I just gave an assignment that might be of interest to readers of this blog. It’s for a graduate course in English Education, so the students are all either currently English teachers or are studying to be. This is an extra-credit assignment for students who need to make up for missing class, but other years I have assigned it to everyone.

1. Translate a scene from Shakespeare (minimum 36 lines) from Shakespeare’s Early Modern English to our American English of the 21rst century. This should be a line-by-line translation.

2. Take a text that was written in the last ten years (most likely a song) and annotate it for an audience reading it 400 years from now who might not understand our idiomatic language or our cultural references. Please choose a text that is conducive to this activity. Minimum 14 footnotes.

3. Write an original piece in iambic pentameter. It can be anything you want, as long as it’s one cohesive piece that is at least 14 lines of iambic pentameter.

4. Discuss your experience completing these three activities and your assessment of their value as assignments in the English classroom.

Does anyone have anything to add to the list? I’m not looking for more work to give my grad students; I’m just starting a brainstorm of writing assignments that would give high school students a broader view of Shakespeare.

Researchers in Germany are working on a way to predict the intentions of human subjects by observing their brain activity. Damn!

For some reason it’s a little disturbing to me that something as personal and ephemeral as an intention can have a physiological manifestation that can be measured. Or maybe I’m just disturbed that they are now starting to measure it. What new “mind reading” technologies might be developed from this science? Could it become prosecutable to merely intend to commit a crime? Intent is already used as a legal concept, and attempted murder is considered a crime, even if nobody is hurt as a result. Could market researchers measure the intent of potential consumers? Will we one day have little handheld devices that can measure intent at a poker table or when our daughter’s date arrives to pick her up?

It all reminds me of a thought experiment made popular by Robert Nozick, which will be this week’s Conundrum. Before we get to it, though, it might be helpful to consider another thought experiment known as Kavka’s Toxin.

Let’s say I offer you $100,000 if you can form an intention to drink a particular toxin. This toxin will make you violently ill for about five or six hours, after which you will be perfectly fine. You’d drink it for the money, but you’re not being asked to drink it. You’re being asked to intend to drink it. After you have the money, you are free to change your mind and not drink it. The question is, can you actually form a genuine intention of doing something unpleasant that you will have no motivation to do?

Turn that one over in your mind for a few moments before moving on to this week’s Conundrum, Newcomb’s Problem.

Imagine there are two boxes, Box A and Box B. You will have the option of choosing to take both boxes, or to take Box B alone. You will keep what you find inside. Box A is transparent and contains one thousand dollars. Box B is opaque. A super-intelligent alien scientist with a proven track record of accurately predicting human behavior has analyzed you and has secretly made a prediction about which you will choose. If he believes you will choose Box B alone, he has put one million dollars inside. If he believes you will take both boxes, then he has left Box B empty. Which do you choose?

The super-intelligent scientist has run this trial with several hundred other humans, and has made a correct prediction each time. The only people who have ended up with the million are the ones who chose Box B alone. On the other hand, our alien friend has already made his prediction and left. Your choice can no longer affect the amounts that are in the boxes. You may as well take them both, right?

Fans of game theory might recognize this as a variation of the Prisoner’s Dilemma. Game theory would likely suggest that you flip a coin, so we’re going to disallow that option. You must rely on reasoning alone.

Unlike last week’s math puzzler, this one doesn’t have a right or wrong answer. It’s a thought experiment designed to test your conceptions of free will vs. determinism.

Or as Nozick put it:

To almost everyone, it is perfectly clear and obvious what should be done. The difficulty is that these people seem to divide almost evenly on the problem, with large numbers thinking that the opposing half is just being silly.

It will be interesting to hear how people answer this.

Will you take both boxes, or Box B alone?

Feel free to answer the question, or continue the discussion of any of the topics covered above.

First of all, I want to thank everyone who answered last week’s question about the reliability of Wikipedia. The discussion there was one of the most vibrant of the blog so far. Between that and the subsequent post about Fox News, it made me realize that there is a larger question we need to address here: What does it mean for a source to be reliable?

The answer may be changing with the culture, and some quick background reading may help support that potentially controversial claim. Cynthia points us to the article in the The Chronicle for Higher Education The Intellectual in the Infosphere, which hits a lot of key issues in a short space and is definitely worth checking out. I also have an earlier post about the changing nature of information in the digital age. And then there’s the Karl Fisch video.

So with all that in mind, it’s as important as it’s ever been to ask what it actually means for a source to be reliable. Does it simply mean that we can count on it for accurate facts? Or do we require more from our sources than just fact checking?

Is it important for a source to give us balance between different points of view? Or can a source be reliable and just give us one point of view? And if the source only provides one point of view, how important is it for the source to share our values? Could different sources be reliable for different people, or is reliable meant to be an objective term?

Is a source that provides a more depth of coverage always more reliable than a superficial one? Does quality of writing affect reliability? Does a proven track record count for anything? Or do these factors co-exist with reliability without affecting it? Is a primary source always more reliable than a secondary source? Or can secondary sources bring qualities to the table that can increase reliability?

And does reliability cover just facts? Or can sources also provide opinions? Are you more likely to be persuaded to share an opinion that’s expressed by a source you already trust? Is that a part of reliability? Is it even possible for a source to be value neutral? Or does a source always have an inherent value system by the choices it makes in what information to present? If a source presents information in a way that doesn’t fit your worldview, which sources can affect your willingness to reevaluate that worldview, and which sources would simply make you doubt the source?

Does the element of time affect reliability? The book you purchase in the book store may have been written months ago, while a website might be updated while you’re reading it. Does this affect reliability, and if so, in which direction?

Once you’ve answered these questions for yourself, I’d like you to consider the relative reliability of the following twenty sources when it comes to information, perspectives, and opinions about, say, the Bush administration:

A. Joe Biden on This Week with George Stephanopoulos
B. Wolf Blitzer on CNN
C. Dick Cheney on Meet the Press
D. Noam Chomsky in a new book published by AK Press
E. Katie Couric on The CBS Evening News
F. The New Encyclopedia Britannica, 2007 edition (Hardcover)
G. Thomas Friedman in a New York Times Op-Ed
H. Seymour Hersh in the current issue of The New Yorker
I. Brit Hume on Fox News
J. Russ Kick in a new book published by the Disinformation Company
K. Rush Limbaugh on his radio show
L. Michael Moore in a new documentary
M. Sean Penn while accepting an acting award
N. Tony Snow from the White House briefing room
O. Jon Stewart on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show
P. The White House website
Q. Christie Todd Whitman on Real Time with Bill Maher
R. Wikipedia in an entry with no controversy alerts
S. Bob Woodward in a new book published by Simon & Schuster
T. Markos Zuniga on his blog The Daily Kos

I lettered them instead of numbering them because you may wish, as part of your answer to the question below, to rank some or all of these twenty sources in order from most reliable to least reliable. If two of these sources gave conflicting information, which would you be more open to, and why? What if their information didn’t conflict, but they selcted facts that promoted different biases? What if their facts were the same, but they presented conflicting opinions?

What does it mean to you for a source to be reliable?

The third episode of The Tudors airs tonight on Showtime and will be replayed throughout the week. You can also view the episode On Demand.

Via Lara at TudorHistory.org, Variety reports that the show has been picked up for another season. They’ll be able to go through a lot of seasons before they run out of Tudor history, and all of it the stuff of good television.

Use the comments section of this post to discuss the episode. Any comments I may have will be posted in the comments section as well.

WARNING: Comments may contain further discussion of the show, including potential spoilers. Click through only after viewing the episode. Commenters may discuss this episode as freely as they like, but are asked not to spoil future episodes.

By the way, did you know that Henry VIII founded the Anglican Church and converted his whole country from Catholicism so that he could break with the Pope, grant himself a divorce, and marry Anne Boleyn? That’s hot.

It’s been a while since I’ve posted any Animaniacs clips. Here’s a fun song about the US Presidents.

This is just my way of saying that the surroundings may be new, but it’s still the same old blog. Enjoy!

Okay, I’m playing around with a new look for the site (finally!) and I wanted to get some reader input before committing to anything. I have a few specific questions for readers of this site:

1. Do you like the way the site looks now, compared to the old look?
2. Is it easier or harder to read than the old style?
3. Is there anything you were able to do in the old style that you can no longer do?
4. Is anything about this style distracting or confusing?
5. Should I keep it how it is, or put it back how it used to be?

