Who Needs History
AUSTIN – Republicans on the State Board of Education soundly rejected a Democratic-backed proposal Thursday that would have required Texas students to be taught the reasons behind the prohibition of a state religion in the Bill of Rights.
See the whole sad tale here.
Hey bitches
From here.
this unique 18-minute genre has its own requirements
From a Wired article on how to ace a TED Talk:
“I’m surprised to see that half the people here know my career in some detail and the other half don’t know who I am,” he says.
Science is fine, but not when it messes with our illusions.
If she had included solar power and African child warriors, it would have been so perfect a TED talk that there would have been no need for others.
Wolfram wraps his talk by saying that when it comes to trying to boil down the universe to a simple algorithm, “it’s almost embarrassing not to at least try.”
“Just because someone has an ego,” he says, citing a writer whose name I can’t read from my scribbled notes, “doesn’t mean he’s wrong.”
Trailer for El Topo (Alejandro Jodorowsky. 1970)
The strangest movie I’d recommend?
Allen Klein presents an ABKCO Film.
the first legal male prostitute
I think for a male, if you want to be successful in this type of venture, you’re not a prostitute. You’re a surrogate lover. You encompass everything that’s required of you—not only emotionally, physically—but psychologically. Because women are wired differently. They’re much more sensitive creatures. You actually have to enjoy what you do. You can’t necessarily say, “Oh, it’s just a job.” You actually have to say it’s a passion. I think it’s the same situation as with anything that happens when you break apart a social institution. There has to be some kind of change in terminology to describe persons like myself. And it’s more of a civil rights thing now. Basically this is the first time in the economy of the United States that a male has actually stood up and said, “I want to do this for a living.” And be protected under law to do it. It’s just the same as when Rosa Parks decided to sit at the front instead of the back. She was proclaiming her rights as a disadvantaged, African-American older woman. And I’m doing the same. I’m actually standing up now, and hopefully I can be supported by the male community and be understood as a person. This actually isn’t about selling my body. This is about changing social norms.
Congratulations.
(via marginal revolution)
quote out of context
He went on to say, “the extent to which you think writing is about something other than words then you will fail.”
Give it a ponder…
James Lipton — spokesman for teen culture?
Overheard
“And then things took a 360 for the worse.”
My new motto.
Brother Blue is gone.
I will try and write about his impact on me. Meantime, this from the Boston Globe.
Making the grade isn’t about race. It’s about parents.
After a recent state report on test scores in California schools, Jack O’Connell, the state’s superintendent of instruction, said the gap is “the biggest civil rights issue of this generation” — a very popular phrase in education circles.
But focusing on a “racial achievement gap” is too simple; it’s a gap in familial support and involvement, too. Administrators focused solely on race are stigmatizing black students. At the same time, they are encouraging the easy excuse that the kids who are not excelling are victims, as well as the idea that once schools stop being racist and raise expectations, these low achievers will suddenly blossom.
While I agree with the article’s premise*, I found myself wondering why the emphasis on fathers. I’d hedge that it’s having two parents, two incomes, and two role models that make the difference, and not just some problem with ’soft’ single mothers.
* I spend my forty-hour work week advocating for more parental involvement to close the aforementioned achievement gap.
Looking for a Pen that will Grade Papers
“This is the tragic story of a man who’s essay writes about his events.”
Ra Addresses the Youth
Oakland, California. 1972.
From Space Is the Place (1974). Directed by John Coney. Featuring Sun Ra, Ray Johnson, Christopher Brooks, The Intergalactic Myth-Science Solar Arkestra with June Tyson, John Gilmore, Marshall Allen. (Reissued in a revised edition on DVD in 2003. The edition on VHS presents the film as released in 1974. This clip appears to be from the revised DVD edition.)
Trolling for Credit
(3) provide at least 10 posts defending ID that you’ve made on “hostile” websites, the posts totalling [sic] 2,000 words, along with the URLs (i.e., web links) to each post (worth 20% of your grade)
Thoughts on beergate
If there was a teachable moment in this incident, it could be found in how some powerful white people well beyond Cambridge responded to it. That reaction is merely the latest example of how the inexorable transformation of America into a white-minority country in some 30 years — by 2042 in the latest Census Bureau estimate — is causing serious jitters, if not panic, in some white establishments.
