Daily Delicious Digest for 5-22-2009
Friday, May 22nd, 2009 00:53
"... In fact, if you accept the notion that books are written for the readers, and not for the author, then the readers’ opinions are actually more valid than the author’s. Some authors, as demonstrated by the RaceFail debates, act as though the mantle of Author confers a certain authority and eminence upon them, seating them at the top of Artist Mountain, from which they can peer down through their telescopes at all the little people buying their books. But in reality, those people only look little because the author is holding the telescope backwards, because it is in fact the readers who are studying the author. The author has not been elevated to a private balcony; the author has been placed on a stage. But authors and readers are just people. We’re all just people, sitting at our computers, reading and thinking and expressing ourselves."
"These are the notes for " 'Harshin Ur Squeez': Visual Rhetorics of Anti-Racist Work in LiveJournal Fandoms." The notes are from a paper by Robin Anne Reid at the Texas A & M University Race and Ethnic Studies Institute’s Symposium exploring Race, Ethnicity and (New) Media."
"I recently discovered some little-known ways to use your Gmail address that can give you greater control over your inbox and save you some time and headache. When you choose a Gmail address, you actually get more than just "yourusername@gmail.com." Here are two different ways you can modify your Gmail address and still get your mail:"
"The main premise for the book is dismantling the concept that men and women speak completely different languages. This idea was given currency by Deborah Tannen, who took concepts from cross-cultural communication (where people are totally unfamiliar with each others' cultures and misinterpret based on their total unfamiliarity with what the other person's trying to do) and applied them to gender (where people are not completely unfamiliar with each others' cultures and erm...actually, no, there isn't really a parallel there)."
"The resulting economic pressures (tight housing markets and such) along with robust federal subsidization of roads and suburban housing developments, pushed many white families to the suburbs. What’s more, is that there was a tremendous sense among white Americans that their new black neighbors would negatively impact the value of their homes and neighborhoods. And so, suburban townships and communities around the country adopted measures like exclusionary covenants (restricting landownership to a particular race) or redlining to prevent African-American migration to the suburbs. Indeed, some communities even went as far as using roads to isolate black neighborhoods (where automobile ownership was far less likely) from goods and services. The older suburban/exurban model of isolated neighborhoods connected by roads and strip malls owes its existence – in part – to a desire to keep African-Americans out of the suburbs."
"... So maybe that is the key: questioning our privileged locations within the social and economic framework within which we all live, write, and create, and then allowing that new consciousness or awareness to shape our work before we set it free to impact and help culturally define our world. ..."
How I made this post happen. Good, easy-to-follow directions for getting the Delicious blog-posting feature to work on Dreamwidth.