Our friends at CMO.com have released their Social Media Landscape 2014 table, helpfully colour-coded.
A Defense of Kristin Stewart …
… and of the poem she recently published, surrounded by snark, in Marie Claire magazine. The poem is called “My Heart is a Wiffle Ball / Freedom Pole.” Writes poet and UCLA professor Brian Kim Stefans:
This [post] is partly to address the apparently universal opinion by journalists – most of whom seem to not know anything about literature – that this is a terrible poem.
My own initial post went like this: “The second stanza isn’t horrible. Worst part of the poem are those awful adjectives! Stupid Beats.” What I meant by this was that the words “digital” (applied to moonlight), “scrawled” when linked to “neon” (neon is a much overused word by poets who want to sound like Beatniks) and “abrasive” (applied to organ pumps) weren’t working for me. I also didn’t like the word “ubiquitously” especially since everything up until that point was in the singular – ubiquitously seems to suggest some sort common element among many parts. Not a big fan of “Whilst” either.
But I thought the second stanza was very delicate with sound play – “parked” and “Marfa” are good off-rhymes (I heard the word “barf” in there somehow) and there is some nice alliteration in “Devils not done digging / He’s speaking in tongues all along the pan handle / and this pining erosion…” etc. And I like the broken syntax and quick movements in perspective – there’s little to no punctuation and most people can’t pull that off. And the line “He’s speaking in tongues all along the pan handle” is very evocative to me – and seems to explain some of the eccentricities of syntax and vocabulary in the first verse!
I share Stefans’ impressions.
And I would add that Stewart’s piece provides surprise and conveys joy. These are two of the profoundest reasons we love youth.
h/t JM
Bryan Garner’s LawProse.org
Bryan Garner is a lawyer whose range of work on the topics of writing and rhetoric is humbling – to me as it should be to you, too. His blog is a gas. Here he is, just the other day, on one of my favourite topics, the hyphen (or, more precisely, hyphens “in phrasal adjectives”):
When a phrase functions as an adjective, the phrase should ordinarily be hyphenated. Professional writers and editors regularly do this. Search for hyphens on a page of the Wall Street Journal or the New Yorker and you’ll spot many. But less-polished writers often fail to appreciate the difference that adjective can make (consider criminal law professors vs. criminal-law professors). And for some reason, lawyers resist these hyphens. To prevent miscues and make your writing clearer, you should master the art of hyphenating phrasal adjectives and consider the guiding principles every time you encounter one.
Here’s the rule: if two or more consecutive words make sense only when understood together as an adjective modifying a noun, those words should be hyphenated {second-year associate, case-by-case analysis, trade-secret protection, summary-judgment motion, breach-of-contract claim}. [The possible phrases are infinite. For more examples see Garner’s Modern American Usage 625-26 (3d ed. 2009); The Redbook 46-47 (3d ed. 2013); The Winning Brief 278-83 (2d ed. 2004).]
But there are exceptions. Do not hyphenate the phrase in these situations:
(1) When a phrase begins with an –ly adverb:newly admitted lawyer;legally permitted action; calmly spoken argument. An exception to this exception applies when the phrase is longer than two words. Hence: poorly-thought-out strategy.
(2) When the phrase contains a proper noun: a United States diplomat; that famous Civil War battle; the Pablo Picasso painting.
(3) When the phrase is borrowed from a foreign language:de novo review; habeas corpus petition, prima facie case.
(4) When the phrase follows the noun it modifies: that rule is well known (vs. a well-knownrule); a claim of bad faith (vs. a bad-faith claim);action for unlawful detainer (vs. unlawful-detainer action). But there are some fixed phrases that are invariably hyphenated even if they follow the noun {cost-effective, old-fashioned, short-lived, star-studded, time-tested}. In general, these hyphenated, fixed phrases will be listed in a dictionary.
If you’re still uncertain about why you should hyphenate, ponder the plain meaning of small animal veterinarian, high school dropout, or one armed bandit.
