Saturday, November 30, 2002
I really don't even know how to react to this article. Victims are turned into charlatans, men are rendered powerless in a gender-biased coutroom, and apparently all femininsts everywhere are bitter-hearted, vindictive, and compassionless.
Overgeneralization, oversimiplification. All men are not supposed to be in control of or have power over all women in the definition of patriarchy - there are certainly many women - white or not, with power, influence, and affluence - who have more power over certain men. Socioeconomics are too complex to simplify matters this way. Additionally, I must have missed the parts of the feminist theory, history, and writing that says feminists (apparently of the PC variety, the only strand of feminism that gets specifically mentioned here) speak for all women. Most women I know who call themselves feminists wouldn't ever make this statement. This is the type of ignorance that got white middle- and upper-calss feminists in trouble a few decades ago, and I think that a lot of feminists took somethign from the accusations - namely, a greater degree of reflexivity and a reluctance to claim universality or the ability to represent all womanhood through one single voice.
And to charge that "For some feminists, any sense of decency or concern for women is suspended if the woman thinks for herself and disagrees" is, well, if it's really true, it's unfortunate. I believe that, while there may certainly be feminists out there who are not very nice individuals (there are some in any group), feminists on the whole are very concerned for women, and for children, and for men, as well - and sometimes with animal rights, environmental issues, and a host of other social and cultural concerns.
And this:
"How many other women have been battered into silence by PC feminists? Especially in academia, where political correctness holds sway...how many women have feminists intimidated into never speaking out at all?"
Take away PC-ness and the results of feminist activism: I'd be a seceretary getting my ass pinched by a prof, instead of a graduate student working on a PhD. And oh, yeah, the ass-pinching might be my fault, after all, especially if I wasn't dressed like a granny. But on the other hand, if I dressed like a granny, no man would want to marry me, thereby increasing my self-worth, so I have to dress kind of cute and just put up with the pinching. Sounds like a catch-22. Yeah, I can see where feminism has closed a lot of doors and kept me from expressing my views in academia.
Here's the kicker: the closing two paragraphs of the article:
"Real feminism aims at genuine equality and good will between daughters and sons. It eliminates the need for parents to choose which of their children are to be privileged by the courts and other institutions of society, which are to be oppressed.
Perhaps then women who are true victims will be able to claim what they justly deserve: the automatic compassion of decent human beings."
oh, wait! you mean that's NOT what FEMINISM has been trying to accomplish? Gee, my Women's Studies teachers must have been some of those nasty feminists that don't have any sense of decency or compassion for others, because they told me that those were some of the aims of feminism! "Real feminism", I guess, is something completely different from "feminism." Nonplussed. Completely nonplussed by this article.
But I do want to make it clear that, while I disagree with this author, I find it disheartening that anyone could make fun of a person's disabilities, or find any measure of anything other than horror and sympathy because of a person's experience as an abused person. Disagreement with a person's arguments or opinions is no reason at all for ad hominem attacks.
Oh brrr!
From now until the end of the semester, I think it's fair warning to let people know, I will be griping about school or writing about one of three topics: inferential statistics, cultural metaphors and the Internet, and research in online anf df2f writing centers.
Friday, November 29, 2002
Someone out there hates my site. :( I got a rating of one from some bloghopper. *peep*
Ah, well. There are plenty o' things wrong with the page, I will admit, but I kinda like it. It's comfy and roomy, and I have been here a while. Maybe the person who gave me a rating of one was the same person who came to my site after googling for pee (see last entry), and was disappointed in the lack of pee-related content on the page.
Really going to bed now.
I'm heading off to bed very shortly (after I freeze my lay through a last cigarette of the evening - btw, I am quitting over winter break, honest, I have the prescription for zyban and everything), but I wanted to share one thing before I go freeze my butt off.
Before logging in to blogger tonight, I checked my stats. I've got some interesting hits coming from some oddball places. A few google searches that kind of amuse me: someone got here by googling "pixie oil diffuser," another person by googling something about having to pee (I think the search was "pee" + "I have to"). Heh. I huess it's all about context, right? I was completely confused, especially by the last one, until I remembered that recent link to a woman's guide to peeing standing up . . . random.
