Planets circle the stars that dot the heavens.

Before 1995, we couldn’t have said that with any certainty. Now we know of more than 300 planets orbiting distant stars, and we have a fleet of telescopes looking for them. The ultimate goal is to find another Earth orbiting a star like the Sun, but the quest on the way to that Holy Grail has yielded some strange benchmarks.

Full Article:

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2008/10/06/astronomers-fi...

One of my students this semester has hair longer than mine. Maybe that's why he's been writing such great blog posts! Anyway, I thought you might enjoy or profit from his review of free alternatives to Microsoft Word. It's fairly comprehensive and even has screenshots. Check it out!

t's a little late to try to circulate this ad (deadline is tomorrow), but I'm going to do it anyway. CCCC is looking for a web editor:

The Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) is seeking applications from CCCC members for a new position as CCCC Web Editor (to be distinguished from CCC Online Archivist). The CCCC Web Editor’s term will be three years (non-renewable) beginning as soon as possible after the application deadline and ending in December of 2011. This is a volunteer position.

Actual programming or Web building is not required. Instead, the CCCC Web Editor will have the responsibility of orchestrating uses of new Web building structures made available in the coming months (e.g., blogs, Wikis, Face Book and so on), moderating new community spaces, publishing relevant information, and working with NCTE/CCCC to develop a stronger Website with new features. We anticipate that after the initial restructuring period, no more than 5 to 10 hours per month will be required of the Web Editor's time.

Persons interested in applying for the CCCC Web Editor position should send a cover letter of application to be received no later than October 1, 2008. The applicant letter should be accompanied by the applicant's CV, one sample of published writing, and a one-page statement of the applicant's vision for transforming the CCCC Website into an active community space. Two reference letters from CCCC members attesting to the applicant's qualifications can be sent under separate cover. Please do not send books, monographs, or other materials that cannot be easily copied for the Search Committee.

Applications should be mailed to Kristen Suchor, CCCC Web Editor Search Committee, NCTE, 1111 W. Kenyon Road, Urbana, Illinois 61801-1096; faxed to (217) 328-0977; or emailed to cccc@ncte.org.

I originally intended to post this as a "be part of the solution" exhortation, as several of us have expressed criticism of how CCCC has used the web in the past. For example, when they started a blog, some of us weren't impressed. I took a look at the CCCC blog right before writing this post, though, and I was very impressed. The blog had lain fallow throughout late 2006, all of 2007, and the first half of 2008, but now Joyce Middleton has started a series of posts titled Conversations on Diversity. She's featuring essay-length posts by -- so far -- Victor Villanueva, Krista Ratcliffe, Malea Powell, Paul Kei Matsuda, Haivan Hoang, Jonathan Alexander, and Mike Rose. Check it out; I will very likely be assigning this series of posts in my pedagogy classes.

Cross-posted at CultureCat.

The Computer Connection, a project of the CCCC Committee on Computers in Composition (7Cs), seeks submissions for short presentations and workshops to be delivered at the Conference on College Composition and Communication in San Francisco, CA, March 11-14, 2009. The CC presentations will be offered during sessions A-D on Thursday, March 12, and sessions F-H on the morning of Friday, March 13.

Adam Thierer in Technology Liberation Front has a nice overview of the recent raft of books on the internet. Thierer presents a schema grouping optimists and pessimists, and books by their beliefs/themes.

Call For Essays

Metamorphosis: The Effects of Professional Development on Graduate Students

Editors: Andréa Davis and Suzanne Webb

I borrowed a copy of Programmers at Work and found some pretty good comments in there from the Bill Gates interview. It's harder than heck to get a copy of this book--I ILL'ed it, and then they only let me keep it for a week. But here's the quotations. These are either from 1986 or 1989; my guess is the interview was closer to the former.

Is studying computer science the best way to prepare to be a programmer?

Gates: No, the best way to prepare is to write programs, and to study great programs that other people have written. In my case, I went to the garbage cans at the Computer Science Center and I fished out listings of their operating system.

You've got to be willing to read other people's code, then write your own, then have other people review your code. You've got to want to be in this incredible feedback loop where you get the world-class people to tell you what you're doing wrong.

Kairos is hiring! Would you like to join our journal? All positions are unpaid volunteer positions.

We have immediate openings for two qualified candidates for the position of Praxis Assistant Editor.

We have an immediate opening for a qualified candidate for the position of Reviews Assistant Editor.

“The wind was blowing harder now, and the snow was coming down in thick flurries, which quickly turned the fronts of their clothes white and made it difficult either to see or hear; but Dora thought she heard a snatch of music. Then one of the little boys started jumping up and down and pointing. 'Look! Look! They're dancing! They're dancing!' Everyone looked where the little boy was pointing. On the far side of the snow-field, next to the fir trees, the snowmen and snow-women were moving.”

ATTW 2009 : : Beyond Work? Technical Communication in Professional,
Community, & Social Networks

12th Annual ATTW Conference
March 11th, 2009
San Francisco, CA

Traditionally, teachers and researchers of technical writing have
concentrated on writing in workplace settings. And rightly so. But the
spread of information technology into all areas of social life means
that, increasingly, technical communication practices and genres arise
and collide in social spheres other than the workplace. Combine this
trend with an increasingly mobile work environment in which people are