It's September!

Happy birthday to aragornlover and ltlj! I hope you have great birthdays and wonderful years to come!


* Thanks to everyone who voted in my recent poll. I'm so happy that there's still interest in my October "spooky posts." They will be back this year, beginning exactly in one month, on October 1!


* I have my teaching schedule now for the rest of the academic year for the upper-division, online seminars I'll be offering for Belmont University.

In the second quarter of this semester, I'll be teaching "History and the Gothic Imagination."
( History and the Gothic Imagination - course description )

In the first quarter of the Spring 2008 semester, I'll be teaching "Native American Identity in the U.S. Context."
( Native American Identity in the U.S. Context - course description )

In the second quarter of the Spring 2008 semester, I'll be teaching "J.R.R. Tolkien in History, Political Thought, and Literature."
( J.R.R. Tolkien in History, Political Thought, and Literature - course description )

* And, last but not least, congratulations to my little sister Margret, who graduated with her Master's earlier this summer, and now has accepted a position as Operational Marine Meteorologist for Weathernews, Inc. Way to go, Sis!


The quote of the day never fails to crack me up, despite - or perhaps because of - the fact I'm a fan of Queen:

"Nothing about him looked particularly demonic, at least by classical standards. No horns, no wings. Admittedly he was listening to a Best of Queen tape, but no conclusions should be drawn from this because all tapes left in a car for more than a fortnight metamorphose into Best of Queen albums. No particularly demonic thoughts were going through his head. In fact, he was wondering vaguely who Moey and Chandon were."
- from Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett

PS. IDIC Explained

A PS. To My Earlier Post Today: Some who took my recent poll asked what "IDIC" means.

It's become part of the language of science fiction readers and fans (its symbol can be found on shirts and buttons and keychains, for example), but it traces its roots to the original Star Trek. In that series (and later incarnations of Trek), the Vulcan philosophy of IDIC equals "Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations."

According to Inside Star Trek in 1968, "Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations represents a Vulcan belief that beauty, growth, and progress all result from the union of the unlike. Concord, as much as discord, requires the presence of at least two different notes. The brotherhood of man is an ideal based on learning to delight in our essential differences, as well as learning to recognize our similarities. The IDIC symbol is a union of a plain circle and triangle, uniting to produce the beautiful gemstone in the middle. The circle represents infinite, nature, woman, etc; the triangle can represent the finite, art, man, etc." You can see the IDIC symbol here.

Or, to put it another way, "it takes different strokes..."

And that is, I'm sure, way more than you ever possibly wanted to know about that. Live long and prosper!

PPS. The 2007 Hugo Award Winners have been announced.