Month: October 2005

Be careful with the Facebook, folks

Sorting through a bunch of old email, I came across this article that Nick Carbone posted to WPA-L Mailing List: “When students open up– a little too much” from The Boston Globe. The Facebook, of course, is an online directory/social exchange forum for college students. But to be honest, I don’t know a whole lot more than that, mainly because I’m not a college student any longer and I don’t know if it’d be a good idea for me to set up an account where I’m pretending to be a student. Though that might be kind of a fun thing to do.

Anyway, back to the point here: this article is just another example of how students need to be careful about what they say about themselves on the ‘net because what you say might get back to the wrong audience. Here are the opening paragraphs of this article:

Last school year, Brandeis University junior Emily Aronoff tapped this sentiment into a computer: ”I enjoy the festive greens.”

The reference to marijuana became part of her profile on facebook.com, the online student catalogue that allows Aronoff and tens of thousands of collegians to share photos and idiosyncratic odds and ends of their lives, intended for viewing by other students.

But others were reading as well — including ”an individual in the community,” she said, who shared the reference with her parents in Marietta, Ga. Eventually, word reached her grandmother.

”My bubbe,” she said, using the Yiddish word for grandmother, ”told me her seniors home was abuzz with the news, and I was like: ‘I hate the Facebook.’

The article also has a nice quote from a communications professor named Steve Jones: “I would put money on a political candidate — probably 20 years from now — getting in hot water on account of something posted on Facebook.” I think Jones is right, and I would extend this to the kinds of things that students put up on web sites, too. In one of my classes the other day, a student asked if he could put anything he wanted on the web site he (and all the other students) are creating for the class. I said that he could, but I also pointed out that it could come back to haunt him later on. I think I might post a link to this article to my class blog….

If Academic Blogging is a Carnival, Where's the Cotton Candy?

I don’t have a lot of time to write about this now (I’m way behind on my grading), but I’d highly recommend the CHE article “The Blogosphere as a Carnival of Ideas” by Henry “his real name” Farrell, who is himself a member of the Crooked Timber blogging collective.

It’s a great piece. After a few opening paragraphs where I thought Farrell was going to go down the really tired pseudoanonymous blogger argument thing again, he gets into swing with an argument that I and plenty of other academic bloggers have made for a while now: “blogging isn’t a hobby; it’s an integral part of their scholarly identity” and blogging should have some place in the realm of academic publishing. Here’s a longer quote:

Why are so many academics beginning to blog? Academic blogs offer the kind of intellectual excitement and engagement that attracted many scholars to the academic life in the first place, but which often get lost in the hustle to secure positions, grants, and disciplinary recognition. Properly considered, the blogosphere represents the closest equivalent to the Republic of Letters that we have today. Academic blogs, like their 18th-century equivalent, are rife with feuds, displays of spleen, crotchets, fads, and nonsenses. As in the blogosphere more generally, there is a lot of dross. However, academic blogs also provide a carnival of ideas, a lively and exciting interchange of argument and debate that makes many scholarly conversations seem drab and desiccated in comparison. Over the next 10 years, blogs and bloglike forms of exchange are likely to transform how we think of ourselves as scholars. While blogging won’t replace academic publishing, it builds a space for serious conversation around and between the more considered articles and monographs that we write.

Right. And that’s what we’ve been saying for years now. I’m just glad that Farrell said it as well as he did and that the CHE published it. Go read it; you’ll be glad you did.

Bush getting cheeky with SC nominee

So, Bush has nominated a woman named Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court, someone whose “major” legal experience (besides being a lawyer, of course) has been to be in charge of the Texas Lottery and W.’s attorney (which is a position she stepped into after Alberto Gonzales stepped into the Attorney General’s spot), and who has been a friend of W.’s for 30 or so years.

First off, this is just such obvious cronyism that I cannot believe anyone could possibly think otherwise.

Second, I think it’s pretty clear that W. is essentially lying when he suggests he doesn’t know his good friend’s feelings about issues like abortion. He may have never had the conversation with her, much in the way that I haven’t had that conversation with a lot of my friends and colleagues, but I am sure he has a pretty good idea where she stands.

And to make matters worse, this article from the LA Times suggests that Harriet might be a pretty scary-assed nominee. Here’s a quote:

Nathan L. Hecht, a Texas Supreme Court justice, has been a close companion of Miers since they first worked together for a Dallas law firm 30 years ago. His comments are the clearest indication to date of Miers’ view on abortion — which, as with other issues she would be likely to face on the high court, is unknown.

Hecht is known as the most conservative member of the conservative Texas Supreme Court. “He’s sort of the [Antonin] Scalia of that court: smart, aggressive and very conservative,” said University of Texas law professor Douglas Laycock.

Hecht, a vocal opponent of the abortion right, said in an interview Tuesday that Miers shared his views. The two attend the evangelical Valley View Christian Church near Dallas.

“Harriet goes to a church that is pro-life. She has for 25 years,” he said. “She gives them a lot of money. Her personal views lie in that direction.”

But when asked if her personal opposition to abortion would give her sufficient cause to overturn the Supreme Court’s abortion precedent, Hecht said, “I think she’ll say they won’t.”

The "Intelligent Design" trial: the inside story

Via The Education Wonks comes this article from The New York Times, “In Pennsylvania, It Was Religion vs. Science, Pastor vs. Ph.D., Evolution vs. the Half-Fish.” This is of course about the trial having to do with creationism — okay, so-called “Intelligent Design”– being taught in science classes. I haven’t been following the story of this court case that closely, though I am concerned as an academic and, ultimately, I suppose I’m concerned as a parent, too.

Anyway, this NYT piece strikes me as kind of unusual for them because it is sort of taking the People magazine/Entertainment Tonight approach– you know, the “inside story,” the “people behind the scenes.” Here’s a juicy section:

The trial presents a particular challenge for the journalists from science magazines. In the courtroom hallway during a break last week, Celeste Biever, a reporter for NewScientist, was interviewing a courtroom regular, a bearded local pastor who says he considers evolution a lie.

“You want half-bird, half-fish?” she asked, drawing a dotted line on her notepad.

“Yeah, why not,” the pastor said.

Later, out of the pastor’s hearing, Ms. Biever said with fascination, “He thinks evolution is a bird turning into a fish turning into a rabbit” – one straight line of common descent, instead of a tree with common roots.

Ms. Biever was finding that she could not cover the trial the way she would a classic courtroom face-off. When you put intelligent design up against evolution, she said, “It’s not a head-on collision between two scientific arguments; it’s orthogonal,” with the opponents coming at each other from right angles.

“It’s apples and oranges,” Ms. Biever said.

Her readers do not take intelligent design seriously, she said, so she was striving for “local color.” Her readers want to know, she said, “Why is this happening here?”

“We’re not just science cheerleaders, and I don’t want to overlook any valid argument for intelligent design,” Ms. Biever said. “As far as I’m concerned, I haven’t heard one yet.”

As for the pastor, after four days of listening to science experts dismantling the case for intelligent design, he was unimpressed.

“They’re babblers,” said the pastor, the Rev. Jim Grove, who leads a 40-member independent Baptist church outside of Dover. “The more Ph.D.’s you get, it seems like the further away from God you get.”