Communication Professors Speak Out is an open letter from several political communication professors to the McCain-Palin campaign, protesting efforts by the campaign to “other” Obama I agree that the Republiclans are stoking the fires of racism while avoiding direct racist attacks, but I do wonder how effective messages from academics like this are in improving political discourse.
I’ve been using Zotero since its release a few years ago. Now that I’m back in school, I’m installing in on my new Mac, and it seems better than ever. In fact, a recent discussion on the Association of Internet Researchers email list indicated that Zotero is the best citation manager available, even better than the tried-and-true, but expensive, EndNote.
Zotero installs as a Firefox extension, and simplifies one of the most frustrating parts of doing academic research on the Internet, citing Web pages, complete with access times. It’s free, as well.
On an email list, I saw a call for papers by a journal called Neo-Victorian Studies and thought, “Has Steampunk joined the academic mainstream?” The call solicits papers about the film Sweeney Todd, which is not Steampunk writ large, but a larger cultural turn toward the early industrial age is perhaps even more interesting.