Blogs

I finally got my blurb done for my Food for Thought discussion at iLaw Friday night. Donna Wentworth is also leading one, and it sounds terribly stimulating, as does the one Frank Field is leading. Too bad I'll have to miss them.

Scholarly Publishing, Weblogs, and the Digital Commons

Right now, we are in the midst of a shift in scholarly publishing from print to online and, some might argue, from a proprietary model to an open access model. A profusion of scholars are keeping weblogs, and many are licensing the content under Creative Commons licenses. Moreover, several online academic publications, including the forthcoming edited collection Into the Blogosphere: Rhetoric, Community, and Culture of Weblogs, Classics @: The Electronic Journal of the Center for Hellenic Studies of Harvard University, and The Stanford Undergraduate Research Journal are publishing under Creative Commons licenses. As one who frequently converses with scholars about alternative publishing models, I will explain the resistance I have encountered to Creative Commons licenses, particularly those that allow derivative works. I hope to facilitate a fruitful discussion of ways that the current face of scholarly publishing can be changed, especially to the benefit of the public interest, libraries, and webloggers, who, I would argue, are making a significant and as yet unacknowledged contribution to knowledge-making in the academy.

How is it that I haven't stumbled upon the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy until now? The entries I've read so far are thorough and provide excellent overviews of issues and philosophers. See the entry for identity politics written by Cressida Heyes and the one for common knowledge by Peter Vanderschraaf.

JD Lasica, whose blog I should read more often, has put drafts of his book, Darknet: Remixing the Future of Movies, Music and Television, on a public wiki. He says:

Goal: In the spirit of open media and participatory journalism, I'd like to use this wiki to publish drafts of each chapter in the book. I hope you'll participate in this effort by contributing feedback, edits, criticism, corrections, and additional anecdotes, either through the comments field below or by sending me email. Feel free to be as detailed as you like or to insert comments or questions. After all, you're the editor. (And remember, this is for a book manuscript, not a finished online document.) If you make a couple of helpful edits, I'll mention your name in the book's Acknowledgments (and buy you a drink next time we meet up).

Although this would be even cooler if he were using a Creative Commons license or Founder's Copyright (and he may do that later, but this text is at the bottom of Chapter 1: "{Many users mistakenly believe that material on the Internet not accompanied by a copyright notice is fair game for taking. Not true. In any case: Copyright 2004 by J.D. Lasica.}"), I like this collaborative model and that he has given us free access to the book.

Via Mary Hodder.

Buy Diana Krall's new CD. I've said before that Diana Krall, Sade, and Joni Mitchell are the holy trinity of musical artists, and Krall proves it yet again with The Girl in the Other Room. Many of the songs are written by Krall and Elvis Costello, but there are some covers on the album too, most notably the cover of Tom Waits' "Temptation," which I've been listening to over and over again. Aaah, perfection.

By way of the Creative Commons weblog come two journals that are publishing under Creative Commons licenses: Classics @ and The Stanford Undergraduate Research Journal. Both are using the Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike license; I'm especially pleased that they are allowing derivative works, and I hope more journals and other academic enterprises heed the call of this model. Allowing derivative works is good--doing so will only enrich the original work, not compromise it. Come on in; the water's fine. :)

An earnest thanks to Emily for showing me this piece by Dorothy Allison titled "Notes to a Young Feminist," and a sarcastic thanks a lot to AKMA for IMing me the link to Kingdom of Loathing, the procrastinatory game I never knew I always wanted. My character is a disco bandit named Yoterlon, after my old high school D&D character, Yoterlon Doonsbern the Fair.

No bloggers that I've seen are commenting on the fact that Disney subsidiary Miramax dropped Michael Moore's latest film, a point-by-point critique of Bush's presidency, particularly involvement in Iraq. Moore says it's because Disney is worried about losing tax incentives. Disney says they don't want to be perceived as endorsing any particular candidate, and indeed kairos has a lot to do with it, and good for Moore for taking advantage of the timing. A representative for Disney says that Moore can find another distributor. Let's hope he does, but not before a lot of people get appropriately outraged over this act of censorship.

Feministe inspired me to create the soundtrack of my life. I guess this is the next big meme. I purposefully sat out of the page 23/fifth sentence one, so I'd better get on task.

Edited to add: Oops, I forgot to include the criteria set forth by Green Fairy: "These aren't necessarily your favourite songs, or even ones you like, just ones that you associate with a particular time, incident or memory." Lest anyone think these are my favorite songs, heh. Others haven't put them in any particular order, but I've done mine chronologically: two from childhood, two from junior high/early high school, two from high school, two from college, and one from my master's program. It was hard to think of some recent ones; I don't have the perspective yet.

Celebration - Kool & the Gang

This is the first song I remember. My parents had the 45, and my mom showed me how to arrange the little arm on the record player above the needle so that I could make the 45 play over and over again. The exuberance of the song stuck with me, and to this day I love it.