OK, so I admit that I am baiting Charlie with that title, but I would like to ask a few questions to get a sense of everyone's investment in open source vs. proprietary file formats. For those who haven't followed it, here's the backstory (as I understand it):

The deadline for paper, panel, and workshop submissions for Computers & Writing 2008 has been extended to January 24. This year's theme is “Open Source as Technology and Concept,” and we welcome everyone to visit the conference website to learn more about the conference, the Athens area, and to access our online (and open source) proposal and registration system.

We look forward to seeing you in Athens!

-------

The conference CFP is enclosed below for your convenience.

Woo - hoo!

Here 'tis. Gotta love this year's theme.

Computers & Writing 2008: Open Source as Technology and Concept

Well, okay, it is inherently political, but my point here is really one of coherence and not politics. Yesterday I heard most of Bush's speech on his new torture policy. I was dumsbtruck when I heard the following sentences. I tried to ignore it, yet I heard this very text again on the radio a few minutes ago. No one has commented on what I see as a completely staggering illogic; does anyone else see the same problem?

Here's the text I'm referring to:

These men will be held in a high-security facility at Guantanamo. The International Committee of the Red Cross is being advised of their detention, and will have the opportunity to meet with them.

Alan Liu posted the following on Humanist. I asked his permission to repost it here, and he consented. I'll post some thoughts of my own as a response to this post. For now, I'd offer that Dr. Liu's post seems to strike a good balance; I wonder how students would react to this statement.

Subject: Request for Comment: draft policy statement on student use of Wikipedia

Dear Willard,

This message is a request for comment (the humanities version of a RFC). 2006 appears to be the year that undergraduate students discovered Wikipedia in a big way. My colleagues and I have been seeing an increasing number of papers that use Wikipedia inappropriately as the sole or primary reference. For example, I just read a paper about the relation between Structuralism, Deconstruction, and Postmodernism in which every reference was to the Wikipedia articles on those topics with no awareness that there was any need to read a primary work or even a critical work. After writing comments to a number of students on this topic, I set to work on a general policy statement addressed to the student that might be shared among my local community of scholars (see draft below). I thought such a statement might be of general use. I welcome any suggestions from, or discussion by, the Humanist community as well as pointers to any similar statements that
may exist. (Still to do is a one-paragraph version of such a statement suitable for inclusion in a course syllabus.)

--Alan Liu, UC Santa Barbara

TO THE STUDENT: APPROPRIATE USE OF WIKIPEDIA

In recent years, Wikipedia (http://wikipedia.org) has become one of the most important and useful resources on the Internet. Created by an open community of authors (anyone can contribute, edit, or correct articles), it has become a powerful resource for researchers to consult alongside other
established library and online resources. As in the case of all tools, however, its value is a function of appropriateness. In the case of college-level essays or research papers, students should keep in mind the following two limitations, one applying to all encyclopedias, and the other specifically to Wikipedia:

(1) As in the case of any encyclopedia, Wikipedia is not appropriate as the primary or sole reference for anything that is central to an argument, complex, or controversial. "Central to an argument" means that the topic in question is crucial for the paper. (For example, a paper
_about_ Shakespeare or postmodernism cannot rely on an encyclopedia article on those topics.) "Complex" means anything requiring analysis, critical thought, or evaluation. (For example, it is not persuasive to cite an encyclopedia on "spirituality.") "Controversial" means anything that
requires listening to the original voices in a debate because no consensus or conventional view has yet emerged. (For example, cite an encyclopedia on the historical facts underlying a recent political election, but not on themeaning or trends indicated by that election.) These limitations are due to the fact that encyclopedia articles are second- or third-hand summaries. They are excellent starting points for learning about something. But a college-level research paper or critical essay needs to consult directly the articles, books, or other sources mentioned by an encyclopedia article and use those as the reference. The best such sources are those that have been refereed ("peer-reviewed" by other scholars before acceptance for publication, which is the case for most scholarly journals and books) or, in the case of current events, journalistic or other resources that are relatively authoritative in their field.

Nick Carbone published this link on techrhet just yesterday:

http://credibilitycommons.org

I noticed a new posting this morning, explaining the site's purpose:

The Credibility Commons is an experimental environment enabling individuals the opportunity to try out different approaches to improving access to credible information on the World Wide Web. Tools will be provided to researchers as well as the public, allowing them to try out search strategies, collections and other approaches to improving access to credible information. The Commons can be viewed as a collaborative space in which to share ideas, data sets, results and innovations. This project is sponsored by the MacArthur Foundation who is deeply invested in improving access to credible information on the World Wide Web.

Alison Mackeen, editor of The Wild, Wild Wiki volume that Matt Barton and I are working on, forwarded this to me. Alison is starting a new imprint a U Michigan Press entitled digitalculturebooks. Below is a call for nominations to a new series they're launching in short order.

CALL FOR NOMINATIONS

digitalculturebooks is currently inviting nominations for our forthcoming collection, The Best of Technology Writing 2006.

The only such volume to be dedicated exclusively to technology writing, The Best of Technology 2006 will feature innovative, stylish, and accessible writing on a wide variety of technologies and topics, and in a wide variety of genres, including narrative features and profiles; Big Think and opinion pieces; business, investigative, and citizen journalism; art and design criticism; policy analyses; and personal essays.

Yet another article on student e-mail in NYT (don't register if you don't want to, instead try http://www.bugmenot.com/)

To me, there are some shocking quotes in the article. To wit:

"Christopher J. Dede, a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education who has studied technology in education, said these e-mail messages showed how students no longer deferred to their professors, perhaps because they realized that professors' expertise could rapidly become outdated. 'The deference was probably driven more by the notion that professors were infallible sources of deep knowledge," Professor Dede said, and that notion has weakened."

Hi Folks:

I'm working with a group who is trying to look objectively at Facebook, Myspace and other social networks to find if there are meaningful lessons about their popularity which we could incorporate into electronic portfolio design for use in higher education. It might well turn out that these spaces are popular with students mainly because their "teachers" aren't there, but we're hopeful that there are some more objective lessons to take away.

The first step in our project is to engage in a fairly complete literature survey. We're working on a bibliography, but I didn't want to pass up your collective knowledge -- does anyone know of scholarly work done/being done on Facebook and Myspace specifically that we should not miss?

Sorry to interrupt the otherwise thoughtful discussion going on here, but can anyone direct me to an open source solution/workaround for .pdf docs? I know that OO Writer will write a .pdf document, but I want to get beyond that. I'd like to post a document to my website and have both .html and .pdf versions available. I want the .html and .pdf to be as close to identical as possible.

To make this happen now I'm using OO Writer to create a .pdf. I then post the .pdf file onto my web page. But I don't want to use the nasty .html code that OO Writer will create. Yet I'm locked into that OO Writer document because any time I need an to make an alteration to the document, I must return to the source of the .pdf file.