It's Deja Vu All Over Again
Friday, October 10, 2003
I did it, I linked to it, I really did
I think I did it--click here
While this article is not really related to our current topic, it is really funny and does relate to perceptions.
Thursday, October 09, 2003
Lack of access to technologies (not teaching 106), feeling impoverished
It is interesting to hear 106 instructors talking about the technology requirements. I am teaching English 002 this semester and to be frank, I feel impoverished because I do not have regularly access to technology. I did reserve a computer lab for my class once but I was given a lab in the basement of Stone Hall. The computers there were arranged exactly like work stations. Unsatisfied with the changed class dynamics in that room, I never went back. Because I teach in 209, I have been trying to figure out how to use the Smartboard there. Unfortunately I have not found the time to play with it first.
It seems that learning to use technologies is like investing in bridges and roads. You spend a lot of time and money, but you do benefit from them in the long run. Technological literacy will bring access to a lot of things, especially information, which is crucial for success in today’s world. In the meantime, maintenance does cost a lot of money. If you want kids in a high school to have access to the Internet, you will need printers as well because not many people (I believe) can just read something on a screen for a long time. That is why I do not believe equal access to technologies will be possible unless communism (Marxian version) can really materialize one day.
Did everyone notice that for all the screens of ITAP computers, the brightness and contrast are set to the maximum so that our eyes can get exhausted easily? More later,
Vampiric Technologies; Or, Popular Media/Press and Xenophobia
In thinking about DH's notion of the vampire and how it relates to what we have been thinking and talking about in class, I wonder about perceptions (and perceived realities) of technology in the "real world". How have our perceptions (as a society) of technology changed over the last 25 years or so? Buzz phrases that come to mind are Internet Addiction, Identity Theft/Tourism, Cyber Stalking, and numerous others. What about HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey, Sandra Bullock in The Net, Will Smith in Enemy of the State, and others. How have our greatest fears about technology found their way into our greatest nightmares? What effect do these fears/perceptions/realities have on us as teachers and scholars? What can we do about them? How?
Just my ramblings.
Marx on Vampires
Here's Marx on vampires/capital/cyborgs:
"The capitalist has his own views of the necessary limit of the working day. As capitalist, he is only capital personified. His soul is the soul of capital. But capital has one single life impulse, the tendency to create value and surplus-value, to make its constant factor, the means of production, absorb the greatest possible amount of surplus-labour. Capital is dead labour that, vampire-like, only lives by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks. The time during which the labourer works is the time during which the capitalist consumes the labour-power he has purchased of him. If the labourer consumes his disposable time for himself, he robs the capitalist. The capitalist then takes his stand on the law of the exchange of commodities. He, like all other buyers, seeks to get the greatest possible benefit out of the use-value of his commodity. " (Das Kapital, 6.1)
The link
http://www.cnn.com/2003/EDUCATION/10/09/colleges.race.ap/index.html
This should be the link.
Aliens and Vampires or Vampiric Aliens
The similarities between aliens and vampires relates to their presence in cultures based on popular fears that connot be spoken publicly or explicitly without the metaphorical cover. The Romantic idea that vampires are sexual and heavily related to blood and fluids can be seen as a direct correlation to the Victorian fear of sex and impurity. John Polidori's vampire was this new on the scene socialite that young women were warned about because of his sex drive, but then this representation of the vampire is also Polidori's representation of Lord Byron - who was also a socialite that women and readers were warned about by the 'English.'
Aliens - the word - is interesting because it has two levels of denotations and connotations. For one, it refers to "space aliens" or "martians," then it refers to the immigrant population in a given society. Immigrants take the jobs of the "regular folks" - according to some. This xenophobia manifests itself in sci-fi films as well, in terms of invasion. There are posititive and negtive connotations, though in terms of the exotic offering of what we (natives) do not have.
As Harraway describes the biological connections with race, the alien/other is a pseudo-scientific way to measure who is or "should be" officially labeled aliens and who isn't. This is perhaps why Harraway's chart ultimately does not find "the missing link" between the notions of biology and social construction. The notion of race, therefore, can not be stable because if it remains stable then the focus will always fall more heavily on either biology or construction where neither is an adequate representation or characterization of race.
Collaborative post between Jingfang and Maria.
Interesting numbers on Race and Gender in College
Not sure what these numbers means or don't mean, but here's something I ran across today. Oh no, I should be in class. I'm on my way.
