Notebook of Sand

• Recent Publications
• Recent Projects
• Conferences & Speaking
"Comparing Spatial Hypertext Collections"
  ACM Hypertext '09
"Archiving and Sharing Your Tinderbox"
  Tinderbox Weekend London '09
"The Electronic Nature of Future Literatures"
  Literary Studies Now, Apr '09
"The World University Project"
  St. John's Col. Cambridge, Feb '09
"Ethical Explanations,"
  The New Knowledge Forge, Jun '08
Lecture, Cambridge University
  Tragedy in E-Lit, Nov '07
Hypertext '07: Tragedy in E-Lit
Host for Tinderbox Cambridge '07
Keynote: Dickinson State Uni Conf
Upper Midwest NCHC'07: Speaker
eNarrative 6: Creative Nonfiction
HT'05: "Philadelphia Fullerine"
  Nelson award winning paper
NCHC '05:
 Nurturing Independent Scholarship
Riddick Practicum:
  Building Meeting Good Will
NCHC '04:
  Philadelphia Fullerine
  Lecture on American Studies
WWW@10: Nonfiction on the Web
NCHC '03: Parliamentary Procedure
ELL '03 -- Gawain Superstar
• (a)Musing (ad)Dictions:

Ideas. Tools. Art. Build --not buy. What works, what doesn't. Enjoy new media and software aesthetics at Tekka.

Theodore Gray (The Magic Black Box)

Faith, Life, Art, Academics. Sermons from my family away from home: Eden Chapel!

My other home: The Cambridge Union Society (in 2007, I designed our [Fresher's Guide])

The Economist daily news analysis

Global Higher Ed blog

• Hypertext/Writing

Writing the Living Web

Chief Scientist of Eastgate Systems, hypertext expert Mark Bernstein. (Electronic) Literature, cooking, art, etc.

Fabulous game reviews at playthisthing.

• Stats

Chapter I: Born. Lived. Died.

There is a Chapter II.

Locale: Lancaster County Pa, USA

Lineage: Guatemala

Religion: My faith is the primary focus of my life, influencing each part of me. I have been forgiven, cleansed, and empowered by Jesus Christ. Without him, I am a very thoughtful, competent idiot. With him, I am all I need to be, all I could ever hope for. I oppose institutional religious stagnation, but getting together with others is a good idea. God is real. Jesus Christ is his Son, and the Bible is true. Faith is not human effort. It's human choice. I try to be the most listening, understanding, and generous person I can.

Interests: Anything I can learn. Training and experience in new media, computer science, anglophone literature, education, parliamentary debate, democratic procedure, sculpture, and trumpet performance. Next: applied & computational linguistics, probably.

Education: Private school K-3. Home educated 4-12. Graduated Summa Cum Laude from Elizabethtown College in Jan 2006. As the 2006 Davies-Jackson Scholar, I studied English at St. John's College, Cambridge University from 2006 - 2008.

Memberships: Eden Baptist, Cambridge Union Society, ACM, AIP, GPA.

Alum of the Elizabethtown College Honors Program, sponsored by the Hershey Company.

The Institute of Official Cheer
Thursday, 12 Feb 2004 :-:

Feeling down? Does your homework sizzle your brain like a bubbling glob of cottage cheese tossed carelessly onto a frying pan?

You need a good laugh. You need to attend The Institute of Official Cheer, where the past is brought back to life, and promptly beaten to death again.

The Institute has many valuable courses of study, all based on James Lileks' historical research:

  • The Story of Bread, an old pamphlet from Sunbeam that teaches the history of our favorite carbohydrate from the perspective of kilt-wearing cannibal brewers, violinists, and Betty Grable's evil child twin.
  • The Gallery of Regrettable Food, The Institute's largest collection, features Eleanor Roosevel'ts treatise on the joys of hot dogs and a cookbook called More Fun With Coffeefrom our friends at the Pan-American Coffee Bureau (can you say Coffee Jello?). Other cookbooks contain delicious entries like magic Motor-Oil Baste-o-Roast, and Aspic Klingon Forehead.

This is just a taste of Lilek's hilarious pop culture commentary on the insane Twentieth Century. But I'll leave you to discover for yourself the joys of Mr. Coffee Nerves, the engraveyard, the grooviest motel in Wisconsin, and the collection of the Worst Comics Ever.

James Lileks also covers serious topics. In other areas of the site, he posts old photographs and architectural/cultural studies. Lileks reminds us to keep our eyes open, that we might learn something about the past from our present surroundings. And perhaps, we might even learn something from that past. In the end, Lileks mocks the past because he respects it so much.

And it works. I've personally come to notice and respect history much more as a result of his careful, insightful website.