There’s more, all delightful.
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“What distinguishes effective from ineffective legal writers,” notes Garner, “is empathy for the reader.”
(h/t LH)
Teaching on the Cheap
This figure is staggering: Adjunct professors and other “contingent employees” make up 70% of the faculty in American universities. These people have no hope for tenure at their schools.
Writes James Hoff in The Guardian, “All but the most elite college students are being taught by overworked and underpaid adjunct lecturers. These faculty are essentially paid contractors, who come in, do a quick job, and then head out. Maintaining high standards and expectations, performing research, and providing honest and accurate assessment under such conditions is incredibly difficult, and the continued use of adjuncts is destroying the integrity and value of higher education.”
These faculty typically have no benefits and no job security. They need to form unions – for their sake, and for the sake of the students they teach.
I fear that university teaching will become a profession so unappealing that truly talented people will flee from it. We are on the verge of losing a generation of scholars to fields that reward initiative with collegial recognition and an appropriate amount of cash. It will take a long time to recover from that calamity.
Clarissa’s blog offers a number of dyspeptic, righteous takes on the topic.
“Ladies Learning Code”
A brilliant former student of mine highly recommends this organization, “a women-run not-for-profit working to empower and inspire more women and girls to become passionate builders – not just consumers – of the web and technology.” Ladies Learning Code is sponsoring a day-long session – an introduction to CSS and HTML – at Vancouver’s Hootsuite headquarters on February 22:
If you are looking to get your feet wet when it comes to programming, then this is the workshop for you. HTML and CSS are the backbone of all websites, and knowledge of them is a necessity if you are interested in things like web development, creating marketing emails, or even blogging! The web without HTML and CSS would be would be a world without colourful, pretty websites, not to mention the web applications we all use daily. It’s easy to learn, and was designed so that everyone – even non-programmers – can do it. No fancy programs are needed, just Notepad and a web browser!
The Ladies Learning Code Introduction to HTML & CSS workshop is designed to be a hands-on experience. During the session, you’ll build something like this and learn the following:
– Basic techniques and concepts that are translatable to other programming languages
– The building blocks of how HTML and CSS work together to create richer online experiences
– How to create a rich website with images, video, and a CSS-defined layout
– What resources are available if you’d like to continue learning at home (and we think you will)
… This workshop has been designed for absolute beginners. If you know absolutely nothing about coding or computer programming, you’ve come to the right place! Our only expectation is that you know how to open up a web browser and do something online like checking your email. (But if you’re reading this, we’re pretty sure you know how to do that.)
You can find out more about the organization on Twitter via the hashtag #ladieslearningcode.
Goosebumps
This new ad, titled “Missing Work,” was created by Bell Canada for its “Let’s Talk Mental Health” initiative. It captures a moment – a short routine, really – very common among the chronically depressed. It is staggeringly understated and beautiful.
(cross-posted at basil.CA)
Quantifying the Costs of Workplace Conflict
Steve McGuire has an excellent, concise piece in Mediate.com showing how the “hidden” costs of workplace conflict can, in fact, be helpfully quantified.
Various indirect factors go into calculating the real (hidden) costs of workplace conflict. In addition to wasted time and opportunity costs, employees impacted by conflict have lowered job performance, motivation and productivity. Conflict can lead to absenteeism, vandalism, degraded decisional quality and often, a loss of investment in a skilled employee that suffers from the “I don’t care anymore” attitude. Often, conflict can lead to false whistleblowing allegations, lawsuits and of course, employees leaving the organization for other opportunities.
In addition, the direct costs of conflict are generally observable, measurable and accrue over time. Let’s take the following example of the cost of losing a single mid-level employee due to conflict within a hypothetical organization, applying the Dana Cost Calculator from figures generated by HR Magazine in February 2003: 1) employee’s annual salary: $80,000; 2) multiply by 1.4 (140%) as the investment you have in the employee: $112,000; 3) multiply by 1.5 (150%) as the cost of replacing the employee: $168,000; 4) multiply by .6 (60%) average role of conflict in voluntary terminations: $100,800. Now, multiply times the number of voluntary terminations in your organization annually. Say you have a 10% turnover rate in a company of 100 employees that’s 10 employees. 10 X $100,800 = $1,008,000.
