Disqus - Latest Comments for krisnelson

Re: Are Law Firm Websites Evolving Or Dying?

Kristopher Nelson — Sun, 08 Jun 2014 22:15:02 -0000

I think this is pretty much right on in terms of using online presence to generate leads. Websites alone just don't cut it anymore. If you want to generate leads online, you've got to use other mechanisms (LinkedIn, influential posts).

That said, I think of the basic site for a lawyer as being like a business card now: necessary but not sufficient. IMHO, every potential client expects to be able to look up an attorney and find out some information, just like they expect a lawyer to have a business card. Can you rely on that to get business? No. Is it necessary to reassure clients that you're minimally legit? I think so.

But if you want more than the basics, you need to do more than a website alone.

Re: NSA spying is not clearly unconstitutional

Kristopher Nelson — Tue, 13 Aug 2013 16:32:30 -0000

I tend to agree that there are ethical problems with the NSA's activities, especially the lack of transparency in what exactly they are doing. That secrecy seems to me incompatible with liberal/representative democracies like the United States. How can anyone exercise effective oversight over the Executive Branch if everything is classified and hidden?

Re: College Is Going Online, Whether We Like It Or Not

Kristopher Nelson — Sat, 18 May 2013 13:50:12 -0000

There's just nothing very revolutionary about the current generation of online education (except, for now, the price--which will change if when accreditation comes into the picture). It efficiently allows a talking head to speak to a larger audience than even the largest lecture hall (about which online proponents complain vociferously). For some kinds of degree, this is perfect; for others, it's a second-class substitute for a classroom. Just like increasing lecture sizes appeals to the budget-conscious, so does online education--but that doesn't mean either currently delivers anything comparable to the ideal environment for all students studying all things.

I love MOOCs. But I don't pretend they'll fix all the problems of education--and a a budget price! We might just need, as a society, to support students and universities with more than trendy technologies and loans.

Re: Recovering from server failure and bad backups: the Internet remembers

Kristopher Nelson — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 19:26:45 -0000

Matti,

Mostly to give me more control over the re-import, such as making sure categories and tags were correct, images functioned, etc. Basically to help with quality control.

Re: TV news is bullshit

Kristopher Nelson — Sun, 18 Nov 2012 17:32:36 -0000

Excellent suggestions, Dave. I have especially noted how much harder it is to find good, lesser-known blogs these days. Twitter tends (not entirely) to re-push the same blogs over and over again. And the old blogroll is gone (or not public). Tools like Prismatic help, but I still can't reliably find smaller, interesting, or niche blogs very easily.

Any thoughts on the best way to present a "river of blogs," other than an old-fashioned blogroll or a Twitter feed?

Re: TV news is bullshit

Kristopher Nelson — Sun, 18 Nov 2012 15:48:33 -0000

Dave,

I don't disagree at all with your points, but I'm having some trouble turning this into some kind of practical actions that I can actually do, rather than relying on "installed leaders" to kick it off for me (which of course would be nice too).

To put it another way: what about those of us who aren't "installed leaders," and perhaps do work in non-product-focused areas? Should we be doing more than writing about what we think is interesting? Should we be pursuing the current leaders and emulating them?

Re: 'No DH, No Interview'

Kristopher Nelson — Mon, 23 Jul 2012 00:32:43 -0000

I must admit that, as a former software dev turned history PhD, I've wondered at the whole "digital humanities" thing. While there's some fascinating work being done under the DH label, it really seems to me to be just another set of tools and skills--rather like close reading or proper use of archive materials. I mean, it does require some training and different thinking--but so does everything else in a discipline. I suppose it's "different" (for now) because it enables approaches that (some of) my teachers haven't done before, which seemingly upends some of the hierarchy of the relationship.

To be honest, there won't be a DH chapter in my dissertation not because I won't use such approaches, but rather because there doesn't seem to me to be any point to distinguish them from any other research approach.

All that said, summer institutes, etc. are brilliant ways of thinking about problems and tools, and I'm heartily in favor of them. And yes, I also think DH experience is a good thing in a new hire--I would advocate it as a requirement (and I would look for it if I were hiring)--but then again, I would find it hard to make it an absolute requirement vs all-the-other-important-scholarly-things. Thanks for the interesting article!

