I told Charlie about this dream I had the other night, and he thought it was odd--and VERY geeky. He encouraged me to post about it, so here goes: I dreamed that I went to my admin menu in my blog, then to accounts, then to permissions. I gave the following permissions to all registered users:

create pages

create php content

create stories

create url aliases

edit own blog

edit own pages

edit own stories

But I didn't announce it here; I wanted to see if people noticed that they had the new options the next time they logged in. After I changed the permissions, I went to sleep (in the dream). Then (in the dream) I woke up and shuffled over to the computer as I always do right after I make my bed. I called up my blog and was horrified at what I saw: Tons of people had posted all kinds of random stuff--extreme neoconservative pontification, hate speech, pr0n, you name it. And there were 27 comments under every post. I immediately changed the permissions back and set about deleting all the evidence of my failed experiment.



Charlie thinks it's strange that I dream about the web. I dream about it all the time. Back when the Ms. message boards were still around, I dreamed about some of the posters on there, even though I'd never met them. They'd just find their way into my dreams somehow, most of the time taking non-human forms. One in particular was a big glob of primordial ooze. Anyone else dream about the web, or about your blog?

How'd I miss this? On Wealth Bondage, I found this thread on W Ketchup, the practical alternative for those who wouldn't dream of supporting Kerry. At first I thought the actual selling of this stuff was a joke in the key of napalm.net, but I put in phony information, and it prompted me for a credit card number. It looks like this could be for real, but wait, there's more! For dessert, if you don't like that cold, creamy liberal goodness, you can now opt for Star Spangled Ice Cream...but that has to be a joke--four quarts of the ice cream will set you back $76.00.

Was just clicking through my block of links to online journals, and I noticed that there's a new issue of Genders. I skimmed a couple of articles and plan to come back to them later:

• "Quality Postfeminism?" Sex and the Single Girl on HBO by Diane Negra (an analysis of the "pathologizing [of] single femininity" in Sex and the City alongside contemporaneous films)
• Dialogues between Paul Virilio and Chela Sandoval: Towards a better understanding of uses and abuses of new technologies by Ingrid Maria Hoofd

I've been meaning to post these notes since January, if only for my own edification as I study for my technical communication theory and research preliminary exams, which are scheduled for July 27-28 (the 24-hour take-home exam) and July 29 (the 2-hour in-house exam). But hopefully they'll help someone else who's trying to explain his or her proposed research to an advisor or committee, too. The notes are from Helen Longino's Feminist Theories and Methods class. I found it to be an excellent laying-out of the differences and overlaps among empirical, interpretive, and analytical/theoretical research. The taxonomy focuses on feminist research, but you could easily substitute concepts and objects of study.

Empirical Research

The questions: How things are/were, e.g. distribution of wealth, gender roles in different societies, prevalence of spousal abuse. When or how did institution X emerge? How has it changed over time? What are the effects of intervention strategy Y? What there is, how it works. For example: How has women's activism changed over time? What changes have been introduced because of women's activism?

Jason Kottke has some thorough coverage of the Plain Layne hoax, which has also been reported in City Pages. There was a discussion about taking bloggers at face value over at Lauren's some time ago too. The basic rundown: Odin Soli, a 35-year-old man living in Woodbury, Minnesota, kept a blog as Plain Layne, a young woman with a tumultuous life. From the City Pages article:

Despite the moniker, Layne was anything but plain. Within the past few months, she recounted a rape that she suggested led her to lesbianism, became engaged to a formerly straight woman, suffered a dramatic breakup with said woman (partially because her fiancée resented being dissected on Layne's site), hooked up and noisily quarreled with a girl from her work cafeteria, met her birth parents for the first time, got involved with a risky internet startup, and had a ton of hot sex (which, because of her linguistic flourishes, was often hottest when solo). All that while keeping up a high-volume website of 5,000 unique visitors per day and middle-managing an IT group for "Minicorp," a large pseudonymous company that from her descriptions sounded like 3M or Cargill or Honeywell. In short: Anaïs Nin, I'd like you to meet William Gibson.

In addition, Layne had profiles on Orkut and Friendster. I'm following the discussions of Layne because I'm still thinking about how to defend the kind of research I want to do against those who look askance at internet research--against what I call the authentication imperative. Arguments have been made that there's a degree of fiction in every representation of self online; you're always only presenting a part of yourself. I'm not sure how persuasive they are for a lot of people, though. Does Turkle discuss this issue in Life on the Screen? What other internet researchers have written about the authentication imperative?

Update: More at Netwoman and at Trish's place.

...Thomas Benton asks. I miss IA; she'd get a great discussion started on this topic. Benton asks us to review this taxonomy of cult tactics and see if it sounds familiar.

Behavior control: "major time commitment required for indoctrination sessions and group rituals"; "need to ask permission for major decisions"; "need to report thoughts, feelings, and activities to superiors."



Information control: "access to non-cult sources of information minimized or discouraged (keep members so busy they don't have time to think)" and "extensive use of cult-generated information (newsletters, magazines, journals, audio tapes, videotapes, etc.)."



Thought control: "need to internalize the group's doctrine as 'Truth' (black and white thinking; good vs. evil; us vs. them, inside vs. outside)" and "no critical questions about leader, doctrine, or policy seen as legitimate."



Emotional control: "excessive use of guilt (identity guilt: not living up to your potential; social guilt; historical guilt)"; "phobia indoctrination (irrational fears of ever leaving the group or even questioning the leader's authority; cannot visualize a positive, fulfilled future without being in the group; shunning of leave takers; never a legitimate reason to leave"; and "from the group's perspective, people who leave are 'weak,' 'undisciplined.'"

'Fraid so.
Edited to add: Like Dennis, I'm having a pretty good experience. Some days this taxonomy does indeed strike me as familiar (especially the guilt part), but on the whole, I like grad school, and I think Jeff makes some good points about the article.

John Lovas has posted an excellent overview of blogging. I must make one correction, though: John writes, "One of Clancy's many ground-breaking moves has been to post the answers to her doctoral exams on her blog, letting the rest of us in on her integration of important reading in Rhetoric and Composition." Thanks, but I don't think I've made any ground-breaking moves, particularly not this one--the first (and only) person I know of to post her preliminary exams is the brilliant Cristina Hanganu-Bresch. That being said, I'll post mine when I take them, which will be in early August.

Since I started living by myself, I've taken to dancing in the mornings. Privacy is a wonderful thing. :D Does anyone else hop out of bed, crank up the music, and start dancing? Dance while you make coffee, etc? Here's one of my morning playlists:

US3 - Cantaloop
U2 - Numb
Tupac - California Love
Sugarcubes - Birthday
Stone Temple Pilots-Big Bang Baby
Rufus Wainwright - Instant Pleasure
Robbie Williams - Rock Dj
Peter Gabriel - Digging in the Dirt
The Notorious B.I.G. - Hypnotize
Mary J. Blige - Family Affair
Go-Gos - Head Over Heels
Eve featuring Gwen Stefani - Let Me Blow Your Mind
Big Tymers - Still Fly

I highly recommend it.