doing something different with language
One of the striking things that I learned about Americans when I began doctoral studies in the field of Communication is that there is a positive identity function to talking about the weather. If you’ve got to interact with a stranger one thing we all experience is the weather. Rather than being superficial, talking about the weather … Read more...
Dutch has two words for foreigner. It seems that one is a generic label (buitenlander or “alien”) and the other (vreemdelingen) emphasizes – just slightly? – the strangeness of someone from another land. If I ever develop a respectable degree of fluency, I will begin to listen for the usage … Read more...
Quoting from a Reuters article by Eric Auchard about Google CEO, Eric Schmidt, on “good, evil and monopoly fears“:
… Read more...When he first joined Google as CEO seven years ago, Schmidt acknowledged thinking the “Don’t be evil” phrase was a “joke” being played on him by founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin.
Schmidt recalled sitting in Google’s offices later
Mike reached up and patted this sign to remind me to slow down. 🙂 I’d asked the class why I’d gone off on a particular tangent….it related, but I had to pause for a moment, back up, where did I begin? How did I arrive where I was? What was the point?!
I came across the sign near the hallway … Read more...
from Earthseed (Parable of the Sower):
God is Power —
Infinite,
Irresistible,
Inexorable,
Indifferent.
And yet, God is Pliable —
Trickster,
Teacher,
Chaos,
Clay.
God exists to be shaped.
God is Change.
I met David in the department computer lab yesterday. “So, you don’t believe in authenticity, do you?”
Nice to meet you, too! 🙂
Of course I do. … Read more...
… Read more...“Obama received Secret Service protection early in the campaign after unspecified threats. It is not a subject his wife likes to talk about. “She doesn’t allow herself to go there,” says Valerie Jarrett, Michelle Obama’s close friend, who says Michelle has not raised the subject with her. “It would paralyze her to think like that.” Michelle’s brother, Craig Robinson, who
I’ve got to serious about mapping conferences for the next year or two. Haven’t known about this one until now, am intrigued:
INGRoup, the Interdisciplinary Network for Group Research, will hold its second (?) conference July 12-14 in Lansing (oy). Proposals due January 15. See CFP.… Read more...
I asked my students today about the relationship(s) among appearance, identity, and authority – specifically mine. It’s part of the ongoing pedagogy project I’ve been working on with Leda about the visibility/invisibility of our actual bodies in the classroom. By the end of the discussion several students were telling me how I should have taught (!) the class all along: … Read more...
I came out indirectly to my students in COM260, Public Speaking. I told them of the time I questioned Geraldine Ferraro, at the National Women’s Music Festival, about how she could address an audience of 3000 lesbians without using the word, “lesbian”. I don’t remember exactly what I said, I’m pretty sure it was implicit – I was … Read more...
Funny – googled myself (as if I have nothing better to do this morning), and found this poem by another “Stephanie Kent”. Reinforces the importance of that middle “Jo”!
there’s also an alias making loads of bucks (listed by Forbes). envy?
Here’s one I hadn’t come across before, about the disableism workshop Shemaya and I did at Mt Holyoke a … Read more...