The first step, of course, is to admit that you have a problem, which most at Samhsa's meeting just would not do. Indeed, most of us could not even get to the point where we claimed that we could “stop any time we wanted." Resistance to the message or not, this model may have some merit--this correspondent probably should make amends with her elementary school librarian for the entire Nancy Drew collection she never returned and may or may not to this day possess. |
Jiggerful's paper wins the prize for the most fun and most liver-threatening. Presented from a very carefully constructed model of a Spanish train station, ca. 1927, participants were encouraged to take a drink every time a text came in to their phones. And, to be perfectly honest, that is all this correspondent can remember. |
A Braughtiganian depiction of an otherwise very technical field, Feignman's paper positively glowed with energy. It will be hard to forget the term “isotrope," for example, but the water pooled on the tent's roof from the previous evening's storm was still heavy, and when it leaked into the tent, we were reactive; in our haste to shut down, we laid waste to an otherwise electrified presentation. |
Gingermann's presentation could be smelled all the way across the field, but it certainly did add some flavor to the otherwise bland conference. This one reminded us that the same lighting techniques illuminate both food shows and porn, and the gustatory and salacious have always been connected, something we won't forget the next time we're eating out. |
Greene's paper would have been the most dangerous save for the tent fire, but the trope of MMA brought the harsh reality of the loss of elegance into stark relief: Aslan couldn't be hiding in a well-lighted walk-in closet, after all, and life online takes all of the virtue out of the virtual spaces where imagination and faith once dwelt. |
This paper pointed out what all of us who deal with students already knew: language is dead. In its passing, we get either a trickle of words, vaguely rendered, or a mash of comma splices and run-ons, signifying nothing. |
The childless-by-choice had said choice reinforced by this one: Leer's musical examples might have been intolerable in the inevitable overplay of the under-seven set, yet the point was clear: softened by online pabulum, people seem more prone to accepting the nonsense arguments of authoritarian leaders and more quickly capitulate to the constant barrage of obnoxious tweets. |
Fixtion: Reading as Addiction, a 12-Step Solution
Can We Please, Please, Please, Please, Please, Please, Please, Please Stop Texting, Please? Smartphones Like White Elephants, a Drinking Game that Sees New Things
Trout-Fission in America: Metafiction and the Environmental Impact of Cooling a Nuclear Power Plant, a Postulation in Half-Lives
Fear of Frying: Erica Jong, Erotica, and the Rise and Fall of the Food Network, a Spice Packet
The Lyin' Bitch in the Wardrobe: YA Fiction, Respectability Politics, and the Coarsening of American Decor, a Street Fight
Clause and Effect: Subjects, Verbs, and Readerly Reduction, A Jeremiad
Bibi Shark: Netanyahu, Nonsense, and Annoyance, on the Rise of Authoritarianism in the Era of the Catchy Online Kid's Song