When I logged into Google Reader today, I got a message that I could read what journalists and what people from the Obama and McCain campaigns are reading. So, I subscribed and started reading "what they read":

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Romney's out? And "Bridges" Pawlenty has cancelled events tomorrow. Fox News is rumored to have the name in hand. Great way to upstage Obama tonight.

According to CNET, starting October 1, Comcast is capping your monthly usage to 250Gb a month. If anyone hears about a class action lawsuit against this, please let me know. I will gladly sign up.Not only do I have to pay $50 a month for mediocre service, but now they are going to tell me what "acceptable" uses of the web exist.

Brad DeLong, my all-around favorite blogger, explains the statistical problems with the Gallup Daily Poll.

Our own Jen Mercieca, Chuck Morris, and John Murphy comment on the Democratic National Convention in the Rocky Mountain News (hat tip to Cara Finnegan).

Any Blogorists want to bet on McCain's pick? It's a bit of heresthetic tackiness to wheel him (?) out tomorrow,in order to cut down on Obama press coverage, I think, but that's what all this has become: constant short-term tactical maneuvering, in hopes that something works. If he picks Lieberman or Ridge, it really is all over for the social conservatives. I'm betting on Romney or Huckabee, probably Romney. Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but hasn't Kay Bailey Hutchison been unwelcome at the Texas GOP convention because she's pro-choice?

I don't know how everybody else is faring now that Obama has chosen Joe Biden for his running mate...You've no doubt heard about Biden's Pro-RIAA, pro-FBI voting record. Still, we can hope that all this talk about the "little guy" will somehow pertain to people besides Jack Valenti, who is surely not all that downtrodden (really). Being disgruntled (and wondering if anyone has ever been just gruntled?), I checked out some of the fringe action and found some interesting stuff.

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neither sen clinton nor former president clinton ended their speeches with "God Bless America". i'm just sayin.

have your constitution handy?

i'm sure you all know that yesterday was the 88th anniversary of WHICH amendment?

To return a wave to someone you think is waving at you, but is actually waving to the person behind you. Usually results in embarrassment and introversion.

Damn...I thought that girl was waving at me :(

HHAHAHAHA MIS-WAVE!!!!!!

Folks....please read Jenny Edbauer Rice's post about Marc Santos' daughter Rowen, who is battling for her life....but doing so thanks to the power of the net. It's amazing, and heart-wrenching.

The most recent issue of the CWRL's e-journal Currents in Electronic Literacy is now live. The issue's theme is "The Commons" and it features some heavyweights: Lawrence Lessig, Johndan Johnson-Eilola, Stuart A. Selber, Alan Liu, Cedrick May, and Robert Scholes.

It also includes the musings of a lightweight.

Congratulations to the editorial board - Mark Longaker, Justin Tremel,
Noël Radley, Lydia Wilmeth, and Kevin Psonak - on a fantastic issue.

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To remove a 'friendship' from facebook due to having either accidentily adding him/her as a friend or actually adding them and reconsidering later.

"Yeah, there was this guy in my network who added me. I thought he looked ok, but his updates were really cramping my news feed, so I had to deface him."

"I went on a date with a girl I met a week before and like the day after our date she changed her status to 'in a relationship.' I defaced her."

Hi,

I am just about lead a major change to the way we assess learning and teaching at our University.

I am hoping some members of this community will vist this site and post a comment

http://medusa.ballarat.edu.au/wordpress/jameso/student-evaluation-of-tea...

Lookng forward to hearing from you

"Bitter" Hillary supporter claims McCain supports Roe v. Wade. Does he or not? The trial balloon of a pro-choice VP by McCain (Ridge or Lieberman) seems to be sinking. Is the strategy here to assume that angry Hillary supporters don't attend to the same news outlets as the anti-abortion rights base?

An historian of some sort has started a gossip blog for the field of History. Are there such things for other academic fields? Should "we" have one? (I don't think so; Communication, at least, is toxic enough, thank you.)

The removal of excess body hair via waxing, shaving, plucking. Also manscap - ing, ed

See Metrosexual

When your chick calls you a Yeti, it might be time for a little manscaping.

The process a candidate for president goes through to choose a running mate. It's a portmanteau word combining the colloquial pronunciation of VP as "veep" and sweepstakes.