Conflict in the above hypothetical organization of 100 employees is costing the organization over a million dollars a year! What other line-item loss in an essential corporate process would be treated so cavalierly by management?
New $ for Visual Artists?
The United States Copyright Office has recommended to the U.S. Congress that it reconsider its copyright laws so that visual artists can benefit from the resale of their work.
Visual artists typically do not share in the long-term financial success of their works because works of visual art are produced singularly and valued for their scarcity, unlike books, films, and songs, which are produced and distributed in multiple copies to consumers. Consequently, in many, if not most instances, only the initial sale of a work of visual art inures to the benefit of the artist and it is collectors and other purchasers who reap any increase in that work’s value over time. Today more than seventy foreign countries – twice as many as in 1992 – have enacted a resale royalty provision of some sort to address this perceived inequity.
That said, the issues are as complex as the art market itself. We believe that Congress may want to consider a resale royalty, as well as a number of possible alternative or complementary options for supporting visual artists, within the broader context of industry norms, market practices, and other pertinent data. …
Although the Internet has provided artists with greater opportunities to exploit derivative images and/or sell mass-produced copies of their works, stakeholders agree that “for most visual artists . . . the amounts involved in reproduction or representation are generally insignificant.” Indeed, it appears to be common ground that reproduction rights represent a “very minor aspect of [most artists’] careers” and that the first sale of a work is “the main or exclusive source of income for almost all American artists.”
(Image by Bob Basil)
Again I agree with Clarissa, one of my favourite bloggers:
It is shocking that this completely idiotic piece on LinkedIn [“All Linked Up with Nowhere to Go,” by Amy Friedman] has been declared one of the best pieces of business journalism in 2013. These days, the way to get hits, likes, pageviews and awards is by declaring that everything sucks, any effort or activity is useless, and the best thing one can do is to avoid even trying to do anything. Except read defeatist, wallowing articles, of course.
Several friends and colleagues of mine have found excellent, exciting new gigs via LinkedIn. Its discussion groups have been absolutely vital to me as a teacher of digital and social media. And it was via LinkedIn that I became reacquainted with the woman who has become the love of my life.
“Undermining Infrastructure at the Core”
Our friends at Sophos have issued their Security Threat Report 2014. The entire report is necessary, sometimes grim reading. Here are two “trends to watch”:
Attacks on corporate and personal data in the cloud: As businesses increasingly rely on various cloud services for managing their customer data, internal project plans and financial assets, we expect to see an emergence of attacks targeting endpoints, mobile devices and credentials as means to gaining access to corporate or personal clouds.
It’s hard to predict what form future attacks will take—but we can imagine ransomware taking hostage not just your local documents, but any type of cloud-hosted data. These attacks may not require data encryption and could take the form of blackmail—threats of going public with your confidential data. Strong password and cloud data access policies are more important than ever. Your security is only as good as your weakest point, in many cases your Windows endpoint and your users’ awareness.
Undermining hardware, infrastructure and software at the core: The revelations throughout 2013 of government agency spying and backdoors (not only by governments, but also commercial organizations) showed the world that broad-scale compromise of the core infrastructure we all operate on is not only possible, but happening. We’ll need to re-evaluate technologies and trusted parties. The discoveries so far likely only scratch the surface and we can expect to see many more of these stories in 2014. Most enterprises won’t have the resources or skills to go digging for backdoors. But it would be wise to closely monitor the work of security researchers and media outlets for new revelations.
On this latter trend, the wonderful editorial cartoonist Tom Tomorrow was prophetic. The cartoon below is from 1994:
