Navas – Regressive and Reflexive Mashups in Sampling Culture

Navas, Eduardo.  “Regressive and Reflexive Mashups in Sampling Culture” in Mashup Cultures.  New York: Springer Wien.  2010. Sampling is “when any software users including creative industry professionals as well as average consumers apply cut/copy & paste in diverse software applications.” Remixes find their roots in 1970s Jamaican dub and hip hop. Navas premise in the paper is to argue that when mashups move beyond typical remix practices they... Read More

Logie – Peers, Pirates, and Persuasion: Rhetoric in the Peer-to-Peer Debates

Logie, John. Peers, Pirates, and Persuasion : Rhetoric in the Peer-to-Peer Debates. Parlor Press, 2006. Print. Introduction:  The Cat is Out of the Bag Early on L. notes that this book will consider the anti-piracy arguments of the content industry by analyzing the key terms and metaphors that underpin their claims (6).  In addition, L. claims that he will “interrogate peer-to-peer enthusiasts’ various responses to these arguments, and the limited applicability... Read More

Intellectual Property, Plagiarism, and Web Justice?: A Tale of Two Tarts

While enjoying my obligatory “I’m not working tonight because it is Thursday and that means I don’t have to get up and do anything immediately in the morning” beer I ran across a pretty fascinating story that highlights intellectual property, plagiarism, and blog-based justice.  Apparently Cook’s Source Magazine – a small independent publication out of Sunderland MA that publishes recipes, cooking tips, etc. – lifted a recipe published... Read More

New Music 8/31/2010

Hello again.  I thought I’d share with you some of the new stuff I’ve come across this week. . . 1. Stornoway - Beachcomber’s Windowsill : Sharing their band name with a small city in the North of the Isle of Lewis in Scotland, this Oxford based folk / pop outfit create soft songs with sometimes gritty instrumentation.  Think James Yorkston’s haunting melodies without a lot of the pretense (please don’t tell James Yorkston I think he’s pretentious.... Read More

Yancey – Made Not Only in Words

Yancey, Kathleen Blake. “Made Not Only in Words: Composition in a New Key.” College Composition and Communication 56 2 (2004): 297-328. Print. Yancey begins this essay with a recognition that never before have the technologies of writing contributed so quickly to the creation of new genres.  For Yancey these technological developments mirror the development of the reading public in the 19th century as the technological and economic changes of an increasingly globalized... Read More