Kinsey, the Instititue and the movie

Tonight the Bartholomew Country Chapter of the Indiana University Alumni Club and the IUPUC Alumni Club held a gathering at Yes Cinema for a screening of Kinsey (2004). Prior to showing the film, Jennifer Bass, Head of Information Services at The Kinsey Institute spoke on the history of the institute and issues surrounding the film.

I am a huge fan of The Kinsey Institute. First because they do necessary research. Secondly because they are a class act. This is not Larry Flint on a college campus. This organization does professional research into human behavior. Their research is well thought out and executed with the utmost concern for their subjects. I take special notice of the IRB applications we receive from their researchers because I know I will be reading a proposal that displays research excellence.

The movie was enjoyable. I had been told that several points had been exagerated to increase cinematic tension...it is after all a work of fiction. Likewise I knew that the film was shot in New Jersey, to control location costs, through it would have been nice to have seen it shot in Bloomington.

Two comments on casting brilliance: First, Benjamin Walker as the 19 year old Kinsey looks so much like Neeson that you can picture one aging into the other, and Oliver Platt as Herman Wells...well I will never be able to watch Platt again without seeing Dr. Wells in front of me.

All in all it was an enjoyable evening

Posted by prolurkr at 11:57 PM | TrackBack

Lessons learned from AoIR abstract reviewing

At this point in my learning I volunteer to review for conferences both as community service and to learn more about the process. Here are my take-always from this round of reviewing, which is quite different from doing the full paper reviews I have written previously.

As an abstract writer make sure you:

• Focus on the why, how, and who cares - make sure that those points are clearly and unambiguously stated.
• Assume that your readership knows a touch about the subject but not a significant amount - no one knows as much about the subject as you do when you sit down to write. Respect that and help your reader understand what you have written. (I've been guilty of this in the past, on occasion.)
• Use every word they allow you to submit - maximize the space, never under sell. (I've been guilty of this one too.)
• Use at least a couple of citations - it makes it clear that you know what you are talking about. Also it's simply more professional and positions your work in the flow of previous research. Nothing worse then reading something that says "No one else has thought about this" when the reader knows there are published works - journals and online - that address the same issue.
• Finally if you are submitting in a language which is not your native tongue and in which you are not a near expert writer, have someone else who is an expert read your work and comment. Then take their advise - I've seen works, both full length and abstract, that were scored lower then they likely deserved because the ideas were not communicated clearly and understandably to the English speaking audience. Sadly this is so easy to correct before the work is submitted.

As a reviewer I have learned these things about myself:

• I write long and detailed reviews on full papers but have a tough time getting more then a sentence or two for an abstract. I think this is because basically abstract reviewing is a toggle-switch system with little room for recommendations. I need to work on this writing form so that I am more comfortable that I am giving usable information to the authors. I also want to emulate the reviews I have received that made me feel good about myself and my work, not to become so concise that I sound totally negative.
• I have a clear, and possibly appropriate, bias against work where the authors have not done a good literature review prior to submission. Many of the conferences I attended last year were marred in my memory by presentations where the authors claimed to be the first to look at something when I was aware of a body of work around the subject. I try to give authors space since not all have access to the same level of library resources I have at IU. But if the work is online and is discussed in blogs and webpages, you should know about it before you write.
• Tying into the previous comment I also want to see literature reviewed beyond the author's academic discipline. Sometimes this and the previous comment are closely linked in that if one only searches within ones discipline then one may falsely believe that they are the only person researching a topic.
• Finally I have found that I enjoy reviewing. It gives me a taste of what others are doing and helps me consider new roads for my own research. Also it appeals to my teaching skills, allowing me give a bit of what I know to someone else.

Posted by prolurkr at 11:35 AM | TrackBack

Blog Redesign

I have contracted with Blog Moxie to upgrade and redesign the blog for me, as well as transfer my webpage, Lois Ann Scheidt.com to a new host and move it to blogging software. The first phase should start in about six weeks, I'm sitting as patiently as I can in que for the designers services. I'll let you know before we go live. Personally I can't wait I'm pretty bored with the plain-vanilla-blog look...low maintenance but also low style - training wheels.