When reading about the vampire metaphor in Haraway and its relation to race, purity, innocence, mingling, I kept thinking about sex. Not because I have some wierd spikey tooth fetish, but because vampires have a contentious relationship to sexuality. Vampires are, traditionally, viewed as hypersexual, or maybe hypererotic (the sucking, the fluids). Part of this sexuality is the idea that the male-to-male vampire bite is very charged-homoerotic. Or else vampires are without sexuality, just as they are without age. The idea of age is also interesting-vampires create new vampires that are fully grown. New vampires do not grow into the state of being a vampire (think the fully grown Athena here). Relating these ideas to race, the idea that vampires don't grow may cause problems with the metaphor. Haraway discusses the changing ideas toward race/population/genome in the 20th century, meaning that she sees the notion of race as changing. Vampires don't really change, do they? Or am I taking the metaphor too literally? Is race the vampire or is society the vampire sucking the difference out of the various races/populations/peoples? So there you go with my tired brain and hungry bodies musings.
Waiting to be mowed
What i was after in my backyard response (ironic because i'm terrible at it) was some unpacking of your (Karl's) concerns that we just didn't have time to deal with in class. Your snake-weed response helps a lot. What i especially like, and what i find lacking in many "overviews" of rhetoric, composition, and technology, is your emphasis on risks (and sucking). Someone has probably theorized risk-taking in different environments, but i'm clueless. The idea of risk-taking needs to be unpacked in the corporate university so that, i think, i can produce and theorize in an effective way.
And when someone with Karl's perspective gets into an administrative/teaching position at a university, that will be a moment when someone like me begins to reconceive of how i and others should manage time and access (personally and socially) and my relationship with technology in "interesting" ways.
On a side note, i'd love to hear about how Samantha sees what she does as a contributor to larger discussions of access, race, technology, etc. affecting important contributors to the university-machine-phenomena-space. I don't have the knowledge or access to do anything beyond hypotheticals at this moment, but i'd love to see an example of something that "did" or is "doing" so i can think through "what can we do?"
[i think someone has spiked the blog punch with all this activity goin' on...]
My Snake- and Weed-Infested Back Yard...
In response to Maria, I think that your 10,000 computers/1 lab example is another crucial reason why specialists in digitality/computers & writing need to have some solid tech chops. Suppose you were put in charge (or, more likely, took charge) of developing a computer component to composition at that school. If, as I'm supposing, there is little in terms of university tech support at such an institution, who's going to maintain the computers, and make sure that everything is operating smoothly? But even before that: suppose you went to university administration (or a grant granting institution/organization) asking for money to build a computer lab for use with composition and rhetoric courses. What are such individuals going to want to see? A list of the theories that are available in the field, or examples of the kind of work that can be done on such expensive equipment?
What's important to me is not just a grasp of technology for the sake of teaching introductory composition; it's a grasp of technology that allows us to achieve goals within larger institutional structures, classroom and otherwise. And in the Corporate University®, it is--for better or for worse--production, not theory, that gains attention and, often simultaneously, money. That said, all of the comments offered by Mike and others is true: using what is available (and appropriate) and doing your very best with it. You get moneyout of institutions and organizations by showing what you can do with a little money, NOT by "theorizing" what you could do if you only had money.
HOWEVER, theory plays an important part of this. We all posess the Power of Rhetoric, and it is that theory that gives us the ethos and overwhelming power to show students (and administrators) the rhetorical possiblities of the technology available. This theory angle is what makes us unique and valuable if we can demonstrate a similar grasp of the very technologies were talking about, which brings me to my next point.
It is impossible to generate good, sound theory about technology if you're not using the technology. OK, maybe I'll concede that you can teach using theory and only the bare mininum tech skills--but if you're looking to contribute to the larger theoretical discussions, technological ethos is just as important as being able to research and look more carefully at current discussions. If you think that this is untrue, I invite you to go to Computers and Composition, or another C&W-friendly journal, and compare the broad, utopic "theories" dished up about hypertext, with the actual functionality of digital texts that the article's author has dished up on the WWW. While there are certainly some scholars who talk the talk and WALK the walk, but there are plenty who are just talking...
