Florida and Auburn

Game off.

How many times? How many times?
How many times will instant replay fail in college football.

It was an incomplete pass and not a fumble. [I say this with no interest in the SEC. My team is in the Big Ten and benefits from bad officiating.]

At least hockey is back in season. At least refs in hockey never get the call wrong. Well....

Let me get personal for a minute...

I want to take some time to thank Solon for introducing me to a new brand of beer this past weekend. After putting down several Modelos on Saturday night, I tried one of his Dogfish Head IPAs. Boy, was it good!

It was so good, in fact, that I ran to the liquor store earlier this week and picked up a few for myself. I had to purchase them in singles, as my local store had stopped carrying the brand and was selling off its remaining stock by the bottle (to make room in their larger coolers for more popular varieties of beer). I bought last two they had. I think they were 120-minute IPAs.

I brought my two beers home (along with a few other sample singles) and decided to pop them open after dinner. Keep in mind that I was not planning to get loopy that night; I just wanted a Doghead or two. And they sure hit the spot.

But I had no idea that they were 20% alcohol. Before finishing my second beer, I was buzzing pretty good. I didn't quite understand it. I thought that all beers were of the same alcohol content. Something like 4.5-5%, required by law. At least that what it used to be in my home state. I never knew that the %ABV went this high in beers.

So thank you, Solon, for turning me on to Dogfish Head. And thank you for encouraging me to always check the alcohol content of my beer.

-----------------------------

On another note, I'd like to welcome Southpaw to The Rhetorical Situation. As you may have gathered from his last few posts, he is an entertaining and intellegent bloke who is sure to offer a unique perspective to our humble blog. Welcome, Southpaw!

More bad quotes from the NFL

In an article from Don Banks about the possibility Rand Moss will be traded by the Raiders before Tuesday's trade deadline:

"We're hearing there are a couple suitors for Moss,'' one veteran general manager. "And when you look at his contract, a trade is not as unlikely as people think. There is some smoke there right now, and you can't be sure it won't turn into fire.''

How does smoke cause fire? I always thought, correct me if I am wrong, that smoke is a sign of a fire.

In all my years of teaching argumentation and debate and discussing the fire/smoke relationship as an argument by sign, it took the wisdom of an NFL GM to prove me wrong.

Perspectives by Incongruity

This is random: A site combined the annoying Family Circus cartoons with the lovable philosophy of Freidrich Nitezche. Wait, I mean. Oh well. Here is an Example:


Caption: All sciences are now under the obligation to prepare the ground for the future task of the philosopher, which is to solve the problem of value, to determine the true hierarchy of values.

What wonderful technology: If you hit refresh, you'll receive another cartoon!!!

I once saw Marx's ideology outlined by using Family Circus Cartoons. I wonder is it is online?

"Call the attorney. Habeas Corpus. Call the Attorney!"

It is not as if we actually need this Habeas Corpus idea. People did fine without it. Why should we consider ourselves to be so special?

This is a sound party platform...

"At least no one died."

This is the defense by Republican Representative Christopher Shays (Connecticut) over the Foley Scandle. According to CNN, "Republican Rep. Christopher Shays defended the House speaker's handling of a congressional page scandal, saying no one died like during the 1969 Chappaquiddick incident involving Democratic Sen. Ted Kennedy."

Does he defend the current disaster of Iraq by arguing Sadam killed more? Oh. Wait. That defense is no longer valid.

While I am not sure if I actually want the Democrats to win the midterms, I do think the country will implode or spontaneously combust if the Republicans were to win.

If only our political system would allow a viable third party to compete. But, coporations, er, I mean people, would not allow for...that...um...oh...um....democracy to work.

At times like these I can only think of Monty Python. Unfortunately, I think of them, in general, and this skit, in particular, as a metaphor for our democracy, or republic, or aristocracy, or...whatever.