You can check out the girls, yes it's an all female design company, portfolio. Julie, my designer, is an FIT and Farmingdale grad. I was impressed before finding out her credentials, now I'm in awe...FIT is cool.

p.s. My previous attempt to hire someone to do the upgrade failed when he bailed on me...he plead to much class work.

Posted by prolurkr at 09:13 AM | TrackBack

A day that simply won't go right *sigh*

After two days of knock-your-socks-off coolness, I got a day that simply refuses to go right. My morning bits - email, RSS reading, blog posting, etc. - took far to long so I didn't get started on my project for the day before I left the house. Of course I also left the house later then I planned.

Once I got to the Indy campus it took forever to get the VPN to recognize my laptops existence on the network. Then I found that some strange malady had effected the campus email system so I could log-on but it showed no email, none in the main screen none in the folders. *ok deep breathes don't panic*

Then after multiple log-ins and still finding no email I tried to log-in and was denied access. Which in a perverse way is a good thing. It means they have everyone locked out and are probably working on the problem. Good read cause now I'm in the system and I have email...lots of email.

I needed in the email system so I could pull up the information for reviewing Association of Internet Researchers Conference Abstracts. Of course I tried finding the links I needed on the official site but they were not speaking to me. I believe they have to be there but I sure couldn't lay my cursor on them. Then after the email was back up and I had the link, my log-in for the AoIR site will not work. So now I am waiting for a reply to tell me what log-in and password to use to access the system. I had hoped to knock out all the reviews before class this evening, having budgeted about 3.5 hours for the work. But right now I have wasted an about two hours trying to get everything to work. *sigh* Well at least the sun is out and shining in through the windows of the IT Building.

Posted by prolurkr at 03:54 PM | TrackBack

School bans blogs as not "not an educational use of computers"

Found via Weblog-ed and The Blog Herald, a Vermont High School's strange idea of blocking students from blogging spaces because they are "not an educational use of computers."

Officials at Proctor Jr.-Sr. High School have banned access from school computers to an Internet site that students have been using to post to weblogs, or blogs.

Principal Chris Sousa said the decision to block the site from school was made because blogging is not an educational use of school computers.

But he's also urging parents to keep tabs on their children's blogging, with a particularly close eye to what personal information the student may be posting on sites like Myspace.com.

"It's not so much a school concern as it is an issue for students and parents," he said. "This site particularly was getting a lot of hits. It's a blog site but they also post pictures and biographical information and then send each other notes."

He added, "My concern is less as a principal and more as a dad."

Sousa said he found the prospect of students putting information on the Internet, potentially available to predators, was a serious concern.

There is so much wrong with this idea that it's hard to know where to start. First blogging can be very educational, witness the number of educators, from grade school on up, who are using them as tools in their classrooms. Second, do you really want the principle making decisions for all children based on his decisions for his own kids? I remember my principles and their relationships with their own children...and would not hold that up as a model for anyone. Third, what concerns can't be at least partially alleviated through education...use this as a teaching moment.

I understand schools have the right and responsibility monitor the students in their care as well as utilizing their equipment and resources to the students best advantage. But come on this is writing we are talking about, and reading. Two skills teachers have bemoaned their students decline in utilizing their abilities to at any level, let alone utilization to the fullest. Is the glass half empty or half full?

Posted by prolurkr at 10:06 AM | TrackBack

An embarrassment of riches

The last couple of days have been pretty cool in my little corner of the blogosphere. On the 28th Professional-Lurker was mentioned in a post at the ever popular Moleskinerie blog. So I've had a couple of days of watching the blog stats jump as new people check out the site. If that includes you "Welcome." It's always fun to watch the stats roll up.

The yesterday I wrote a post about research sites and received a reply offering access to research data. Massively cool and amazing since the turnaround time between the post and the email is only 3.5 hours. They must be using some pretty cool aggregation and search software to have found this one little post out of the multitude of posts that mentioned them in the last few days.

Note to self: Never look a gift horse in the mouth...or maybe I should since my great aunt, the genealogist in the family, swore that we were descended from the guy who opened the gates at Troy. But that is another story.

