanks for reading.