Portfolios

My latest project has been an online portfolio. I've been wanting to put one together for a while now, but haven't had the technological skills to do so-- and actually, I still don't.

But what I do have is a friend, i.e. Carol, who does have the skills to put together this kind of thing-- and already has. See her portfolio here. And thanks to Steve, I have Dreamweaver. So it's now or never!

My first step is finding a server. Not sure how I'm going to go about that (probably with a lot of help from Google)... I'll keep you posted.

This article, although targeted to design professionals, has some good general tips for setting up a portfolio. Definitely worth a read.

And, just for fun, this is one of my favorite portfolios, by an artist I found while wandering around DeviantArt one day a couple of years ago. Her new portfolio is here; her old one is here.

Mrs. de Winter

I read the book Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier over the summer; it took me by surprise. I expected it to be a classic version of a trashy romance novel... and at the beginning, it met my expectations. Du Maurier's style is simplistic, almost juvenile-- while the writing is not bad, per se, neither is it well-polished. But the more I read, the more I realized what a competent author du Maurier really was. Her style mirrors the theme of her novel: coming-of-age from naivete to consciousness. And despite the simple premise-- a young second wife trying to fill the unfamiliar shoes of her predecessor-- Rebecca proved to be a tale well worth the study.

Tonight, I watched Alfred Hitchcock's film adaptation of du Maurier's novel. It was the first Hitchcock movie I have ever seen, and I have to agree that he deserves the title of master. Rebecca ranks among one of the best film adaptations I have seen. The characters looked and acted exactly as I had imagined them-- though, of course, that is not the only criteria for an effective adaptation. Hitchcock flawlessly tread the line du Maurier had mapped between light innocence and dark forboding; the balance between lightness and evil, happiness and pain. Joan Fontaine's performance as the second Mrs. de Winter was spot-on: everything, from her facial expressions to her posture to her timid girlishness, was perfectly in tune with the unsure, innocent character laid out in the novel. Her subsequent transformation into a grown-up was equally elegant in its execution, and, I thought, more marked than the character's change in the book. In a way, Rebecca reminds me of the Audrey Hepburn classic Sabrina (later remade with Harrison Ford and Julia Ormond). Sabrina deals with the same kind of transformation from girl to woman, just without the ghost story. But Hepburn and Ormond have nothing on Fontaine-- while these portrayers of Sabrina succeeded in conveying a silly, bookish girl, they did so in a way that showed too much of the confidence that Sabrina would grow into. Fontaine, on the other hand, presents a character who is painfully reminiscent of adolescence-- the young Mrs. de Winter is never quite up to speed, never quite has all the information, never quite feels at ease at the Manderley estate. She is the young teenager finally old enough to attend a party with her parents, dressed in elegant clothing that doesn't feel as if it fits right, expected to use more pieces of silverware than she knows what do with, uncomfortable and outclassed by the ideas discussed among guests, uncertain of the correct etiquette for anything, even something as small as what to do with your napkin or where to leave your handbag.

In sum, go and read the book Rebecca and then watch the film. Both du Maurier and Hitchcock do a beautiful job of telling a tale that is a little too familiar for our taste-- yet at the same time, keeps us glued to the story, enraptured.

Health care: worth it?

This is from an article by the Social Security Advisory Board, entitled "The Unsustainable Cost of Healthcare." It was compiled in September 2009.

"Studies have examined whether increases in medical spending have provided a good value: whether advances in medical care have led to large enough improvements in health and life expectancy to be worth the expense. Harvard health economist David Cutler and his co-authors found that averaging across all ages, increases in medical spending between 1960 and 2000 provided reasonably good value, with an average cost per life-year gained of $19,900.12 For individuals age 65 and over, however, the average cost of adding one more year of life had increased from the 1970s to the 1990s from $46,800 to $145,000. The authors note that their estimates for the 1990s would fail many cost – benefit criteria. Other studies suggest that at current high levels of spending, additional dollars are not improving outcomes."

I think this hits the crux of the health care debate: how much is too much? At what point do we have to throw in the towel, so to say, and accept death as the natural next step in our lives? Is it at the point where another year costs more than we could earn in a decade? Or do we keep on fighting to live, throwing pitchforks full of cash in the burning fire of disease, until technology is exhausted? Is one year of grandma's life worth bankruptcy for her children, who will survive years after her?

