I'm trying to think through Malcolm Gladwell's piece in the recent (11.22.2004) New Yorker -- "Something Borrowed: Should A Case of Plagiarism Ruin Your Life?" -- in which he relays and puzzles over the account of how his previous New Yorker article "Damaged" (1997) was reproduced in Bryony Lavery's play "Frozen." I say "reproduced" and not "plagiarized" in order to try to further embody the point Gladwell makes throughout and rather surprisingly in his piece: that even though large portions of his original article were copied directly from his article and into the play, as in word-for-word, in their new dramatic form they took on new artistic lives of their own, imbued like so many Cambell's Soup Cans maybe, rendering an accusation of plagiarism counter-cultural and base.

Just completed work on 9 short films on the Academic Job Market.

I'd be interested to read what people here think about this use of e.tech.

With what I've come to think of as the date-header-function, the date, typically a minor or ancillary feature of titled and dated texts, is promoted within the genre of blogs to a content-rich feature, or header. Taking note of the date-header-function reveals how the structure of the texts foregrounds everydayness, habitual writing, fresh copy, newness, etc. -- and a particular form of blog.validity ("is it current?") is assessed and maintained through this textual feature.

So you check on a blog you read regularly or stumble upon one you've never seen before, and the date is one of the first things you look at and consider and take in (or at least it is for me); the date (10.17.2004 in this case) signals and in part defines (as much as any header does) the content.

"If you have included access to a web site in support of your candidacy, we
would like you to know that, while we would be most interested in reviewing any information
on that site related to your teaching, research, or administrative abilities, you may want
to remove any personal information that may be outside those areas."

Of course, such clean divisions between professional and private seldom take place online ...
though I see that Rich Rice recently pulled the livecam still from his homepage. Probably a good idea.