Blogs

A summary of an informal discussion in which I participated.

People seemed to like it on her blog, so I thought I'd show off the pic here too. Enjoy.

Charlie Lowe has published an excellent article in Across the Disciplines on open content and the state of our current intellectual property model. It's well worth the read, especially for those who are not all that knowledgeable on IP matters and how they are relevant to composition. Charlie has also posted a comprehensive bibliography of sources on intellectual property in rhetoric and composition.

You might have noticed that I added a culturecat.net email address to my sidebar. After much frustration with the University of Minnesota's email client, I have decided to make my hosting company's email program, SquirrelMail, my primary email interface, meaning I arranged for my UMN email to forward there. I was absolutely fed up with the fact that, first off, the UMN Webmail interface has no BCC field, even though if you want to email all your students and they have arranged for total suppression of all their information, FERPA says that you must put the students' email addresses in your BCC field. Well, in order to do that, I have to have a BCC field to put them in, don't I?! Also, it's very annoying that if you put an apostrophe in the subject line of the email, UMN Webmail (don't know about Pine) drops it. Can't becomes cant, don't becomes dont, Clancy's becomes Clancys, etc.

Now I'm overjoyed that I can actually put apostrophes in the subject line and I can BCC people! Woo-hoo! Plus, SquirrelMail allows me to have separate identities, so I can email someone as ratli008 at umn or as clancy at culturecat. Sometimes I feel that I need the credibility that an institutional email address offers, especially if I'm emailing someone I don't know at another university. Funny how that works.

Edited to add: Another reason I love this email client is that they have a lot of different visual display themes, including one called "In the Pink." The name makes me cringe, but I have always wanted to have a pink email interface.

Today I took a 2-hour no-books, no-notes midterm exam in my rhetorical theory class. I answered this question:

Below are two quite different ways of thinking
about figures of speech.

“’Ornament’ is what goes beyond Lucidity and
Acceptability. Its first two stages [lucidity and
acceptability] consists in conceiving and carrying
out your intention; the third is the stage that puts
the polish on and may properly be called
‘finish’”(Quintilian, Institutes 8.3.62)



“The important is that in metaphor, metonymy, and
synecdoche alike language provides us with a
direction that thought itself might take in its effort
to provide meaning to areas of experience not
already regarded as being cognitively secured by
either common sense, tradition, or science”
(Hayden White, Tropics of Discourse, 73).



In his essay, “The Four Master Tropes,” does
Burke embrace one, reject the other; embrace
both; offer a third view: what? Explain.

Below is my attempt:

I'm a little surprised at what's being said on IA about lecturing and discussion. I'll admit that I didn't like discussion classes while in college because most of the time, the discussions devolved into pandering to the lowest common denominator, and I was left frustrated, spinning my wheels. Anyway...people over at that thread are also talking about how some students perceive discussion days as days on which the instructor wants to slack off and not have to do anything. I admit having had those thoughts too. I'm following the pedagogical tensions here with interest.

UPDATE: The Little Professor has a good response.

Today I found out that on February 6, a friend of mine, known on the Ms. message boards as Olympe, committed suicide. We really only knew each other online, but I did meet her face-to-face once. For nearly two years (that I know of), she had been very, very depressed, so much so that she spoke of living as unbearable. We (the Ms. boards community) knew it was likely that she would take her own life--she talked about the moral and philosophical implications of suicide a lot, especially here (I warn you, this is a very emotionally draining thread). I've been brooding today, just thinking about her, hoping she's not in pain anymore. I don't know what else I can say about it right now.

Edited to add: I can't stop thinking about her, about this. I've had the most morbid, disturbing thoughts, imagining what she did right beforehand. What was her last meal? Did she play music? I keep thinking of the scene in Girl, Interrupted when Daisy has hanged herself; the 45 of Skeeter Davis's "The End of the World" plays over and over, and then Susanna finds her. What other things did Olympe do?

I also feel this urge to knit a shroud for her, which is probably the most morbid thing. She was found on 6 February, so whatever they did with her remains has already been done, so why do I have this foolish need to knit something for her?

Cunt: A Cultural History.

Via Purse Lip Square Jaw.