It’s the age-old debate of form vs. function, but I have to say that the site looks a lot more like a ShakespeareTeacher.com than the old style, which looked more like SomeGuysWebsiteIDontCareAbout.org.* Also, I like that there’s a calendar, which I haven’t had before.

Anyway, let’s try this out for a while and see how it goes.

*SomeGuysWebsiteIDontCareAbout.com was taken.

I have been to a theatre abroad and come back;
I’m a doctor legit, though I might treat a quack;
Philadelphia sports fans can visit my plaque;
And I check out your past to make sure you’re on track.

Who am I?

UPDATE: Riddle solved by Lee. See comments for answer.

Discuss.

I overheard this once on a train and was never able to figure it out. Maybe someone here can help me.

Imagine I have two envelopes and I tell you truthfully that both contain money and that one envelope contains twice as much money as the other. I offer you your choice of envelope and you choose one of them without opening it.

Now I ask you if you would like to switch envelopes. You chose yours randomly, so it’s a 50/50 chance whether the other envelope contains half as much or twice as much. So, if the amount you now have is x, there’s a 50 percent chance that switching would get you 2x and a 50 percent chance it will get you x/2. You have twice as much to gain as you have to lose, regardless of how much is in your envelope, so it makes sense mathematically to switch envelopes.

But of course, this is ridiculous, since you have no new information about the two envelopes than you had before. Once you’ve made that switch, by the same logic, you should want to switch again. This much seems obvious. So where’s the flaw in the math above?

By the way, I consulted our good friend Wikipedia before posting this, and it was little help. It just mumbled something about Bayesian Decision Theory and said the problem would be easy if I were a mathematician. It then went on to pose a harder problem in which you can look inside one of the envelopes, and an even harder problem that was way over my head at 5:30 am. Thanks, Wikipedia.

Two weeks ago, the Question of the Week was about books different people were reading. Pensive Ro picked up on the idea and posted the question on her own blog (which you should all visit several times a day until she reaches her 20,000 hits). In the comments section, I mentioned Wikipedia and that sparked a discussion of its own.

Personally, I love Wikipedia. I probably access it more often than any other website. I even made a game out of it which I continued to post to the blog long after it became clear that most people didn’t want to play it. Wikipedia is great for getting background information, or exploring a topic you know very little about. It’s great for learning about new topics and exploring just to see what’s out there.

I would not use Wikipedia to learn more about an area that I’m already an expert in, and I would never cite Wikipedia as a source. You never really know who the author is, and the articles are in constant flux. I wouldn’t respect any argument that relied on information from Wikipedia to make its case. This Onion article is way over the top, granted, but it does make a few valid points.

I was giving a presentation once, and said (after giving the above argument) that there had been studies done that demonstrate that Wikipedia is just as reliable of a source as the Encyclopedia Britannica. Someone asked me what my source for that was, and I couldn’t resist answering “Wikipedia” though I had heard it in legitimate news outlets as well.

Fine word, legitimate. We know that news sources have bias. Could it be that Wikipedia’s negotiated definition of reality is more objective than any one source can be? Perhaps. And perhaps this is part of a larger trend of how knowledge is now constructed.

For their part, the Wikipedia folks recognize the limitations of their medium and have launched a sister project, Citizendium, which is a Wikipedia-like online interactive encyclopedia that requires contributors to use their real names and is given “gentle expert oversight” by Ph.Ds. Full disclosure: I have a Ph.D. in Shakespeare Teachery, and I can tell you that not all Ph.Ds agree on everything. Or anything, really. You’d think it would work on the level of an encyclopedia, but even many supposed facts are in dispute.

Speaking of Ph.Ds, something interesting just happened over at Weblogg-ed. Will Richardson posted an article about a new degree in Social Computing which he thinks is worthy of ridicule. Some interpreted this as a rebuke of higher education in general, and a fierce debate was sparked. Richardson then issued a clarification. Definitely worth checking out.

What’s your opinion of Wikipedia and the changing nature of authority?