And that brings me to one final point, one that I think I've made before on here...We're talking too much about the Web (websites, web pages, web design). I hate to tell everyone this, but in less than ten years, the Web will be about as interesting and cogent to C&W theory as word processors (all the rage in the 80s) are now. So part of avoiding our complacency (thanks for that term, Mike!) is to think beyond the WWW, beyond what's hip and cool now, and figuring out what's coming next. Sure, the Web will still be a vehicle for navigation and delivery (just as Word processors are still pretty much vehicles for composition, even if a few bells and whistles have advanced them closer to a desktop publisher), but the question really is what will the web deliver, and how will that change our very conceptions of what it means to be tech-savvy.
One thing that I'm feeling very nervous about is how personally this whole discussion is being taken. One of the class members spoke to me later in the day on Tuesday, and said that she felt "inspired" to work on her Website--what worries me is that she felt something a little more negative than "inspired." I still maintain (and I'm trying hard to more demonstratively show) that what is key for all of us, as members and perhaps specialists in this field of digital writing, is that we constantly move forward from where we stand. If that means learning how to check your email using Outlook from off-campus, go for it. If that means learning how to make text graphics in Fireworks, go for it. If that means learning how to shoot your own video and compress and edit it for the web, again, go for it. The key aspect of any field that promises to move rapidly forward is that we at least try to keep up with the pace, even if we're not on the cutting edge; even if, because of tenure, or dissertation suprvision, or whatever we get "set back" somewhat.
So here is my personal list of goals for myself. You can do with them what you'd like--
1. Stay abreast of design trends, and try to deconstruct what designers are doing, and how they're doing it. This is accomplished simply by keeping tabs on top-hole Websites and other designers, and watch what they're doing in terms of navigation, presentation, content inclusion, etc. I'm never, ever going to be as exciting and proficient as these types of designers, but it gives me something to aspire to in my own digital work.
2. Get familiar with the workspace of different, common pieces of software. Interface is key to accomplishing anything in any program. Even just locating the rudimentary things (where's my palette? how do I set up document properties? how do I enter text?) gives everyone at least a fighting chance to crack into different pieces of software, each of which is a discourse community all its own, based along our old rhetorical lines of Purpose and Audience (read: users).
3. Do more digital writing, and take more risks with each project. Most of my digital projects are still available online. You can actually go through them all and see that each time I do digital writing, I try and do something I've never done before--whether that's changing up my color schemes, or altering the way that graphics are used (as navigation, as decoration, as cohesive devices).
4. Try and apply theory to work done on actual projects in different programs. Some will object to this approach, in that it tries to make theory practical, but some interesting things can develop. I personally need to do a helluva lot more of this kind of thing.
5. Be ready to suck. Like any writing project, digital writing can turn into a disaster. Links are broken. Shit doesn't work right. Shit loooks like shit. The actual text gets out of control. But as with any failure, learn from what went wrong, and return to goal #3.
That's about it. I've said too much--I'm looking forward to talking this out in class today. See you all then.
Response to Colin's Backyard
I have to say that I by no means think I have a great website - I have a highly functional website that is easy for my students to use and for me to maintain. It functions as my web presence, yes, but also as a way to convey information to my students.
I believe the people we were refering to are those we are reading, or say Samantha or Mike Salvo. There is a difference between those who teach with technology and those who claim that as their specialty. If a person teaches 106 and researches Classical Rhetoric, I don't think they are highly responsible for having a most excellent site. However, if you are going to teach a course where technology is the main focus and you are making claims to be a technology person, then you should have a decent site.
I agree whole heartedly that sites evolve and especially student sites need to continue to evolve so they deliver content to them in a meaningful way. I user test my class site with my students to make sure they are clear on everything and I make changes as they need them.
Not to pick on Meg, but she asked us to check out her site - the question I would approach it with is not: "Is this a great site," but "are her students able to access the information efficiently and are her students aware of the complete content of her site." It's when sites are hard to use that they are bad, in my opinion. As instructors, we need to be responsible for the learning of our students.
United Colours of Benneton
This is part of what Harraway included in her chart for 1975-1990's under "Popular Images inside political ideology." I am sure there are more ads - these were just the first to pop up.
