Snakes in SF/F/H (Or, Drumming Up Fear from Ignorance)
As someone who keeps reptiles and still occasionally searches for them in the wild, very few things annoy me more than the way genre films treat snakes. In fact, one of my biggest rants on Torture Cinema concerned the sea snake inaccuracies in Sphere (1998). To this day, I find it difficult to watch films which feature snakes of any kind because almost all of them get nearly everything wrong and most of them use snakes as plot devices for fear. There are a lot of problems with the way snakes are portrayed in SF/F/H, especially film. The biggest, however, can be summed up in these three points:
Online Coursework, Here We Come!
I’ve received official word that classes at Bemidji State University will switch over to remote learning for an undefined amount of time starting on Friday (3/20). I’d assuming this was going to happen when I talked about this stuff a few days ago, so it wasn’t a surprise. And that means all my little preparations for such an eventuality were spot on. Not that I planned to have in-person classes during a pandemic that has a decent likelihood of killing me (asthma FTW!). With that in mind, I’m scrambling to rework my syllabi, put together online resources for instruction and for student activity, and doing my best to work with the technologies I have available to me. So far, I’ve got the following in the pocket:
The Space Opera Project Continues!
Some of you may recall that I began a database project last year containing space opera novels by women. To date, the list includes nearly 700 novels in the space opera genre. This has come through a combination of my own knowledge and the knowledge of the science fiction community, who have suggested numerous works for inclusion via this form. The goal for this project is two-fold:
Academia During a Pandemic: Hunker Down Philosophy 1B
Almost as soon as I released yesterday’s post on things I’m planning to do in order to survive this pandemic we find ourselves in, things got made real at my university: classes have been cancelled entirely until March 30th. This presents some real challenges. For one, it looks like we’re going to lose two full weeks of classes. That’s a lot of classes. That’s a lot of interesting topics and conversations gone. Poofed out of existence by a totally reasonable response to an absolutely bananapants situation. And so here I am contemplating the types of changes I’ll need to make so the class still…functions. What assignments can I drop? What assignments can I move to “do it on your own”? What things must stay so students meet the intended learning outcomes?
Academia During a Pandemic: Hunker Down Philosophy 1A
COVID-19 is upon us in the good old United States of America. Like many totally great countries, we are really prepared for a global pandemic involving a virus for which there is no direct treatment and which kills vulnerable populations a tad too easily. We’re super prepared. Mega prepared. So prepared it’s like this country is run by very competent people. Believe me. Of course, the only true statement in that paragraph is the first one. COVID-19 is upon us. It is upon many people. And it’s here to stay for a while. In my dreams, the world rallies and kicks this ugly virus to the curb, minimizing the loss of life and paving the way for a glorious future where peoples and nations work together in harmony. They’ll build a new United Nations and form a global exploratory and scientific space organization and band together to revert climate change and pave the way for an era of nearly endless prosperity. We’ll discover new worlds, create amazing new technologies and art, and look back on the past as a shameful and pathetic time. Dream dream dream.
Thoughts on Living in Small Towns (Or, Life in Forgotten America)
One of the interesting things about watching the news and politicians in the United States is the way they eventually talk about “small town America.” In a lot of ways, “small town America” is part of American mythology: a story about America that this nation tells its citizens to make us feel connected to something that most people have no connection to. Beyond that myth, though, “small town America” is ignored; few people really know what it’s like to live there or understand the struggles folks in rural and small town communities face. Sure, we talk about it as nation every so often, but I’m not convinced that much of what goes on in national conversations has much applicability to everyday life in America. I basically view our national talk about “small town America” the same way I view the same talk about “military families”: it’s mostly lip service designed to convince others that our politicians really care about these issues. But if you live in a small town in America, it’s pretty obvious that national policy (and, often, state policy) hasn’t done much to protect those small communities from corporate greed and abuse, the destruction of small business, the erosion of community arts and culture, or general decline (in population, in income, etc.).