The winner of the veepstakes is awarded the honor of being trashed in the media for the next 5 months.

A: Who should Obama pick for VP?
B: I sure hope Brian Schweitzer wins the veepstakes!

A fascinating essay on spiritualism and 19th century law. A collection of Victorian death photos (which I never knew of until I saw The Others). Marconi and Edison both thought radio could let us hear the voices of the dead.

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Having finally reached page 1085 this morning, after a month of reading, I wish it would go on for another 1000 pages. Anyone else read it?

Exploring a Corpus-Informed Approach to Writing Research

CFP:

Since the development of the Brown Corpus in the 1960s, leveraging language corpora and corpus-based methods to analyze and to describe spoken and written language has become an established tradition within the broad field of linguistics.

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With all the whining about Biden coming from the left-wing blogs, I'm sure we're about to have another round of support for Ralph (support for gay rights is "gonadal politics") Nader. But here's what's really at stake.

I have become to the generation of Communication and Critical Cultural Studies as Lloyd Bitzer was to mine.

the medical condition causing pain in the wrists after playing guitar hero for an extended amount of time

"Man my wrists hurt from my guitarthritis"
"You sure its not from jackin' it?"

Check out the NYT story on the unbelievable debate in this youtube video.

1.A car that is wrecked, totaled or not drivable.
2.A very old car that needs a lot of servicing.
3.A car that is a lemon.
4.Any car that either looks like it will, or has fallen completely apart while someone was driving it

Clint took his doom buggy in the shop. But they told him there was nothing more they could do and suggested that he buy a new car.

Despite pandering to anti-abortion forces, neither Reagan nor Bush 1.0 ever did much to try to overturn Roe v. Wade. W. did, leaving the Court one vote away from declaring the existence of full fetal rights (perhaps on 14th Amendment grounds). As Dahlia Lithwick points out, no one seems to be paying attention to just how radical the Republican Party's platform plank on abortion is: no exceptions for rape or incest, and NO abortions to save the life of the mother (a clear Establishment of the Roman Catholic position on this question).

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from the very start, or from the beginning

I never believed that boy's BS story from the gitgo.

According to Austin Sound, Jake Mitchell of the Austin Band Boxing Lesson was sentenced to 5 years in prison for growing Marijuana. But Mitchell was sentenced under the Patriot Act as a "narco-terrorist" which changes EVERYTHING. Here is part of a statement from Boxing Lesson’s publicist, Ryan Cano:

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v.
1. To gain entry; to connect, as to a network.
2. To enter or connect by deceptive or unscrupulous means, esp. with malicious intent.

"He tried to jack in and take down their group from the inside after he heard what they were saying about him behind his back."

Would Hillary really be so bad for VP?

A game that can be played in large meetings. The players write down management-nonsense word like "Out-of-the-box-thinking", "Synergy", "Content streamlining" etc. in a 5 by 5 square bingo card.
If a word or phrase is used during the meeting you check the box. When you get a five box line (horizontally, vertically or diagonally ) you shout "BULLSHIT!" and win.

Company bigshot fancypants: "And that is why this merger is going to benefit shareholder value by creating value driven content.

You: "BULLSHIT BINGO!"

Company bigshot fancypants: "You're fired!"

Just read that some 100 odd college and university presidents are calling for a reduction of the drinking age to 18. They seem to think that'll cut back on drinking, since there will no longer be a need to binge when the coast is clear. However, MADD is, uh, not happy about it, and has accused these presidents of not doing their homework.

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PC Magazine has published a list of 12 Tools for students who want to stay organized this semester. The list includes the usual suspects (RateMyProfessors, Facebook), but there are some here that I hadn't heard of before, such as MyPunchBowl, Mint, and TheDailyPlate. There are also some citation and bib tools here, though I think Word's new built-in bib tools pretty much render them superfluous.

In this month's Atlantic, James Fallows performs an interesting rhetorical analysis of primary debates in order to predict what kind of president Obama or McCain might be. He focuses much more on Obama, arguing that the Republican debates played a smaller role in McCain's nomination. In many ways this seems to be a cop out, and it could be argued that this turns into an Obama puff piece, but the mere fact that it's entitled "Rhetorical Questions" means that Fallows' discussion deserves The Blogora's attention.