Suffices to say that I am both pleased and flattered to have the company contact me with an offer of access. I am discussing possible research ideas with BROG members so we can take them up on their kind offer.

So as I said in the title it has been an embarrassment of riches the last few days. I wonderful happening to coincide with warm weather here. I completely plan on working outside today on campus in Indy. So if you see a redhead with a hat working on a computer in the sun...wave hello.

Posted by prolurkr at 09:40 AM | TrackBack

Intelliseek BlogPulse 2.0, new look for the site with new features

I've never been one who cared much about all the blog topic trackers that run across the blogosphere. Reasons: 1) I've never been clear on how they set-up their definition of what they track, i.e. the old - blog vs. journal vs. they are all blogs - debate; 2) I do cross-sectional research so I'm more interested in what my dataset is telling me then I am what a general tracker is telling me; 3) I don't really write a filter blog - though I do a lot of filtering within the blog - so "what's hot" doesn't matter to me; and 4) I've never been one to follow the pack so why start now.

Well this morning at The Blog Herald the post Intelliseek's BlogPulse 2.0 launched, over 9.3 million blogs tracked, caught my eye. You see the 9.4 million (current number) tracked by Intelliseek BlogPulse is more then the 9.2 million (current number) tracked by PubSub, though it is a modest increase. I've been looking at PubSub as a source for research corpi, so if BlogPulse is tracking more blogs it is worth a look to see if there is a way to pull usable corpi out of its system.

After playing around with the site I think it is potentially useful, especially with topic tracking. I can see myself using it in a research project to check the popularity of topics I find in my corpi against the blogosphere as a whole. But the site will not be helpful in setting up research corpi, they allow no significant access to individual blogs, BlogPulse is primary an analysis engine.  Think I'll stick to PubSub for now, where I can do the analysis myself.

Posted by prolurkr at 09:13 AM | TrackBack

The Private, the Public, and the Published: Reconciling Private Lives and Public Rhetoric

I have a new book, interlibrary load, that looks like it will be very helpful to future work though not really for quals. Couture, Barbara & Kent, Thomas (Eds) (2004). The Private, the Public, and the Published: Reconciling Private Lives and Public Rhetoric. Logan, UT: Utah State University Press.

Check out used copies of The Private, the Public, and the Published: reconciling Private Lives and Public Rhetoric.

Utah State University Press says:

At the 2003 "Rock the Vote" debate, one of the questions posed by a student to the eight Democratic candidates for the presidential nomination was "have you ever used marijuana?" Amazingly, all but one of the candidates voluntarily answered the question. Add to this example the multiple ways in which we now see public intrusion into private lives (security cameras, electronic access to personal data, scanning and "wanding" at the airport) or private self-exposure in public forums (cell phones, web cams, confessional talk shows, voyeuristic "reality" TV). That matters so private could be treated as legitimate - in some cases even vital - for public discourse indicates how intertwined the realms of private and public have become in our era. Reverse examples exist as well. Around the world, public authorities look the other way while individual rights are abused - calling it a private matter - or officials appeal to sectarian morés to justify discrimination in public policies.

The authors of The Private, the Public, and the Published feel that scholarship needs to explore and understand this phenomenon, and needs to address it in the college classroom. There are consequences of conflating public and private, they argue - consequences that have implications especially for what is known as the public good. The changing distinctions between "private" and "public," and the various practices of private and public expression, are explored in these essays with an eye toward what they teach us about those consequences and implications.

Ultimately, the authors recommend a humane and ethical reconciling of the two realms in the tradition of rhetoric since Aristotle. This means, they argue, that scholars must work to create the conditions in public - in classrooms, meeting rooms, Congress, international forums - that respect and defend the ethical treatment of private lives.

Posted by prolurkr at 08:04 PM | TrackBack

Would invited conversations increase connection between blogs?

how to save the world has an interesting post that references the author's exchange of ideas with Jeremy Heigh, of the sift everything experiment, in the post A Proposal to Make Blogs More Conversational.

