1. What is the difference between stereotypes and subcultures?
2. Choose an avatar for your journal. Analyze what information you are trying to convey with this avatar. (You could choose something that communicates something about your subculture.)
3. What are icons? What icons represent your subculture (to you or the world at large)?
4. Think of depictions of your subculture in the media, either negative or positive, and analyze the reality, depiction, and perception of the icon or your subculture (using the icon as anecdotal evidence).
5. What are texts?
6. Not yet assigned: What texts might a literate, knowledgeable member of your subculture be expected to be familiar with?
7. As usual, define your terms and then tweak, abuse, and test them to destruction: what is an anthem?
8. Anthems (often songs) usually have writers or performers. Research the writers or performers behind your chosen anthem or anthems and write about them. Cite your sources. This research may be useful for your term papers.

Upcoming: Glossary of terms.

torbooks is an rss (really simple syndication) feed in Livejournal for the Tor Books website. If you are interested in science fiction or fantasy, you might consider adding them to your friends page.

Today they posted an article on steampunk as a subculture. If you don't know what steampunk is, I won't go into detail. Basically, it's a sort of Victorian fantastic fiction with an emphasis on technology.

Read the article here.

Here's my grading rubric. It's similar to ones used by many other professors, whether they have them written down or not.

There are plenty of resources at Purdue University's Online Writing Lab (OWL), but look here for how to format your papers. There is a sample first page.

• Remember to never split an infinitive.
• The passive voice should never be used.
• Do not put statements in the negative form.
• Verbs have to agree with their subjects.
• Proofread carefully to see if you words out.
• If you reread your work, you can find on rereading a great deal of repetition can be by rereading and editing.
• A writer must not shift your point of view.
• And don't start a sentence with a conjunction. (Remember, too, a preposition is a terrible word to end a sentence with.)
• Don't overuse exclamation marks!!
• Place pronouns as close as possible, especially in long sentences, as of 10 or more words, to their antecedents.
• Writing carefully, dangling participles must be avoided.
• If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a linking verb is.
• Take the bull by the hand and avoid mixing metaphors.
• Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky.
• Everyone should be careful to use a singular pronoun with singular nouns in their writing.
• Always pick on the correct idiom.
• The adverb always follows the verb.
• Last but not least, avoid cliches like the plague; seek viable alternatives.

William Safire, R.I.P.

I've got the website assembled. Some of you didn't send me the required email. I need it, I want it, and not having it will make me unhappy. I am prepared to share my unhappiness.

If your name is missing from the roster, send me that email right away.

Look over on the left sidebar for the link to the blogroll.

After the Deadline: http://www.afterthedeadline.com/

The scene: watching an anime called Black Cat with my not-quite 11-year-old son

Anson: The subtitles are terrible. They don't match the spoken words at all.
Me: Yes. Someone told me recently that's because often one translator will do the subtitles, and another will do the script for the dialogue. I'm disappointed that this is dubbed rather than just subtitled...
Anson: It's almost impossible to get anime in Japanese in the US. If you want it in Japanese, you have to go to Japan...
Me: Hmm... [click]
TV: "私はパンクしたタイヤを取り替えることに関しては完全なアマチュアである!"
Me: What was that again?
Anson: You can stop being "in your face" about it.
Me: Sorry, I forgot I don't know anything about science fiction, fantasy, or anime...

There are useful communities on Livejournal. Some more useful than others.

For ecology or conservation research, you might consider following the ecogeek_org feed.

English majors might watch the englishmajors community.

feministe covers a wide range of women's issues.

bruce_schneier writes about computer security and other security issues.


I'd invite people to comment with any communities or RSS feeds that might be useful for people using Livejournal as a research journal.

If your teacher is a benevolent and merciful teacher, like me, it is possible that you can make minor corrections to your paper, neatly, to indicate that you do in fact know what you are doing.

This will not work for major structural catastrophes or flaws in your logic, lack of content, or only having six pages when I asked for eight.

But I am prepared to accept that MS Word has idiosyncrasies, and may muck with your spacing, or you may have left a period out of a citation and spotted it at the last second.

These are proofreaders' marks.

Now you will know what some of the more arcane scribbles on your papers mean. We aren't just testing our pens.

You could get paid for it.

