Health Care Rationing Rhetoric Overlooks Reality – New York Times
June 17, 2009
Health Care Rationing Rhetoric Overlooks Reality – New York Times Health Care Rationing Rhetoric Overlooks Reality
Washington Post
New York Times
By DAVID LEONHARDT As in: Wait, are you talking about rationing medical care? Access to medical care is a fundamental right. And rationing sounds like something out of the Soviet Union.
The Death and Life of Health 'Reform'
Arena Digest: What obstacles await Obama on health care?
Palin accepts Letterman apology, protest goes on – Washington Post Palin accepts Letterman apology, protest goes on
ABC News
Washington Post
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin accepted late-night TV host David Letterman's apology over a sexually charged joke about her teenage daughter, but it was not enough to stop a protest outside the comedian's studio on Tuesday.
Letterman comes out joking about Sarah Palin and the 'Fire Dave' rally
Sarah Palin accepts David Letterman's apology
Africa Union Launches New Campaign Against Human Trafficking – Voice of America Africa Union Launches New Campaign Against Human Trafficking
Voice of America
Voice of America
By James Butty The African Union (AU) has launched a new initiative to combat human trafficking on the continent. The launch Tuesday came on the same day the United States added six more African countries to a blacklist of countries trafficking in …
Recession boosts global human trafficking, report says
Partnering Against Trafficking
Lawmakers to Investigate Exclusive Phone Agreements – DailyTech Lawmakers to Investigate Exclusive Phone Agreements
TheWrap
DailyTech
Four US senators are now requesting the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) look into cell phone service providers and how they tie certain cell phones to one carrier.
Video: FCC Nominee Julius Genachowski Opposes Fairness Doctrine
Students push for radio station of their own
June 3, 2009
Students push for radio station of their own
Plans are in the works for a new student-run radio station run through KCUR.
Student Sarah Troyer took on the idea of the new radio station as her final project for a class with Patty Cahill, general manager of KCUR.
The vision of the radio station was originally born in basketball player Brian Goettinger who graduated this year.
Professor KC Johnson, Durham in Wonderland blogger and
This event is cosponsored by Duke Students for an Ethical Duke and
One of the groups sponsoring KC Johnson’s address, Duke Students for and Ethical Duke (not to be confused with the equally estimable Duke Students for an Ethical Durham) is a new group dedicated to making sure that the appalling treatment of certain Duke students by the administration and a few of their professors is not forgotten and does not go unaddressed. They are pledged to “defend the dignity and the academic and legal rights of Duke students, both individually and collectively, whether threatened by other students, faculty, or administrators alike.” Here is an article from the Chronicle.
This is a very encouraging development. The fact that the number of groups focusing attention on these issues is growing and not decreasing with time should indicate to the trustees and administration that these issues are not going to go away. It is also good that the students themselves are getting involved. We at FODU are certainly concerned for Duke as an institution. However, most of all, we have done what we have done for the students. Those of us who are alumni want present students to enjoy what we enjoyed while at Duke: a university committed to the care, nurturing and dignity of ALL students. Those who are parents want these things for their children.
Follow up to Duke and the Police
First, a Duke official contacted me after I posted the last update and took issue with two statements I made there. I repeated information that had been told to me personally and which had also been widely reported. However, this official says these two statements are inaccurate and offers an alternative view. As the other bloggers in this case have done, I reproduce this person’s comments below in order to allow a fair opportunity to reply. I also appreciate this person’s willingness to respond and engage us in a dialogue, something lacking among Duke officials up to this point.
1) No one in the university “hired” Wes Covington. In fact, I was the unfortunate agent who brought him into contact with the players. When I met with them on March 17th and first learned of the police search, I was surprised and concerned that they had neither told their parents about it nor retained counsel. I told them to call their parents and consult with them about a lawyer. I said that I would also find out if there was anyone locally who could help them. I then asked Sue Wasiolek for a recommendation and she pointed me to Covington. I was the one who passed his name along to the four captains. They met with him at least once that I am aware of but to the best of my knowledge, he was never formally retained by any of them. I would be surprised if anyone in the administration other than Wasiolek knew anything about this until much later. By 3/24 (the day after the NTO was served) he was entirely out of the picture as far as I know.2) The persistent rumor about “student/teacher privilege” is somewhat inaccurate. This came up in a meeting between the captains and Trask, Pressler [and] Alleva . . . on 2/24. By then, the players had all retained counsel and been advised not to speak about the matter without the presence of counsel. Trask had been sent down to athletics (I think) to assess the situation and report back to Allen Building. When he asked the players to tell him everything that had happened, they responded that they had been advised not to speak (in fact, they were dying to tell anyone who would listen what had (or hadn’t) happened). Trask responded that they could call their lawyers to come over and that he would wait for them. The players (specifically, David Evans) then said they would go ahead without representation. At that point, Trask said “We could argue that it (their account of the evening of 3/13) is a protected educational record. We might lose that argument.” The players then went on to detail what had happened at the party. Incidentally, it was clear . . . that Trask was absolutely certain that nothing had happened and that the players were innocent; I’m not sure that he played much of a role in what ensued in the following weeks.