The idea is to increase discussion between some selected blogs by inviting bloggers to comment on a set topic. The idea has some merit as unlimited conversation has been severely limited under current spam onslaughts and through the limitations on tracking pings, trackbacks, etc to facilitated threading in conversations. The idea, as presented below, also uses a variety of technologies to maximize the interaction between the invited participants.

Here's a first cut at how I would envision it working:

1. The host would come up with either (a) a question (one better suited to small-group exploration than 'putting to the crowd'), or (b) a vision to be achieved. Example: How could we overcome the huge disconnect that exists today between the people who have great ideas and the people who have the money and other resources to realize those ideas? The host would write a 1-3 paragraph context-setting explanation of the question or vision.

2. The host would research who might be the best 3-10 people to address this question or vision. These invited participants would each think independently about the question or vision and each produce an Initial Thoughts document (200-500 words) which the host would publish on the host blog. Then, at and for a prescribed time, there would be a 'live' conversation via Skype, moderated by the host, between the selected participants.

3. The Initial Thoughts and the edited Conversation would then be podcast and the mp3 of the podcast would be posted on the host blog. The conversation would be transcribed and posted to the host blog. The participants would post either a link to the transcript and podcast, or, if they wanted, they could post the entire transcript and/or podcast on their own site, with a request that all comments be posted to the host blog version (so that all the comments are in one place).

4. The facility for additional individual posts (participants would get short-term author access on the host blog), and additional Skype conversations as agreed upon by the participants (also transcribed) would be made available on the host blog for a set period (3 days, or a week perhaps).

5. An archive of all conversations, posts and comments could be produced and sent to movers and shakers who might be inclined to act on the ideas that emerged, for those movers and shakers who do not normally go online.

And here are the inevitable questions:

* If you were asked to participate in one of these, would you, and why -- WIIFY?

* Is the blog format robust enough to carry the weight of one of these Conversations?

* Do you see this as a way to get more buzz for important ideas, or is it just a big echo chamber replacing a lot of smaller ones?

* Would you spend the time listening or reading to these Conversations (if you liked or knew the participants)?

* Is there some commercial opportunity here, or is this just a good way to get bloggers working together, or is it not even that?

* Is the model (participation by invitation) too elitist? Would self-subscription on a first-come basis be better? What's the 'right' number of participants?

What are your thoughts on this idea to link a selected set of bloggers together in discussion?

Note: The graphic is part of my comment on the over all structure of the idea and the possibility for a single set of voices to utilize the available technologies, none of which are cheap, to maximize their views without the inclusion of difference. It will take conscience management to make sure that multiple voices are allowed to flourish in an "invitation only" environment.

Posted by prolurkr at 06:18 PM | TrackBack

New cateogry - Ethics

I've been doing a lot of thinking about ethics lately: research ethics, adminsitrative ethics, religious ethics, the ethics of humanness...research ethics is one of my stated research interests. As such I have decided to add a new category to the blog to allow me to gather some of my thoughts on the subject into one pocket. So look for the new category Ethics...thoughts on the ethics of research and life in the the bar. Entries will be coming shortly.

Posted by prolurkr at 12:58 PM | TrackBack

IUB - Computer Science and Informatics agree to merge

The following press announcement was released this morning to IUPUI Faculty, though word on the street has had the merger for months. This change does not impact the Indianapolis campus.

NEWS RELEASE -- Administrators, faculty and staff in Indiana University Bloomington's College of Arts and Sciences, the IUB Department of Computer Science and the IU School of Informatics have agreed to move computer science from the College to the School of Informatics.

In order to proceed, the merger must receive the approval of IU Bloomington Chancellor Kenneth R.R. Gros Louis, which could happen early next week. If the chancellor gives the plan his assent, the merger should be complete before fall semester 2005.  The move will not affect faculty and staff salaries or student degree programs. Course offerings in informatics and computer science will remain unaltered. The computer science bachelor of arts degree, a liberal arts degree, will continue to be awarded by the College of Arts and Sciences. Other computer science degrees will be awarded by the School of Informatics.

Administrative offices for the newly expanded informatics school will continue to be located in the Informatics Building at 901 E. 10th St. on the Bloomington campus. Computer science faculty and staff will remain in Lindley Hall while informatics faculty will remain in the Informatics Building and Eigenmann Hall.