Bell RInger: "Bring out your Dead."
Body: "I'm not dead yet."
Bell Ringer: "What?"
Body Carrier: "Nothing. Here's your nine pouds."
Bell Ringer: "He says he's not dead."
Body Carrier: "Yes he is."
Body: "I'm not."
Bell Ringer: "He isn't?"
Body Carrier: "We'll he will be soon. He's very ill."
Body: "I'm getting better."
Carrier of Body: "No you're not. You'll be stone dead in a moment."
Bell Ringer: "I can't take him like that. It's against regulaitons."
Body: "I Don't want to go in the cart."
Carrier of Body: "Oh, don't be such a baby."
Carrier: "Oh do us a favor...."
Body: "I feel fine."
Carrier: (to Bell Ringer) "Isn't there anything you can do?"
Body: "I think I'll go for a walk."
Carrier: "Your not fooling anyone you know."
Body: "I feel happy. I feel happy."

Thump.

(It's at the end of the clip, after "Ralph the Wonder LLama.")

We all make mistakes, Solon

For your amusement, Solon, I thought I'd share a mistake from my dissertation:

"Chatper 1."

Yes, that's right, I misspelled my first word. And this is all I've written.

Humorous moments while writing and editing

Right now I am reediting the first chapter for my dissertation. Even after proofreading this chapter, there are still a few mistakes. It seems that I get too claose to the work and my brain fills in the gaps so I can no longer notice the errors in my writing.

Here is my favorite mistake so far:

"The justices themselves are aware of their power and their ability to constitute the social world through words. Before Samuel Alito Jr.'s confirmation hearing to the Supreme Court, Justice Stephen Breyer discussed his fear of language while on the Court with a reporter."

How big is the Court? And what they were doing there? Is this the post-game interview?

The intersection of Sports and Politics, again

An article on "Daily Kos" (via Raw Story) suggests that when Mike Tirico announced former President Bush during the New Orleans v. Atlanta game (on Monday night), ESPN manufactured fake "cheers" and broadcast those cheers. Further, the article claims that ESPN favors Republicans and disfavors Demcoracts.

The story revolves around an argument by authority, which the author does not provide backing to support it. Anayway, it is interesting as a concpiracy theory or to reflect the paranoid style (see Richard Hofstader's "Paranoid Style in American Politics"

ESPN is owned by the Mickey Mouse Corporation, which seems to favor elephants to jack asses. But, personally, I think ESPN is biased towards masturbation: "ESPN's Rick Majerus, on a Kentucky-Tennessee college game announced: "At this point in time, the game's over ... but I'm starting to look for Ashley Judd so I don't have to go home to the adult videos tonight."

This argument also revolves around an argument by authority. However, I do not care whether or nor Majerus provides backing for his warrant.

Interpreting the Words of Bush:

File this under: “Why Hermeneutics Matter.” From Political Wire

"In a recent CNN interview, President Bush suggested history would judge the Iraq war as "just a comma." He repeated the statement today in Alabama. While it seems an odd thing to say, a Political Wire reader suggests it's designed to speak to the religious right while not unnecessarily alarming others. In other words, it's a classic example of "dog whistle politics" used to energize his base.

The Christian proverb Bush was evidently referring to is "Never put a period where God has put a comma." In essence, trust in God to make a bad situation better."

In the Presidential Debates of 2004, President Bush always discussed abortion in terms of Dread Scot, meaning he does not like how the Supreme Court refuses to acknowledge humans as citizens, or, he does not like how the Supreme Court refuses to acknowledge the fetus as a living being and, hence, not a citizen. Of course, others have pointed out how Bush believes in the protection of Life.

Anyway, this provides another reason why people need to pay closer attention to the connection between language and motives. This is another attempt by Bush to focus on one audience while speaking to multiple audiences.

Students petition against Turnitin

A colleague of mine recently directed my attention to this article in the Washington Post. Over 1100 students at a Virginia high school have petitioned school officials to stop using Turnitin, for they claim that the online anti-plagiarism service violates their intellectual property rights. In addition to violating their rights, students say that use of the service implies guilt and that the subscription fees paid to Turnitin could be better spent.

Much of the debate over Turnitin has centered on the intellectual property rights of students and the implication of assumed guilt that allegedly accompanies the use of the service, but little has been said, to my knowledge, about the allocation of school funds to subscribe to Turnitin. I wish to address that topic here.

