Today in my Science Fiction class I learned that there was such a thing as a Hype Curve (or cycle, or graph, or whatever you want to call it). My professors likened it to Pilgrim's Progress; there's the Technological Trigger, the Peak of Inflated Expectations, the Trough of Disillusionment, the Slope of Enlightenment, and the Plateau of Productivity. I bet you never knew SciFi could be so interesting, now, did you?!? Seriously, though, that class is really good. Where else can we turn from analyzing the soundtrack of Jurassic Park to FEMA's performance after Hurricane Katrina to the U.S. Navy? Actually, all three of those are tied together by information technology. A soundtrack lets the audience know when the plot gets exciting. FEMA is a good example of poor managerial decisions. The U.S. Navy has experienced many disasters, and has successfully recovered and learned from those experiences and can prevent them. Now I can understand more of the story when I read "Down And Out on Ellfive Prime" by Dean Ing.
Today in my other class (Linguistics), I decided that the material is quite fascinating. The professor, however, is not. I made up a sentence: I hit Nate with a pillow because it was a very late night and I was tired. That sentence, my friend, contains an agent, a patient, an instrument, a theme, and an experiencer. It's so exciting! And I get to be both the agent and the experiencer! (Sorry, Nate, I couldn't figure out how to give you two Theta Roles also.)