More than a dozen faculty already have joint appointments in computer science and informatics or are full-time faculty in one unit with formal affiliations in the other. For more information about how the merger will impact faculty, staff and students, please see http://www.informatics.indiana.edu/news/csfaq.asp

Since the IUB Department of Computer Science was founded in 1969 (as part of the College of Arts and Sciences), it has grown to employ 31 faculty. The College of Arts and Sciences is the largest of IU's schools, with over 10,000 undergraduate and graduate students enrolled in 176 degree programs. The IU School of Informatics, the nation's first such school, offers courses in Bloomington, Indianapolis and South Bend to more than 1,400 undergraduate and graduate students. In Bloomington, IU Informatics has 40 faculty, 77 graduate students and 465 undergraduate students.

The IU School of Informatics has developed three areas of focus since its founding in 1999. Human-centered informatics examines how people interact with personal computers, Web sites, and handheld digital devices. Domain-centered informatics aids disciplines such as medicine, security, chemistry and even music that can benefit from information technology. Informatics' third area of focus is oriented toward software and hardware -- it is the area expected to be most strengthened by the addition of computer science. The Indiana Committee for Higher Education recently approved IU's request to begin administering an informatics Ph.D. degree program on the university's Bloomington and Indianapolis campuses.

Posted by prolurkr at 10:14 AM | TrackBack

Update on quals work

After reading today I have only twenty-five more blog articles to read and from which to take notes left on my list. I know that sounds like a lot to some of you but it's manageable. Probably another two days work at the outside, assuming nothing unexpected happens in the rest of my life. So I should be writing again by the middle of the week.

Twenty-five more articles and I can restart on the guts of the paper, the guts or the heart which ever works. Then a rough draft off to my committee chair for comment. With her comments in hand then a revision to meet her requirements will be completed. Next the new draft goes off to my full committee for comments. More revisions. Then we cycle through the draft to committee for comment and revision cycle one more time before the completed paper is submitted.

Onward and upward. It's time to get this puppy done and outta here.

Posted by prolurkr at 08:07 PM | TrackBack

Off-site clicks - what I have learned

I now have MyBlogLog data from March 3-24, 2005 (with most of 25^th added), though five days of it show zero in all categories - March 3 & 4, and March 8-10. I hate missing data, not sure why it didn't record for all those days.

Oh well missing data aside, I have learned some very interesting things watching this log. For the period there were 170 clicks to off-site URLs. 48.2% of the clicks were to pages listed on the sidebar (n=82). Of those, 20 were to my webpage http://www.loisscheidt.com for 24.4% of the sidebar clicks. An additional 16 clicks, the second highest number, were placed to Bridging the Gap: A Genre Analysis of Weblogs, which is linked multiple places in the sidebar.

47.1% of the clicks are to URLs that appeared in post entries (n=80). The top two most clicked URLs are Preople Rank with nine and Levenger with six. Finally, 4.7% of the clicks were to URLs that appeared in both entries and the sidebar so the actual origin is impossible to define (n=8).

Additionally 28.8% of the clicks were to URLs associated with the blogger - my webpage, papers I have written, my CiteULike list, and other websites to which I contribute.

It appears that a significant number of the clicks lead the reader to pages that give them more data about the author rather then to pages that give them more information about the topics. Now to be fair this could be a unique finding since it is getting late in the semester and students are looking for sources to use in their class papers. Or it may simply be a function of writing an academic weblog, in that readers want to verify the credentials and authenticity of the writer. *w* More research is needed.

For the clicks not associated with me or my work, I have been surprised to see how few of the readers actually click through for more information on the day the link is posted. For example looking at March 23 statistics for the individual date, on that day there were nine click throughs but only one of them was to a link posted that day, Guardian Unlimited. Interestingly the single click through used that day was to the general site not to the specific article I cited and discussed in the post. The remaining eight clicks were mostly to links listed in the sidebar (n=6). The remaining two click throughs were to links that appear in earlier posts on the page, prior to March 23, and on the sidebar as well.