Either way, my larger point remains unchanged. Officials of Duke University–and, in a couple of cases at least, I do think genuinely–were indicating to the players their belief in their innocence at the same time that the University was surreptitiously passing protected personal information about them out the back door to police officers with questionable motives and disputed integrity.
The problems with Mike Nifong and his conduct were manifest as I mentioned in the last post. However, Duke had every reason to be very suspicious of the motives of the police as well. Before that interview with the victim occurred, the original police investigator assigned to the case spoke with Sergeant Mark Gottlieb and they agreed that he would take over the case. As detailed last September in both the News and Observer and the Chronicle, Sergeant Gottlieb had been the subject of numerous allegations involving the violation of the rights of Duke students and use of thug-like tactics against them because of some particular animus he had against Duke students. Days before the lacrosse case incident, Durham Police Department officials had moved Gottlieb from patrol to investigations in District 2 apparently in response to these complaints. Duke officials had been notified of the complaints against Gottlieb no later than February. Now Gottlieb was back chasing Duke students, having in his own words “adopted” the lacrosse case. And into Gottlieb’s very hands, Duke personally delivered this protected information without a subpoena.
Second, in the comments, someone asked why turning the key card data over to the police was prejudicial to the players. Sure it was illegal, but how did it harm them? A good investigator will gather as much information as possible and then form a theory. However, that is not how it is always done. Some police investigators unfortunately do not go wherever the evidence takes them. Instead, they make up their mind what happened and then go out and try to find evidence that supports their theory while ignoring all else. Sometimes they will even make up evidence. Even “good” cops sometimes do all this. No better illustration of these problems can be found than the way Durham police actually conducted the lacrosse case investigation.
Let me be clear. There is nothing inherently sinister about police. Most police officers are dedicated, honest professionals who want to make a difference in the community. As in every human organization, there are some who do not live up to these ideals. In the middle are a bunch of people who see police work as just another job. Even under the best circumstances, the role of a defense attorney, as with any other type attorney, is to protect against the worst case scenario. They do that by forcing police to establish probable cause and preventing opportunities for fishing expeditions.
In investigating an alleged crime, the police must establish two things: whether a crime occurred and who did it. In the context of the lacrosse case, the police had skipped over the first step and were already trying to find three people to indict. This was despite their initial skepticism about the accuser’s story. In fact, throughout the entire case, they specifically avoided looking for corroborating evidence to test the accuser’s claims, evidently afraid of what they would find. Remember that the application for the Nontestimonial Order sought by police stated that the dna evidence would “immediately rule out any innocent persons, and show conclusive evidence as to who the suspect(s) are. . . .” Yet, the police did not wait for the results of the DNA testing to come back before inducing Duke to give them the keycard information. The keycard data helped police establish who was at the party and, more importantly, who was not. As described in the Pressler/Yeager book, the police were afraid that the accuser would pick someone out of the lineup who was not at the party and that is exactly what she did.
It is not that information protected by FERPA can never be obtained by police. All police have to show is that they have some particular need for the information, i.e. that it would be helpful to them in their investigation. That is a very low threshold, yet the police and Nifong were unable to make that showing with regard to the key card data. That they were unable to do so demonstrates that no legitimate reason existed for them to have this information.
Judge pushes ruling on Chrysler’s sale to Monday – Reuters UK
May 30, 2009
Judge pushes ruling on Chrysler’s sale to Monday – Reuters UK
NEW YORK (Reuters) – The U.S. bankruptcy judge overseeing Chrysler LLC’s bankruptcy case said on Friday he would issue an opinion “sometime on Monday” on the automaker’s proposed sale of most assets to a new company run by Italy’s Fiat SpA. The sale seeks to create a “New Chrysler” owned by Fiat
Prince Harry – Newsday
NEW YORK (AP) — Prince Harry has been all business on his first official trip to the United States, but he’ll have an opportunity for fun before wrapping up his two-day visit to New York. On Saturday afternoon, the 24-year-old prince is to
Obama still has a yen for cheeseburgers – New Haven Register
WASHINGTON — For a health food nut, President Barack Obama sure likes his burgers. Obama made a surprise lunchtime stop at Five Guys, a fast-food restaurant in Washington. The president ordered a cheeseburger with lettuce, tomato, jalapeno peppers, and mustard as well as several other
Report: Iran hangs three over Zahedan mosque bombing – Xinhua News Agency
TEHRAN, May 30 (Xinhua) — Iran hanged in public three men convicted of involvement in a bloody mosque bombing in Zahedan, capital of southeastern province of Sistan-Baluchistan, the official IRNA news agency reported Saturday. The three were hanged in public at 6:00 a.m. local time (0130 GMT) near
Prince Harry – Newsday
May 30, 2009
Prince Harry – Newsday
NEW YORK (AP) — Prince Harry has been all business on his first official trip to the United States, but he’ll have an opportunity for fun before wrapping up his two-day visit to New York. On Saturday afternoon, the 24-year-old prince is to
UAW OKs GM concessions – Daily News Journal
DETROIT — The United Auto Workers union has ratified a package of concessions designed to reduce General Motors Corp.’s labor costs, completing a key piece of the automaker’s massive restructuring effort. UAW President Ron Gettelfinger said at a news conference Friday that 74 percent of GM’s 54
Bush calls Clinton ‘brother’ in joint stage appearance – Chicago Sun-Times
TORONTO — Former President George W. Bush has defended former President Bill Clinton and called him his “brother” in their first appearance together on a stage. Bush said in their Friday appearance at a Toronto forum that he never liked it when previous administration officials criticized his
HP To Cut More Than 6000 Jobs – InformationWeek
May 20, 2009
HP To Cut More Than 6000 Jobs – InformationWeek HP To Cut More Than 6000 Jobs
RTE.ie
InformationWeek
The cuts follow HP's announcement of a 3.2% drop in revenue and a 17% decline in profits for the fiscal quarter ended April 30.