For those in the medical field, this has got to be a huge ethical dilemma. Their job is to keep people alive... but sometimes, maybe, it's better to let a person go.

Who is that masked man?

Note: I wrote this a while ago. It's a condensed version of a 20-page paper I wrote earlier this year on a topic that I thoroughly enjoy. Hope you do, too!

I’m lying on the bed in my brother’s room staring at a giant BATMAN poster. I gave him the poster last year for Christmas because it matched his newly-painted color scheme. And, of course, because you can’t go wrong with Gotham’s Dark Knight.

In fact, it seems that no one can go wrong with the caped crusader. Introduced to the world in the May 1939 issue of Detective Comics, the dark knight recently turned seventy—yet still ranks near the top of the “cool” charts, if the success of Jonathan Nolan’s 2005 and 2008 Batman films are any indication.

Think of the other seventy-year-olds you know. How many of them can boast a fan base to compare with Bruce Wayne’s? To be fair, Bruce doesn’t show his age in the same way that great-aunt Millie does. And Bruce Wayne to Millie is probably not the same as the Bruce Wayne you know. Batman’s seventy years have not been consistent, except in one respect: he has always been there to help his readers cope with their particular brand of reality.

Superheroes were born in the 1930s, and Batman was at the front of the wave. His only predecessor is Superman, who made his debut in 1938. It is not a coincidence that these icons were born concurrent with what is arguably the greatest economic crisis in American history. Bradford Wright, author of Comic Book Nation, defines these early superheroes as a literary fanfare for the common man. “The new heroes in Depression America turned out to be the American people themselves,” he writes. The economy’s massive heart attack brought out the best and worst in Americans, both in reality and in fiction.

In the case of the worst, Gotham City’s antagonists started out as realistic thugs: robbers, mob bosses, the usual crowd of miscreants down at the station. However, as the depression years gave way to World War II, Batman grew too big for petty thieves. When America outsourced its enemies to faraway countries like Germany and Japan, Batman outsourced his villains, too. Or rather, upsourced. Instead of trading out for evildoers from Zimbabwe or Estonia, the caped crusader traded in dozens of regular villains for a few super villains. Americans could identify with Edward Nygma’s insane motives about as well as they could identify with the Axis powers: i.e., not at all. Yet in the midst of the crackpot chaos that emerged to tromp through Gotham, Batman was a beacon of light, reassuring citizens of both Gotham and America that an unfathomable enemy is not necessarily an undefeatable one.

But as crisis resolved and security returned, heroes fell by the wayside. According to Bradford Wright, “superheroes after World War II had far less to say about their world than ever before… victory ushered in an era that seemed to fulfill all that superheroes had fought for.” Batman of the fifties and sixties seems farcical compared to the modern, solemn caped crusader. The world was getting more complicated—McCarthyism, Korea, eventually hippies. A simplistic superhero fighting villains from outer space let comic book readers take a break from the world around them and enjoy, for a little while, a story in which good and evil were clearly defined.

Batman’s campiness hit its pinnacle in the 1960s television series: The Adventures of Batman and Robin. But the series didn’t last long. The escalating political turbulence of the 1970s preempted a reinterpretation of the dark knight. In the words of Dennis O’Neill, one of the men who reinvigorated Batman for the audience of the 1970s, “The world has changed… and Batman has changed with it.” In his new incarnation, O’Neill and his partner, Neal Adams, redefined Batman’s roots as the dark knight, renewing his relevance to the world that created him.

O’Neill and Adams’ reinterpretation of Batman set the stage for Batman’s depiction in the next decade. Frank Miller’s six-part 1986 comic series The Dark Knight Returns depicts an older, jaded vigilante; Tim Burton’s 1989 film Batman is a dark, stylized interpretation of the caped crusader.

The 1990s brought mixed images of the dark knight. Tim Burton’s subsequent Batman film, Batman Returns, continued an eerie portrayal, and Batman: the Animated Series presented a dark-colored cartoon with content suitable for adults as well as children. Its dark images betray a theme deeper than good-beats-bad: it acknowledges, in no uncertain terms, the dark side of justice and the dark sides of life.

Meanwhile, Joel Schumaker’s Batman and Robin and Batman Forever fit the happy-go-lucky mold of the 1990s, an upbeat version of a hero still coming down from the 1960s camp-heaven high.