Anyway, hope the radom visitors enjoyed the site. I know it wasn't quite what they were looking for, but . . .
I'm going to go cool my heels (and my nose, and my fingertips), reduce my circulation, and all of that now. Good night!
Tuesday, November 26, 2002
The comment that really got me: "I try not to read Blog Sisters because it feels like "Maxim for girls", reinforcing the sorts of attitudes which lead to good docile consumers who fit into easily manipulated demographics."
I don't feel this way. At all. Wow.
I was looking for some of the posts that I think counter this (for eaxmple, the critical discussions of Barbie, of girlie and girl-power, of breast cancer research and funding), but, as usual, I'm late, late, so you'll have to hop on over to Blog Sisters and poke for yourself. Maxim, my butt!
And what's this "for girls" crap? Is Maxim for men or boys, d'ya think?
steam is going to start coming out of my ears soon. I'm going to log off and go get ready for school.
BTW, for anyone keeping track, Rafi still hasn't published anything on his blog.
Love ya, Rafi!
Monday, November 25, 2002
Googlism for: laurie johnson
laurie johnson is often associated with music for british television
laurie johnson is perhaps best known internationally for his title theme for the diana rigg/linda thorson seasons of the avengers
laurie johnson is undoubtedly one of the greatest composers and arrangers in the world today
laurie johnson is a very fine writer
laurie johnson is a member of the "panel on the future" which is a special project of peri
laurie johnson is the recipient of the district's first beacon of light award
laurie johnson is generally an excellent composer
laurie johnson is an assistant director
laurie johnson is right back to his 1960s glory with this one
laurie johnson is giving us one of his best scores
laurie johnson is certainly one of the most prolific soundtrack composers around
laurie johnson is married to john mercer and have one daughter
laurie johnson is the provider
laurie johnson is heard in the background
laurie johnson is assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction for the milford school district and a board member on the nh council for the social
laurie johnson is letting them go
laurie johnson is tracking the dinner dance budget items separately from the board of trustees budget
laurie johnson is a genius
laurie johnson is oncology clinical coordinator at genentch biooncology in palmdale
laurie johnson is quite herrmann
laurie johnson is a freshmen member of carroll county's high school chess team with her cunning talent and remarkable moves on the board she can and will
laurie johnson is one of the main characters of the story
Hey - I'm a genius! Nice.
(by the way - I haven't left for class yet)
Out the door. Now! (after I grab a slice of cold pizza for lunch - sustenance of the gods - if gods were grad students who are chronically late.)
Man, it's going to be a stream-of-consciousness kind of day. Whoope!
Sunday, November 24, 2002
Love ya, Rafi!
Wednesday, November 20, 2002
The tech guy behind the genius counter at the Apple sotre tonight made me feel like a moron. Like an idiot girl who knows nothhing about computers except that they come in two flavors: Mac and PC. And that the flavors don't mix well. For shame. The whole apple tradition is built around sleek interface design, user-friendliness, and ease-of-use (is that redundant? there's a difference, even if only a shades-of-grey one, in my mind). To get such a talking-down-to (especially while the guy next to me didn't) at an Apple store is bubble-bursting.
Ok, more page-turning. No more blogging 'til tomorrow, as in when I wake up, not when it turns midnight in 14 minutes.
*yawn* estoy cansada. tengo mucho sueno. (how does one get ~ in this interface?) voy - a leer, y despues, a dormir.
It's been a long day. I'm sleepy and have reading to do. But I went shopping today and spent dollars I don't necessarily have. Bought utterly useless items: yummy-smelling candles, a scented oil diffuser and oils to diffuse, a CD (really an impluse buy!). The only practical purchases were care products for my leater items: the briefcase I don't use and the leather coat I rarely wear. They get such infrequent use in part because I am afraid it'll rain or I'll dump something on one of them, and then I'll be upset at myself.