HP Disappoints — for Now
A Sobering Quarter from Hewlett-Packard
"MISSING LINK" FOUND: New Fossil Links Humans, Lemurs? – National Geographic "MISSING LINK" FOUND: New Fossil Links Humans, Lemurs?
guardian.co.uk
National Geographic
May 19, 2009—Meet "Ida," the small "missing link" found in Germany that's created a big media splash and will likely continue to make waves among those who study human origins.
Norwegian team reveals 'missing link'
Why 'Ida' Inspires Navel-Gazing at Our Ancestry
Leonardo: New Criteria for New Media
May 20, 2009
Leonardo: New Criteria for New Media
University of Maine’s criteria for New Media achievement serve as a model for faculty at other institutions.
Academia’s goal may be the free exchange of ideas, but up to now many universities have been wary–if not downright dismissive–of their professors using the Internet and other digital media to supercharge that exchange, especially in the arts and humanities.
Peer review committees are supposed to assess a researcher’s standing in the field, but to date most have ignored reputations established by blogging, publishing DVDs, or contributing to email lists.
In a signal that some universities are warming to digital scholarship, however, the winter 2009 issue of MIT’s Leonardo magazine–itself a traditional peer review journal, though known for experimenting with networked media–has published a feature on the changing criteria for excellence in the Internet age.
To make its point as concretely as possible, the feature includes the recently approved promotion and tenure guidelines of the University of Maine’s New Media Department, together with an argument for expanding recognition entitled “New Criteria for New Media.”
Rather than throw time-honored benchmarks for excellence out the window, “New Criteria for New Media” tries to extend them into the 21st century. To supplement the “closed” peer review process familiar from traditional journals, …. [University Of Maine's ] criteria recognize the value of the “open peer review” employed in recognition metrics such as ThoughtMesh and The Pool.
>>>The Pool < <<
[http://scholarship20.blogspot.com/2008/05/everyone-into-pool.html]
>>>ThoughMesh< <<
[http://scholarship20.blogspot.com/2008/05/thoughtmesh-innovative-scholarly.html]
As the name suggests, open peer review allows contributions from any community member rather than a group of experts, and all reviews are public; when combined with an appropriate recognition metric, the result is much faster evaluations than possible via the customary approach.
“New Criteria for New Media” also urges academic reviews to reward collaboration in new media research; valuable roles include conceptual architect, designer, engineer, or even matchmaker (e.g., introducing two other researchers whose collaboration results in a publication).
Because the University of Maine hopes other institutions will adopt these criteria and adapt them to their own needs, it is releasing them under a Creative Commons (CC-by) license. [snip]
The new criteria have already been sought after by individual tenure candidates and cited in the Chronicle of Higher Education.
[http://chronicle.com/free/v54/i38/38a01001.htm]
You can find them in Leonardo’s winter 2009 issue (vol. 42 no. 1)
[http://newmedia.umaine.edu/feature.php?id=927]
Leonardo: New Criteria for New Media
Abstract
This paper argues for redefining evaluation criteria for faculty working in new media research and makes specific recommendations for promotion and tenure committees in U.S. universities.
[http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/leon.2009.42.1.71]
PDF (Subscribers)
[http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/leon.2009.42.1.71]
PDF Plus (Subscibers)
[http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1162/leon.2009.42.1.71]
See Also
[http://scholarship20.blogspot.com/2009/04/university-of-maine-promotion-and_20.html]
[http://scholarship20.blogspot.com/2009/04/university-of-maine-promotion-and.html]
See Also Also The ThoughMesh Version(s)
[http://thoughtmesh.net/publish/275.php]
University of Maine | Promotion and Tenure Guidelines || Promotion and Tenure Guidelines | New Criteria for New Media |
New Media Department, University of Maine
Promotion and Tenure Guidelines Addendum: Rationale for Redefined Criteria
New Criteria for New Media
Version 2.2, January 2007
Authors: Joline Blais, Jon Ippolito, and Owen Smith in collaboration with Steve Evans and Nate Stormer.
