Author: abendelow
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Breaking Bad as social critique
I’ve blogged elsewhere about the many pleasures and interesting social critique tv mini-series offers viewers. My current series (three of four seasons done) is Sony AMC TV’s Breaking Bad, about a 50 year-old high school teacher who does the title move. A 50 year-old high school teacher like me would sooner or later find this…
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Tom Waits' "Bad as Me" reviewed
The new Tom Waits LP, Bad as Me, was given a mixed review on SoundOpinions last week, but from what I’ve heard so far, it contains some excellent material. One of its songs seems very much part of the zeitgeist, corresponding with Isabel Wilderson’s best-selling American history, The Warmth of Other Suns, about the great…
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18 October Republican National Debate review
This year, to high ratings, the Republican presidential candidates’ debates are functioning as showcases and battlegrounds. In a single forum for a certain amount of time, each candidate gets an audience with the American voter, a chance to distinguish him/herself from the rest and argue for policy solutions to national problems. As staged tonight live…
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Infographic of the history of communications
…is a little hard to see at first, so read it from the top down. by Hyperakt via http://visual.ly/embeder/embed.js
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Noam Chomsky puts economic news in perspective
In this article –really a transcript of an interview with Aaron Maté via Amy Goodman at alternet– the famous leftist rambles a bit and calls into question our supreme military. But his take on the present debate over Social Security calls into question common assumptions about the public’s true interests in our democratic republic. His remarks expose the president’s…
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Fight at the educational waterhole heats up
Contention between parties contending for the available wealth–public resource control combat–has arrived in my school district, where the board is facing down the teachers’ union. This is a battle-scarred board. In the past few years they have successfully “beaten” the custodians and para-professionals in contract negotiations, demolishing wage scales and demanding pension and working condition give-backs.…
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Labor Day Message from teachers union leader Randi Weingarten
AFT President Randi Wiengarten delivered a letter to her 1.5 million dues-payers this Labor Day weekend. And there is something of a general’s message to the troops in her words. At a time when it could be said that American labor is in a death struggle against those who see it as corrupt and outmoded,…
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An appreciation of Saul Bellow's Augie March
Just the name, “Augie March” implies transaction and progress, and this book’s protagonist does not disappoint. A 20th century extension, in some ways, of Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), The Adventures of Augie March (1953) moves its hero from one difficult circumstance to the next, each filled with colorful Americans who have moral import for the developing…
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The "Debt-Ceiling Crisis": Competing narratives at the waterhole
In our recent “Debt-Cieling crisis” we see a new-age fight at the waterhole, a primeval scene from the struggle for survival depicted chillingly in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001, and repeated whenever “times are hard” and group interests over valuable commodities collide. Competing groups converge over the precious resource. In the scene above, it’s the dirty waterhole;…
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An appreciation of cleaning
One thing I have always loved about the task of cleaning; it’s so clean, so unambiguously necessary and natural work. Morally and practicaly, the lines of cleaning are clear. It is always obvious what needs to be done: this oven looks like crap; my sinks are filthy, etc. The task identified, specific, perfectly measured steps…
The Wikiness 