scavenger hunt

First, let’s talk about the scavenger hunt. I found all (within the 30 minute time slot) but #5. The frustrating thing about this exercise was that everytime I googled a search term, the first 3 or 4 entries were people’s blogs. Of course I skipped over those. Here’s the results:

1. Leon Trotsky. I found that one on youtube. Very interesting (Moscow trials) as I like Russian history. I’m not going to list web address (i hope I don’t get yelled at..tee hee) but really, does anybody not know how to access youtube?

2. Suffrage poem was easy, as well. I found it here: www.scribd.com/doc/2393145/Are-Women-PeopleA-Book-of-Rhymes-for-Suffrage-Times The poem is entitled “Evolution” by Alice Duer Miller and is part of scribd’s Gutenberg eBook project. It was actually a good poem, fitting for the times, I would say.

3. George Washingtons’ letter to Timothy Pickering was found at google books (address obvious).

4. I found Willie Lynch’s speech at menuampim.com/lynch_hoax1.html This was full text and pretty disturbing.

5. Like I said….Didn’t find this one.

6. This article was found a JSTOR. That’s a no-brainer.

7. Four syllabi for Hamlet on the Holodeck were easy to find, as well. Just google and scroll down until you find university websites and just make sure that they are syllabi (I won’t bore anybody with the addresses here, either).

8. Oh, yeahhhhh. This one. I went to Way Back and my browser said there was an error. This was Fire Fox. So I tried  Safari. This was bad, too. A shame because I’ve used Way Back successfully in the past. O-wel.

9. Janet Murray and the Sims. I found both, but not together. However, i did find a picture of her in front of a screen and the images may well have been the Sims. I dunno.

Phew…that’s that. A few thoughts on this exercise. I think when it was first assigned it was probably a real challenge. Now, not so much because. like I said before, when you google a search term, you get everybodys blogs that have done them before. Perhaps a new hunt would be in order here?

Dan Cohen likes blogs.

It’s obvious that Dan Cohen likes blogs.  And he wants others to like them, too. While he laments the “self-involved, insecure, oversexed teens and twentysomethings” who drone on about daily activities, he also sees blogs as useful tools for academics to inform and educate interested parties. In fact, he implores academia to start their own blogs. I agree with his various points that blogging is indeed a ‘new’ form of writing and an outlet for publishing material, and that it easily accessible to many (after all, all one has to do is a keyword search and BLAM… the options are endless). 

When I got to the end of the blog I saw that it was published in 2006, and it got me to thinking. I did a little research and found countless academic blogs out there and realized what he proposed actually happened: Professors started their blogs.

I went one step further and dusted off my Chicago Manual of Style, leafed through the index and did not find the word ‘blog’ anywhere. And this was the 15th edition. So I went to their website, and there it was: proper citations for blog entries. So I guess what Cohen wanted, happened. Blogs have become both a valuable tool for authors and a legitimate source for research. 

While I was never really interested in blogging, or reading blogs before, I can say that I have found a new appreciation for both the bloggers and the readers of the blogs. I look at it this way, you can pick someones brain without the big bar tab.

hi there

Hi everybody.

I’m looking forward to starting classes, meeting all of you, learning some new stuff and also having some fun. Cheers!