The Pickering Institute in Missouri is pimping out its edu domain names. The Institute, which falls under my definition of a "questionable institution," is clearly not what we expect when we hear the .edu domain. Its home page consists of a standard blog template and two short front page entries, the oldest of which is from March 2008. PI's ethos is no better established by its two-paragraph long "About us" page.

Someone may have already mentioned this in class, but there is a program, DOSBox, that will allow users to play old DOS-based games on a computer running current operating systems. (Supports Linux, Mac, and Windows) So, if you feel like some old school pixelation, check it out!

The virtualization software, Parallels, makes it possible to run Windows within Mac OSX and thus, allows for the simultaneous use of Windows and Mac programs. In order to use Windows programs on the Mac, you must purchase Parallels and a licensed copy of Windows. But what if you just want to be able to play some PC games?

A quick note about an upcoming conference in Pasadena, CA: The Art Center Design Conference 2008: Serious Play. Every two (?) years the Art Center College of Design hosts a conference focused on a central theme relevant to design. Past years have included Radical Craft and Stories from the Source: Design Excursions Out of the Ordinary.

In "The Changing Nature of Writing: Prose or Code in the Classroom," Alan Rea and Doug White assert: "Most of the information students receive outside the classroom is a multimedia experience.... Asking them to use print solely for expression goes against how most communication takes place in the world outside of academia" (421).

In rhet/comp we have become accustomed to the wars between the technophiles, technophobes and the just plain confused. It seems that there is the constant fear that using new technologies (referred to by most as simply "technology") will distract us from our real classroom work-- teaching "real" writing. In the 1986 article, "Integrating Computers into the Writing Classroom: Some Guidelines," Dinan, Gagnon, and Taylor assert: "Above all, we try to keep writing, not technology, the center of the course, even when we are introducing word processing to the students" (34).

The death of the book is a prophecy that we in rhet/comp are particularly familiar with, as is the related heralding of e-books as the birth of a superior reading technology. In "from Pixels to Pencils," Denis Barron acknowledges that "[a]s the old technologies become automatic and invisible, we find ourselves more concerned with fighting or embracing what's new" (31). This is certainly true of how the media represents our new writing (and reading) technologies. They want us to pick a side and according to publications like Time magazine, there are only two sides to choose from.