Batman of the 2000s has been defined to this point by Christopher Nolan’s grim Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. Nolan portrays Batman in the tradition of O’Neill, Adams, Miller, and Saturday morning cartoons: a dark force for darker justice in a world that hopes, one day, to see a light.

***

Unlike the case with many superheroes, it’s not just nerds and preteens who admire the bat. What is it about the dark knight that speaks to us as a cultural collective? There must be a reason that we have held on to the caped crusader through the years, molding him to fill the needs of each generation. Is it because he is just a normal guy? No radioactive spider, no parents from Krypton. He is a person who has been wronged, and who now uses his power to combat evil—yet is not exactly the flawless force of Good.

The thing is, Batman has spoken to us since long before superheroes hit the scene in’38. He has gone in different guises—the guise of a red wildflower, the mask of a fox—but has been working on the people’s behalf for centuries. He is Emma Orczy’s 19^th-century Scarlet Pimpernel: by day a drawling aristocrat, by night a daring resistance fighter against the atrocities of the French Revolution. He is Zorro, the masked man of Mexico, slashing his Z to scare off the bad guys. The hero of the people.

It’s all there: wealth, double lives, dashing heroics, vigilante justice. Secrets. Lies. But underneath, a thread of good. Despite the pain and suffering they cause, Batman and his forebears work to deter future pain and suffering, especially of the innocent—even if it means sacrificing themselves, in any number of ways. Perhaps this is why this type appeals to the West: these men are modern mythology’s version of a Messiah. Batman is of the people and not of the people, man yet Infinite incarnate. He is the best and the worst, the leader and the follower, the beginning and the end. He shows us that hope still runs in the dusty California desert, or seaside Calais, or the seedy streets of Gotham. Someone is willing to save us from ourselves. A man and more than a man. A paradox hidden within a strange suit and a cryptic name. Jesus Christ for the pulp masses. And don’t we all need a savior, by whatever kind of name?

Na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na, Batman!

Like a ton of bricks...

So it just hit me on Saturday that I'm graduating. Aka, won't be coming back. This is how it hit me:

"S*%t. I'm going to miss these people."

It's not necessarily my friends who I hang out with on weekends that I'm going to miss. It's the people who have sat beside me for three years' worth of classes; it is the people who smile at me when I pass them in the hallway; it is the people who gather for a spontaneous debate in the middle of Dukes between class. Some of these people make me smile; some of these people make me think; some of these people have no idea how much I rely on them to get me though my week.

So, thanks, you guys.

The end.

Improper Comma Use: Angry Edition

Let me introduce you to my friend the comma. This is him: ,

He may not look like much, but boy oh BOY can he make a difference. In the book A Dash of Style, author Noah Lukeman doesn’t dance around the problem with this punctuation mark: “the comma is schizophrenic.”

Lynne Truss’s ‘Eats, Shoots & Leaves’ (which, incidentally, is a fantastic read) articulates the problem with commas: not all commas serve the same function.

“More than any other mark, the comma draws our attention to the mixed origin of modern punctuation, and its consequent mingling of two distinct functions: 1) to illuminate the grammar of a sentence; 2) to point up—rather in the manner of musical notation—such literary qualities as rhythm, direction, pitch, tone, and flow. This is why grown men have knock-down fights over the comma in editorial offices: because these two rules of punctuation sometimes collide head-on—indeed, where the comma is concerned, they do it all the time.”

(See? I told you it was good.)

Long story short, commas mess with your head.

A post to exhaustively fix all of the comma problems that make me want to pull out my fingernails with a pair of tweezers would be far too long for this blog. Instead, it would be a thesis, or possibly a year’s worth of posts in a new blog altogether. So for the sake of everyone’s well-being, Angry Edition will focus on a very particular comma problem that makes me go home and drink: titles vs. appositives. Ready? Here we go.

1. The TITLE.

I especially see this problem in newswriting, because we use titles every time we introduce a person. Example: “President Barack Obama admitted yesterday that he is a very tall man.” In this sentence, ‘President’ is, obviously, Barack Obama’s title. Got it. That’s easy. Let’s try another: “Plane crash survivor Evangeline Lilly commented on the tragedy.” This is a little bit trickier, because ‘plane crash survivor’ is not the kind of thing that you put on your business card. A more conventional example is this: “Junior sports management major Megan Erbes sits next to me in class.” This is like ‘plane crash survivor.’ Both are long descriptive tags, but they function as titles. Why am I telling you this?

