CLASSES for Tuesday, Sept 02

Hi all; I am back from Copenhagen, but now everyone is going away for a brief bit. So it goes.

As you know, there will be no classes on the Loyola campus on Tuesday of this week. Current estimates of the hurricane Gustav track indicate that we will be able to continue classes on campus, as scheduled, on Thursday, Sept 04. (Although hurricane Hannah may pose a subsequent threat.)

Therefore, for next week’s classes, we will stick to the same syllabus and the schedule posted online. Secure your texts. Do your readings. All graded assignments will continue to be due on the original dates listed on the syllabus — except as noted below. More detailed and individual instructions for CMMNA100 and CMMNA400 students are these:

1. For CMMNA100 students.

• You originally had this quiz due Sept 09, Tuesday. Quiz #1 is now due at the end of the Tuesday, Sept 16 class. Your online schedule has been modified to reflect this. We very well may discuss — and I will answer questions about — this quiz in detail during the Tuesday, Sept 16 class, so do as much of that quiz as you can prior to that date, and be prepared to complete the remainder before leaving class on Sept 16.
• Your review assignment #1 remains due on Thursday, Sept 18. This means you need to be working on either reading Neuromancer (readily avl through most on and off-line bookstores) OR watching the movie Network (readily avl through a rental service such as Netflix — and avl for purchase widely as well). This is a required assignment, and hurricane Gustav has given you an excellent opportunity to focus on it. Do not dawdle.
• Otherwise, in preparation for my lecture on Thursday, Sept 04, read the assigned chapters (16 and 17) in your textbook, take a look at this file, and you might also want to browse through this file as well.

2. For CMMNA400 students.

• As indicated in your online schedule, your first graded assignment is a quiz you will receive on Sept 11 — which will be due the following class. I plan to adhere to this schedule. In preparation for that quiz, you should be completing the readings as listed in the schedule.
• As a supplement to the required viewing of the History of Video Games, you may also wish to take a look at these files, which are a copy of a documentary that appeared on European television concerning online entertainment forms. I recommend this documentary as an engaging survey of the content and gratifications of online entertainment, with two caveats. First, the files are very large (in high definition) and may take some time to download. Second, since the documentary reflects cultural standards other than our own, the sexual content of the documentary (particularly in the latter half of the second file) is more graphic than conventional USA television might allow (although less graphic than you might see, for instance, on Showtime).

CMMNA100 –> First week of class.

Goddag.

I apologize for not being present the first week of class. I wil be in Copenhagen August 25-29, attending The [Player} Conference. I will return during the second week of class, and I hope to see you first on Tuesday, September 2. Before then, it is very important that you do the following:

1. Find my homepage [http://www.loyno.edu/~dmyers/] and explore the “classes” link in the upper right-hand corner of that page. That link will take you to an index containing folders of materials for CMMNA100 and CMMNA400.

2. Open and download the “Syllabus” and “Schedule” files for your class.

The “Syllabus” file contains important information about the class.

Read closely the sections on grading and grading policy. If you have any questions about these – or about any other parts of the syllabus – you may ask questions in a reply to this message on this blog, or you may email me directly; my email address is listed at the top of the online syllabus.

You should also take special note of the required text for this course. This text is now available at the Loyola bookstore. You should purchase it as soon as possible.

The “Schedule” file shows an overview of class activities and assignments, week by week. As you will see, you have goals to accomplish this week while I am away. More on those goals below.

3. If you add CMMNA100 after Tuesday, August 26, or if you are enrolled but absent on August 26, or if you are absent on August 26 for any other reason, then you must contact Ms. Phyllis Aleman, in the SMC office on the third floor of the Music/Communications building during the first week of class. If you are not in attendance on Tuesday, August 26, and you do not contact Ms. Aleman prior to Thursday, August 28, then I will believe that you do not plan to take CMMNA100 this semester — and you may be dropped from the class.

4. The CMMNA100002 class on Thursday, August 28, will take place in Monroe Library, Room 229. Librarian Laurie Phillips will give a lecture in my absence concerning various techniques and materials associated with scholarly research and publications in the social sciences. The topics covered in this lecture are a part of your Quiz 1 assignment (which you will find online in the same place as the “Syllabus” and “Schedule” files).

Remember, should you have any questions, leave them in a reply to this message on this blog, or send them to me directly by email. I respond as soon as I can.

CMMNA400 –> First week of class.

Goddag.

I apologize for not being present the first week of class. I wil be in Copenhagen August 25-29, attending The [Player} Conference. I will return during the second week of class, and I hope to see you first on Tuesday, September 2. Before then, it is very important that you do the following:

1. Find my homepage [http://www.loyno.edu/~dmyers/] and explore the “classes” link in the upper right-hand corner of that page. That link will take you to an index containing folders of materials for CMMNA100 and CMMNA400.

2. Open and download the “Syllabus” and “Schedule” files for your class.

The “Syllabus” file contains important information about the class. In particular, note the prerequisites for CMMNA400: Completion of CMMN100 and CMMN101 and Junior standing (successful completion of 56 credit hours). If you do not meet these requirements, then you are not eligible to take this class and must withdraw.

Read closely the sections on grading and grading policy. If you have any questions about these – or about any other parts of the syllabus – you may ask questions in a reply to this message on this blog, or you may email me directly; my email address is listed at the top of the online syllabus.