ABSTRACT: An argument for redefining promotion and tenure criteria for faculty in new media departments of today’s universities.
Introduction
Recognition and achievement in the field of new media must be measured by standards as high as but different from those in established artistic or scientific disciplines. As the reports from the American Council of Learned Societies[1], the Modern Language Association[2], and the University of Maine[3] recommend, promotion and tenure guidelines must be revised to encourage the creative and innovative use of technology if universities are to remain competitive in the 21st century.
The following points summarize some of the key areas in which new media research departs from traditional academic scholarship, with the aim of providing a rationale for specific criteria for promotion and tenure detailed elsewhere.
New form and content
The differences between traditional and new media excellence lie in both form and content. The hard-copy format of traditional review documentation, such as photocopies or slides, is insufficient for evaluating new media work; screenshots do little justice to electronic projects based on innovative interactive or participatory design. As the MLA puts it, “evaluative bodies should review faculty members’ work in the medium in which it was produced. For example, Web-based projects should be viewed online, not in printed form.”[4]
Further complicating the evaluation of new media achievements is the fact that they are often interdisciplinary, as reflected by the current University of Maine New Media faculty, whose backgrounds range from engineering to computer science to fine art to photojournalism to literature.
For example, while art professors typically divide clearly into critical (Art History) and creative (Studio Art) faculties, new media’s brief history often requires its practitioners to develop a critical context for their own creative work. This is why the majority of pre-eminent new media critics are also artists.[5] It is also why new media research spans numerous genres, from critical essays to political activism to community-building to software design.
Limitations of academic journals
These differences may require evaluators of new media artist-researchers to look beyond the usual standards applicable in other disciplines. As noted by a 2003 National Academies report:
Because the field of [Information Technology and Creative Practices] is young and dynamic, ITCP production is hard to evaluate. Traditional review panels…may be hampered by their members’ ties to single disciplines and the absence of a time-tested consensus about what constitutes good work in ITCP and why. [6]
Ironically, the National Academies study found that the highest benchmark for success in traditional academic departments, publication in peer-reviewed journals, is less relevant to success in new media–and empirically less an accurate measure of stature in the field–than more supple or timely forms of intellectual exposition:
The gold standard for academia–and the criterion most easily understood by parties outside a given subdiscipline–is the so-called archival journal (often published by scholarly or professional societies) that involves considerable editorial selection plus prepublication review and revision, which function as a screening system for quality. But the long lead time for such publications poses problems for subdisciplines in which timeliness–quickly getting an idea into the field–matters.[7]
Leonardo magazine (MIT Press) is currently the only print magazine universally recognized as a peer-reviewed journal about new media. There are currently a handful of networked peer-reviewed journals devoted to new media, such as Leonardo’s Electronic Almanac (Cambridge), Fibreculture (Sydney), and First Monday (Chicago).
Yet the field’s most prominent print publishers and research archivists[8] have acknowledged a 15-25 year lag and limited exposure that makes print publications far less relevant for new media research. Although promising new paradigms for distributed publication are on the horizon, at the time of writing these systems are only in the planning stage.[9] Finally, as the MLA warns, participation in electronic scholarship should not place extra demands on a researcher[10]; an accomplishment in new media research should substitute for a print article or monograph, not merely supplement them.
Alternative Recognition Measures
Given the accessibility and timeliness required for new media research, the following measures of recognition should be prioritized in the evaluation of new media research candidates:
1. Invited / edited publications
Invitations to publish in edited electronic journals or printed magazines and books should be recognized as the kind of peer influence that in other fields would be signaled by acceptance in peer-reviewed journals.
2. Live conferences
The 2003 National Academies study concludes that conferences on new media, both face-to-face and virtual, offer a more useful and in some cases more prestigious venue for exposition than academic journals:
[The sluggishness of journal publications] is offset somewhat by a flourishing array of conferences and other forums, in both virtual and real space, that provide a sense of community and an outlet as well as feedback[11]….The prestige associated with presentations at major conferences actually makes some of them more selective than journals.[12]
New forms of conference archiving–such as archived Webcasts–add value and exposure to the research presented at conferences.
3. Citations
Citations are a valuable and versatile measure of peer influence because they may come from or point to a variety of genres, from Web sites to databases to books in print. Examples include citations in:
a. Electronic archives and recognition networks, such as the publicly accessible databases maintained by the Daniel Langlois Foundation (Montreal), the V2 organization (Rotterdam), the Database of Virtual Art (Berlin), and the Media Art Net database (Karlsruhe).
b. Books, printed journals, and newspapers. These are easier to find now, thanks to Google Scholar, Google Print, and Amazon’s “look inside the book” feature.
c. Syllabi and other pedagogical contexts. Google searches on .edu domains and citations of the author’s work in syllabi from outside universities can measure the academic currency of an individual researcher or her ideas. In the sciences, readings or projects cited on a syllabus are likely to be popular textbooks, but in an emerging field like new media, such recognition is a more valid marker of relevance.
