Hello Writer’s League seminar participants! For those of you who didn’t come to my seminar today, I am saying hello to the people who did. I had a great time this morning talking about online community, the long tail and how to market authors’ books without really engaging in the behaviors that are traditionally associated with marketing and PR by participating in relevant online communities. After having my head buried in the books all semester it was really fun to talk about some of the things I’ve been thinking about. To my students: I challenge you to create a WordPress account (even if you haven’t yet created your own web site or blog) and comment on this post!
A friend of mine suggested that Hillary is hanging on this way because she has her eye to the history books and wants to be recorded as having as many delegates’ votes as possible. This news suggests that is true.
If you live in Austin, you should go see Northern State Wednesday at Stubbs. I’ll be there! If you have a pulse, you should read the book written by one of the members of Northern State:
Is the difference between the MSM coverage of Wright and Hagee because Obama’s black, too? I’m just wondering, because I’m sitting here looking at Hagee’s views and I’m thinking that some of them are just as kooky as Wrights, and yet this little gem is NOT being plastered all over every news channel in the country:
I believe that New Orleans had a level of sin that was offensive to god, and they were recipients of the judgment of god for that. The newspaper carried the story in our local area that was not carried nationally that there was to be a homosexual parade there on the Monday that Katrina came, and the promise of that parade was that it was going to reach a level of sexuality never demonstrated before in any of the gay pride parades. So I believe that the judgment of god is a very real thing, and I believe that the hurricane Katrina was in fact the judgment of god against the city of New Orleans.
- Hagee on Fresh Air
The quote above comes from this video, which has a whole slew of other doozies from Hagee, especially if you happen to be Catholic:
As you can clearly see from the sudden upsurge in blog posts, I have returned from being completely snowed under. I am coming up for air this week, licking my wounds, sorting through many unanswered emails and tasks that had to wait until after today. Hello! What happened while I was gone?
Shakha* said that the day students are allowed to bring guns is the day he quits. Mmmhmmm! I agree (not that I have anything to quit yet, but you get the idea). To reprint part of my comment to Shakha’s initial post:
I really don’t want students to be the one to make the call about whether or not to whip out the “people-killing tool,” as andrewska puts it above. When I started seeing fliers with big guns on them around campus, I got pretty emotional about it myself. If it really does become an issue I will fight against it.
The learning environment can be an emotional one, especially in sociology classrooms where we talk about race, gender, religion, and any number of other controversial issues. Students who are paying attention get their minds blown once in a while, but other students just hear buzz words and get angry.
However, when I heard about a second UT student being charged with the same 3d degree felony for only his words, I started thinking there’s something wrong here. Yes, MCelvey could probably use a stern talking to. And did the students who turned him in do the right thing? Sure. Should the university and even perhaps the police have investigated the issue? Yeah, absolutely. But as far as I can tell, this kid is getting a felony charge that involves jail time for being an asshole, and that just feels like the first few miles down the road toward a police state in a fear-fueled vehicle.
* Am I the only one who gets I Feel For You stuck in my head every time I see his handle? Just sayin.
fancy handoutsand this guy’s stats software. this video is 20 minutes long. if you don’t have 20 minutes at the moment, please come back when you do. this is an amazing video (with a real ZING at the end). it’s one of the better TED talks i’ve seen.
So Obama has captured the hearts and minds of so many over the last year, and now Jeremiah Wright is, for reasons that are totally unclear to me, attempting to undo all that. Obama tried to be gracious when this first came up, and in doing so he produced a truly wonderful speech. Ultimately this thing would have fallen out of public attention, remembered only, perhaps, as fodder for people who already dislike Obama. Now this ridiculous tripe.
As far as supporters are concerned, the very last thing that we should be doing right now is losing hope. Obama’s response today was exactly in line with who he is: an authentic human being who wants to do the right and rational thing.
One of the reporters asked him what this situation says about his judgment. He stuttered through a long answer in which he rightly pointed out that he did not begin vetting the people in his life 20 years ago just in case he would run for president one day. Let me give a shorter answer: it says nothing about his judgment. It says that Wright took a left turn toward cuckoo-ville somewhere along the way, Obama tried to stay loyal and spin it positive, and Wright just kept on trucking toward crazy-land. However, the fact that he stood in front of us all today, stuttering and obviously upset, says everything about his judgment and, perhaps more importantly, about his commitment to authenticity.
When it came down to brass tacks, Obama was hurt and angry, and it showed. Authenticity is not always pretty. It’s not always polished. Obama detractors complain that we’re all bedazzled by his pretty speeches. Well, his words were not very pretty today, and I’m here to tell you that I’m still bedazzled. The man knows when to stop spinning and come clean. He is a leader. I’m not saying he can’t do anything wrong, but I am saying that he’s a far cry from having lost my confidence.
From the “my research is dangerously close to web surfing” department, I bring you another titillating video that summarizes why I want to study the internet even better than the first (sorry, can’t seem to embed)! This one is Clay Shirky talking about his book Here Comes Everybody, which (if his talk is any indication) is fantastic. Actually, this talk contains a much better argument than I’ve ever made about why studying the internet is important. Shirky articulates why the two-way nature of the internet as a medium is revolutionary, and how we’ve only just scratched the surface of its potential because social systems are slower to evolve than technology. Some of his examples are fascinating. I learned a little something about flash mobs that I didn’t know before, for instance.
Here’s an interesting little side note about Shirky. As far as I can tell, he has a B.A. only. He’s absolutely brilliant, but he’s not an academic (though he does guest lecture at NYU, I think). His book is not published by an academic press. So this means that, much like Rebecca Blood’s seminal book about blogging, it’s not really, fully “legitimate” to cite him in academic work, although people do.
Now, the other day I had a conversation with an undergrad who had cited sources like The Economist in his paper. I told him that his sources were not appropriate and that he needed to use articles from academic journals. The problem with this student is that he had not grasped the meaning of “academic journal” and “peer reviewed” and all that jazz. I get the difference. I just want to use Blood and Shirky and… well, I am using them. But it’s interesting, isn’t it? There’s a lot of amazing stuff out there - especially stuff about the internet - that is not published by an academic press or not published at all, even. Theses and dissertations, articles presented at conferences, books and articles written by people who aren’t academics… there’s more of this sort of information out there about the internet than there are peer reviewed journal articles, I think. Of course it’s the internet that makes them available, and if you look at Google Scholar, some of these unpublished works are cited tens of times in academic articles.
Does this sort of free-wheelin’ behavior represent a barrier to being published? Are onlne-only journals like First Monday more friendly toward it, or are they actually more stringent so as to protect their already-tenuous reputation as a truly peer reviewed journal? Maybe some of this is obvious, I just don’t know because I’m a greenhorn. That’s right, people, greenhorn. I live in Texas.
Shakha* said