So much for a little Friday night content analysis with a touch of ethnography thrown in for spice. I will have to see what stories the numbers tell when I have a quarters worth of data. Assuming I can wait that long for the analysis. LOL

Posted by prolurkr at 09:46 PM | TrackBack

Personal information theft is rising

Two pieces of different but complementary information hit my radar this week:

Study: 9.3 million ID theft victims last year: Consumers who eye accounts online are safer, authors say

Identity theft continues to afflict millions of U.S. consumers, according to a new study released Wednesday. About 9.3 million people were victims of the crime last year, the study says, echoing a study last year by the Federal Trade Commission that indicated 10.1 million consumers had been hit in 2003. In all, one in every 23 consumers were victims last year.>

But the study, which was commissioned by the financial industry, came up with a surprising finding, according to its authors. Contrary to popular wisdom, using the Internet may be a consumer's best fraud-fighting tool. In fact, the study's authors say, the Internet has gotten a bad rap.>

< snip >

The study also suggests personal data is usually stolen in offline ways - such as dumpster diving - rather than over the Internet. Only 12 percent of the victims in the survey believed their information was stolen electronically. Stolen wallets, checkbooks, and mail remain the chief nemesis, Van Dyke said - not brilliant computer hackers who break into online databases of personal information. Signing up for services like electronic banking will reduce the amount of personal mail sent home, reducing consumer risk, Van Dyke said.

I read elsewhere this week, wish I remembered where, that an estimated 1.8 million Americans have fallen for phishing attacks and given up personal information.

Attacks on Web Applications Up, Symantec Says in 'Threat Report'

Symantec unveiled its bi-annual "Internet Security Threat Report" this week, and as you might expect, the state of security on the Web weaken during the second-half of 2004. Phishing attacks, attacks against corporate Web applications, and the prevalence of Windows-based viruses and worms grew considerably from July 2004, but somewhat surprisingly, more vulnerabilities were reported for the Mozilla Web browsers than Microsoft's Internet Explorer, widely regarded the bane of online security.

The problem of phishing, or tricking people into entering their confidential information into fraudulent Web page cleverly designed to look like that of their trusted service provider, has been well documented over the past year or so, and Symantec's accounting of the scope of the problem reflects, more or less, what you might expect. The security provider's Brightmail unit reported a 366 percent increase in the number of phishing attempts, from 9 million per week in July 2004 to 33 million by December 2004. This problem will continue to get worse before it gets better.

Scary stuff.

Posted by prolurkr at 07:39 PM | TrackBack

The revival of the Hawaiian langauge

I think Hawaiian is one of the most beautiful languages to hear. The soft rolling melody of the spoken words is soothing. Of course, I bought a book on my last trip to the islands that should help me learn some of the language.  I mentioned the book in my previous post North Kohala and Waimea. So today's MSNBC story caught my eye, 'E heluhelu kakou' strikes chord with students: Hawaiians language makes a comeback

A 1983 survey estimated that only 1,500 people remained in Hawaii who could speak it, most of them elderly.

Today there are probably 6,000 to 8,000 Hawaiian language speakers throughout the state, most of them under 30, said Kalena Silva, professor of Hawaiian studies at the University of Hawaii-Hilo.

Everyone knows a little bit of Hawaiian, even visiting mainlanders. "Aloha" has become an almost universally recognized greeting and expression of love. "Mahalo" often subs for "thank you."

But there's less understanding of the state motto - "Ua mau ke ea o ka aina i ka pono" (the life of the land is preserved in righteousness) - or the name of the state fish - humuhumunukunukuapua'a.

"Before, people would hear me speaking Hawaiian to someone and ask what language I was speaking," said Leilani Basham, coordinator of the Hawaiian language program at the University of Hawaii's flagship Manoa campus. "I don't get that anymore."

Kamehameha Schools Distance Learning has online lessons to teach you to speak Hawaiian. I'm going to be checking them out to use with the book I bought on my last trip. I wonder if someone teaches two week workshops, that would be fun. It a beautiful language that I want to learn simply because I love the way it sounds. No better reason is required. *S*

Posted by prolurkr at 01:48 PM | TrackBack

A fresh look at the "Women's Writing" debate

I love when I get to post something that was published tomorrow. *S* From the March 24, 2005 edition of the Guardian Unlimited, more on the idea of writers and gender.