How to Make $5 in 30 Minutes Online

I have friends and students who use Macs, so:

Malware researchers have discovered what they believe to be the first Mac OSX botnet.

Keep your iAntiVirus up to date.

As some of you may have noticed, when I ask you to print pieces of your journals, if you're not careful, you may print the whole page, including all of the ads and white space.

We can't install anything on the computers in the labs, but here are some tools to use at home:

GreenPrint - www.komando.com/downloads

Smart Web Printing - www.komando.com/downloads

Ecofont – www.ecofont.eu


Originally found in the Kim Komando e-mail newsletter. More about the programs here.

The KSU library website has one.

I use Endnote myself, but I just found this: http://www.citefast.com/.

It's not cheating. Just do it right.

The single most important thing I can teach you is to look it up, whether online, with software, or in the handbook. The handbook should be your first and last resort, but you should make sure you're using one that's up to date, because these associations occasionally change their minds about the rules. 

I have told you this.

Remember that if you memorize the format for citing a book with a single author, you'll always be in the ballpark for almost anything else.

Sonia Simone's 5 Editor's Secrets to Help You Write Like a Pro

I'm going to come out and tell you that these are the five things that I tell my students over and over again.

The rationales I give are not always identical to Simone's, so I'll tell you mine. But read the original artical, because it's good. there may be a quiz, because I'll be deeply curious to see who read this.

1. Sentences can only do one thing at a time.

She's right. I say you should vary your sentence length because it keeps the reader from getting bored, but the truth is a little more complex. The whole truth, or a little more of the truth, is that the length of the sentence should fit the complexity of the thought, and you shouldn't try to cram too much into one sentence. Clarity is ALWAYS key. You are not juggling, this is not a circus act, and you stand less chance of dazzling the reader (at any level) with your prose than with your clarity of thought.

2. Paragraphs can only do one thing at a time.

What goes for sentences goes double for paragraphs.

3. Look closely at -ing

Simone tells you that -ing constructions are inherently weak, and refers you to a Wikipedia article. I'll give you the short version: the more moving parts something has, the more prone to malfunction it is. True of machinery, true of syntax. Although this can be reduced to absurdity--if you don't write at all, nothing can possibly go wrong--generally, minimizing suffixes like -ing and other complications keep your sentences from breaking down.

4. Omit unnecessary words.

Again, fewer moving parts means fewer ways for your sentence to break.

5. Reframe 90% of the passive voice.

I differ with Simone on this one. I don't think that Americans find active voice inherently more interesting. I think that's a side-effect.

What I think is that passive voice is a grammatical tool with a specific purpose, which is to distance the actor from the action, and should only be employed when that is your intention, or when you don't know who did whatever was done. (Like that.)

If you use it at other times, you're doing it unthinkingly, and that's never good. You should be aware of the how the words are interacting with each other.

I have told you that the issue of personal pronouns in your writing is tied to the appearance of objectivity, and whether you use them or not is related to how hard you need to strive for objectivity in a particular project.

Wikipedia claims neutrality, but anyone with net access can edit the articles. Source evaluation in such documents becomes critical, even though Wikipedia is often a good place to start--but never use Wikipedia as one of your sources.

There is always an author behind a text; there is no way to entirely remove the author's presence. No matter how little or how much of an agenda the author is aware of having, the writing is informed by the author's ideologies. Be aware.

We'll discuss this comic after we're done with the peer review.

Poets & Writers website looks like an excellent clearinghouse for writers seeking to establish themselves in creative writing: fiction, or creative nonfiction.

According to the website:

"If you’re looking for writing competitions, or literary magazines and small presses that welcome both new and established writers, begin here. If you're seeking employment in the literary world, be sure to visit our Job Listings."

Some of their features include a Writing Contests Database, a Literary Magazines Database, a Small Presses Database, Job Listings, and helpful hints such as "Top Ten Topics for Writers."

Note that this is a "dot org" site, not a "dot com." Usually, that means they are less invested in trying to sell you something--this is part of source evaluation.

From SparkNotes: Elements of Style

Literary terms from alliteration to zeugma. My favorite example is "litotes."

Please note one correction: the term for beginning in the middle of the story, such as The Odyssey begins, is "in medias res, not "in medias rest."