Ok. I'm reading now. I swear. Turning pages as I type.
Oh, one last thing: Rafi - you are being publicly called out. Blog, you silly! You promised!
and now, good night, my friends. see ya 'round like a record.
Tuesday, November 19, 2002
More to come . . . (see - this post reinforces yesterday's post about needing another blog or two . . .)
I tried this when I was a kid - really little, like three or four. Old enough to remember what a disaster it was. Anyway, I just recently told Eric how abso-frickin-lutely impossible it was for women to pee standing. I have been proven wrong.
Link from Blog Sisters
Link from Jana, who apparently is also a procrastinating grad student.
Monday, November 18, 2002
**edit** I fixed it. Had a "eureka!!!" moment: "So THAT'S what safe mode is for!" Oh, thank you, Blogger dev people, for including that functionality for losers like me that can't close tags or close quotes in hrefs!
Ah, well. I'll live without it, I think! ;)
[rant]
Typographical errors occur frequently in my posts. Sometimes I catch these evil demonstrations of my lack of typing skills, but other times I don't. I do not touch-type: I usually watch my hands while I type, though I am trying to break myself of the habit (I used to do the same thing when I took piano lessons - my piano teacher used to hold one of my music books just above my hands to keep me from looking at my fingers and the keys while I played, and ot encourage me to look at the sheet music instead). I make a lot of typos. That's life. Typos do not, do not, do not demonstrate someone's lack of intelligence or spelling prowess or anything like that. Sometimes I go back and edit my blog entries because I know other people think so, but it's just not true. Soooooo. . .
F**K it. I have typos in my posts. Deal with it.
[/rant]
So, as all I have done today is work on TCQ stuff and drink some coffee (yeah, I still have my p.j.'s on *sigh*), I haven't got a lot ot report in the way of news and views. I'll get to that later on today, perhaps. I just wanted to share my bit of sunshine with the world beyond my apartment!
The only thing I really have to report is this: I think I am going to have to start another blog (or two). I've been noticing that this blog hardly ever sticks to topic - rhet/tech, cyberculturem cyberfeminism, IP, p2p and emerging tech. But I have also noticed that I like this: I have a place to run off at the mouth, so to speak, and that's fun, necessary. But - I'd still like to have a place for organizing my more academic/scholarly (or what passes for such anyway!) thoughts, and recently I have been thinking it might be useful/interesting to keep a specifically feminist-oriented blog (not that I couldn't write about feminism here or in an academic blog, but that it would be nice to also hoave this collected in one location). So I might need to start other blogs sometime in the near future. The problem is: I think I want to use something other than Blogger to create the next generation of Laurie Blogs. Partly for the same reason that I own a Mac and a PC - I believe in being as conversant as possible with as many OSes and apps as possible. The other part of this desire to move away from Blogger would be because of some of the problems Blogger has (and has had in the past): instability, hacks, disappearing/reappearing templates and other files, those wonderful days when my blog won't appear when I type in the url, the times when my images, hosted on the same frickin' server as my blog, simply don't appear . . . you know, I have been using blogger for over a year now, and while there are others out there who have been using longer, certainly, I feel a sort of loyalty to blogger - I like blogger, like a lot of the blogs people create with blogger, like (as much as one can wothout actually knowing them) the people who created/run blogger. But perhaps it's time to move on.
That means I've got to figure out what blogging tool I want to use next. An if I want it to be web-based or not. Do I want to host my blog on server space that belongs to me? Does that mean I need to find a host and pay a fee and perhaps register a domain name (I've been thinking about this for years, but haven't gotten around to doing it yet).
Last, and certainly not least: do I have the time, the energy, the motivation, the creative power to maintain three blogs?
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
Maybe I should think on this a bit more ;)
Sunday, November 17, 2002
Concluding section:
"Changing Women's Roles For Good
There has always been a question rumbling through the ranks of feminism that people ask, but no one has the answer to. Why is it that changes made to women's roles never seem to stick? We're not the first culture to squat over handmirrors and "discover" the female orgasm. Naomi Wolf goes through that quite well in her book "Promiscuities." We're not the first generation to have women working and making our own money. Until the 1960s, the women of ancient Egypt had more rights than we did! Why do these changes never seem to stick without major effort?
