Category: Uncategorized
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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…
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Public schools: our best democratizing institution?
My argumentative friend recently asked me about the new http://vivateachers.org/ site, which seeks “to dramatically increase classroom teachers’ participation in important state and national policy decisions about public education” through “direct communication between individual teachers and public officials, giving public officials authentic insight into how public classrooms and schools work best and they make policy…
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The technology of the TV mini-series
The “tv mini-series” is a (to me) new narrative vehicle, 100% televisual and when done well, instantly engrossing. Many years after their heyday, I am discovering these many-chaptered, multi-year series, and seeing how they merit comparison with Dickens or Trollope, or Tolstoy, with their engaging, realistic characters working out personal struggles in an ensemble. In…
The Wikiness 