Re: How to Thrive in the Expanding Electronic Scholarly Domain

Kristopher Nelson — Mon, 21 May 2012 13:38:12 -0000

This really resonates with me in many aspects. I am a PhD in history and, while I haven't exactly been discouraged from DH work, I have heard that basically, all my efforts ought to be directed at finishing my dissertation (which better be "traditional history") and then publishing it as a (paper) book (from the appropriate publisher).

Nothing else beyond turning my dissertation into an eventual book, I'm told, really matters--the committee work on making campus a better place, the blogging (generally, early scholarship and investigatory work that's often broader than my dissertation scholarship), or anything else, really. All this other stuff is considered good only for "networking" that might help me know the right people--provided I get that dissertation published as a book!

Every field is slightly different, of course, but I think the core is similar--do the traditional, safe thing, *then* once you have tenure (if it's even still possible to *get* tenure in a few years...) you can do that other fluff.

Must of the graduate student process seems to be making sure we internalize these values--though most grad student "rebel" in small ways, of course--no one looks over our shoulders 24/7, or forces us to do things a certain way--but we all get the message of what's "really important."

Thanks for the nice article!

Re: Summify Users: We’re here for you. You’re Safe.

Kristopher Nelson — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 14:26:49 -0000

iPhone app is my #1 request!

Re: Defamation, SLAPP, and medicine: Doctor’s Data, Inc. v. Barrett et al

Kristopher Nelson — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 22:07:26 -0000

If he simply have an opinion without evidence and asked us to believe him on the basis of his (former) practice, then perhaps. But if you read through Barrett's materials, there is extensive documentation, evidence, and analysis, not simply a demand for blind trust. It doesn't take a practicing physician to recognize testing/logic and methodology problems, in any case, though I think his medical training does inform his analysis and his explanations. But it's important to read carefully regardless.

Re: You do not get an “A for effort” with copyright

Kristopher Nelson — Sun, 13 Mar 2011 18:58:21 -0000

Inasmuch as any property right derives from the effort of creation, then yes, effort is necessary.

But "progress" (interpreted by the courts as "creativity") is what the Constitution and American IP law focuses on, not effort. It simply doesn't matter how hard you work, it only matters how creative you are. Thus, putting huge energies into compiling phone book entries does not make that work copyrightable, because it isn't creative. On the flip side, two minutes of typing on a blog could easily generate copyrightable content, even though the amount of effort was negligible. Effort does not distinguish the copyrightable from the non-copyrightable, but creativity does.

Minimal effort is indeed a requirement (it takes effort even to breathe, after all), but it is a minimal requirement as compared to the creativity necessarily required for copyright.

Re: The archive and the state

Kristopher Nelson — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 17:40:10 -0000

Yeah, true. I've never really bought into the objectivity argument anyway--sure, we're not 100% objective, but that doesn't really mean we can't say anything. Same with this--it does add to the complexity of being sure about the truth, but that doesn't mean we as historians (or people) shouldn't talk about what we've learned and think despite this.

But certainly thinking of the archive--not just the historian, and not just the sources--as adding complexities of subjectivity as well does make things more complicated! But also more interesting, I think.

Re: Measuring the impact of technology on the law

Kristopher Nelson — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 20:18:32 -0000

Oops, typo! That should be 1895, not 1875. Fixed above. Thanks!

Re: Modern Islam and science: an article by Seyyed Hossein Nasr

Kristopher Nelson — Wed, 26 May 2010 19:39:37 -0000

You're right: there is a distinct lack of concreteness. I believe he thinks that infusing Islamic ethics and values into the scientific process will inevitably lead to differences--even if he's not entirely sure what those differences will be. Respect for the environment? No nuclear bombs? He mentions these things--but is that really different science, or just a different way to apply knowledge?

Re: Some commonalities of pro- and anti-vaccination rhetoric

Kristopher Nelson — Sat, 01 May 2010 13:03:33 -0000

Good points. My larger interest is in seeing how anti-vaccination arguments--despite criticizing scientific claims--nonetheless adopt similar, scientific-sounding language and arguments to try to establish credibility. So I'm not trying to equate the claims or their basis, but instead to look at how critical it is today to use certain kinds of rhetoric if you want to get people to trust you.