It's always assumed that there are forces outside of feminism who work to snap the rubberband back, who work against the advances we've made and unravel them. I'm proposing that, very often, feminism undoes its own advances by:
Attempts to broaden itself out to the point of evaporation, and
Attempts to define itself as "not really that scary," and hence embrace the same old crap that came before, but label it feminism.
These are serious problems. I don't know what the solutions are. But I do know that pursuing only woman-oriented goals that have to do with children is not the path. Embracing images of women who suffer instead of women who break heads is not the path. Opening our minds to the point where our brains fall out is not the path.
We are skittering backwards and calling it progress. It's not due to young teenagers wearing glitter eyeshadow and -- thunderously stupid and sexist though they are -- it's not due to Britney Spears and MTV. It's not the fault of the generation coming up, the teenagers and eary-twenty-somethings that haven't yet taken the reins of power in any way. It's the fault of the generation that's presently in the driver's seat of feminism, the generation of women who are trying to softpedal the potential impact of feminism by claiming it's about nothing more threatening than babies and breast implants and the "freedom" to stay the hell home and give up your career, the freedom to be mediocre and make the same mistakes that brought feminism to the fore fifty years ago with the publication of "The Feminine Mystique." It sickens me to see these women praising the Victorian model of Ever-Nurturing Moral Mommy To The World as if it's feminist, then turning around and blaming the next generation of teenaged girls for the fact that the advances made by women never seem to stick.
That's a polite way of saying that I'm sick of listening to 40 year old women bitching about how unenlightened today's teenaged girls are, then in their next breath talking about how motherhood should be the center of feminism becuase mothers are special sainted people with knowledge beyond the ken of mere mortals (and certainly women such as myself who have no kids and are hence classifiable as nothing but dickless men).
Feminism shouldn't be same-old-same-old. Feminism is revolutionary. And feminism is scary. Real change is always scary. And that's the way it should be."
I am glad I finally did see Vanilla Sky, but I do think that Abre los ojos is better in many ways. The music is better, for example. I also think that the foreshadowing is a bit too heavy-handed in Vanilla Sky, and that the movie has a mor happy-cherry-optomistic feel to it. I can't explain the latter, it's kind of a gut-level feeling, but Vanliia Sky didn't seem as dark. Pretty movie, though, and I love Cameron Diaz. (I think one of the main critiques of a Salon reviewer was that she was the most likeable character in the movie - a problem when she's supposed to be the psycho-bitch stalker-ex-girlfriend.)
The long and short of it is: if you haven't seen Abre los ojos, do it! It's an awesome, mind-bending movie.
Saturday, November 16, 2002
Friday, November 15, 2002
"All Idealists (NFs) share the following core characteristics:
Idealists are enthusiastic, they trust their intuition, yearn for romance, seek their true self, prize meaningful relationships, and dream of attaining wisdom.
Idealists pride themselves on being loving, kindhearted, and authentic.
Idealists tend to be giving, trusting, spiritual, and they are focused on personal journeys and human potentials.
Idealists make intense mates, nurturing parents, and inspirational leaders.
Idealists, as a temperament, are passionately concerned with personal growth and development. Idealists strive to discover who they are and how they can become their best possible self--always this quest for self-knowledge and self-improvement drives their imagination. And they want to help others make the journey. Idealists are naturally drawn to working with people, and whether in education or counseling, in social services or personnel work, in journalism or the ministry, they are gifted at helping others find their way in life, often inspiring them to grow as individuals and to fulfill their potentials.
Idealists are rare, making up no more than 8 to 10 percent of the population. But their ability to inspire people with their enthusiasm and their idealism has given them influence far beyond their numbers."
