my signature strengths

Here are my “signature strengths,” via Martin Seligman’s www.authentichappiness.org.   I won’t tell you what my 24th (last) strength was. I’m workin’ on improvin’ that one.
Your Top Strength
Forgiveness and mercy
You forgive those who have done you wrong. You always give people a second chance. Your guiding principle is mercy and not revenge.
Your Second Strength
Appreciation of [...]

[journal entry] on first part of Murphy’s “The Key Role of Habit in Roman Writing Instruction”

It’s amazing how influential Latin rhetoric was.  It makes me wonder if this influence was due mainly to its being so systematized and organized. It seems that is at least one reason Aristotle’s Rhetoric has been so influential: its breakdown of every aspect of rhetoric into learn-able parts.  (Of course Aristotle’s Rhetoric has also been [...]

don’t-forget-to-do list

respond to N.L. and T.
practice with my own enthymeme
take Seligman’s signature strengths questionnaire at authentichappiness.org
arrange date to present Weaver’s “Language is Sermonic”
finish revising letter and c.v.
copy Mills’ Discourse (due Feb 4)
[Heheh, here's what you call a fascinating blog post!]

[journal entry] on Aristotle’s Rhetoric, Books II and III

Aristotle obviously does take up Plato’s challenge that the rhetor must know his audience and what is likely to persuade them and must know each “class of speech” well enough to choose which is the most advantageous in the situation (Phaedrus 167). I imagine Aristotle didn’t even wince when he read Plato’s criteria. Aristotle [...]

OSU looks good in snow!

Taken about 6:30p this evening, in front of the Memorial Union building. There was a guy out there on his cross-country skis. I guess he couldn’t resist the chance to got on ‘em.

Facing east, Gilkey Hall on the right.

sources to check out for rhetoric and epistemology paper

Atwill, Janet M. Rhetoric Reclaimed: Aristotle and the Liberal Arts Tradition. Cornell UP, 1998. Chapter 7.
Gage, John T. Review of Rhetorical Traditions and the Teaching of Writing by C. H. Knoblauch, Lil Brannon. Rhetoric Review, Vol. 3, No. 1 (Sep., 1984), pp. 100-105.
Gage, John T. “An Adequate Epistemology [...]

privilege meme

Here’s my version of the privilege meme that’s going around (see Michael’s and Chanel’s versions).
Privilege meme: Bold the items that apply to you.
1. Father went to college
2. Father finished college (on a football scholarship)
3. Mother went to college
4. Mother finished college (nope — she wanted to do the have-the-kids thing right away)
5. Have any relative [...]

[journal entry] on Plato’s Phaedrus

BELIEVER. On one hand, I think Plato/Socrates is making an excellent argument here. He’s saying that in order for rhetoric to be rightly called an “art” (something that can lay claim to serious consideration of both the body (the theory) and the soul (the practice)), the rhetoritician must know the truth about her topic (and [...]

Hyundai commercial

I’ve seen this Hyundai commercial before, but this was the first time I thought consciously about why I have such mixed emotions/reactions to it.
The narrator says, “Instant gratification has us in a stranglehold, so much so that we don’t want to fix things anymore — just replace them. Don’t like your nose, get a new [...]

face value

Rather than seeing the proliferation of advice manuals on women’s conduct as evidence of women’s oppression, we can see them, amongst other things, as indicators of women’s resistance to those discourses.
from Sara Mills’ Discourse (Routledge, 2004), p. 81
Interesting. Seems an important principle — not to take discourses at face value.
Addendum 1-21-08, for Michael :-):
Mills says,
The [...]