You should also take special note of the required texts for this course. I strongly recommend that you purchase these texts online; there are any number of outlets – including Amazon – that offer these books for purchase at a very reasonable price. You will first need to refer to one of the three required textbooks (Mass Media Research, Wimmer & Dominick) during class on Thursday, September 11. Prior to that date, class lectures will be based on materials either online or available on two-hour reserve at the Loyola library. This gives you plenty of time to secure the required texts for this course – if you act expeditiously.

The “Schedule” file shows an overview of class activities, week by week. This file displays the readings you should complete each week, and it also lists dates for all assignments and exams. These dates are somewhat tentative for the quiz assignments; they are more definite regarding the exams.

3. The class on Tuesday, August 26, will consist only of taking roll and distributing the above information. If you are a part of this roll-taking procedure on Tuesday, then you will not need to come (physically) to class on Thursday, August 28. Instead, you should watch the online video The History of Video Games, which is available on youtube and linked within your online schedule. We will discuss this video and the relevance of new media forms (such as video games) on mass media theory during the Tuesday, September 2 class.

If you add CMMNA400 after Tuesday, August 26, or if you are enrolled but absent on August 26, or if you are absent on August 26 for any other reason, then you must contact Ms. Phyllis Aleman, in the SMC office on the third floor of the Music/Communications building during the first week of class. If you are not in attendance on Tuesday, August 26, and you do not contact Ms. Aleman prior to Thursday, August 28, then I will believe that you do not plan to take CMMNA400 this semester — and you may be dropped from the class.

re F08 CMMNA 400 new seat cards.

I will give out CMMNA400 new seat cards during the Fall 08 semester only under the following conditions:

1. The student receiving the seat card is a graduating senior AND has applied for graduation at the end of the Fall 08 semester. (I. e., the student will NOT be attending Loyola University during the spring 09 semester.)

2. The student receiving the seat card is required to take and pass CMMNA400 in order to graduate at the end of the Fall 08 semester.

If you meet both these conditions, contact me about receiving a new seat card. If you do not meet both these conditions, you will have to register for CMMNA400 through the normal process.

Do you immediately think John Travolta and Grease?

I know everybody has seen this but me.  But can… not… resist.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31×2WpuSAkA

from Windows to Mac.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7×2Sl4GtA8

Now that Parallels and VM Fusion are available, I am giving Mac a chance.  It’s never been the OS anyway; its always been the applications.

And Windows has, I fear, begun to run its miserable little copy-protected misguided integrated application-OS course of greed into the ground.  All things pass.

***

Let’s see, what else.

This summer:  Tabula Rasa, AoC, Dungeon Runner, Atlantica, Wizard101, Necro something or other, and various other free-to-try MMOs.  Who can remember the details when they are ALL THE SAME?  All removed from the hard disk now.

Still to come:  Warhammer, Spore, Champions Online, and, potentially, Star Trek Online — although the latter two are most likely to demonstrate that Cryptic and Emmert were just flat out lucky with the original CoH.

Seriously, how innovative could Braid really be?

***

60K words on Play Redux.  Still needs the notes and biblio stuff — dreary.

Coordination and the lack thereof.

Obama says properly inflate the tires, which, speaking of China, is sorta like the story you used to hear about what would happen if all the gazillions of Chinese were suddenly to inhale and exhale in perfect unison.

Ain’t gonna happen.  Mass society is built on — and, in fact, depends on — a great variety of people doing a great variety of things.  When all those people do exactly the same thing, whether that thing is good, bad, or indifferent, then it all falls apart. 

When it snows in New Orleans and everybody tries to call their kids and their mothers and their uncles in Houma, boom, down go the phones.  When it gets really really hot and everybody turns on their air conditioning and their plasma tvs and their (not really) supercooled dual cores to heat things up a little more, then boom, down goes the grid.  When the hurricane comes (as the hurricane will definitely come) and everybody tries to fill their tanks, boom-boom, we all sit with our radios on in the parking lot freeway.

Back in the olden days, I remember the grand dissident plan to bring the man to his knees:  every SDS sympathizer mails a letter, man, and the fascist postal system collapses.

Of course, used to be, in the good ole days, that such plans required the coordination of a large and unifed mass of true believers, sort of like the little pixel fairies that dance around inside Obama’s Wild Ride.  Ain’t gonna happen.

Nowadays, though, as the East Germans learned once upon a time, all the revolution takes is a serious capital investment.  Want to bring the man to his knees?  Buy several thousand cell phones and place them on continuous redial — giving them away to random thirteen-year-olds might do the trick.

Plus, I suspect as long as TMobile and the telecom clones have their 2-yr service agreements in place, they really really aren’t gonna complain.

NOAH.

http://www.wwltv.com/topstories/stories/wwl080108mlNOAHsuspends.5443b9b.html

Look, I’ve written about all this sort of stuff before.  It’s in the archives; I’m not even going to bother calling it up for you. 

This politician does that, that politician does this.  Big hoho surprise.  Maybe Jindahl can talk really fast about it or something.   That should fix it for you.

It’s just all seriously boringly deja vu to me.

***

I will note, however, that the Times-Picayune seems to have mostly called in sick on this one.  They do have a lot of Saints coverage in their online banner heads, though.  So there you go.

Meanwhile, the bloggers do the dirty work.

Of course, maybe the TP can talk really fast about their Pulitzers and whatnot.  That should fix it for you.