With a little local flavor:
What provokes their angry and nonsensical cries of racism is sheer desperation: an entire country is changing faster than these white guys bargained for. We’ve been reminded repeatedly during Gatesgate that Cambridge’s mayor is a black lesbian. But a more representative window into the country’s transition might be that Dallas County, Tex., elected a Latina lesbian sheriff in 2004 (and re-elected her last year) and that the three serious candidates for mayor of Houston this fall include a black man and a white lesbian.
On Frank
My classmate Daniel Radosh has posted a sweet remembrance of Frank McCourt. (With yearbook photo!)
Beyond the practical lessons I learned in Frank McCourt’s class, I’ll always remember him as a model for how to be cynical without being jaded and sarcastic without being inhumane. I’m pretty sure he did not believe in God or an afterlife, but he had to believe that there is an immortality in living so that your words and actions transform the world around you in ways that will continue to reverberate forever. No one with so much life in him can ever truly die. And if there were an afterlife, I can guarantee you that somewhere right now, Frank McCourt would be mightily pissed off that he’s not around for what’s sure to be a hell of a wake.
—Daniel Radosh, “Why not almost any other famous person?“
Danger!
Dear clusterflock, what kind of danger, real or wildly overestimated, were you exposed to as a kid? Was it worth the risk?
Everything You Need to Know
Figurine. Calcite. Circa 10,000 BCE. (Mesolithic.) Found/acquired: Ain Sakhri. Small cave in the Wadi Khareitoun, south-east of Bethlehem in the Judean Desert.
A clustercommenter introduced me to this Mesolithic figurine, now held by the British Museum. I thought it might get buried in the great midden-heap of commentary, so I reckoned I’d bring it to the surface.
“Awesome and humbling,” says the commenter. I concur.
Gaming the college ranking system
We have walked the fine line between illegal, unethical, and really interesting.
—Catherine Watt of Clemson University, quoted in “‘Manipulating,’ Er, Influencing ‘U.S. News,’” Inside Higher Ed, June 3, 2009
Read more
Teachers as interchangeable parts
The Widget Effect is a wide-ranging report from The New Teacher Project that studies teacher evaluation and dismissal in four states and 12 diverse districts, ranging from 4,000 to 400,000 students in enrollment. From the beginning, over 50 district and state officials and 25 teachers’ union representatives actively informed the study through advisory panels in each state.
Read more
cloaca
young conservatives rap (n(i)s)*
Enjoy feeling uncomfortable?
“Three things taught me Conservative Love / Jesus, Ronald Reagan, plus Atlas Shrugged.”
*not (intentional) satire.
I politely decline
Not that I wouldn’t talk to any of y’all.
I’ve decided…
I’ll begin working on my Ph.D in English starting next fall. After this school year I won’t be teaching 7th graders anymore so I can focus on the work. I got a teaching assistantship and will be making way less money. This is scary but somehow feels right.
Five years ago today . . .
. . . sometime ‘flocker John Buass “took a break from folding laundry and decided, more or less on a whim, that it might be fun to start a blog.”
Blog Meridian is still going, despite an extended absence that is likely to continue for a time, but it is going, and it remains a source of delight and enlightenment. Go take a look if it’s been a while — or if it’s new to you.
While walking Scruffy this evening, I thought about what I might post on by way of looking back over the past five years–Things Accomplished, Lessons Learned, etc. Whatever work this blog represents for me has been in me. It has made me think harder about things that matter to me and has, in some cases, led me to a strengthening of my convictions–I still might be wrong about them, but I like to think I’m more skilled now in expressing my wrongheadedness–and has led to a reassessment of some others. It’s also made me more attentive as I go about my business or read or listen to music or watch films or look at pictures: I’m no longer thinking solely about what I think about these things but about how best to talk about what I think about them. That’s because keeping this blog compels me to think about audience in ways the usual diary or journal would not.
Whatever merits this blog has, therefore, is due in large measure to the fact that people visit it. But more to the point, those of you who visit regularly and make your presence known via comments keep me honest: you are smart, thoughtful people. I don’t want to look dumb or foolish in front of you on too regular a basis if I can help it.
Thanks for helping keep this blog going for as long as it has.