But on Wednesday I did take time from work to pay attention to student and media behavior on Wednesday night. It was clear to everyone here that if Paterno was dismissed immediately that there would be a student reaction, and it turned into a large gathering of students downtown, some of whom were engaged in property damage. To call it a “riot” seems to misconstrue the crowd, though from my understanding, two media vans were toppled, a car’s windows were smashed through, and some light poles were pulled down.

I don’t have cable, so after following some of the Board of Trustees’ press conference online (it was streamed on a Philly ABC station, but the stream ended before it was over) and following Twitter online, I went downtown to Chumley’s (a small gay bar) to follow the pressed and to follow the events on Twitter on my iPhone.

I thought I’d create an archive of my tweets (and a few others’s tweets) and my retweets using Storify, so I’m posting it below. Hopefully, at some future point, I’ll have time to reflect more on this—particularly the rhetorical aspects—in writing. (By the way, the Chronicle has a storify following the scandal that’s pretty interesting).

So most of them have sat in a cue to be approved or deleted for a while, because I’m not really sure where my ethical stance on this issue is. I could: A) Approve them, and engage with them, which seems like a complete waste of time. B) Approve them, but not respond, but then this ignorant hate speech is sitting on my blog. C) Delete them, write a comment that I’ve closed comments. D) Just delete them.

I’ve chosen to turn off comments on the post (finally — I should have done this a while ago), and right now the comments are sitting in a cue. I’m wondering what others might do in this situation?

I meant to write “thankful for” posts way back during Thanksgiving break, and I think this one should count as that. I’m thankful for Heather, but also for the other graduate students in my program, who have been supportive, bright, and fun. I’m living with Matt, who studies a lot of the same things I do, and it’s been awesome spending more time with him this year. It’s especially nice to bounce frustrations and ideas off of him—a roommate in your field of study can be a very good thing. (I could imagine it could be a very bad thing, but Matt is too awesome for that to happen.) In fact, I’m currently sitting in an Einstein Bagels in North Canton drinking coffee and charging my iPhone waiting for Matt’s (delayed) flight to get in. Our friend Sandi also thinks we are “cute” roommates.

There are too many great people in my program to count and list them all, but quick shout outs to Billy (who came into the rhetoric program the same time as Heather and me and brings good energy and different perspectives to things), Sarah (who might just be one of the sweetest yet subtly sassiest people I know), Andrew and Adam (who are sooo smart and great on Twitter). I feel blessed to be surrounded by such great colleagues (and sorry for not mentioning others!).

Hopefully I’ll make time to write a few other “thankful for” posts over the next few days. It’s a good time of year to stop and think about what makes life good.

This move makes me kinda sad, I guess, and not for any real reason other than nostalgia for my alma mater, Iowa State. While crows here can be a nuisance, at Iowa State they were ubiquitous. For two years I lived across the street from campus there, and our sidewalk was painted white with crow droppings every winter (if there wasn’t snow to mask it). Late at night, when I’d eat at Perkins as an undergraduate, we had to be quiet getting to the car, or the crows would get startled and crap all over us. Sometimes I’d walk by a tree and it would sound like rain because of all the crows pooping. And when I’d drive by the intermural soccer fields, they would be blanketed black with the crows.

It was a disgusting, but also endearing, part of living in Ames and going to Iowa State. My freshmen year I met a girl whose parents had a lovely story about meeting in the 70s because of the crows. A crow pooped on her mom, and her dad was there to offer a scarf or something to clean up the poop. And thus, love was born.

Image credit: Annemarie Mountz at Penn State Live

h/t Blogora

From the Manifesto:

Dead Drops is an anonymous, offline, peer to peer file-sharing network in public space. Anyone can access a Dead Drop and everyone may install a Dead Drop in their neighborhood/city. A Dead Drop must be public accessible. A Dead Drop inside closed buildings or private places with limited or temporary access is not a Dead Drop. A real Dead Drop mounts as read and writeable mass storage drive without any custom software. Dead Drops don’t need to be synced or connected to each other. Each Dead Drop is singular in its existence. A very beautiful Dead Drop shows only the metal sheath enclosed type-A USB plug and is cemented into walls.You would hardly notice it. Dead Drops don’t need any cables or wireless technology. Your knees on the ground or a dirty jacket on the wall is what it takes share files offline. A Dead Drop is a naked piece of passively powered Universal Serial Bus technology embedded into the city, the only true public space. In an era of growing clouds and fancy new devices without access to local files we need to rethink the freedom and distribution of data. The Dead Drops movement is on its way for change!

This is a very interesting reaction to cloud sharing and constant connectivity, as well as an interesting statement on the use of public space.

(h/t Repurposed)

Here’s a page I’m working on: me online.

1977 is an excellent history of the composition program at Penn State, which Henze, Selzer, and Sharer argue is a justified history to tell because too often histories of composition are more national and told in grand narratives. In a way, the history of Penn State’s composition program in the 1970s “mirror[s:] (and complicate[s:])” the national debate in composition studies (86).

Henze, Selzer, and Sharer begin by providing cultural and social context for their history (Chapter 2), and then proceed through the book to narrow their focus. Chapter 3 offers a the context of English Studies in 1977, and Chapter 4 overviews the national conversation about composition studies in the mid-to-late 1970s. These two narratives are pretty familiar to most in composition studies, and Henze, Selzer, and Sharer move through it quickly before focusing on Penn State. One nice aspect of these two chapters is the sidebars, in which prominent composition scholars from other programs provide their own views of the state of the field in the 1970s.

Chapter 5 examines closing the changing face and the new problems of Penn State’s English department in the 1970s: budgetary woes, a changing student body (more nontraditional students), declining number of English majors, and of course, critiques of the two composition courses (English 1 and 3). Henze, Selzer, and Sharer outline how the courses often did not have a shared design and were critiqued for not preparing students for college writing.

Chapter 6 is a discussion of how the English department attended to these problems. Professors Wilma Ebbitt and Douglas Park were instrumental in bringing about certain changes: a shift from English 3 as a literary course, changes from a more current-traditional paradigm to a process-oriented paradigm, a move toward exposition and argument and away from expressivism, the development of a committee for freshman composition, and a new teacher orientation.

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