4. Download / visitor counts
Downloads and other traffic-related statistics represent a measure of influence that has gained importance in the online community recently. As a 2005 open access study[13] concludes:
Whereas the significance of citation impact is well established, access of research literature via the Web provides a new metric for measuring the impact of articles – Web download impact.
Download impact is useful for at least two reasons:
(1) The portion of download variance that is correlated with citation counts provides an early-days estimate of probable citation impact that can begin to be tracked from the instant an article is made Open Access and that already attains its maximum predictive power after 6 months.
(2) The portion of download variance that is uncorrelated with citation counts provides a second, partly independent estimate of the impact of an article, sensitive to another form of research usage that is not reflected in citations (Kurtz 2004).
5. Impact in online discussions
Email discussion lists are the proving grounds of new media discourse. They vary greatly in tone and substance, but even the least moderated of such lists can subject their authors to rigorous–and at times withering–scrutiny.[14] Measures such as the number of list subscribers, geographic scope, the presence or absence of moderation, and the number of replies triggered by a given contribution can give a sense of the importance of each discussion list.[15]
6. Impact in the real world
While magazine columns and newspaper editorials may have little standing in traditional academic subjects, one of the strengths of new media are their relevance to a daily life that is increasingly inflected by the relentless proliferation of technologies. Even counting Google search returns on the author’s name or statistically improbable phrases can be a measure of real-world impact[16].
By privileging new media research with direct effect on local or global communities, the university can remain relevant in an age where much research takes place outside the ivory tower.
8. Net-native recognition metrics
Peer-evaluated online communities may invent their own measures of member evaluation, in which case they may be relevant to a researcher who participates in those communities. Examples of such self-policing communities include Slashdot, The Pool, Open Theory, and the Distributed Learning Project.
The MLA pins the responsibility for learning these new metrics on reviewers rather than the reviewed.[17] Given the mutability of such metrics, however, promotion and tenure candidates may be called upon to explain and give context to these metrics for their reviewers. Again, efforts to educate a scholar’s colleagues about new media should be considered part of that scholar’s research, not supplemental to it.
9. Reference letters
Letters of recommendation from outside referees are an important compensation for the irrelevance of traditional recognition venues. Nevertheless, it is insufficient merely to solicit such letters from professors tenured in new media at other universities, since so few exist.
More valuable is to use the measures outlined in this document to identify pre-eminent figures in new media, or to require new media promotion and tenure candidates to identify such figures and supply evidence that they qualify according to the criteria above.
[1] The ACLS recommends “policies for tenure and promotion that recognize and reward digital scholarship and scholarly communication; recognition should be given not only to scholarship that uses the humanities and social science cyberinfrastructure but also to scholarship that contributes to its design, construction, and growth….
We might expect younger colleagues to use new technologies with greater fluency and ease, but with tenure at stake, they will also be more risk-averse….
Senior scholars now have both the opportunity and the responsibility to take certain risks, first among which is to condone risk taking in their junior colleagues and their graduate students, making sure that such endeavors are appropriately rewarded.”
“Our Cultural Commonwealth,” report by the ACLS Commission on Cyberinfrastructure for the Humanities and Social Sciences, 29 July 2006,
[http://www.acls.org/cyberinfrastructure/cyber.htm[, accessed January 2, 2007.
[2] “Departments and institutions should recognize the legitimacy of scholarship produced in new media, whether by individuals or in collaboration, and create procedures for evaluating these forms of scholarship.” December 2006 report of the MLA Task Force on Evaluating Scholarship for Tenure and Promotion,
[http://www.mla.org/tenure_promotion] accessed January 2, 2007.
[3] “The Commission encourages each department on campus, as well as the University as a whole, to examine promotion and tenure criteria to recognize and reward innovative uses of technology in teaching, research and service….the University needs to consider the criteria and standards used in the promotion and tenure process.
The Commission encourages each department and the University as a whole to consider whether faculty efforts in this area are recognized, valued, and/or encouraged.” November 2003 report of the University of Maine Commission on Information Technologies, accessed at
[http://www.umaine.edu/documents/CIT.pdf] on May 2, 2004.
[4] MLA Committee on Information Technology. “Guidelines for Evaluating Work with Digital Media in the Modern Languages.” 20 May 2000. ADE Bulletin 132 (2002): 94–95. 82, mirrored at
[http://www.mla.org/guidelines_evaluation_digital], accessed 2 January, 2007.
[5] A brief sampling of new media theorist-practitioners includes Simon Biggs (Cambridge University), Matthew Fuller (Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam), Mary Flanagan (Hunter), Alexander Galloway (NYU), Kenneth Goldberg (Berkeley), Eduardo Kac (Art Institute of Chicago), Natalie Jeremijenko (UCSD), Raphael Lozano-Hemmer (Karlstad University, Sweden), Lev Manovich (UCSD), Randall Packer (American University), Richard Rinehart (Berkeley), and Jeffrey Shaw (ZKM).
[6] National Research Council, Beyond Productivity: Information Technology, Innovation, and Creativity (Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 2003), pp. 8-9.
[7] National Research Council, op. cit., p. 188.
