bucknell

“If One Has No Sense of Humor, One is In Trouble”

Upon reading the blog assignment for the week, I actually dreaded it. I have been stuck in the library for the past two weeks straight, cranking out assignment after assignment. Even though I detest the hustle and bustle of the first floor of Bertrand, I quickly skimmed the book selection parallel to the courtyard computers for a title and cover that caught my attention. I was really hoping one would not only peak my interest, but also relate back to class. However, I was drawn to the smiling face of the Betty White. Seeing Caitlyn out of the corner of my eye, I quickly grabbed the book and made my way down to the lower level to begin writing.

The works of the great Betty White that I know are her hilarious skits on SNL, where I literally cannot control my laughter. Despite being 73 and appearing on shows such as The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Golden Girls, and Life With Elizabeth, all shows airing even before we were born, she is still a comedic phenomenon in her own right. In her autobiography, If You Ask Me (And of Course You Wont), the seven time Emmy winner tackles topics ranging from friendship, romance and aging to television, comedy and her fans, interjecting her own personal stories into the mix. The book is broken up into chapters and then into shorter subchapters. In reading through the contents, the Hollywood Stories chapter drew me in, specifically the chapter on SNL. Continue reading →

Titles of Second Papers (for easy ref)

“Employers Creative Use of Facebook” by Amanda

“Costs of Being Costco” by Caitlin

Blog Awards-Cited Reference Searches

The blog council met late Friday afternoon to discuss the blog awards for this week’s prompt on cited reference searches.  Although the blogs this week were not the most exciting to write, some did spark debate such as Alyssa’s stem cell post and Ben’s NBA post.

With prompt in mind, the blog council came up with six awards.

1. Best Use of Sources

2. Best Use of Class Topics

3. Best Use of Media

4. Most tenacious

5. The Luckiest SOB (Most Cited References)

6. Best Post

The winners of Best Use of Sources are Amanda and Derek.

You each found relevant articles and were the most effective at connecting the topics in the articles to topics in your paper.

The winner of Best Use of Class Topics is Jenna.

You looked back through a previous class case, Walmart, and used the case’s references as a starting point to search for more material.

The winner of Best Use of Media is Joey.

We felt you had the most relevant and entertaining media (in your case graph and cartoon)

The winner of Most Tenacious is Lauren M.

We felt you deserved an award for the amount of effort you put into translations.

The winner of The Luckiest SOB (Most Cited References) is Derek.

You found over 10,000 articles…which can be attributed to effective researching and some luck.  Anyhow, we felt you too deserved an award.

The winner of BEST Post is Danielle.

Congratulations Danielle!  We felt your blog on Stakeholder Pressure was well researched, well written and deserved the title of best post.

Finding Gold Mines of Info- Blog Prompt 8- Cited Ref Searches

Cited Reference Searches.

As Brody explained, the works cited of an article, case or book is a view BACKWARDS in time to what the author used.

A cited ref search is a look FORWARD.  It can be a very powerful and targeted search based on what you know is a good source.  The idea is to look at a piece of knowledge and see, from its point of publication, FORWARD, who else cited it.

Several tools can do this.  All are reachable here at the LIT page for management.

ABI/INFORM is one.

Google Scholar is another.

Web of Knowledge is the third, and perhaps the most sophisticated.

The differences are primarily around which databases it searches for references.  The second is the presence of BOOKS.  Only Google Scholar does books.

FOR NEXT WEEK,

1)      Take a “piece of knowledge” we have used or referenced and

2)       Do a cited reference search on it to find a

3)      New item that is useful to you.

4)      Briefly describe the new item. Continue reading →

I Hate Being White

Race is not a biological category.  There is no Black “race” nor White nor Asian nor Native American.  One way you can tell is that in my lifetime the numbers of races keeps fluctuating.  Growing up in the South in the 1970s and 1980s, we would hear about the “White man, Yellow Man, Black Man, and Red man.”  This, mind you, was in the context of treating all “colors” the same.  Well, what in the hell are the new waves of immigrants, the “Latinos,” then?

This post is a very raw, un-researched post on my part. Continue reading →

Mrs. Silverstein… Is Dana Black or White?

If you think going to Bucknell for four years was like living in a bubble, then you never grew up in Rye Brook, NY. Being raised in this homogenous community and attending the same school district, there was only one African American family in town The family, who actually lived around the corner from me, had four children; two of them graduating from my high school while the youngest two transferred before senior year. One of the girls who transferred was actually in my grade and in my kindergarten class in 1995. (In order to protect the identity of this girl, I have chosen to not use her real name. So for the purpose of this assignment, I will refer to her as Alex). For those of you who don’t know me well, I tend to get absurdly tan when I go away to tropical climates and completely change skin color (I am too embarrassed to post a picture to blog so if you are truly interested in my transformation, I’ll email you a picture)! I will never forget this story, since it’s my mother’s favorite to tell. I had just gotten back from President’s week vacation in Puerto Rico in February of 1995. Being my usual self and despite wearing massive amounts of sunscreen, I came back chocolate brown. Alex and I took the same bus to school each morning and waited together at the bus stop. The first time she saw me, she gave me the weirdest look and for the rest of the day, as we colored pictures of our vacations and ate snack, she could not stop looking at me. The next morning while we were waiting for the bus, Alex asked my mom a simple question, “Mrs. Silverstein, why is Dana black and you’re white?” Continue reading →

What or Who Inspires You? Blog 5

Prompt for blog 5-

What (interest) or Who (person) Inspires You?

For this week’s prompt, the Blog Council wants you to examine how this class relates to your own interests. So, please write about how this class relates to some of your own intellectual or other learning interests.  We are NOT interested in how it relates to a specific career goal. Continue reading →

Moby Dick and PSU

Just a quick note:  Professor Gruver of our own SoM has an op-ed on-line and with the Harrisburg Newspaper (I think).

He talks about leadership, Moby Dick, and Penn State.

Stuff Week: Blog Prompt for Session 5, Blog 4

For your blog post, please take an item or object, with a clear brand identity, and explore what you can learn about the maker’s stance as a company on relevant BGS questions. As a bonus, you can watch the “Story of Stuff” at the Campus Theatre next Tuesday at 7 p.m.   Your post can go many directions:

• Are they known as living their values? (For example, here is one outside group that recognizes “green” companies.)
• Do they have critics?  How does the company respond?
• Do they publicize a code of ethics?
• Do they try to affect laws or public policy?  (Open Secrets is a fantastic resource to track down information; search the site, or use on of their reports or search tools).

Please, if you discover that your favorite branded company has a questionable or even awful track record, save the guilt.  Do you know how hard it is to buy clothes NOT made in questionable conditions?!?  Feel free to imagine a different world, but guilt is not the price of admission to that conversation.

For example, I think I will do Automagic, the company that makes wordpress.  Part of the reason is I thought of a company whose product I whole-heartedly endorse with word of mouth.  “Worpdress is great, better than blogger,” is a phrase I have said many times.  A little like AIG, I am giving away my good name to this product.  I suspect as a tech start up they are venture capital-funded and therefore probably have much less public info than bigger firms.  Do what you can!

ARE YOU GOING TO THE MOVIE?  Add your name to comments below.

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• Ten good reasons why your business should be buzzing about blogging (b2bsocialmediaguide.com)