Mary Kate Hurley at In the Middle has an interesting post on history and the latest narrative jump in Heroes (links in original):

Hiro seems to be playing a role that’s difficult to imagine. Hiro’s influence in the past — pointing Takezo Kensei toward his “destiny”, hoping to restore a timeline somehow made different by his presence there. Hiro remarks on the way in which “History” writes stories — and has in fact already written the one he’s in — yet his work in the past (if you can call it that) creates the very stories he’s claiming as a kind of inherited tradition.

I guess what’s fascinating here is the way in which Hiro’s position is that of the disembodied “History” he speaks of when he remarks that “History has already written that story.” Of course, as viewers (co-conspirators?) we know that Hiro is only partially correct. History hasn’t written the story — or more precisely, hasn’t written it yet. What’s intriguing is that History — in the form of Hiro — has already heard the story – and knew it, in fact, in advance of arriving on the scene as an historical agent.

Heroes, I think, takes an interesting position vis a vis history and the role the subject can play in it (whether or not the writers are aware of it, though I’d like to think they know exactly what they’re doing). History arrives from the future (literally in this case) and inscribes a narrative, a trajectory, where before were inert forces, empty lives and silent stones. JJC writes below that in encountering Barber rock at Avebury, My son and I touched a megalith’s cold side and felt our own desires. Hiro’s dilemma in this episode of Heroes is that he knows history must be written as he has already heard it — yet his desire is that it be written differently, perhaps even Otherwise.

What I find interesting here is the “desire” to revise that plays out in Heroes (maybe) and perhaps even in Lear or as it may play out in different forms of historical conception: Beowulf vs Gawain, for example or in (re)presentations of futures.

Hypertext can play with a persistent recalling or revision of an event, simply by rewriting the same event in two different ways or providing a different set of contexts for that event.

In Heroes, Sylar will want to either find the onramp back to an original trajectory or secure entrance to a different path altogether. But I still find he possibilities of time play in narrative an underdeveloped possibility in filmic space and here I’m talking nuance not suggesting possible simulacrum. There may indeed be an evil twin. But what are the relations?

I observe now that the “casino” has become a conduit of dreaming.

About college growth:

But few states have experienced student growth as rapid as Arizona’s. In 1990, about 31,000 students graduated from the state’s public high schools. By 2005, there were nearly 52,000 graduates. This growth is expected to continue, even if the local high schools do nothing to solve their dropout problems.

Although there are two other state universities — the University of Arizona and Northern Arizona University — Arizona State, with campuses in Tempe and three other sites in metropolitan Phoenix, has agreed to absorb 90 percent of the additional demand. That means it will continue to focus largely on in-state residents. Over the last 10 years, in-state students have made up 72 percent to 76 percent of the student body.

Antonio Garcia, a professor of bioengineering, said that he supported the university’s intention to expand and improve, but that it needed to continue hiring more professors to lower its student-faculty ratio, currently 22 to 1.

Some students and professors question whether it is possible to handle so much growth so quickly. “Ninety thousand students is a lot,” said Trevor Bergeron, a sophomore. “Right now it’s pretty huge.”

The same article claims that ASU is at 64,000 students. Western states have seen upward enrollment trends for the past ten years. What will the ratio be between retirees and job hunters in a few years?

I’ve visited the ASU campus a few times and it’s a wonderful place; it doesn’t feel massive. Western universities have a much different feel than do those in New England. Orders of magnitude are experienced differently, such as at New Mexico State, where the distant mountains wall the light and band it pink and orange against the purple sky. But walking to class is walking to class, unless you must do it uphill as one must at Cornell. Sixnut, for me, is just the right size.

See Dean Baker for more on the economic context of my last remark about jobs. Economic scales do matter in enrollments.

Wally Rorschach tells me that, proportionally, what we do to ourselves probably wont matter all that much. Some celestial tourcraft will come by and mention that cinder smoking at the corner of the window. “That’s where life struggled to get going over a billion years ago and a few billion years after that bickered itself into oblivion. Now off to the center of the galaxy.”

People are fond of comparative expressions about Renaissance makeup and childcare. In 300 years some anthropologist with a chip in his brain will proclaim our own silliness and dispositions and laugh about it. This Wally image came to me after happening on a reel of swarming photographers chasing after a celebrity with a child in her arms, the mother and child slapped by the non-stop flash of bulbs. Everyone offering advice, judgment, and penalty.

Really rich.

The bulbs are a wonderful and terrible metaphor.

Someone has stolen Jeffrey Cohen’s computer.

To the thief: You should return this computer. It’ll never be yours. Nothing good will come of it for you.

Yo-Yo Ma was amazing last night at the Bushnell. His performance and that of the crew was a lesson in intensity and collaboration.

Up was Dvořák’s Cello Concerto in B minor. Ma was typically intense. He’d sway right and left, leaning toward the first violin and others around the front and second circle, talking to them with his wood, eyes, his extreme expressions drawing smiles and nods of agreement from his partners. It was like watching an intense conversation between a crowd. The sound was just amazing.

The orchestra is a metaphor for the system enlivened by the possibility of collapse. It didn’t collapse. It held together with wiretight, temporary, and simultaneous agreement. For a moment, everyone was talking to one another.

Fiction writers everywhere know that for a month or three years of flash, the story must be the medium. Summaries are nothing.

This guy’s speech is just insane. No link.

The guy after him ain’t much better. No link.

Susan Gibb sure makes a delightful crabapple jelly. Thanks so much.

Milan Kundera was correct in claiming that we should attempt to understand first before we judge. It’s a hard stricture.

Avery Doninger’s blog post accusing Burlington school officials of being, I believe, “douchebags” (in the original post the student wrote “douchbag”) falls into the above category and is yet another example of a wasted effort by the courts and school to offer learning opportunity. Since the post was public, why didn’t an official from the school system in their own weblog or comment space simply ask the student to explain the remark? This would have cleared things up and would’ve presented Doninger with chance to amount an appropriate rhetorical scheme.

Doninger was junior class secretary in April when a dispute over the school’s battle of the bands-type jam session led to her now-infamous comment. After talks with school officials made it clear the school’s “Jamfest” might not go forward as planned, Doninger wrote on her livejournal.com Web log, “Jamfest is canceled due to the douchbags in central office.” She also encouraged others to write or call Region 10 Superintendent Paula Schwartz “to piss her off more.”

A few weeks later, Principal Karissa Niehoff told Doninger to apologize to Schwartz, show her mother the blog entry, and remove herself from seeking re-election as class secretary. Doninger agreed to the first two points, but refused to withdraw her candidacy. Niehoff then told Doninger she would not provide an administrative endorsement of her candidacy, barring her from the race, according to Kravitz’s ruling.

The above presents some traces of context. The witless call to “piss off” the Superintendent is further evidence for answer in the agora, not for prohibition, which merely makes things worse.

I’ve always felt that the answer to rate your teacher websites is a counter “rate your student” website. This wouldn’t work, though, would it.

In today’s Courant, Rick Green writes:

A fascinating ruling Friday evening by U.S. District Judge Mark R. Kravitz suggests that Big Brother school districts can keep watch and penalize juvenile offenders who overstep the boundaries of decency and civil behavior, even if it occurs nowhere near school.

Technically, Rick is begging a question: it is merely an assumption that Doninger overstepped in the first place and incorrect to attribute “juvenile offender” to her position. My claim is that “civil behavior” demands a question or an explanation. But this question and explanation was never asked for. I disagree with Green’s characterization that “education leaders” seek to “muzzle speech,” they simply don’t know how to react appropriately in the context of networks.

Dean Baker provides, briefly, context.