Re: Science and Protestantism: why is evolution a target?

Kristopher Nelson — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 19:53:43 -0000

Good points, James. The sense of distrust in abstract extrapolations beyond the directly observable evidence (Baconian, in a sense) perhaps unifies opposition to both evolution and climate change, but a unifying moral objection to both seems less clear.

Perhaps it's just a feeling that "God wouldn't do that to us"? Or just "it feels icks for that to be true"?

(Note to readers: "John," above, refers to John Evans, one of the authors of Religion and Science: Beyond the Epistemological Conflict Narrative, and a participant in the discussion.)

Re: Smallpox inoculation and quarantine in colonial America

Kristopher Nelson — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 16:35:59 -0000

In some senses, the arguments against vaccination are not terribly different now than they were then. For better or worse, I do think the modern anti-vaccination movement has tended towards incorporating more "scientific" rhetoric in their arguments, and stepped away from some of the earlier, more religious "Divine Will" arguments (perhaps not completely). Many of the "personal liberty" arguments, then and now, do bear a striking similarity though.

Re: Cultivating Failure - Magazine - The Atlantic

Kristopher Nelson — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 00:47:00 -0000

I'm not sure I understand. Is this a joke? You think the problem with American education is that students are growing carrots an hour or two a week? Really? I think maybe we have bigger problems that deserve our attention.

Re: Packrati.us: A Dead Simple Way To Make Delicious Bookmark The Links You Tweet

Kristopher Nelson — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 01:43:35 -0000

I was just looking for something to do this today, strangely enough!

Tweecious does this, too, if people want another choice. It's a Firefox Extension, so you have to have Firefox running to do the processing.

Tweecious uses Zemanta's API to provide useful (if imperfect) tags automatically, so you get something basic at least. It works pretty well.

Re: Is scientific peer review censorship?

Kristopher Nelson — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 22:42:33 -0000

Denis,

Granted, the Creationist angle makes this me suspicious, but I did want to at least consider the potential negatives of current approaches to peer review. Are improvements possible that might answer some of the criticisms? (Or is even considering it giving credence to what is simply not science?)

Re: How to write attributions for the Creative Commons licensed images you use on your blog

Kristopher Nelson — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 22:51:47 -0000

Yes, it seems like putting it in a credits-style box at the end might be the best. I would recommend using captions to the images to attribute the work to a person's name, and then connect the name to the correct license at the end of the newsletter. You could also add the information in a box or a section that has editor-identifying information, often on the second or inside page of a magazine or newsletter.

However you do it exactly, the main point is to connect the specific image with the person who made it or owns it and the license it's being used under.

Re: Court Says You Can Copyright A Cease-And-Desist Letter

Kristopher Nelson — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 22:23:38 -0000

Good points, Bill. I think I can say that I agree with your logic on this one!

Re: How to write attributions for the Creative Commons licensed images you use on your blog

Kristopher Nelson — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 14:51:47 -0000

However you do it exactly, the main point is to connect the specific image with the person who made it or owns it and the license it's being used under.

Re: Historians need to stop obsessing over writing books

Kristopher Nelson — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 04:50:08 -0000

Ah, great question. The lawyer in me (of course) says he's both a model and a warning. Certainly he was engaged in social issues, and certainly he made history matter to people outside the academy. I would encourage all humanities scholars to look to him for a model in this sense.

On the other hand, his engagement was normative in a way that I think historians especially ought to be careful of. It became easy for some to simply dismiss him and his work as biased, and therefore untrustworthy, due to his explicit "left-wing" views.

While I have issues with the potential existence of a true neutrality or objective perspective, and prefer people explain up front where they are coming from, I do think that explicitly advancing an agenda through one's work as an historian is potentially problematic, although making judgments about history based on historical evidence is indeed what historians ought to do.

When I speak of "engagement" with contemporary society, I don't particularly mean in a normative or prescriptive fashion. Rather, I was thinking of connecting history and historical events with modern issues, to help illuminate how we got where we are, how others have dealt with similar situations in the past, and so on, with the goal of giving people more tools to make better decisions about contemporary problems.

Re: Historians need to stop obsessing over writing books

Kristopher Nelson — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 20:50:08 -0000