I went to the p2p and web-based services conference in Nov. 2001 and had a grand ol' time, though I did feel a bit like a fishie out of my bowl. Try being the only one at a computer industry conference wearing a name badge that says, "Department of English." Of course, I got kick-ass funding to go to the 2001 conference, and I somehow don't see the same happening here. Mayhaps I could get a paper accepted, but somehow I doubt it, I doubt it. At least that would cover the registration costs, but there's always the airfare . . . blargh! How nice would it be to spend several April days in Santa Clara, though?
Thursday, November 14, 2002
I'm off to (not) be late for class, then to work on Technical Communication Quarterly layout/editing for a while.
And I might, or might not, who knows, write more about my adventures through the weird world of health care, family health history, and insurance snafus later on. But at the moment, I'm inclined to keep that stuff off my blog, mainly because it's not light-hearted, jovial information. *sigh* I need this semester to be over. I've got a winter break with two warm-eather vacation trips scheduled. I need it now, not in a month or so! Yeah, warm weather, vacation, and hugs would be good right about now.
Anyway, the nurse doing the physical yesterday was taking my family history, and after hearing about all of the cancer, mental problems, etc. she advised me to take advantage of genetic counseling. "Seek couseling, my child." Wasn't quite that bad, but that was kind of how I feel. Of course, in some perverse way I found the whole thing funny, because doctors and healt care practitioners are generally pretty blase about things in general, and I've managed to raise a few eyebrows with my family history. Colorful as a patchwork quilt, is my family. Of course, as I get toward the age where my body will start breaking down and just not stop, and as I get to the age where having kids is a serious thought, this gets less amusing.
Cats are making a mess. I'll write later!
Wednesday, November 13, 2002
Tuesday, November 12, 2002
Anyway, further impetus to fix the blog, upgrade the blog, overhaul the template of the blog, and otherwise find ways to spend more time on the blog than on any other single element of my life (except sleep, of which I am very, very fond). Really, I don't waste that much time on it, but blogging is such a good procrastination tool!
From Lilith Notes:
*******************************************************
Fun (not stupid) police tricks
Definitely one of those jobs where you need to (somehow) retain your sense of humour.
* "So, you don't know how fast you were going. I guess that means I can write anything I want on the ticket, huh?"
* "Warning! You want a warning? O.K., I'm warning you not to do that again or I'll give you another ticket."
* "Yeah, we have a quota. Two more tickets and my wife gets a toaster oven."
* "Life's tough, it's tougher if you're stupid."
* "The answer to this last question will determine whether you are drunk or not. Was Mickey Mouse a cat or dog?"
*******************************************************
Reminds me of my dad and Eric's dad. I thinnk growing up as the child of law enforcement agents tweaks a person - in both good and bad ways. We're both respectful and polite when we encounter law enforcement officials (it's dumb and counterproductive, no matter what your instincts tell you, to do otherwise), but we're also both pretty resistant to authority, and have managed to talk ourselves out of tickets/into written warnings only. Yeah, yeah, the latter is a good thing from the p.o.v. of the ticketed, but still decidedly not fair. If you're speeding, you're speeding, right? And if you're speeding and get caught you should get a ticket, right? (here's where people start getting antsy).
Call me a freak. I think people should be treated equally by agencies and institutions in this country - it's kind of what we're supposed to be about. That means if I speed, I get a ticket, and if you speed, you get a ticket. But hey, I'm also one of those rare weirdos who wouldn't mind paying higher taxes for better social services and a more equitable society. Makes for interesting political conversations with Eric, who's a confirmed libertarian (of the liberal-left type, not the right-wing type). There'a a bit too much of the blinder-wearing-individualist in the libertarian philosophy for me to sign on with them.
By the way, even though I found out about Tudor Rose because they sent bulk email to everyone in the Deaprtment of English at Penn State, and I usually hate email ads and solicitations, they're actually a really great place to find literary criticism and theory (and related topics). It's worth the visit.
Monday, November 11, 2002
Now I have to go help Eric move furniture around in the living room - we're getting a couch tonight! Yay! Free comfy couch! Grad students benefit when faculty get new furniture.