Wednesday, October 08, 2003
Responsibility------
As a part of the tech class designed for new 106 teachers, there is a level of proficiency expected, but I have to say that posting a syllabus and using comment features in Word is a really big deal for most of the new teachers. Yes, this is a combined class with people from all branches of English – linguistics, lit., theory – but even though they are not R/C much less C&W, they are all still ‘teaching with technology.” So, what then is the responsibility of all teachers? The English department here has established technology goals for all 106 teachers, which I think is great because it is a starting point. But in relation to using all the bells and whistles of visual rhetoric, can they still be effective teachers if they don’t have killer websites. Or… does having that killer, rhetorically sound site mean that the teacher is necessarily any more effective than the one who just barely got their syllabus posted?
I think like Colin said, maybe it is more important to look at the why and how of tech in writing classrooms –This… rather than asking what new cutting edge technology can we force on other teachers and students. At some point, all of the factors we talked about – comfort, access, responsibility – come into play, and like everything else in teaching we must do the best we can with what we have.
Necessity and Access, or as Mike and Aristotle said - Appropriate and Available-------
I came from a commuter school with only one small computer lab available to a community of 10,000 students. Only majors like computer science and education actually had their own computer lab. That meant that as a writing teacher, I had no lab time with students, much less the resources to require students to do tech projects. (There was however a department policy that all essays must be typed – how students accomplished that was their problem not the university’s.) I and other teachers there did what we could with the one “computer cart” we had to check out and roll down to our classroom. The need for Flash and Fireworks was nonexistent – what we did need was to use the available technology as a means of helping students write their essays and make presentation materials for the class.
Specialist specialists
Access and Comfort
Is specialization limiting the way we think about our relationships to different types of technology? If I'm comfortable with, say, (hard hypothetical because i'm not that comfortable with much when it comes to teaching-learning) pushing the design boundaries of MSWord to create "multimedia" documents, do I (with that know-how) find myself resentful to someone in-experienced joining the conversation? I'd say that ideas, not realities, of specialization in a "field" teach us to do just that--to deny the possibility that a novice has something to teach the veteran. That's unfortunate but maybe necessary when it comes to advancing theories of why and how to use technology in a writing classroom.
Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh My!
Whoa! A monster post from Mike! Great!
Responsibility
I think the question of responsibility is a very good one and one that we started talking a bit about in terms of ethos yesterday. How much "responsibility" do we have for our web presence? Can we judge webs aesthetically and find folk wanting? Or is there just no accounting for taste? Must all C&W folk be heavy techie? Is it possible that it is not possible to be all things to all programs? Is it possible that some of use will have to focus more on the theory than the heavy tech or vice versa?
Access and Comfort
We've talked about issues of historical/material/conditional access and students, how does that apply to C&W instructional staff? If it is not possible for certain teachers to be "comfortable" with certain technologies or to be able to create "acceptable" visual rhet projects, but they still have one hell of a hold on the theory and the pedagogy of the field, are they still "acceptable" C&W teachers/scholars? Will their past multiplicity of accesses continue to affect them? Is this something that can be the basis of bias?
availability and Access
Mike makes a good point about our being in a prime situation technologically (comparatively). What happens when we go to other institutions where the tech support is not quite so strong? If we are unfamiliar with the technologies available or unable to create/maintain/store webs that demonstrate our "rhetorical prowess" does this affect our ethos as C&W teachers/scholars/pedagogues? Must all C&W folk "measure up"? It goes back to the question of whether or not C&W folk must be all things to all people? Or if it is really possible to do so. Also consider TIME and INVISIBLE LABOR when thinking about this. Remember that right now you are working 6 hours a week (in Meg's case), what is going to happen when you have 2-3 courses to teach (grad and undergrad), departmental and university committee obligations, thesis and dissertation obligations, research and publication obligations, social obligations (even if they are virtual), AND family obligations? How easy will it be to stay on the "cutting edge"? Will your ethos dull along with your edge?
The Backyard
this is for Karl (and everybody else):
I wanted to pose a question for ya based on what you were talking about at the end of class yesterday (and as usual my getting to the question will probably take too long). If I'm new to teaching 106 and new to, say, having a course webpage, what's my stuff gonna look like compared to yours? I certainly agree that, given the desire, many composition teachers could do some killer stuff with their web content and design, but to me my web-authorship-ethos is evolving very slowly (if at all), and at the same time the stuff's got to be done to meet 106 goals and to (eventually) make my life easier because "my" class and its emergent content is suited to a continually updated calendar. Saying that, I was lucky to be taught by a design major the basics of webpage-arrangement, so i have decided to approach my use of "technology" as a minimalist. There's too much junk out there and it's too easy to rely on bells and whistles primarily when that is what partially creates the drive to impress-through-progress. but my web-shit, and my minimally-outside-informed theory of why and how i create it, is very tentative and dynamic. Some of what you were calling for yesterday "sounded" like we would have to have a standard to get people to create webpages that mirrored their webtheory (this plays out the same, from my perspective, at my level, possibly at a child's level, and definitely at a faculty level because we're talking about learning). And i think that's dangerous.