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The level of thought control in Economics is overwhelming. Someone should write a similar article about Political Science.

Someone just suggested that they wanted to Tweak my Twitter on Twinkle — you wanna what?!

In an age where many of us are offended, indeed upset that that our privacy is being diminished by the growing executive powers and their deemed right to listen in, watch, and read our personal communications, it is surprising how much of our private life we are freely giving up. With programs such as twitter and now twinkle, people, including myself, are freely telling those plugged in and signed up what we are doing and where we are at.

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To draft off of, when cycling. often said to friends

Dude,if you're hurting, grab a wheel before we hit this hill

"In Lacanian terms, Conservative presidential candidates speak within the Discourse of the Master, while liberal presidential candidates speak within the Discourse of the University." Do you agree with this statement? Why or why not?

Robin Masters has some advice for Obama's and McCain's convention speeches.

David Cheshier at Georgia State has a splendid new blog.

By now, you've probably read about or seen the video documenting an unpleasant exchange between the Pitt and Fort Hays State debate coaches at a tournament last spring. Looks like there's plenty of blame to go around, from the initial bit of race-baiting by the Pittsburgh coach to the mooning incident.

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The 3rd Circuit strikes down a Temple University speech code that would have prohibited "generalized sexist remarks."

To be reprimanded via sms messages on a mobile (aka cell) phone.

"I was suppoesed to take her out for dinner but I stayed with me mates at the pub and boy did she give a right thumb lashing."

Here are the transcripts from the Faith Event at Saddleback Church. Videos here. I think Obama blew the "when does life begin?" question (and I note it's the section featured by Drudge this morning.)

"Perhaps history this century, thought Eigenvalue, is rippled with gathers in its fabric such that if we are situated, as Stencil seemed to be, at the bottom of a fold, it’s impossible to determine warp, woof or pattern anywhere else. By virtue, however, of existing in one gather it is assumed there are others, compartmented off into sinuous cycles each of which had come to assume greater importance than the weave itself and destroy any continuity.

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A little less than gr8 (great) but still better than just good
said grr-sev-en

A:how are you?

B: gr7 you?

A: Just good

Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy is pleased to announce the release of Issue 13.1 for Fall 2008 and our new redesign by Kathie Gossett, Karl Stolley, and Doug Eyman. In addition to the redesign, we are also launching two new sections: Inventio, which covers the process of creating webtexts for Kairos, and Disputatio, a forum for readers to respond to the pieces and ideas in Kairos. We invite your feedback on the changes we've made.

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We've seen Lenovo beefing up its consumer offerings of late, but this is really taking it up a notch. The company just announced its very first netbook, the recently spotted 10.2-inch, Atom-powered little wonder. Sadly, there's little of note in the design -- it seems to have more in common with the MSI Wind and the Eee PC than its Lenovo siblings -- but the $399 starting price is certainly pleasing. That model brings 512MB of RAM and a 80GB hard drive, while a $450 version will be available with 1GB of RAM and 160GB of storage, with both being powered by 1.6GHz Atom chipsets.

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Looks like Florida may be in for the first storm of the season. It may or may not become a hurricane, but certainly we will get some strong weather no matter what. If you have family around S. Florida, you may want to start making plans, especially if they are elderly. My grandmother is very old and lives alone in S.W. Florida so we will probably go down there this weekend to make sure everything is OK. Plus it gives everyone an excuse to get out of the house.

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You may or may not seen the news about Harry Potter and the release date being pushed back, but the Harry Potter fans have definitely seen it and they are not happy, to say the least.

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v.- Describing someone with the ability to use their feet to pick things up. Also, pedextrous

Susie dropped her pencil on the floor during school and, thanking Sweet Jesus for her pedexterity, slipped her foot out of her flip-flop and picked it up with her toes.

A social offense that can be called out when one is being falsely spoken for.

"God, we got so plastered last night."
"The royal we. I had a vodka tonic and called it quits. You got so shitfaced you puked on my jacket and then attempted to fornicate with it."
"Good times. We have fun."
"Go fuck a blender."

