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Which OS are You?

I think I'm very easy to get to know, but hey, I'm happy with the result. You should take the quiz; the multiple choice answers cracked me up several times. I mean, what's a "sausage of power"? :D Really, someone tell me. I'm afraid to Google it. Via Marcoe.

Am I the only one who sometimes thinks it would be fun to use Salt'n'Pepa's "Push It" and L'Trimm's "Grab It" to introduce students to dialectic? I wonder if it's crossed Jeff's mind before...the lyrics are a little risqué, and I don't know if I'd really bring the songs into class, but if any of you would like to try it, be my guest, and let me know how it goes. :) As you probably recall, the argument in "Push It" is simply, "Push it real good." But in the lesser-known rebuttal to "Push It," L'Trimm instructs us to "Grab it like [we] want it." The first few lines are as follows:

You say you want to push it but your pushing is through

Let's push you aside and show you what to do

You got to grab it, grab it like you want it

And then later in the song: "So take a lesson, and I hope you learn/That if you push it, it might not return." Listen to the songs, and please share your thoughts. Be sure to listen to "Push It" first, then "Grab It".

I've been meaning to blog this for weeks. I recently attended a thought-provoking talk given by my adviser, Mary Lay Schuster, in the monthly "Rhetoric Parlor" series of colloquia we have in our department, titled "A Different Place to Birth: A Material Rhetorical Analysis of BabyHaven, a Free-Standing Baby Center." Schuster has been doing research on midwifery for years now. She has done analyses of the legal status of midwifery practices after Roe v. Wade and insightful Foucaultian/feminist critiques of the tension between the knowledge systems of the medical establishment and midwifery, which, according to cultural norms, is situated as an alternative knowledge system placing more authority in "embodied knowledge." I'll be quick to point out, however, as Schuster would, that there's always overlap and a degree of cooperation between the two systems (for example, some physicians supply midwives with pitocin and other materials on the sly). Her most recent work, on which this talk was based, centers on material rhetoric as an analytical tool for analyzing spaces, in this case a birthing center. In spring 2003, she taught a seminar on gender and the rhetoric of science and technology, in which we read a lot about material rhetoric and the body, including Rhetorical Bodies, a collection of essays edited by Jack Selzer and Sharon Crowley, and Feminism and the Body, a collection of essays edited by Londa Schiebinger, both of which I'd highly recommend if you're at all interested in this stuff. These texts, particularly the former, which contains Carole Blair's essay, "Contemporary US Memorial Sites as Exemplars of Rhetoric's Materiality," inform her work.

Schuster started out by defining key terms. She explained the difference between direct-entry midwives and nurse-midwives. Direct-entry midwives are not formally schooled but do apprenticeships under other midwives, whereas nurse-midwives work under the supervision of physicians. She also cited a definition of material rhetoric from Barbara Dixon's essay in Rhetorical Bodies material rhetoric is a space where "multiple discourses and multiple material practices collude and collide." She invoked Blair's five-question theoretical framework for studying material sites as rhetoric:

1. What is the significance of the text’s material existence?
2. What are the apparatuses and degrees of durability displayed by the text?
3. What are the text’s modes or possibilities of reproduction or preservation?
4. What does the text do to (or with, or against) other texts?
5. How does the text act on people?” (p. 23)

Other assumptions that guided her thinking included the study of mind and body in relation and the assumption that cultural norms mediate the body and the ways the self experiences the body. We experience cultural inscriptions and natural sensations simultaneously. To further describe her thinking, she reviewed two models of birth with their own particular sets of norms: the medical model, in which birth is managed and the laboring body is perceived as "risky" and in need of control in the form of objects such as fetal heart monitors and procedures such as epidurals, and the midwifery model, in which labor and birth are not so pathologized, and medical objects are hidden from view (at least in the case of BabyHaven), except the oxygen tank, which is too large to hide. Simply put, the medical model often assumes something will go wrong, and the midwifery model assumes that nothing will go wrong but are prepared for medical emergencies should they arise.

Schuster provided excerpts from the interviews she had done with women who had given birth at the birthing center, and while there's no way I can do her presentation justice, I'll point to a few of Schuster's key interpretations. She articulated the problem of balancing her observations with those of her participants. As a result, her interpretation of the space was influenced by her participants' accounts of their experiences in the space. One pattern she noticed was "materializing privacy." The physical space of the center (the text, according to Blair's framework), acts on people by helping to create the perception of privacy. The positive experience of privacy, created by the homelike decor, locking of doors during a birth, and closing of curtains, enabled the women to relax and better cope with pain. One tangible benefit of the material rhetoric of BabyHaven is that the women don't require drugs to cope with pain. Specific objects at the center, such as the large tub of water in the room and the birthing ball, also enhanced the women's experience of birth. The tub made women feel in control and helped them avoid pushing too soon. To use Blair's term, BabyHaven, considered as a text, has several consequences, including contributing to the resistance of the medical hegemonic norm that the laboring body is in need of control. BabyHaven rewrites cultural assumptions about where the laboring body can be safe; Schuster makes this point in reference to the tub, which physicians rarely allow laboring women to use because of the perceived risk of infection or, it could be argued, the perceived jeopardy of the laboring body and fetus. Finally, BabyHaven helps to create a positive experience of privacy in which women can bond with babies differently and more easily. It was an excellent presentation, and Schuster will be publishing an article based on this study soon. When it comes out, I'll post the citation here.