[8] These estimates are from MIT’s Roger Malina (Director of Leonardo magazine) and the Daniel Langlois Foundation’s Alain Depocas (Director of the Centre for Documentation + Research), and are mirrored at
[http://cordova.asap.um.maine.edu/wiki/index.php/Standards_of_Recognition]
[9] The Interarchive project is a possible model for distributed publication; see
[http://newmedia.umaine.edu/interarchive]
[10] “Change in favor of a more capacious conception of scholarship, which we strongly endorse, should not mean ever-wider demands on faculty members, most especially those coming up for tenure and promotion.” MLA Task Force on Evaluating Scholarship for Tenure and Promotion, op. cit., p. 21.
[11] National Research Council, op. cit., pp. 8-9.
[12] National Research Council, op. cit., p. 188.
[13] Tim Brody and Stevan Harnad, “Earlier Web Usage Statistics as Predictors of Later Citation Impact”,
[http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/10647/], accessed 5 March 2005.
[14] This recent
[http://www.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0504/msg00051.html]
rejoinder by Morlock Elloi on the
> If you have any past publications that might help me understand your point of view, I would gladly read them.
While I understand that in paidspeakerworld the weight of the argument is computed as (volume of publications) x (number of speeches), on nettime and elsewhere closer to reality arguments stand for themselves.
[15] Electronic and email texts also have a currency acknowledged by leading institutions in the field. As of December 21, 2005, one of the premiere bibliographic indices in new media, the Langlois Foundation’s CR+D database, included the following indexation for “Jon Ippolito”:
* Author of 10 documents
* Subject of 48 documents
* Participant to 21 events
* Organizer of 2 events
Of the 10 documents by the author indexed, 1 is from an email list and 2 are parts of Web sites. In the case of artist and critic Alexander Galloway, the relevance of his online texts is even more striking: although by 2005 he was the author of several journal articles and an important book from MIT Press, the two documents that represented his writing in the CR+D database were both from email lists.
[16] A statistically significant number of Google returns, eg > 30, may be a necessary but insufficient condition for confirming global impact.
[17] “In evaluating scholarship for tenure and promotion, committees and administrators must take responsibility for becoming fully aware both of the mechanisms of oversight and assessment that already govern the production of a great deal of digital scholarship and of the well-established role of new media in humanities research.
It is of course convenient when electronic scholarly editing and writing are clearly analogous to their print counterparts. But when new media make new forms of scholarship possible, those forms can be assessed with the same rigor used to judge scholarly quality in print media. We must have the flexibility to ensure that as new sources and instruments for knowing develop, the meaning of scholarship can expand and remain relevant to our changing times.” MLA Task Force on Evaluating Scholarship for Tenure and Promotion, op. cit., p. 46.
[http://newmedia.umaine.edu/interarchive/new_criteria_for_new_media.html]
Timeline: Tracking the Spread of Swine Flu – ABC News
May 18, 2009
Timeline: Tracking the Spread of Swine Flu – ABC News Timeline: Tracking the Spread of Swine Flu
CTV.ca
ABC News
A government order closes Mexico City private and public schools after Mexico reports its first lab confirmation of swine flu. The virus has spread to California and Texas; eight Americans infected.
Video: Swine Flu Shuts Down Japanese Schools
Astronauts finish work on inside of Hubble – The Associated Press Astronauts finish work on inside of Hubble
ABC News
The Associated Press
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) – After five amazing days, spacewalking astronauts finished repair work on the Hubble Space Telescope on Monday and shut the doors to the treasured observatory, which will never be touched by human hands again.
Video: Astronauts' marathon mission to repair Hubble
Conrad Black's anti-fraud case will go to Supreme Court – Los Angeles Times Conrad Black's anti-fraud case will go to Supreme Court
BBC News
Los Angeles Times
Justices have agreed to hear an appeal by the former newspaper executive, who says he was wrongly convicted of failing to provide 'honest services.
Supreme Court Accepts Conrad Black Conviction Appeal
Court will review Black's fraud conviction
NYMEX-Crude ends up on Nigeria unrest, Sunoco fire – Reuters NYMEX-Crude ends up on Nigeria unrest, Sunoco fire
BBC News
Reuters
* Fire strikes Sunoco's Marcus Hook, Pa., refinery * Nigeria militants hit infrastructure, threaten more NEW YORK, May 18 (Reuters) – US crude oil futures settled almost 5 percent percent higher on Monday on supply jitters after unrest in Nigeria …
OIL FUTURES: Nymex Crude Rises On Nigeria Supply Concern
Oil jumps 4.8% on supply concerns
CfP: Communication Pedagogy in the Age of Social Media
May 14, 2009
CfP: Communication Pedagogy in the Age of Social Media
Over the course of the last few years, social media technologies such as blogs, microblogs, digital videos, podcasts, wikis, and social networks, have seen a dramatic increase in adoption rates. To date, Internet users have uploaded roughly 80 million videos to YouTube and launched approximately 133 million blogs worldwide. Because of their ability to connect people and to facilitate the exchange of information and web content, social media technologies not only provide a powerful new way to interact with one another, but they also present exciting new pedagogical opportunities.