The Washington Post reports the following: "members of the Committee for Students' Rights want the school to allow students to opt out. In an interview at a Starbucks near the campus, they said that they can learn about plagiarism directly from teachers and that there are other ways to catch cheaters. They also said fees paid to Turnitin would be better spent on other educational matters." Despite contrary statements by teachers and school officials, students continue to focus on the "gotcha" aspects of Turnitin. They ignore the pedagogical potential of the online service. If they would take a moment to consider the ways that Turnitin might help them learn proper citation and avoid plagiairism, then they would likely not see Turnitin as a threat but as a safety precaution or even a friend.

The argument that subscription fees could be "better spend on other educational matters" loses much of its force when the pedagogical potential of Turnitin takes center stage. When used as a pedagogical tool, Turnitin lets students find and fix instances of accidental (or intentional) plagiarism. It identifies those passages where students did not properly paraphrase or cite the work of others and gives them an opportunity to revise those portions before "officially" turning in their work to teachers. To be sure, this process is much different than traditional lecture-based methods of teaching and learning about source attribution; it's more student-centered. And most of the scholarship about the teaching of writing in the last forty years have favored the self-directed and learn-through-practice methods of teaching composition. So why should learning to paraphrase and cite sources be excluded from these proven methods of teaching writing when they are, themselves, an essential part of writing and learning to write? The answer is simple: they shouldn't.

When viewed through a pedagogical lens, it seems that 80 cents per student is not a lot of money to spend on something that effectively teaches students to cite sources. Through my own experiences as a teacher of writing, Turnitin helps students avoid plagiarism much better than any lecture on the topic. And it frees up a lot of classroom time to talk about other writerly issues and strategies.

No Child, College, or God Left Behind

No this is not about the Left Behind series.

An article from Inside Higher Education discusses the revelation that certain interests want to make college education standardized. Who needs a liberal arts educaiton when the business model works so well for CEOs.

Maybe we should quantify everything. It would save time.

William Jefferson Clinton versus Chris Wallace

Here is the interview between former President Clinton and Chris Wallace. The interview was scheduled to be about Clinton's Global Initiative. However, it seems as if there was a change of plans. President Clinton did not back down and questioned the "objectivity" of Fox as he attacked Wallace. I am not sure if Wallace thought he could outsmart Clinton. I wish someone would question our current president like this.

Part One:


Part Two:


A full, uninterupted broadcast can be found at Think Progress.

A Scholarly Game...

Building on the previous post…

A colleague of mine teaches a rhetorical criticism. In her early class, she asked the class to define the following terms and then discuss their similarities and differences: Rhetoric and Education. To this list I would add Propaganda and Indoctrination.

What do these terms means and how do we understand them and use them in the classroom?

Advocates for the “Student Bill of Rights” argue for a balanced classroom (though they never petition business schools to teach Marx.) What does this ultimately mean? What are the limits to having a balance of ideas in a class? (I imagine that business schools would not teach Marx because they would say Marx is wrong. But is this a correct view of history?)

This is not about indoctrination...

One of my students told me about this film. I have not seen it yet. Here is a clip from ABC News.



The preview of the movie states that the movie is well balanced. It does not state whether or not the people at the camp are sane or insane.

Where do Iraqis stand on Roe v. Wade?

Yesterday, an article in The Washington Post discussed the number one characteristic potential Defense Department employees would need in order to work in Iraq: no, it is not knowledge about the Middle East nor knowledge on post-war reconstruction; these would be beneficial. No, the number one characteristic was loyalty to President Bush.

Some great excerpts from the article:

"O'Beirne's staff posed blunt questions to some candidates about domestic politics: Did you vote for George W. Bush in 2000? Do you support the way the president is fighting the war on terror? Two people who sought jobs with the U.S. occupation authority said they were even asked their views on Roe v. Wade."

"A 24-year-old who had never worked in finance -- but had applied for a White House job -- was sent to reopen Baghdad's stock exchange. The daughter of a prominent neoconservative commentator and a recent graduate from an evangelical university for home-schooled children were tapped to manage Iraq's $13 billion budget, even though they didn't have a background in accounting."