BECAUSE UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES SHOULD YOU EVER, EVER, EVER USE A COMMA HERE.

“Junior sports management major, Megan Erbes” is WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG (etc.). Why? Because ‘Megan Erbes’ is what all those words in front of it are modifying. Putting a comma in there makes it look like ‘Megan Erbes’ are throwaway words (aka, an appositive—we’ll get to that). Would you write “President, Barack Obama admitted…blah blah blah”? No, you wouldn’t. ‘President’ is treated as if it is part of his name. Well, ‘Junior sports management major’ is now part of Megan Erbes’ name. (Sorry for all those initials, Megan. Hope you weren’t planning to monogram anything anytime soon.)

We fixed a huge problem with this is in the paper last week (and good thing—I might have had an apoplectic attack if it had printed). One of the headlines read: “ONU alum, VonAlmen wins audition.” (Or something to that effect.) NO no no. Why? Because ‘ONU grad’ is modifying ‘VonAlmen.’ Don’t make VonAlmen look like a throwaway. It should have read (and did read) like this: “ONU alum VonAlmen wins audition.”

Even though this mistake puts me in a tizzy, I can understand why it’s confusing. The reason is this:

2. The APPOSITIVES.

I think appositives are really cool. It lets you include long titles or descriptors without making the sentence confusing. Appositives are framed by commas—it’s basically the equivalent of parentheses. An appositive looks like this:

“Barack Obama, president of the United States, admitted last week that he was very tall.”

See what just happened there? Instead of ‘President Barack Obama’, we stuck his title after his name. This sentence is the equivalent of:

“Barack Obama (president of the United States) admitted last week that he was very tall.”

Cool, huh? I can also say this:

“Megan Erbes, a junior sports management major, sits next to me in class.”

The important part of the subject is still Megan Erbes, but now we can throw away her title, because in this sentence it’s not really necessary to know that she’s a junior sports management major.

BUT WAIT… there’s more.

Sometimes a title is not really a title. Take this example:

“One of the plane crash survivors, Evangeline Lilly, was on site for the memorial service.”

I know, that just ripped a hole in your universe of titular perfection. But it makes sense. In this case, ‘Evangeline Lilly’ is acting as an appositive. Her name is less important than the fact that she is one of the survivors. And there’s another difference. Check out this example:

“Plane crash survivor Evangeline Lilly was on site for the memorial service.”

In the first example, the sentence could stand alone without the name, because it has already been established that there is one specific survivor to whom the author refers. In the second case, “Plane crash survivor was on site for the memorial service” is not good English.

(Note: “A plane crash survivor, Evangeline Lilly, was present…” would be correct, however. The article “a” indicates that there is one particular survivor.)

What it all boils down to is that you have to be able to identify your subject. Is your subject Megan Erbes? Or is it a plane crash survivor? Is your title just a bunch of adjectives, or is it acting as a noun phrase? Ah, grammar. A good test is trying to take out different parts of the sentence. If you can take out the name, it is an appositive. Frame it with commas. If you can take out the title (**and it comes AFTER the name), frame it with commas. If you can take out the title but it comes BEFORE the name, it is most likely a title and should NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT have a comma.

Use good sense. And use commas correctly. And then I won’t have to come to your house and break your stuff. Win-win-win situation.

Nothing fun to write about

I've been meaning to write something new for your (i.e., O'Connell's) enjoyment (and subsequent harrassment). Unfortunately, I haven't been able to think of anything postworthy that was not whiny, fatalistic, or angry. (Topics I have considered, in nonparallel construction: living your backup plan, dating is overrated, improper comma use: angry edition, and how much I hate the Gilmore Girls.)

So instead of putting you through any of those painful diatribes...I'll brag a little bit.

Please turn to page 3 in this week's Northern Review and admire Steve's senior project... and my AWESOME GRAPHIC.

I'm proud of this exploding computer. It is likely the most amazing Photoshop project I have ever produced. Admire it for a while, then come find me and tell me how fantastic I am. Or, you know, go tell other people. That works, too.