ajgulyas.com « history, teaching and the strange

Guatamala– heading out on Friday!

Jul 26th

I, and a group form my church are heading out to Santiago Zamora, Guatemala, to do some repair/paint work on a school there. This post is mostly a test to see if I can get photos and text to appear here through email…

I’kll be out for 8 or 9 days, doing work, hiking a volcano, and probably buying a new straw hat and machete…

mobile

Creating videos for online classes

Jul 22nd

Posted by AJ Gulyas in Teaching

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As much for my own record keeping as anything else, I thought I’d run down how I create video PowerPoints for my online classes. I use these videos for course content and also to explain, through screen captures, how to accomplish various menial course tasks.

In general, these are some things I like to keep in mind:

Each presentation should be no more than 20 minutes–less if possible. Sometimes this means doing 2 or three separate videos per chapter, broken up topically. The way our World History text is structured, the individual chapters are pretty large. For example, for the chapter on 1500-1600, I had three presentations: Exploration and Colonization, The Reformation, and East Asia.
Another thing I do is not cover every topic under the sun– the presentations are a supplement to the textbook, not a replacement. I try to provide broad overviews and explanations to assist the students in comprehending the text.

This is what I do:

Figure out what topics (usually 2 or 3) would be best explained by me talking about them.
Work up a brief PowerPoint presentation on my Macbook with enough bullets to give me talking points as I record. I try to include as many maps as possible as well, and I use the slide-show’s “pen” feature during recording to explain geographical stuff.
Review the slide-show a few times, sketching out what I want to talk about, relating it to things I’m not talking about (that they’ll read in the book) and–hopefully–tie everything together.
Record. I use Techsmith’s Camtasia: Mac for recording. It’s affordable ($99), made by a local company (Techsmith is down the road in Okemos, MI) and works incredibly well. Although the mic built into the Macbook is pretty good, I added a Samson Go Mic ($50).
HIT SAVE IN CAMTASIA BEFORE DOING ANYTHING ELSE!
Edit. Camtasia’s editing functions are excellent and pretty intuitive. Usually, I only need to trim the beginnings and endings of the video so students don’t have to sit through me switching between windows and such.
Sometimes, when I’ve got some time or am bored, I make some goofy intro music with Garageband and my M-Audio O2 MIDI controller.
Export. We use Blackboard for our online course management, but uploading videos directly into the course shell can be a hassle. One thing I like about Camtasia is that it will create ready-made webpages with your video embedded into them as Flash. I use that feature to render the videos.
Upload. I upload the folders containing the video and associated HTML code to my school-supplied webspace using Flow.
Link. I provide a link to students in the chapter’s Blackboard folder. So far, I haven’t had students running into tech problems with this.

That’s basically what I do. It’s, clearly, not the only way to do it. It might not even be the best way to do it.

history, projects, teaching, tech

Redux: Exopolitics is Annoying

Jun 30th

Posted by AJ Gulyas in Anomalous

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From March 2010

I’ve spending my mornings polishing up a conference paper I’m presenting next month. The subject is exopolitics, conspiracy thinking, and the Obama election/presidency. One thing that I’m struggling with as I tighten my argument is that I’m finding the exopolitics movement, and exopoliticians themselves are pretty annoying.

And this is why.

Like so many aspects of UFOlogy that irritate me to no end, the Exopols are obsessed with being taken seriously. They long to be mainstream. They set themselves up as academics (and whether or not academia is truly “mainstream” is another topic) or lobbyists (ditto) and stage conferences and stamp their little feet and scream “LOOK AT ME!”

Why would we? Honestly, what are they bringing to the table besides the same unsupportable theories, the same tired, been-around-the-circuit-for-years “witnesses” and the same promises that the truth isn’t just out there, but that it’s just around the corner.

The seriousness annoys me most. The earnest, po-faced, embrace of nuts and bolts and politics is just so tired. It’s at times like this that, in the past, I would head over to posthumanblues and see what Mac Tonnies had to say. Sadly, I can no longer do that. There are other outlets that embrace the strange and fantastic–Greg Bishop is about the best out there–but they are few and far between.

I guess the point of this rant is that I’m sick and tired of people positing answers when we don’t even know what questions to ask.

Back to work.

expolitics, media, UFO

Redux: UFO mythologies vs. “UFO Mythology”

Jun 30th

Posted by AJ Gulyas in Anomalous

1 comment

INTANGIBLE MATERIALITY: Secret Decoder Rings

Human reaction to the UFO phenomenon has always perhaps taken place in the creation of mythologies from Dragons to Hybrids. Whether these have been suggested to us from without or within may be parsing this subject. When something exceptional, inexplicable occurs in our world that is in defiance of all the impetus that we utilize in our quest to fallibly survive, our own terms of reference are turned upon us. This is perhaps both in the sense of events in of themselves but more deeply, we upon our own aspirations to become a participant, perhaps in a form of reflected glory in a manner that betrays our own helplessness and fallibility. Editorials with titles such as “Hysteria Drives UFO Gatekeepers Debunking Exopolitics Pioneers” is one example out of hundreds that teletype our vulnerability to a universe that is highly indifferent to human posturing.

