politics
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Emily Raboteau’s Searching for Zion, reviewed. – Slate Magazine
In her memoir Searching for Zion, Emily Raboteau travels to several continents and countries—including Israel, Jamaica, and Ghana—seeking her own personal Promised Land. While Raboteau, whose mother is white and father is black, may not have been looking to trace… Continue reading
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The Excellence of Fortitude in the Face of Viciousness
”I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. ‘Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct,… Continue reading
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Viewpoint: Why Al Jazeera’s Entry into the U.S. Is a Good Thing | TIME.com
If you say, consider the source and their “overlords,” I’ll say, “I will do that with this station just as do with Fox & MSNBC… whose “overlords” have their own biases that they keep shoving down our throats.” I’ve caught… Continue reading
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ARE YOU A POST MATERIALIST? | ellisnelson
Top notch overview of this concept over at ellisnelson.com. Kudos! …Ronald Inglehart developed the idea of post materialism in the 1970s as a sociological theory to explain an ongoing transformation of individual values within a society. He argued that as western… Continue reading
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Textimony 20121223
In this loving struggle, death though certain has no sting; chance, no power; guilt, no blame; pain, no duration. Let-go violent force & obtain fortitude. Continue reading
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Social Class & Dividends for the Educational Industrial Complex
Thanks to my ever vigilant colleague Carl Beck Sachs for pointing the article below out to me. I had seen it in my “topic alert:pedagogy” from the NYTimes, but did not know if I wanted to read it. I’m glad that… Continue reading
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There is no fiscal crisis. And macroeconomics is not a morality play.
Nice overview of how things stand vis. the “fiscal cliff.” The Puritanism that surrounds how most people talk about debt–esp. government debt–really irritates and shows the lasting influence of Christian dogmatism on our sociocultural situation. Sometimes I cannot tell if… Continue reading
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So You Think You Know the Second Amendment? : The New Yorker
…Conservatives often embrace “originalism,” the idea that the meaning of the Constitution was fixed when it was ratified, in 1787. They mock the so-called liberal idea of a “living” constitution, whose meaning changes with the values of the country at… Continue reading
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The End of the University as We Know It – Nathan Harden – The American Interest Magazine
One of the biggest barriers to the mainstreaming of online education is the common assumption that students don’t learn as well with computer-based instruction as they do with in-person instruction. There’s nothing like the personal touch of being in a… Continue reading
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Can Colleges Ever Really Be Accountable?
I go on a bit about our system of higher education. Mostly I do this because I have been in and around it for over two decades so it is a beast that is quite familiar to me. But that… Continue reading
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DOJ & HSBC Settle It: The War on Drugs is a War on Poor People
Thanks to my good colleague & brother Carl Sachs for pointing out this story. More to think about in the war on drugs as a war against the average citizen when banking institutions are allowed to do business with the… Continue reading
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The New Jim Crow: Enslaving our Future
In case you don’t have it in you to read the book–which I highly recommend as something you SHOULD read–here is a very nice overview. Do not let yourself believe that incarceration in the United States of America is doing… Continue reading
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Robots, Robber Barons, & the Situation for Existential Innovation
A more full account from Paul Krugman on some of the topics I originally brought up yesterday. Still, can innovation and progress really hurt large numbers of workers, maybe even workers in general? I often encounter assertions that this can’t… Continue reading
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