Archive for May, 2009

musings as I revise

I’m working on revising something, and a few thoughts:
• I’ve noticed that citations in many journal articles are often not complete (part of the title is left off, for instance), or sometimes inconsistently formatted within the same book or article. Most interesting, I find, is that some scholars cite their own work incorrectly, getting titles [...]

Uncategorized

audience word cloud

Word cloud of a paper I’ve been working on:

At last I’ve written something that doesn’t bring up adverbs and conjunctions (like “rather” and “however”) as large words!

Audience

is loyalty too dirty of a word?

I’m working through some thoughts regarding ethics and causes. Specifically, I’m wondering about the differences between loyalty and commitment. After reading Josiah Royce’s The Philosophy of Loyalty for a creative democracy philosophy course at Oregon State, I was moved by his discussion of loyalty as the ultimate virtue. According to Royce, all other virtues are [...]

Ethics

notes from the interblags

• Ira Socol’s post The Width of the World is an interesting read about social media tools. I don’t entirely agree with all his points, but he’s started a decent discussion about groupthink, time-wasting, and human relationships (arguing, largely, against Larry Sanger’s blog post here).
• Via someone on Twitter: I LOVE these clowns, who confronted [...]

Copyright, Gender, Literacy, New Media, Notes from the Interblags, Queer issues and theory

technology and gender

This is a few weeks old, but worth sharing. Jender at Feminist Philosophers asks Why are there so few women in technology fields?:
It must be their innate lack of ability, as the tech community is doing everything they can to make them feel welcome– even using images of them in powerpoint presentations! Like this [...]

Feminism, Gender

Fish questions “rational” critiques of religious epistemology

Stanley Fish’s most recent NY Times blog post is quite good. Though I’ve found myself disagreeing a lot with his posts, this one makes a lot of sense, as he questions the idea that science is empirical outside of a constrained observer and that science and faith are opposed: “Rather, evidence comes into view (or [...]

Religion

Faigley (1992): Fragments of Rationality

Fragments of Rationality: Postmodernity and the Subject of Composition by Lester Faigley

My review

rating: 5 of 5 starsIn Faigley’s 1992 book, he addresses the lack of attention to postmodern theory in composition studies, with particular attention to composition studies’ “belief in the writer as an autonomous self” (15). While composition studies [...]

Uncategorized

Michael Steele: single gays are cheaper

RNC chairman Michael Steele is now arguing same-sex marriage would create an undue financial burden on small businesses:
Republicans can reach a broader base by recasting gay marriage as an issue that could dent pocketbooks as small businesses spend more on health care and other benefits, GOP Chairman Michael Steele said Saturday.
Steele said that was just [...]

Queer issues and theory

auto tune the news

I saw this a few weeks ago, but was reminded of it today. Amazing. Especially the Katie Couric part:

Music, New Media

Twitter rumors: retweeting, misinformation, and amateurs

Today was an interesting experience on Twitter. Somehow, a whole bunch of people latched onto a few one-year-old newspaper articles about the California Supreme Court ruling in favor of same-sex marriage, and interpreted the articles as news that they had overturned Proposition 8. The “news” spread like wildfire (at least from my perspective).
A few hours [...]

Internet culture, New Media