Bruce Duensing’s blog “Intangible Materiality” is becoming a must read for me. The post linked/quoted above is a prime example of why. Like Mac Tonnies, Greg Bishop and others, Mr. Duensing is taking up the mantle of Keel and Vallee, observing the UFO phenomenon and the paranormal in ways that are rooted in the myths and archetypes of the human story (limited though that story might be). At the same time–and this is what I really like–their discourse is largely divorced from the 1947-present UFO master narrative into which everyone from Stanton Friedman to the exopolitics crowd is locked.

Far too many researchers don’t actually research. They embrace comfortable stories that others have shown to be disinformation (there are still people talking about the human vs. alien firefight in the Dulce underground base) or are simply adapting UFO iconography (abductions, grays) into pre-existing religious frameworks. The newish trend for evangelical Christians such as LA Marzulli, Russ Dizdar and others to look at the UFO field and proclaim it to be a demonic infestation is, in my opinion, a derivative rehash of the “satanic cult” scares of the 1980s. The work of such people does no favors for the UFO phenomenon or Christianity. They seek, in Duensing’s words, “reflected glory” moving the focus away from Christ and putting it on their own alleged efforts to unmask the evil ones in our midst.

But these things are not new, not particularly noteworthy. I simply wish there were more people who enjoyed the questions rather than obsessing over finding a correct answer.

aliens, religion

Redux: Do we Wanna Meet these Guys?

Jun 30th

Posted by AJ Gulyas in Anomalous

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Rescued from the old blog. I think it has some good thoughts. In the 10 months since I’ve written this, we’ve lost Mac Tonnies, which still stings. See Macbots for a great tribute blog to Mac.

First Anniversary of Declaration to end secret extraterrestrial agreements

Exactly one year ago a consortium of citizen organizations authorized a Declaration to end what were claimed to be secret official agreements concerning extraterrestrial life. Based on first hand testimonies by a number of whistleblowers and civilian contractors, the Galactic Freedom Day Declaration asserts that agreements concerning extraterrestrial life have been secretly entered into by a number of government authorized agencies, departments and corporations. In some cases, these agreements involve representatives of advanced extraterrestrial civilizations whose existence has not been disclosed to the general public. On 08/08/08 individuals and citizen organizations around the world collectively joined in events calling for exposing and ending such agreements. A consortium of citizen organizations from Hawaii, USA, Canada, Britain, Spain, South Africa, and Hong Kong formally sponsored the Declaration and launched an online petition which currently has over 2000 signatures.

What do we learn?

“Hawaii” and “USA” are apparently separate political entities
Online petitions still exist despite their uselessness
Some people don’t get it.

The key line for me comes in the second paragraph: “natural right of all citizens to have safe and open contact with extraterrestrial visitors, and to engage in non-official diplomacy.” Is there such a thing as non-official diplomacy? Dictionary.com defines the word as

1.	the conduct by government officials of negotiations and other relations between nations.

2.	the art or science of conducting such negotiations.

3.	skill in managing negotiations, handling people, etc., so that there is little or no ill will; tact: Seating one’s dinner guests often calls for considerable diplomacy.

At most, I can see definition 3 fitting a “non-governmental” use of the term. To use a terrestrial example, if I talk to someone from Russia, I’m talking to someone from Russia–I’m not engaging in any kind of diplomacy. Of course the Exopol crowd would shift focus back onto the question of whether or not the public should be made aware of these alleged visitors. That’s actually a really good question–but is it the best question?

One camp answers “yes!” mostly because “whistleblowers” have told them that the visitors are friendly, part of a galactic federation, here for our own good. Others say “no!” because they fear the visitors are demons (or, as Russ Dizdar calls them, homo satanas. As an aside, I have a feeling that his “black awakening” terminology contains elements of racism. “Dark Awakening” or “Awakening of Evil” would have worked just as well) or, if not demons, then certainly evil entities very much akin to the Lear/Cooper/KRLL fantasies of the 80s and 90s.

Both of these answers assume that the visitors are aliens from another planet (or spiritual dimension in the case of the “Christian” interpretations of the phenomenon). The idea that both “good” and “bad” entities might be:

creations of disinformation sources is usually rejected out of hand (see Greg Bishop’s Project Beta)
something “above” good/evil, dedicated to some kind of game (see George Hansen’s The Trickster and the Paranormal and his argument that the paranormal has an “inherent anti-structural nature”)
part of our world, living alongside us in secret (see Mac Tonnies’s Blog and forthcoming book)

It never occurs to either the exopolitics/spacebuddy crowd or the para-evangelical fringe (I don’t know if that’s actually a phrase or not) that they aren’t dealing with what they think they are.

In the end, as we look at the many, many facets of this phenomena and examine reports and findings from all sides, rather than simply those with which we happen to agree, we might find the question is not whether or not we should be allowed to talk to the visitors and engage in diplomacy with them. The question is whether the concept of diplomacy makes sense in such a context. It might be akin to opening discussions with a tornado or thunderstorm. It might be as futile as politely asking the mosquitoes to stop biting us.

Whatever it is, it won’t be what anybody expects. The phenomenon will make sure of that–whatever it or they may represent seem to take delight in confounding our expectations.

aliens, Exopolitics, religion