‘Weasel Words’, Jargon, and eReseach!

March 23, 2009 at 4:09 pm · Filed under gadfly

A colleague of mine recently lamented the fact that his organisation was bloated by jargon.  A lot of organisations are bloated by jargon;  including parts of the English academy (that is supposed to advance the noble task of pursuing truth through evidence).

Here is a definition of ‘jargon’ or dare I say  ‘Weasel Words’ from Wikipedia.  ‘Weasel Words’ are endemic in the gigantic field of  eResearch because the field is so intellectually noisy and cognitively stupefying that ‘jargon’  may be one reactive response to the overwhelming intellectual questions that are extraordinary important to address but as yet lack a cognisant means of navigation.

Weasel words is an informal term for words that are ambiguous and not supported by facts. They are typically used to create an illusion of clear, direct communication.

Weasel words are usually expressed with deliberate imprecision with the intention to mislead the listeners or readers into believing statements for which sources are not readily available. Tactics that are used include:

• vague generalizations
• use of the passive voice
• non sequitur statements
• use of grammatical devices such as qualifiers and the subjunctive mood
• use of euphemisms (e.g., replacing “firing staff” with “streamlining the workforce”)

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The great practical consipiracy…

March 23, 2009 at 12:05 pm · Filed under gadfly

I went to visit King Henry VIII’s palace on the weekend (Hampton Court Palace) with a college of mine from the Centre for Computing in the Humanities (CCH).  It was a lovely grand palace; big gardens, royal apartments, tutor architecture, and some excellent displays of the life of King Henry the VIII; his wives, his obese character and his dutiful servants.

Trouble is that the palace is still owned by the Royal Family.  All of the Palace’s 1500 rooms, and all the objects within them, are the direct property of Queen Elizabeth II.  This means that all the displays within the Palace; with their particular portrayal of royal history, must be condoned for the ‘appropriateness’ by representatives for the Royal Family. I find this strange; even draconian because this important history is manipulated by an undemocratic and unaccountable sector of British Society that still has and manages to cloak its  immense wealth and power.

I asked some of my English colleges what they though of this.  They said ‘what do you expect; they own it’.

A practical response!  And I think I am onto something here. English ‘practicality’ hides some of the Nation’s deep seated ideological underpinnings.  Uncritical ‘practicality’ masks the ‘normalised thinking’ of a deeply class-based society.

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A day in the life of the Digital Humanities

March 20, 2009 at 6:26 pm · Filed under digital humanities, gadfly, humanities computing

This is the entry I wrote for the ethnographic study yesterday on the day in the life of the Digital Humanities. I am not sure it was a typical day; except all the reflection about the nature of the Digital Humanities. That is typical for me (link).

Nanook of the North; a famous (but discreited) ethnographic study into Eskimos.

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Interdisciplinarity in the Arts and Humanities Conference

March 18, 2009 at 2:51 pm · Filed under digital humanities

Conferences and Symposia

Friday 20^th March, 9.30-6pm

Interdisciplinarity in the Arts and Humanities Conference

Speakers: Georgina Born (Cambridge), David Cunningham (Westminster & Radical Philosophy), Thomas Docherty (Warwick), Jeremy Gilbert (UEL & New Formations), Susan Melrose (Middlesex), Joanne Morra (University of the Arts & Journal of Visual Culture), Peter Osborne (Middlesex & Radical Philosophy), Adrian Rifkin (Goldsmiths), Marquard Smith (Westminster & Journal of Visual Culture), Shearer West (Director of Research, AHRC), and Joanna Zylinska (Goldsmiths & Culture Machine)

Free Admission but RSVP to sinclas@wmin.ac.uk

Venue: The Swedenborg Society, 20-21 Bloomsbury Way, London

Organised by: Network for Editors of Interdisciplinary Journals

For further information, click here.

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Banned hyperlinks could cost you $11,000 a day

March 17, 2009 at 9:48 am · Filed under internet, projects

The Australian communications regulator says it will fine people who hyperlink to sites on its blacklist, which has been further expanded to include several pages on the anonymous whistleblower site Wikileaks.

Wikileaks was added to the blacklist for publishing a leaked document containing Denmark’s list of banned websites.

The move by the Australian Communications and Media Authority comes after it threatened the host of online broadband discussion forum Whirlpool last week with a $11,000-a-day fine over a link published in its forum to another page blacklisted by ACMA – an anti-abortion website (link).

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The Influence and Impact of Web 2.0 on e-Research Infrastructure, Applications and Users

March 16, 2009 at 5:15 pm · Filed under Virtual Reseach Environments, collaboration, web2.0

This conference is being organised by the National eScience Centre and the eScience institute and is being held in Edinburgh on the 23rd to the 27th March ‘09.

The number of Web 2.0 services and applications, widely used by Internet users, academics, industry and enterprise, are growing rapidly, which demonstrates Web 2.0’s solid foundations. These technologies and services are based on the open standards that underpin the Internet and Web, and are used in many forms, e.g. blogs, wikis, mashups, social websites, podcasting and content tagging. This field is having a significant impact on distributed infrastructure and applications, and on the way users and developers interact. The area needs to be thoroughly investigated and understood to encourage the development of new services and applications for e-Research (link).

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