stevendkrause.com

Here it is then:  Books At Home.  It would appear that the blogger in question has also started a blog recently on Books in New York.  Via Johndan.

It’s that time of the semester, and I’m trying to slap together a presentation for the conference I’m going to next week. So here’s a bunch of links that I had meant to write more about earlier but I’m just going to mention now. Some of this might be handy for teaching at some point:

• “A guide to writing better emails.” Nothing earth-shattering here, but good advice nonetheless.
• The curious and odd ProfEssays site. I’m not sure how I came across this, but I think it is interesting and odd and strange that this paper mill’s web site has as much information as it has about plagiarism.
• A review of a book called Proust and the Squid. Sounds like a cool book. Here’s the first paragraph from the review:
  

  For most people, reading is a taken for granted skill. The purpose of Proust and the Squid is to reveal the magic and mystery of reading and its pathologies. This everyday activity is not natural, and is a recent development from an evolutionary perspective. There is no ‘reading center’ in the brain, but something a lot more enigmatic, an acquired way of using existing structures and connections. New imaging technology shows startling differences between dyslexics and others, differences that illuminate the journey to literacy as never before. It is only 6000 years since humans trained their brains to read, and during that time they have improved on the process to such a staggering degree that the modern child takes 2000 days to achieve a degree of literacy that took 2000 years to develop. The dark cloud on the horizon is another human invention of staggering genius: digitalization. This most economic of information systems was made possible by the very thing it now threatens: the ability to read.

• “How to start writing quality articles for blogs and article marketing.” This is a little too much in the “get rich quick with your blog writing” category of things for me, but still some interesting advice in this little piece. Might be good for Writing for the WWW.
• This link and this link go to popular press stories about a study some folks did about why people read blogs. I haven’t had a chance to look at all the details yet, but it looks interesting for all kinds of different reasons, and it looks like what they are arguing is that blog reading is practiced as “a habit,” and that there is a fuzzy line between blog writing and reading. All of which falls in line with my BAWS project. This might also make for good WWWW reading.
• Finally, WEbook, which I just stumbled across. It looks like a collaborative book writing site. I dunno, maybe that’s one way to get the ol’ scholarly work done, throw it out there on this site and see if other people will do the writing for me.

For reasons not worth going into, I spent some time playing around with Google analytics tonight and I learned a couple of fun facts.

• My old blogs are still getting more hits than this new one. I guess just because there is a lot more content there.
• Top hit on the academic blog? “Period Trick,” which has to do with resizing periods in a word processed essay to create the illusion of a length. Note this wasn’t my tip– just a link.
• Five of the top ten picks have to do with searches having to do with “flip video sample” and other related terms, which inevitably brings up this video of our dog Sophie playing with a ball.

Thank God I offer my thoughts on the state of academia for all to read.

From the NYT, “In Web World of 24/7 Stress, Writers Blog Till They Drop.” Basically, some of these professional bloggers are working to a point where they are hurting themselves:

Two weeks ago in North Lauderdale, Fla., funeral services were held for Russell Shaw, a prolific blogger on technology subjects who died at 60 of a heart attack. In December, another tech blogger, Marc Orchant, died at 50 of a massive coronary. A third, Om Malik, 41, survived a heart attack in December.

Other bloggers complain of weight loss or gain, sleep disorders, exhaustion and other maladies born of the nonstop strain of producing for a news and information cycle that is as always-on as the Internet.

To be sure, there is no official diagnosis of death by blogging, and the premature demise of two people obviously does not qualify as an epidemic. There is also no certainty that the stress of the work contributed to their deaths. But friends and family of the deceased, and fellow information workers, say those deaths have them thinking about the dangers of their work style.

Well, I think you can substitute “blogging” with occupations/pursuits/situations like “graduate school” or “working in a chicken processing plant” or “being homeless” or the like. It isn’t hard to think of things more dangerous than professional blogging. Still, it is a reason why it seems to me that it is better to be an amateur blogger.

I might be able to use this in the Writing for the World Wide Web class this spring….

No, instead, I’ll point to this post on “Confessions of a Community College Dean,” where I left a long comment (I’m “Steve” in the comments, number 4 I believe). All of this in response to DD, Dr. Crazy, and this article in the CHE.

A handy and recent article from The New Yorker that might be good for English 444 this spring, “The News Business: Out of Print.”

Well, since I’m not in NOLA and up to Lord only knows what Steve B. and Bill HD. and my other typical conference partners in crime are up to right now, I thought I’d post a whole bunch of links from my Google Reader feed:

• A book about cursing in over 69 different languages.
• A link to a mashup video of “I’m F*cking Obama.” I came across this on a blog I read on a regular basis (sorry, I can’t remember which one now) that suggested that this was a sexist video. I dunno, I think it makes sense because Clinton is on the attack and has kind of opened herself up to that. I have to think that it’s only a matter of time before we get to the “I’m F*cking Hillary Clinton.”
• Here’s a weird one: http://superbad.com/ You would think that this has something to do with the movie Superbad, but I don’t have a clue what this is. Entertaining though.
• “Professors should embrace Wikipedia” from Inside Higher Ed. This one might actually be useful in teaching about wiki and Wikipedia stuff next year, maybe even this spring. The comments are particularly telling.
• “Experimental Use of Blog-Based Peer Review Gives Mixed Results” in CHE and a reply/rebuttal from the site where the blog peer review took place. Personally, I think a blog is a better place to prewrite/think through a manuscript/project in progress rather review a draft polished enough to send to a publisher.
• What might be an interesting book/web site/blog/wiki to check out later, Wikinomics.
• Finally, another story in the New York Times of a plagiarism policy being plagiarized. Lots of good links here, too.

The UK’s Guardian/Observer has a list I came across via waiterrant (he’s #44) of “The world’s 50 most powerful blogs,” and once again, yours truly is not included. Figures.

Actually, it’s an interesting list and will serve as fodder for blogs to invite to my survey, though I haven’t had a lot of luck in getting “big time” bloggers to participate as of yet. And it’s a list to take with a grain of salt. It’s kind of UK-centric, and it doesn’t include a bunch of different blogs you think it would include– the Daily KOS, for example.

Cory Doctorow, who is one of the brain trusts behind one of the 5 or so most popular blogs out there, has a piece in Information Week called “17 Tips for Getting Bloggers to Write About You.” Much of it is common sense and/or about links. Incidentally, the IW site has some of the most annoying ad pop-up gimmicks I’ve seen in a while. I got some weird one just by hitting the back arrow.

I don’t know how much anthem writing I’m doing exactly, but via a comment on another post (which I just decided to make into a new post in itself) comes this piece from MiLife MiTimes, “Local Bloggers Write Ypsi’s Kick-Ass Anthem.” This here site is mentioned, along with EMUTalk.org and many fine and local Ypsi-Arbor blogs.