I found this reader's report I wrote a while back peer reviewing an article...

 I recommend publication of this article without substantial changes: it is rare that I see an article manuscript that needs so few revisions. 

 

It is very well written, and clear in its objectives. The only stylistic changes I would recommend are (1) fewer sentences in the passive voice and (2) less obtrusive “sign-posting” of the “in the pages that follow” variety. Since the prose is careful and elegant throughout, it wouldn’t be difficult to make these discursive markers blend in a bit more with the development of the argument. By the same token, the use of the passive voice sometimes persists over the course of an entire paragraph in a way that detracts from the over-all eloquence and clarity of the prose. (These are optional changes from my perspective.)   

 

The article has a strong, clearly-stated central idea: ... The two books of poetry analyzed, though by authors who aren’t associated with each other, are comparable in several respects, since both books involve trips to such developing nations... . As a result, the comparisons never seem forced; in fact, the two poets don’t seem as different from one another as one might expect (based on the social networks to which they belong). I would actually not emphasize as much the fact that these poets are not often associated with one another: that doesn’t necessarily make the argument stronger, but I would leave that up to the discretion of the author as well.  

 

The author of the article has meaningful things to say about both .... , through careful but never over-wrought analyses of their poems. Another strong point is the integration of theoretical concepts and of the previous criticism on the poets. In conclusion, this article is rock-solid and fully deserving of publication in ....    

Spelling b

 I decided to use another method for the Spelling Bee puzzle. I look for the pangram, and enter no other words. If I go right for the word with the seven letters, I can often see it almost immediately, whereas if I just randomly put words down, I do not see the pangram until I have found many other words. Yesterday, I found loaded right away, but then broke my new rule and started looking for other words; it took me a long time to find the other pangram: diagonal. 

It is funny how the mind works. Today and the day before yesterday I just looked at the seven letters and the answers popped into my head. 

Solving several problems at once

Suppose there are many problems. I am a bit overweight; I don't exercise. I spend too much time randomly looking at comments on web sites. I binge watch. I look at my stocks too much. My kitchen is messy. Etc... 

Now my idea is this: to solve one problem a day.  The first day I gave up X, the second day Y, the third Z.  Today I cleaned my kitchen and deleted stocks from my "widgets."  I will have to start cleaning the kitchen more, of course. 

Don't do all of this in one day, because it is more satisfying to "stack" them. Make one small change a day. 

It is not a sustainable model, perhaps, because I will ((a) run out of new things to do (b) not be able to keep up with what I have already decided, or backslide.  Problem (a) is negligible, because if I run out of ideas, then that means I will have addressed a lot of problems at that point. The solution for (b) will be to restart (or re-quit for a negative thing.) It's like the old joke: They say it's hard to quit smoking,  but not for me: I've done it a hundred times. 

Connections

 I've playing the connections game from NYT.  There are 16 words, in four categories (four words per category. You guess them one by one, and the game updates if you guess them correctly.  

The first step would be to identify at least 2 categories.  

The words were Marley, Hope, Glen, Hue, Color, Dre, Genre.... etc... 

I saw one category soon:  glen, hollow, dell, dale. 

Then I saw one related to color: shade, hue, color, tone, 

Then, it was obvious that the only Marley I knew was Bob. I remembered Bob Ross was a guy with a PBS painting show. The other two were Bob Dole, the politician, and Bob Hope, the comedian.  

The last category was anagrams of colors: Dre, genre, Gary, lube, for red, green, gray, and blue.  

The secret is not putting in any answers until you have mostly solved in your head. Gary, Glen, Hope, and Dale are first names, for example. Dre and Marley could be part of musician category.  Shade might go with glen or hollow.  Some people try to guess the hardest category first, which involves figuring out all of them and then guessing at what the hardest might be.  

Ways in which Cervantes is metafiction

 1. The work is a parody, so it is automatically metafiction, because of intertextuality.  

2. Breaking the theatrical fourth wall, in DQ's reaction to Maese Pedro's puppet show. 

3. In the second part, commentaries on the 1st part, and critique of the apocryphal Quijote. The printing press in Barcelona. 

4. Discussions of the merits of various literary works. The burning of books at the end of the work. 

5. Interpolated novels. 

6. The found manuscript and translation tropes.  

There are probably other things too, depending on how one wants to slice the pie and define these terms.  

IRISE

 We have had a rebranding.  The acronym is IRISE and each letter represents a value: integrity, respect, innovation, stewardship, excellence. It's hard not to see this language as being kind of empty.  The words are great ones to which we should aspire, but making a list doesn't help the administration negotiate better with our faculty union. It doesn't raise our salaries or our morale. Of course, each word has its own bullet points. For example, under excellence we find this inspiring but somehow uninspiring language that might have been generated by AI:   

• "We are all leaders who engage in, advocate for, and support learning and the advancement of knowledge, skills, and society." 

Riffaterre's joke

I heard a talk by Riffattere, He said this joke was not ambiguous, because the only funny way is to read it is one way, not the other. 

"Bob makes love to his wife every Thursday. So does Bill."   

I was thinking of a variation of this. A man complain to his boss about being depressed. The boss says, when I get depressed, I take the afternoon off, go and have a martini with my wife, and take her to bed. Why don't you try it? I'll give you afternoon off. 

"How did it go?" asks the boss the next day.  Wonderful! says the man. By the way, you have a nice house.