The newest issue of Composition Forum is now available at http://compositionforum.com/

This special topics issue focuses upon "Composition and Location" and offers articles on that subject assembled by Guest Editor Christopher Keller. The issue also debuts our newest feature--the Program Profile---written by our Program Profile Editor Michelle Ballif. Composition Forum continues to feature reviews of important new books in rhetoric and composition, collected and edited by Derek Owens.

Assistant Professor of English in Professional Writing
Dept of English & Journalism, Western Illinois University

My department is looking for a tenure-track professor of English in professional writing. This is a nine-month position with three courses a semester. WIU is a comprehensive university of 13K students about three hours from St. Louis and four from Chicago. We have a great writing program, a very collegial department, and lots of new stuff happening in regards to professional writing.

Feel free to post any questions about this position or WIU.

A British CEO has banned the use of internal email for employees of his company.

Whee...

This is a classic example of the conflicted nature of Western attitudes toward technology: it's great, except when it's bad. The way I use it should be the way you use it. (The CEO doesn't use email.) Technology is liberating, except when it's not. Suggesting alternative methods of using technology will never work, because users are stupid. Technology takes time to use, as opposed to speaking, which is not technological.

So, all you folks who were in Indiana C-dubbin, what's the scoop? On behalf of all those at home, we demand conference reports, and furthermore, our names may or may not be Vroomfondel.

Peter Lewis, in Fortune (via CNN) has a piece on some DVD copying software. From the company's web site, this looks like an actual copying product, not a descrambler which generates an MPEG stream from the DVD (e.g. DeCSS).

Tbe article (which reads like a review) ventures into some musings about intellectual property and the practicality of actually copying DVDs.

Folks not able to attend CCCC this year have two options for getting a feel for the conference:

CCCC LiveAudio streams of selected conference sessions

CCCC Interactive ReviewsReviews of sessions from attendees

For those at the conference, see you there!

In a discussion posted a few months ago, Clancy Ratliff suggested a KairosNews book reviews thingy. I'd like to second or third or 963124th this idea and propose a new category for KairosNews called "book discussions."

Obviously, discussions wouldn't require exordia as detailed as those which appear over in The Mothership. For me, the value would be more being able to ask questions of someone who has read the book, to filter through a geek-rhetorician-educator perspective, etc.

So see my full post for more ideas about pushing this forward. Let's talk more about it.

In this article which is primarily a report on Raymond's experence using Python, there are some fairly interesting assertions about the function of language and code. I don't think Raymond is a seminal language theorist, but his writings may reflect dominant ways of thinking about natural and artificial languages and the differences between 'em.

Why Python

At C&W 2002 I'll be participating in a roundtable with Charlie Lowe and some other fine folks. The title describes the subject well: "Can We Publish Essays the Way Open Source Programmers Publish Code?" We've prepared a handout which gives a quick overview of Open Source. Check it out!