For the Good of Bloggy Science, with a nod to Fancy Day

Via Jody, Julie, Mel, Bardiac and others, here's a call to help a graduate student with his MLA paper. Scott Eric Kaufman wants to measure how fast a meme spreads, so to help him out, please mention his post and then ping technorati. Strictly speaking this seems more like a chain letter than a meme, but I am finding it interesting to see how each of the bloggers I've read has framed his experiment. I don't often do memes, but I like the way the genre of each meme reveals different things about the writers who do them. So far, Jody's story about Elba writing about being thankful for her cat (which she doesn't own, but can spell) is my favorite aspect of this meme. Now there's a story someone at MLA should be pondering.

MLA is the big literary conference, and also the conference at which many schools interview preliminary candidates for jobs. I'm not a literary specialist, so I've only ever attended MLA when I've been on the job market. Consequently, my associations with MLA are rather stress-filled. So a panel on academic bloggers seems like a good thing--much less stuffy and much more connected to issues in my own professional work than most of the work that will be presented. Reading blogs has actually gotten me thinking about literary scholarship in new ways, since many of the academic bloggers I read are literary types, and that's good.

So help out a graduate student get his paper done, and don't forget to ping technorati when you're done..

Another meme that Curious Girl totally enjoyed was Fancy Day. I'll have a picture tomorrow. It was totally fun. "Annika was fancy yesterday. Today is Fancy Day in Our State," Curious Girl was busy telling everyone who would listen. Remember, any day can be fancy day, so get out those clothes you're thinking you need a special event to wear.