Archive for April, 2009
Barney Frank on hate crime legislation
I love this speech:
um, what?
From A Racist Recession?, which discusses the racial disparity in unemployment rates: “High black unemployment has more to do with lags in educational attainment and skill acquisition than with racism.”
Um, what caused those lags in educational attainment and skill acquisition? Oh, that’s right. Institutional racism.
(not to mention the victim blaming)
EDIT: I thought I’d clarify after [...]
sex in public in OK City
Why aren’t straight people arrested for sex in public? I know that they are sometimes, but I have heard stories from many people about how they were caught in the act by a police officer who just let them go home. Not usually the case if you’re queer. And Oklahoma City wants you to know [...]
Sony Reader reflective commentary
I’ve finished my reflective commentary on using the Sony Reader in my graduate seminar and on possible redesigns for the Reader. I thought I’d share my commentary here. It’s a bit long (11.5 pages), so I’m attaching it to this post as a PDF file if you are interested in reading it.
Final Reflective Commentary on [...]
decentering the performer
I went to the drag show put on by a student group on campus today. It was a decent show, and some of the performers were really engaging. But what really got me thinking about the show wasn’t the performers on stage (a group of drag queens from Pittsburgh), but a group of students (I [...]
Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere in 2 minutes
About a month ago or so, Rosa asked us to distill Jürgen Habermas’s Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere down to a two-minute “fairy tale.” I made a YouTube video, but I don’t think I posted it because I… well, violated copyright law. Eh. But now, there’s this cool website xtranormal that allows you to [...]
sidewalk blogging
I took these pictures about a month ago, but thought of them again tonight. Someone on campus, “Nathan,” has started sidewalk blogging. This involves a “post” a day on a square of sidewalk in front of the library on campus, often detailing a small part of the day, something he enjoys, or some musings of [...]
150 years of Penn State
future of the book: as artifacts
The New York Times covers the new XKCD book:
So, are we seeing an all-too-rare example of the triumph of print books over digital content? Does even an online legend like the 24-year-old Mr. Munroe crave the respectability of print? (Mr. Munroe once before climbed the respectability ladder when in October he competed against the [...]
three years, two weeks
I am two weeks and some odd hours away from finishing my first year of my PhD program. This feels…odd? I don’t know how it feels. I’ve been taking courses, oh, almost every term since I was five (including when I taught middle school). And after this term, I’ll just have a summer class (if [...]
