One of my recent favorites from indexed blog:
As Hugh over at Bible Versus says: Dolly Parton. And Amy Sedaris. Perfection.
I had intended to go pick up my new glasses today, but since I want to go into the office tomorrow anyway, I decided to wait and get them then—seeing how my eye doctor’s office is just a few miles from my office.
I spent the afternoon at Helios—ever grateful for being off work today—and I read six articles for tonight’s Rhetoric of Science and Technology class, and then analyzed them from a rhetorical perspective.
The articles were quite interesting, actually. They were taken from the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, and as a collection, they gave an interesting snapshot of how the scientific paper developed over time—a long time. These were they years of publication for the six articles, in chronological order: 1736, 1816, 1931, 1983, and 2003.
I noted the development of the IMRAD-like elements over time.
I also spent about an hour preparing for our STC Student/Faculty Roundtable, just making some notes, as I would be facilitating the discussion.
We had a decent turnout for the roundtable with professors Drs. Dicks, Swarts, and Katz attending, and students including the two Andrews, Brian, Rebecca, Christin, and John S.
We had a good discussion about this new proposed BOLS definition of a technical communicator:
| Develop and design instructional and informational tools needed to assure the safe, appropriate and effective use of science and technology, intellectual property, and manufactured products and services. Combine multimedia knowledge and strong communication skills with technical expertise to educate across the entire spectrum of users’ abilities, technical expertise, and visual and auditory capabilities. |
These were the questions we discussed:
- Overall, what do you think about the new definition? What implications does it have?
- Do any of the elements included in it surprise you? Why or why not?
- What topics of the new definition do you think have corresponding classes to gain expertise in in our MS in Tech Comm program? Any covered in our CRDM PhD program?
- Is there anything you’d take out of the new definition?
- What’s missing that you might add, if anything?
Directly following that event was Rhetoric of Science and Technology class, and the discussion of those six articles was good, and not without its—by now, usual—digression. Last week the professor said “nipples” in class; this week she used the word “whoring.” As I said, digression…
Dancing was fun tonight, and there was a mediocre crowd. Carl taught Bumpers, as a friend of his and Bill’s was in town, and he didn’t know that dance.
The usual suspects tonight included: Carl, Bill, Rick, Patrick, Steven, Rob, Geromy, Sean, Todd, and Michael (who came at the very end, maybe a half hour before we all left).