Eric Stoller's Blog

I received the following comment on my blog a couple weeks ago:

“Yeah blogging is really a great way to help people. Great job. I salute you for doing such a great job. ”

The comment felt like it was spam. The post that was commented on was almost a year old and the comment seemed like it was just a way for the commenter to get their link on a blog post on blogging and academic advising.

As most of you know, I am an avid web statistics aficionado. The same day that the spammy comment was submitted (I moderate all new comments) I noticed two inbound referral links from a couple of Google Docs spreadsheets. My concerns that the comment was from a spammer were confirmed. In fact, I had stumbled upon two link spam documents that had been left open for anyone to see. A SEO company known as “Virtual Assistant” (link is to the Better Business Bureau listing…I love the irony!) was waging a concerted link spam campaign and my site had been “selected” for one of their spam comments.

I quickly saved copies of the link spam documents.

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I attended Indian Hills Community College (IHCC) in Ottumwa, Iowa from 1995 to 1997. During my time at IHCC I joined the jazz band, played my trombone for the pep band and signed up for my first email account with Hotmail. It was a phenomenally developmental period in my life. My IHCC academic advisor, Tom Stewart, is still a close mentor and friend. My love of higher education began at IHCC.

As a member of eduStyle, I frequently submit higher education websites for community review. When Indian Hills recently re-designed their website, I immediately submitted the new site design to eduStyle. I was unaware that my IHCC story was one of the featured stories on the homepage. I had submitted answers, over a year ago, to a questionnaire about my IHCC experiences. When the new site design was entered in on eduStyle, the site thumbnail showed a different homepage image. Brad J. Ward notified me via Twitter of my “celebrity” status.

The new design is definitely an improvement compared to the previous iteration:

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I will be giving the keynote speech for the Oklahoma ACademic ADvising Association (OACADA) Fall Conference in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma next month. The conference theme is “Using Technology to Navigate Student Success” and I think that it provides a terrific continuation to the academic advising technology conversations that came out of the NACADA Technology Seminar. In addition to the keynote address, I will be facilitating a question and answer session in the afternoon.

One of the most successful components of the NACADA Technology Seminar was the use of Twitter amongst the seminar attendees. Every tweet for the event was tagged with this hashtag: #nacadatech09. The hashtag allowed us to aggregate all tagged tweets into the NACADA Tech website via a widget from monitter.com.

This year, due to a multitude of financial issues, a lot of NACADA members will most likely not be able to attend the NACADA Annual Conference in San Antonio, Texas.

The following hashtag has been “created” to enable non-attendees the opportunity to virtually follow the action in San Antonio: #nacada09

How can you participate as either a NACADA Annual Conference Tweeter or as a virtual follower?

NACADA Tweeters:

• Step 1: Sign up for a Twitter account.
• Step 2: Take your laptop or web-ready cellphone to San Antonio and hope that WiFi is available.
• Step 3: Post updates on Twitter about the conference: session pointers, take-aways, best practices, key issues, etc.
• Step 4: In every 140 character post, include “#nacada09″ (without quotes and a space in front of and after the tag)

Virtual followers:

• Step 1: Follow the virtual conference action via a Twitter search for #nacada09
• Step 2: Repeat step 1.

Tim Wise and Don Lemon break down “white racial resentment / white racial paranoia” that is occurring at town hall meetings and the inflammatory rhetoric (e.g. comparing Barack Obama to Adolf Hitler) spewing out of Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Pat Buchannan et al.

Jon Stewart and Larry Wilmore, from the Daily Show, satirize “white fear.”

[flv:http://ericstoller.com/blog/audio/orange.flv http://ericstoller.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/knock-out-orange.png 455 255]

“I am the last thing they see before the lights go out.

I am the enforcer.

I am a giant killer.

I am Orange.”

I am not orange if this is the way that OSU Athletics is going to promote our football team.

We should not be using the act of making our opponents unconscious as a way to elicit a response from our fan base.

The theme of the video is basically all about gratuitous violence: We are giant killing enforcers who are going to knock you out.

This isn’t the “Beaver Nation” that I want to be a part of and/or associated with.

Update: There is another “I am Orange” video for OSU Football.

In this video, the athleticism of OSU’s football players is celebrated. It’s not about glorified violence, it’s about speed and skill…completely different from the “we’re going to knock you out” video.

If a certain family member wonders why I stopped reading their blog, it is due to their defense of (and site link to) Glenn Beck. Rather than engage in a fruitless back-and-forth (like last time when my life experience was called into question), I will simply post these recent videos. Glenn Beck’s rhetoric is blatantly racist and disingenuous. The first clip is of Glenn Beck appearing on the pro-eugenics FOX & Friends. Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart once again provide commentary on the idiocy that is Glenn Beck.

Call on advertisers to drop sponsorship of Glenn Beck.

This amazing poster is in one of the food labs in Milam Hall. From the 1967 Pan-American Coffee Bureau with a little help from PhotoShop.