Okay, I've been thinking about this for months now, so I might as well blog about it. Here's my question: Does anyone teaching business writing and/or technical writing assign The Cluetrain Manifesto: The End of Business as Usual? Based on what I know, my guess would be that either very few teachers assign it, or no one does. (If I'm wrong, please tell me; please set me straight.) So who cares, you might ask. Why are you sweatin' it, Clancy?

For me, it's about the disconnect between the way writing is taught and the way writing is, especially when it comes to business and technical writing. The Cluetrain Manifesto has been called "the most important book about communication written in the last 30 years." Many bloggers and other webby cognoscenti divide the world into pre-Cluetrain and post-Cluetrain. I'm not trying to say that Cluetrain should be treated as some sort of tech comm Bible or anything, but clearly it's a very important book worth at least reading and discussing in business and technical writing classes. I know it's not written by academic rhetoricians, but I think it ought to be assigned. I've been thinking about writing a review of it and sending it to the Journal of Business and Technical Communication. (Of course, if someone has already reviewed it for that journal, I'm going to feel like a real heel...a pleasantly surprised heel, though.) Consider some of the "95 Theses":

I have a hat, but I have no head. :-(

A group of foreign policy specialists (mostly academics, some of whose names I recognize, including Henry Farrell of Crooked Timber and Wendy Brown) have issued a collective statement critiquing the Bush Administration's foreign policy:

We, a nonpartisan group of foreign affairs specialists, have joined together to call urgently for a change of course in American foreign and national security policy. We judge that the current American policy centered around the war in Iraq is the most misguided one since the Vietnam period, one which harms the cause of the struggle against extreme Islamist terrorists. One result has been a great distortion in the terms of public debate on foreign and national security policy—an emphasis on speculation instead of facts, on mythology instead of calculation, and on misplaced moralizing over considerations of national interest. [1] We write to challenge some of these distortions.

Read the whole thing. Much of the critique is similar to what Kerry's been discussing in the debates: lack of prewar planning, going to war without proof that Saddam Hussein had WMD, etc., but the letter goes into a little more detail about conditions in Iraq now and the U.S.'s international reputation.

Today the director of the Center for Writing asked me to give a brief talk on weblogs in writing pedagogy as part of a panel presentation in the Teaching With Writing series. I agreed, of course, but with several questions about the proper approach to take. The talk is only about 10 minutes, and they want me to offer practical ways the instructors in the audience can integrate blogging into their writing courses (or other courses that incorporate writing), which is of course an understandable request, but here's what frustrates me: So often these workshops only scratch the surface. It ends up being a 90-minute discussion of what a weblog is. I'd rather talk about the many issues involved in teaching with weblogs, some of which have been addressed in impressive detail on the Blogging SIG list, including:

• Having students keep individual blogs v. one community blog for the class, or several small-group blogs: advantages and disadvantages of each
• Privacy for the students (if real names are used, people can find the students via Google)
• Requiring weblog posts, or offering the option of keeping a print journal instead
• The possible feeling on the part of the instructor of being "exposed" if students complain about the class on the blog
• Outside participation: the fact that anyone outside the class can read the blog and leave comments (and they do)
• Assessing weblog posts
• Creating weblog post prompts (and the question of whether there should be prompts, or if the students should have the option to deviate from the prompt topic to a topic of his or her choice)
• Avoiding "forced blogging"
• Integrating the weblog into class discussion

Sigh. There's no way I'll be able to cover all of that. It's too bad there can't be workshops for intermediate to advanced techies with some experience using the particular technology on which the workshop centers. I'm one of those people who goes to every workshop I possibly can -- offered through the Center for Writing, my department, or the Center for Teaching and Learning Services, especially the workshops on instructional technology, but others too, and the ones on technology are always the same: the most basic preliminary definition and exploration of a new technology. I leave not knowing anything I didn't already know. I realize it's necessary to make sure no one is lost or confused, and there's not enough time to get into major issues, but I'd still like to see it happen. So, any suggestions for me as I prepare this talk? If you were composing such a talk, what would you cover? If you're new to blogging as it intersects with writing pedagogy, what do you want to know? If it's old hat to you, what would you have appreciated hearing as a newbie?

:jawdrop: Wonkette describes Bush as "in semi-hysterics." Indeed! Jeebus, let Charles Gibson talk, why dontcha? Bush is falling apart; it hurts to watch. In comparison, Kerry is making me want to stand up and cheer.

UPDATE: Yes! I'm so glad Gibson picked the question about the environment. The environment has seemed conspicuously absent from the election rhetoric.