Between the free couch, the free (with linkback) images, the blogfrocks, the Tag Board interactions I had today, and the (slightly less recent) interactions with Levenger Customer Service - they refunded my priority shipping charges because of a, well, miscommunication - I'm really liking people right now. :)
Sunday, November 10, 2002
Technology and privacy
Many people these days are really concerned with privacy issues and networked technologies. Rightly so, in my opinion. I really would like to keep my personal information from being readily available to marketing folks without my knowledge. It also pisses me off that people sell my personal information without my knowledge/consent. Money's not a terribly big issue, because if I had the choice of allowing someone to sell (and thereby profit commercially from) my personal information or opting out, I'd opt out. Additionally, for personal reasons, I like to keep a really, really low online profile. Hence the habit of searching for myself online on a semi-frequent basis. How convenient is it that I married a guy with the last name of Johnson? Try it - search Google for Laurie Johnson. On the ninety-third and final page of the search (with duplicate/similar pages omitted) Google reports: "Results 921 - 928 of about 308,000. Search took 1.22 seconds." Let me know if you find me. It's possible - I have found myself out there, but it's not easy: not only are there a lot of other Laurie Johnsons out there in the world, but a lot of them have done cooler things than I have (like composed the score for Dr. Strangelove and the theme for The Avengers) and hence turn up higher in the Google rankings. But I'm getting off track, here, as I so often do. (There are some people out there groaning and leaining their foreheads on their hands and saying, "oh no! Here comes a Laurie Story . . .").
My point was that, for as much as a lot of people are concerned with privacy online, what about privacy IRL? I have been listening to my neighbors make noises all day long. Next door neighbor has been watching TV - he was laughing hysterically at something not too long ago. There's a little kid downstairs, and everyone in that downstairs apartment is home because it's Sunday - need I say more? If I sit at the table in my kitchen, I can hear my upstairs neighbors talking on the phone. My downstaris neighbor actually told me that she liked us better than the people who lived in our apartment before we did, because all the previous tenants did was talk on the phone loudly, and it bothered her. Where's the privacy in any of that???? I haven't lived in a place where I couldn't hear what was going on in an adjascent residence since, well, I guess since I moved out of my mom and stepdad's house when I was in ninth grade. My dad has a, well, it's not really a duplex, but something like that. He built it in the 80's. It's a pretty nice place, but even there, we could always hear what was going on in the rented part of the house and the tenants, I'm sure, could hear what went on on our side (mostly me being an obnoxious teenager).
I was 14 when I moved from mom and stepdad's abode to my father's house. I'm 26 now. That's twelve years of other people, many of whom I didn't know well, or at all, overhearing details of my life. I'm not paranoid, and I know that my existence is pretty tame (I'm a graduate student now, and I have always been a boookwormy geek, so I'm sure if anyone set out to eavesdrop on me they'd fall asleep from sheer boredom), but still - everyone gets all up in arms about what someone can find out online - and then people log off and have screaming matches with parents/children/spouses, engage in high-volume intimate activities, tell their darkest secrets to their friends on the phone while close to a heating vent, or whatever. Stangers online shouldn't know the mundane details of my life - my shopping habits and so on - but I don't really think that strangers or neighbors who don't fit into the "good and trusted friend" category should necessarily know the more personal details of my life (or anyone else's - I really don't want to hear other people's arguments or phone conversations, you know?).
Yeah, yeah, it's not exactly the same thing, and unless a person is doing something really sketchy or really cool, it's unlikely his/her neighbor is going to turn around and sell info to anyone, but still. Privacy and networked technologies is a hot topic - privacy and building technologies? Not so much, unless you're a contractor, maybe, or a consultant specializing in privacy and built structures.
[/ramble]
I lied. It was totally a Laurie Story. Sorry, can't help it.
Saturday, November 09, 2002
I love it when people out there on the net restore my faith in humanity - instead of convincing me that most people online are demeted, rude perverts, which also occastionally happens (women out there - you all know what I'm talking about).