Why has no one in the MSM pointed out that the Rick Warren/Obama/McCain
faith event, besides continuing our drift toward a State Religion of Evangelicalism, is scheduled at a time when observant Jews cannot attend or watch? Should you wish to point out that being evangelical seems never to mean respecting other religions might consider emailing the church here: info@saddleback.net

"This is not 1968 and the invasion of Czechoslovakia where
Russia can threaten a neighbor, occupy a capital, overthrow a
government and get away with it," Secretary of State Condoleezza
Rice said. "Things have changed."

Well. No velvet, I guess.

Your middle finger. Usually refers to the one on the left hand so it can be displayed out the driver's side window to comment on another driver's behavior.

Your driving finger is the longest finger.

This post is slightly personal, but after one of my former students' posted this story about online student-teacher relationships onto my facebook account, I started thinking about several things regarding being a graduate student educator, a female educator, a female educator who looks unfortunately younger than most of her students, and a college educator in general. So a brief trip down memory lane here, and then a bit about the article and facebook in general...

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I just saw this piece from Fortune reporting that Lawrence Lessig is predicting a catastrophic online event within the next decade that will prompt the US government to unveil an already-written bill similar to the PATRIOT Act which will grant the Fed additional powers in Internet surveilance and investigation. Evidently, Lessig got this information from a counterterrorism expert:

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RSA has announced it's Third Biennial Summer Institute. It will be held at Penn State, June 22-28. Once again, RSA has put together an impressive collection of rhetoricians to run their 5-day seminars and 2-day workshops.

If you're not yet reading Language Log, I'd highly recommend that you start. The authors are linguists, and some of the posts are clearly geared toward linguists (just as some of the Blogora content excludes the non-rhetorician). But on the whole, they have some interesting stuff.

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The fracking hotels are already full for NCA in San Diego???? Anyone know any alternatives?

With or without a McCain victory in November, it's time to start watching for a much more coordinated effort by the Right to destabilize higher education. Charles Murray, who made social Darwinism respectable again and provided the main rhetorical ammunition for the destruction of welfare in 1996, is back at it with a proposal to replace the BA with apprenticeship programs. Given the Right's famous ability to stay "on message", I have a feeling we're going to see more of this meme.

When you get to where you were intending to go, you forget why you were going there in the first place. Not to be confused with being stoned, destinesia often occurs during working hours, and is the cause of much frustration.

John ran down the stairs to the dry storage and walk-in, but when he got there he couldn't remember what he needed. Consequently, he had to run back upstairs to the kitchen, and look at his prep list again. Damn you, destinesia!

It's sad to see someone whose work I used to admire (up until his assaults on free speech and church-state separation) drift into the Horowitz camp, and in a publication of the Hoover Institution, no less. I've been trying to write something on Fish and jurisprudence for a while, and this most recent article displays quite clearly his fundamental rhetorical strategy: attract attention through contrarianism, and frame every dispute in terms of two extreme alternatives.

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"That intellectuals are at once beneficiaries of a bad society, and yet those on whose socially useless work it largely depends whether a society emancipated from utility is achieved--this is not a contradiction acceptable once and for all and therefore irrelevant. It gnaws incessantly at the objective quality of their work. Whatever the intellectual does, is wrong. He experiences drastically and vitally the ignominious choice that late capitalism secretly presents to all its dependents: to become one more grown-up, or to remain a child." --Minima Moralia, 133.

Those were the days:

We see the world, as Burke told us, through terministic screens. This insight, along, perhaps, with Orwell's "Politics and the English Language," as well as widespread belief in the (now-discredited) Sapir-Whorf hypothesis as well as General Semantics, led my generation to fixate on changing language in hopes of changing the world. It is not, of course, that simple; language is neither totally irrelevant to social change (as some "realists" might say) nor is changing language an appropriate substitute for normal or contentious politics in liberal democracies.

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(test-OSS-ih-cross) v. The movie moment when every man in the theater crosses his legs and moans, right after someone's groin has been pummelled onscreen.

"Oh! DUDE! That was the worst testosticross moment EVAR!"

Inspired by the discussion about to-protest or not-to-protest the NCA hotel, and reflecting on the social movement legacies (or an ambiguous legacy, as Zizek calls it) of 1968, I found this article by David Zirin, one of my favorites, about the politics of protest of the Olympics "shut up and play" athlete censorship policy worth a mention:

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Ronald D. Asmus and Richard Holbrooke at WaPo offer a "told you so" on Georgia and also a plan of action (apparently for the next administration):

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