Earlier this year, the New Media Consortium and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative released the 2008 Horizon Report, which seeks to identify new technologies capable of affecting the way we teach and learn. Among the critical challenges outlined by this year’s report is the need for universities to equip students with new media literacy skills and to develop curricula that “address not only traditional capabilities like developing an argument over the course of a long paper”, but also “how to create meaningful content with today’s tools.” (The New Media Consortium, 2008, p. 6).
Considering that these tools center around the ideas of collaboration, participation, and conversation, they should hold special interest to communication researchers and educators alike. As a result, this special issue seeks to examine the pedagogical applications of social media technologies, especially with regard to the communication classroom.
Examples of best practices in social media adoption in all areas of communication education are welcome, as are case studies or empirical research analyzing the effectiveness and/or effects of incorporating social media technologies into the communication classroom.
Research examining the role these technologies play in the social construction of a collective knowledge pool would also fit within the scope of this special issue.
The special issue is scheduled for publication in the first half of 2010. Deadline for completed manuscripts is June 15, 2009.
Submissions should be electronic (.doc or .rtf format) and must conform to the specifications of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 5th ed. Place author’s contact information in an email to the editor only, not on the title page of the submission.
Issue Editors:Corinne Weisgerber, Ph.D. and Shannan H. Butler, Ph.D. / St. Edward’s University
Send inquiries and submissions to: corinnew@stedwards.edu
Source
[http://www.cios.org/www/ejc/calls/socmedia.htm]
Professor KC Johnson, Durham in Wonderland blogger and
This event is cosponsored by Duke Students for an Ethical Duke and
One of the groups sponsoring KC Johnson’s address, Duke Students for and Ethical Duke (not to be confused with the equally estimable Duke Students for an Ethical Durham) is a new group dedicated to making sure that the appalling treatment of certain Duke students by the administration and a few of their professors is not forgotten and does not go unaddressed. They are pledged to “defend the dignity and the academic and legal rights of Duke students, both individually and collectively, whether threatened by other students, faculty, or administrators alike.” Here is an article from the Chronicle.
This is a very encouraging development. The fact that the number of groups focusing attention on these issues is growing and not decreasing with time should indicate to the trustees and administration that these issues are not going to go away. It is also good that the students themselves are getting involved. We at FODU are certainly concerned for Duke as an institution. However, most of all, we have done what we have done for the students. Those of us who are alumni want present students to enjoy what we enjoyed while at Duke: a university committed to the care, nurturing and dignity of ALL students. Those who are parents want these things for their children.
Follow up to Duke and the Police
First, a Duke official contacted me after I posted the last update and took issue with two statements I made there. I repeated information that had been told to me personally and which had also been widely reported. However, this official says these two statements are inaccurate and offers an alternative view. As the other bloggers in this case have done, I reproduce this person’s comments below in order to allow a fair opportunity to reply. I also appreciate this person’s willingness to respond and engage us in a dialogue, something lacking among Duke officials up to this point.
1) No one in the university “hired” Wes Covington. In fact, I was the unfortunate agent who brought him into contact with the players. When I met with them on March 17th and first learned of the police search, I was surprised and concerned that they had neither told their parents about it nor retained counsel. I told them to call their parents and consult with them about a lawyer. I said that I would also find out if there was anyone locally who could help them. I then asked Sue Wasiolek for a recommendation and she pointed me to Covington. I was the one who passed his name along to the four captains. They met with him at least once that I am aware of but to the best of my knowledge, he was never formally retained by any of them. I would be surprised if anyone in the administration other than Wasiolek knew anything about this until much later. By 3/24 (the day after the NTO was served) he was entirely out of the picture as far as I know.2) The persistent rumor about “student/teacher privilege” is somewhat inaccurate. This came up in a meeting between the captains and Trask, Pressler [and] Alleva . . . on 2/24. By then, the players had all retained counsel and been advised not to speak about the matter without the presence of counsel. Trask had been sent down to athletics (I think) to assess the situation and report back to Allen Building. When he asked the players to tell him everything that had happened, they responded that they had been advised not to speak (in fact, they were dying to tell anyone who would listen what had (or hadn’t) happened). Trask responded that they could call their lawyers to come over and that he would wait for them. The players (specifically, David Evans) then said they would go ahead without representation. At that point, Trask said “We could argue that it (their account of the evening of 3/13) is a protected educational record. We might lose that argument.” The players then went on to detail what had happened at the party. Incidentally, it was clear . . . that Trask was absolutely certain that nothing had happened and that the players were innocent; I’m not sure that he played much of a role in what ensued in the following weeks.
Either way, my larger point remains unchanged. Officials of Duke University–and, in a couple of cases at least, I do think genuinely–were indicating to the players their belief in their innocence at the same time that the University was surreptitiously passing protected personal information about them out the back door to police officers with questionable motives and disputed integrity.