Am I taking what you said in the wrong direction?
Some comments on disturbing discussion
A couple of trends emerged in the conversation in--and after--class yesterday that really disturbed me.
Comfort
One of these was a rather alarming confusion of "comfort" (comfortable) with "complacency." Though complacency was never mentioned, it seemed that the discussion was allowing being comfortable with one's technological capabilities (or tech savvy, if you will) to be equated with a lack of desire to move forward in those capabilities, a lack of desire to learn more, a complacency regarding the technologies that one can use for one's own purposes and incorporate in one's teaching. To me, this conflation is dangerous.
We all have our own "comfort zone" in both using and teaching (with) technology. This is normal and to be expected. Afterall, we all have comfort zones when it comes to many other things--other aspects of our teaching included. We use the same textbook semester after semester, or the same syllabus approach, or the same assignments; is this comfort zone to be equally eschewed as our technological comfort zones? Does this practice of our comfort in other aspects of our teaching preclude improvement and/or innovation (in using that textbook, that approach, or those assignments)--does it indicate complacency--in the same way our conversation seemed to indicate that having a tech comfort zone does? I think not. Of course, I think that being comfortable with some technologies (from using Word or checking email every day to being able to do a Flash banner or create a DVD interface in Director in one's sleep) is a perfectly okay thing to admit. I, myself, am pretty comfortable with Dreamweaver, Flash, and Fireworks. I am just beginning to explore the possibilities of OmniPage and Acrobat 6. I expect to encounter a bit of a learning curve with the new features of MSOffice 2003 when it comes out later this year. And that's precisely my point: I am comfortable using some technologies (using software as the example), though I can still learn more about them; I am learning others; and I expect to learn others still. None of this learning--ongoing or anticipated--precludes the comfort I feel with some software technologies. I am comfortable, but I am not complacent.
Responsibility
This topic largely emerged after class, so my apologies to those who were not there for the discussion. I find the implication that our primary responsibility as teachers who teach (with) tech (106, PW, otherwise) is to the tech utterly ridiculous. (!!) And, whether or not this was the intent, the idea of tech teachers and/or C&W theorists with "bad web pages," implies exactly that: "If you're going to talk about C&W or teaching (with) tech, you have a responsibility to make a good personal web page."
While I cannot deny (because I don't want to, as much as anything else) that the aesthetic and the poetic (in the classical sense) come under the rubric of rhetoric (I can hear rumblings from many directions with that claim), the particular implication I'm discussing comes dangerously close to the belletristic/CURRTRAD concept of "taste." Furthermore, the parallel drawn between the ethos of a comp theorist and the ethos of a C&W theorist (we wouldn't listen to someone writing about rhetoric who writes badly, so why should we listen to a C&W person/theorist "does" on-line composing badly?) is tragically flawed, precisely because we do listen to comp theorists whose writing is less than stellar--particularly when we read the early work in composition studies. The bottom line here is that there is, in C&W, a theory/practice split--perhaps more so than in comp--and while this may be less than ideal, it is a reality.
Our primary responsibility as teachers who teach writing (with) tech is NOT to the tech. Just as it is for those who teach writing without tech, our primary responsbility is to the rhetorical situation. And, to paraphrase Aristotle, that situation relies upon the means of persuasion, both APPROPRIATE and AVAILABLE. Every act of discursive creation is rhetorically situated (this is taken as axiomatic), but every act of discursive creation is also materially situated. This material situation includes the available means for addressing the issue at hand, and just because a technology (hardware or software) is generally available, it must not be considered particularly available (i.e., just because Dreamweaver exists, it doesn't mean that each rhetor has it--or has the latest version, I know I don't [MX2004, in case anyone was wondering])! We are SPOILED on this campus: we have the MSCA, we have a good deal with Macromedia, and the educational discounts on Adobe products at the bookstores make them resonably priced, too (e.g., Acrobat 6.0 Pro for ~$100); ITaP upgrades software and hardware in its labs on a regular basis; we have the DLC with capabilities that are unheard of on other campuses; we have campus wide Wi-Fi. I, for my own part, have been realizing lately how spoiled all of this has made me and what a rude awakening I'm probably in for when I leave here--in terms of the tech that's available. (I think appropriate handles itself, in this discussion--correct me if I'm wrong here.)