"To recruit the people he wanted, O'Beirne sought résumés from the offices of Republican congressmen, conservative think tanks and GOP activists. He discarded applications from those his staff deemed ideologically suspect, even if the applicants possessed Arabic language skills or postwar rebuilding experience."

"Smith said O'Beirne once pointed to a young man's résumé and pronounced him "an ideal candidate." His chief qualification was that he had worked for the Republican Party in Florida during the presidential election recount in 2000."

"One former CPA employee who had an office near O'Beirne's wrote an e-mail to a friend describing the recruitment process: "I watched résumés of immensely talented individuals who had sought out CPA to help the country thrown in the trash because their adherence to 'the President's vision for Iraq' (a frequently heard phrase at CPA) was 'uncertain.' I saw senior civil servants from agencies like Treasury, Energy . . . and Commerce denied advisory positions in Baghdad that were instead handed to prominent RNC (Republican National Committee) contributors."

I have very little faith in either party, and if the Republicans win the mid-term elections, I will have even less faith. How can one party diminish almost their entire ethos and still hold office and still receive support from citizens in this republic?

Plato may be correct.

A Fanatical Devotion to the Pope

Over the weekend I found out that certain people-- certain people who write for this blog-- have never watched "The Spanish Inquisition." Ha. Ha. Ha. (Diabolical Laughter.) Nobody expecs the Spanish Inquisition.

Addressing democratic education again...

In CULTURE WARS: SCHOOL AND SOCIETY IN THE CONSERVATIVE RESTORATION, Ira Shor writes the following:

"Students will resist any process that disempowers them. Unequal, disabling education is symbolic violence against them, which they answer with their own skills of resistance--silence, disruption, non-performance, cheating, lateness, absence, vandalisim, etc. Very familiar school routines produce this alienation: teacher-talk, passive instruction in pre-set materials, punitive testing, moronic back-to-basics and mechanical drills, impersonal and shabby classrooms, tracking, the denial of sexual themes and other subjects important to them, the exclusion of student co-participation in curriculum design and governance, and the outlawing of popular idioms in favor of correct usage" (183).

A lot of composition theorist (particularly critical pedagogues) make these sorts of claims. They tell us that student resistance is rooted in the oppressive nature of teacher-oriented education. And I suppose that this argument makes sense, but it doesn't answer for why teachers who enact student-centered classrooms are also met with resistance. I wonder if it's not just an issue of youthful rebellion. No matter what your pedagogy--whether you downplay your authority or not--students will always view teachers as authorities and many of them will rebel accordingly.

For Harrogate, who likes raisins and D&D:

Education in 15 Years

In both of my classes (one on Social Movements, one on Religious Communication- Church/State Conflict), we discussed Facebook. The majority of students in both classes use Facebook (I have never used it and I never liked the lack of Privacy with it) but they were upset with the new Privacy changes that allowed users to track the movements of other users.

While discussing Facebook in my Social Movements, we discussed Communication phenomenon that would cover the use of facebook. I, being rhetorically minded, thought of two: (1) symbolic convergence theory and (2) technological determinism. While I am not a big fan of the first, I, sometimes, concede the power of the second.

After discussing technological determinism, I have spent most of the afternoon thinking about education. Oxymoron provided a post last week about "Democracy" and "Education," through an online Tech Writing class. I still remain unconcvinced that Democracy and Education are two values that should be combined together, but I digress.

This leads me to the point of my post: What will be the state of education in 15 years?

There seems to be a few trends that I have noticed over the last few years since I have been pursuing my Ph.D.
(1) Students read very little to not at all. This decreases the amount of traditional literacy.
(2) Students spend more time on facebook or watching t.v. or working or hanging out.
(3) Students do not spend as much time developing critical thinking skills. With the rise of a business education, there is less focus on writing or critical thinking than there is on consuming.
(4) Students need to be entertained..

How will these developments alter education?
Will professors need to spend more time entertaining students than teaching them and getting them to think?
Will professors need to develop different "literacy" skills to speak to their audience?
Is egalitarianism or democracy good or necessary for education?
How do we persuade our students to be "students"? Now? In 5 years? 10? 15?
How does political affiliation alter education? Do students look to see the politics of the prof and is this necessary for education? Will this alter education? Will it doom education?