The problems with Mike Nifong and his conduct were manifest as I mentioned in the last post. However, Duke had every reason to be very suspicious of the motives of the police as well. Before that interview with the victim occurred, the original police investigator assigned to the case spoke with Sergeant Mark Gottlieb and they agreed that he would take over the case. As detailed last September in both the News and Observer and the Chronicle, Sergeant Gottlieb had been the subject of numerous allegations involving the violation of the rights of Duke students and use of thug-like tactics against them because of some particular animus he had against Duke students. Days before the lacrosse case incident, Durham Police Department officials had moved Gottlieb from patrol to investigations in District 2 apparently in response to these complaints. Duke officials had been notified of the complaints against Gottlieb no later than February. Now Gottlieb was back chasing Duke students, having in his own words “adopted” the lacrosse case. And into Gottlieb’s very hands, Duke personally delivered this protected information without a subpoena.
Second, in the comments, someone asked why turning the key card data over to the police was prejudicial to the players. Sure it was illegal, but how did it harm them? A good investigator will gather as much information as possible and then form a theory. However, that is not how it is always done. Some police investigators unfortunately do not go wherever the evidence takes them. Instead, they make up their mind what happened and then go out and try to find evidence that supports their theory while ignoring all else. Sometimes they will even make up evidence. Even “good” cops sometimes do all this. No better illustration of these problems can be found than the way Durham police actually conducted the lacrosse case investigation.
Let me be clear. There is nothing inherently sinister about police. Most police officers are dedicated, honest professionals who want to make a difference in the community. As in every human organization, there are some who do not live up to these ideals. In the middle are a bunch of people who see police work as just another job. Even under the best circumstances, the role of a defense attorney, as with any other type attorney, is to protect against the worst case scenario. They do that by forcing police to establish probable cause and preventing opportunities for fishing expeditions.
In investigating an alleged crime, the police must establish two things: whether a crime occurred and who did it. In the context of the lacrosse case, the police had skipped over the first step and were already trying to find three people to indict. This was despite their initial skepticism about the accuser’s story. In fact, throughout the entire case, they specifically avoided looking for corroborating evidence to test the accuser’s claims, evidently afraid of what they would find. Remember that the application for the Nontestimonial Order sought by police stated that the dna evidence would “immediately rule out any innocent persons, and show conclusive evidence as to who the suspect(s) are. . . .” Yet, the police did not wait for the results of the DNA testing to come back before inducing Duke to give them the keycard information. The keycard data helped police establish who was at the party and, more importantly, who was not. As described in the Pressler/Yeager book, the police were afraid that the accuser would pick someone out of the lineup who was not at the party and that is exactly what she did.
It is not that information protected by FERPA can never be obtained by police. All police have to show is that they have some particular need for the information, i.e. that it would be helpful to them in their investigation. That is a very low threshold, yet the police and Nifong were unable to make that showing with regard to the key card data. That they were unable to do so demonstrates that no legitimate reason existed for them to have this information.
‘Master and Margarita’ comes together in the end
May 9, 2009
‘Master and Margarita’ comes together in the end
Last weekend, UMKC Theatre opened their final performance of the year – and their biggest stage production to date.
“The Master and Margarita” is an adaptation of Mikhail Afanasievich Bulgakov’s novel, which tells the story of a writer in communist Russia.
Defrosting The Digital Library: Bibliographic Tools For The Next Generation Web
Hull, D., S. R. Pettifer, and D. B. Kell / October 2008 / Defrosting The Digital Library: Bibliographic Tools For The Next Generation Web / PLoS Comput Biol 4 (10), e1000204+
Digital Libraries, DOIs, and URIs
Problems Using Digital Libraries
Some Tools for Defrosting Libraries
A Future with Warmer Libraries
Recommendations
Conclusions
We conclude with how these applications may begin to help achieve a digital defrost, and discuss some of the issues that will help or hinder this in terms of making libraries on the Web warmer places in the future, becoming resources that are considerably more useful to both humans and machines.
FLU UPDATE: State swine flu threat appears to be ebbing – Alexandria Daily Town Talk
May 8, 2009
FLU UPDATE: State swine flu threat appears to be ebbing – Alexandria Daily Town Talk
BATON ROUGE — It appears that the threat of a serious outbreak of swine flu in Louisiana is passing, says Alan Levine, secretary of the state Department of Health and Hospitals “The fact that we have only one new suspected case, that none of our cases are in the hospital, and that the CDC is
Pope Benedict in Jordan stresses deep respect for Islam – The Australian
POPE Benedict XVI underlined his “deep respect” for Islam yesterday in Jordan, on his first trip as pontiff to an Arab state, and stressed that religious freedom is a fundamental human right. He also called the church a spiritual force that could contribute to progress in bringing about peace in the
Fire nears Calif. coastal city; 30,000 evacuated – Charleston Daily Mail
SANTA BARBARA, Calif. (AP) – Firefighters struggled Friday to get ahead of a raging wildfire that has moved dangerously close to heavily populated areas around this idyllic coastal city and forced the evacuation of an roughly 30,000 people. Mobile home parks and neighborhoods of multimillion-dollar