None of which is to absolve any of us of the responsibility of making sound rhetorical choices in our web (hypermedia, multimedia--or even print) texts. Of course we have that responsibility. But good rhetoric (visual and otherwise) on the web is possible using a 28.8 dial-up connection, Netscape Composer, and Microsoft Paint--if we have DSL (or a T-1 line) Dreamweaver, Flash, and Fireworks (or the Adobe or Corel equivalents/betters) available, we certainly have a greater responsibility for appropriate rhetorical use of those software technologies. A claim, however, to knowing something about C&W theory and practice does not make us responsible for having those software technologies available(!), and I, honestly, I would prefer an honest effort use the technologies available--and use them in an appropriate and rhetorically sound way--than a use of technologies that are inappropriate to (at least, unmandated by) the rhetorical situation at hand.
Let them be cranky, we need more practice time filling in the bubbles
Schools drop naptime for testing preparation
For years child development specialists have argued that naptime made happier, healthier, and more alert 5 yr. olds who are more willing and able to learn. Now in the spirit of (not) learning naps have been done away with in favor of more standardized test prep time. Obviously, children get left behind while napping.
Tuesday, October 07, 2003
Mapping Accessibility
Hill's chapter makes me begin to critically re-conceive "access," i think in the way that Karl wants Nakamura's book to address/unpack/deal with "diversity." This isn't going to be too much of a post because i'm interested in what you guys think about how different factions connote (is that even a good way to use that word) "access." Hill's doing this, but i'm interested in how his accesses (don't) match up with accesses at a university or even in our department. Are we re-theorizing with our writing students, for instance, what access means in terms of any website design projects? Probably. But to what extent are our attempts as teachersw/technology insulated or already encompassed by those with higher-educaton access?
We all have (Marxist-related) ideas about why accessibility gets measured by speed and amount of information. What will it take for a minority group to gain access by providing a necessary "service" to the phenomenon of the culture of information?
Is an underclass (harris via Hill, CP 80) ever avoidable when we think in terms of progress?
Have i had too much or too little caffeine today?
And how much does a profit-driven culture of economy deny access (intentionally or un) as a way to deny the possibility of organizing so that using "their logic against them" never gets big enough to require a renegotiation between management and labor?
L & D & Me
Karl's find of the interview with Nakamura (L) and Haraway (D) is a cool read (at least for me). I especially like Haraway's characterizations at the end of the interview of thick time (complicated mucky muck) and lived time (or the techno-present). I think this idea of thickness relates to the end of our discussion of the "non-problem" of race. Perhaps we could think of "race" as both thick and lived, thick in terms of it being a concept that informs any idea stemming from a notion of "an identity" and lived in terms of our desire to ignore it as a problem solved so we can get on wid the techo-present. Then again, maybe i'm inappropriately reappropriating Haraway's idea of thickness (which is nicely not paired with "thinness" in an unproductive binary but with lived-ness, quite thick in its own way).
Monday, October 06, 2003
ALL YOUR HAM ARE BELONG TO US
FuckedCompany.com - Official lubricant of the new economy Since we're thinking about access, the digital divide, and workplace resistance (and opression), I thought I'd point you all to one of my favorite websites, FuckedCompany.com, which is a clearinghouse for both bad corporate news (layoffs, etc.) and a portal to InternalMemos.com, which provides the material for this post. Look for a Fuck (pardon my French, but that's what they're called) under the title "There's some dude wiping crumbs off his desk as we speak," which concerns a very poorly-written memo by a female employee at SimStar. What's interesting to me are the comments on FuckedCompany.com regarding this employees English--not only do the various anonymous posters attack her writing, but make many associations with its quality vis-a-vis her breasts, genitalia, college-years sexual activity, etc. Nothing surprising, but definitely a small piece of proof of the kinds of gender-stereotyping and attitudes that infiltrate so many corporate environments. (SimStar, incidentally, is an IT company).
More soon...