1. Did you vote in your last elections? Yep. I live in Minnesota and am not a big fan of Republicans - I had to vote. Not voting was just not an option.
2. Do you know who your elected representatives are? Um, some of them. I'm not as familiar with state and local elected officials. I just moved here in August!
3. Have you ever contacted an elected representative? If so, what was it about? Yep. Lots of times. Between involvement with Amnesty International, working for Greenpeace, serving as an organizer and Co-chair for the GFTEO (grad student union at Penn State), and being on civil/human rights and political activism listservs (plus the forwards I get from cool friends), I've lobbied, written, called, faxed, and emailed reps in various states (where I have lived - not randomly!) about several different issues.
4. Have you ever participated in a demonstration? Uh-huh. I think I did my first deminstration in high school, in DuPont Circle. It was an Amesty demonstration related to homosexualtiy and human rights. I did a few demonstrations/actions with Greenpeace in Los Angeles (including a mock-funeral at a hardwood-related convention where Greenpeacers, clad in black, processed solemnly with an empty casket - it was pretty cool and generated some media coverage). I went to many, but not all, of the GFTEO rallies, and also went to demonstrations for peace and toerance in the wake of September 11.
5. Have you ever volunteered in an election? What was the result? This is something I actually haven't done, but I might in the future. The results of this week's election really opened my eyes. Time to get politically active again.
My problem with this kind of involvement in general is that I think activism is very important, but I am not entirely comfortable with the visibility and responsibility that often comes with committed activism. I frequently find myself in leadership positions by default, and these are kind of at odds with my personality.
So, those are the long-winded answers to my first-ever Friday Five.
Friday, November 08, 2002
there's my pathetic post for the day. I doubt there'll be more until tomorrow : |
Thursday, November 07, 2002
Wednesday, November 06, 2002
On a lighter note:
Tuesday, November 05, 2002
So, in my Intercultural communications class, we have been reading this collection that deals with, well, technology and culture. One of the things we discussed tonight was the rate at which research in this area becomes obsolete: anything published before 1994, pre-web, is pretty much useless for looking at current issues in technology, culture, and communication. We also discussed the propensity to dismiss anything more than a few years old. A few years, in the lifespan of the Internet, is an eternity. On the other hand, researchers in technocultural areas occasionally challenge the theoretical tendencies of the area, and urge more quantitative, substantial studies of current technologies, arguing that we can’t make changes and improve upon what we have until we understand what’s working, what’s not, and why.
The first camp really seems to fit the “bigger, better, faster, now” model, while the second argues for “harder, deeper, more.”
Sex and the Internet. Two different research agendas, methodologies. Just a thought.
Now all I have to do is sit on my hands and wait for the returns to come in, and keep my fingers crossed. Hard to do while sitting on hands, I know!
Onward - to exercise, to vote, to class, and then to more class! Yippee!!
All right, Rafi, I hope you're happy! Not only am I going to nag people in person, but on my blog, too. And, yes, I will vote. After finishing up my prep for classes this afternoon and working out, but before heading to campus. I promise!!!
But (in keeping with the theme of this blog, which I often either streeeetch a bit or neglect entirely in favor of more rambling, personal posts) don't expect fast returns and results in this election! pz at Kairosnews pointed out this NYTimes article: New Computer May Delay Reports on Voting Results.
This new computer system is supposed to help with the analysis of polls and election returns, but last-minute problems coupled with the uncertainty of a first-time run, make it unclear how helpful the new computer system will be.
It appears that after the "Election 2000" debacle, everyone is being a lot more cautious: news agencies won't call close races, and I heard on a too-fuzzy-to-see network broadcast this morning that, on some networks, there will be no exit-polling reportage.
Hey, isn't technology supposed to increase speed and accuracy? :) Guess we will just have to be patient on this one. Personally, I prefer to wait a bit longer for results of ballot counts than to be satisficed with projections.
Friday, November 01, 2002
I'm off to get ready for Cognitive Science. Damned if I won't be on time to this class today! :)