Belittled women
The editors of a prestigious collection of new writing say most of the submissions from women were dull, 'disappointingly domestic' and 'depressed as hell'. It's true, says Yvonne Roberts, women writers do lack ambition; nonsense, argues Jane Rogers - some of the best fiction is domestic. Below, A L Kennedy asks: why are we so obsessed with an author's gender?

There is no such thing as Women's Writing. Just as there is no such thing as Left-Handed Writing, Red-Headed Writing, European Writing, Northern Hemisphere Writing, or Writing from the Planet Earth. All of these categories are so large as to be meaningless. Sadly, Women's Writing is the only one of the above repeatedly used as a stick to beat women who write. Either Women's Writing is fluffy and inconsequential, full of romps and buttocks - or Women's Writing is coarse and aggressive and the kind of muck you'd expect from an off-duty stripper in a strop - or Women's Writing is obsessed with plumbing and bleeding and bonding to whale music. Effectively, Women's Writing is whatever has most annoyed any given journalist, commentator, academic, or author in the past few books by women they've read. Sweeping generalisations must be made, insults must be slung, personal abuse is welcome and two or three days of columns and op-eds can be sustained with the merry to-and-fro.

This is a good piece with multiple perspectives. Read and blog your own point of view. As for me I think my words on this topic have been said...for this week. *S*

Posted by prolurkr at 11:12 PM | TrackBack

Fixing sidebar link problems

One of the advantages I've found since I've been using MyBlogLog has been that minor problems with URLs are very noticeable so I can fix them. I've never found the error log to be that helpful since it is filled with bot requests for pages on my site that were never there to begin with. But with MyBlogLog I can see that, until I repaired the preceding link, when one clicked on Blog Research on Genre (BROG) Blog you were transported to Blogroots Blogpopuli rather then to the BROG site, all because of a single quote being used rather then a double quote.

So I apologize for any errors and promise to fix them as quickly as I can. Cross my heart.

Posted by prolurkr at 10:28 AM | TrackBack

BlogNashville

Apparently there will be a blogger conference in Nashville TN, about as close as any are likely to be to Southern Indiana, on Saturday May 7, 2005. Their website is BlogNashville, however it is not up-to-date as it says registration will be open in early March and by my calendar it is late March and they are not yet open. I will have to keep an eye on this conference as Nashville makes a nice weekend trip, at 4+ hours drive on a good interstate highway. Might even have to take the extra 2 hours and drive down to Florence AL just to see what has changed since I left in 1999.

Blogger Conference Tennessee

Blogger Conference Tennessee will be held on the Saturday of BlogNashville, the weekend of May 5-7.

Blogger Conference Tennessee will follow the "unconference" format developed by Dave Winer for BloggerCon events at Harvard and Stanford.

The selection committee for topics and discussion leaders will be taking suggestions. If you would like to suggest topics and/or speakers, please email Robert Cox at rcox-at-mediabloggers.org.

Blogger Conference Tennessee Selection Committee:

Glenn Reynolds* - Instapundit
Bob Cox - The National Debate, Media Bloggers Association
Bill Hobbs - Hobbsonline
Ed Cone - Ed Cone
Dr. Sybril Bennett - New Century Journalism Program at Belmont University

*Committee Chairman

Posted by prolurkr at 10:08 AM | TrackBack

CFP - Society for Research on Adolescence

The Society for Research on Adolescence (SRA) has released their CFP for their biannual conference to be held Thursday, March 23, through Sunday, March 26, 2006 in San Francisco, California. This is a very large conference with a wide variety of presentation topics. While their focus is not primarily on digital environments their 345 entry Keyword List, which can be found in the CFP, includes entries like body image, bullying/victimization, communication, community, emotion, friendship, gender, language, media, narrative, social identification, and technology. These are just the words that jump out at me because of my own work and some of the work of others that I know visit this space.

I hope to see as many internet research papers presented at SRA as possible. I think the attendees can benefit from hearing some of our research as we can benefit from hearing theirs as well.

Posted by prolurkr at 09:09 AM | TrackBack