…it has the savor of analogical probability. Chapter 73: STUBB AND FLASK KILL A RIGHT WHALE; AND THEN HAVE OVER HIM The boats were here hailed, to tow the whale on the larboard side, where fluke chains and other necessaries were already prepared for securing him. “Didn’t I tell you so?” said Flask; “yes, you’ll soon see this right whale’s head hoisted up opposite that…
What Is American Education?
Today, though it is certainly by now an “old” debate, our Sunday paper has an “opinion” piece about Common Core State Standards. The Errant has posted before on this (here, and here–the collusion of “divergent” interests) but I want to try to elaborate a bit on what I think are the things that are not said when discussing these issues. First, my response to the…
But It Isn’t Freedom
Shine, Perishing Republic by Robinson Jeffers While this America settles in the mould of its vulgarity, heavily thickening to empire, And protest, only a bubble in the molten mass, pops and sighs out, and the mass hardens, I sadly smiling remember that the flower fades to make fruit, the fruit rots to make earth. Out of the mother; and through the spring exultances, ripeness…
Extirpate these Savages
D. H. Lawrence on our Founding Paternalist Improver, Benjamin Franklin! The ways of Ben’s Providence suits the Improver God in Mammon and Genocide. Be attentive. This is America Singing still. Can’t you hear it in Afghanistan? Can’t you hear it in Yemen? Can’t you hear it in New Orleans? Can’t you hear it in Phoenix, Arizona? Listen: Steven Pinker added another verse. And Barack Obama…
Tech is Production is Revenue is Education Reform
Western Mind is dominated by the Visual. Tech is Visual. Current School Reform is Technological. Educational Technology is Visual. Educational Technology is a Product. The product is digital electronic. It is a capital production. It has production and consumption as motivation. Learning is irrelevant but that students learn production and consumption of the digital-technological-visual. Production of MIND via production of educational technology is quantifiable as…
Against the Eye of Self
This is a huge topic in my own mind, and if you read this blog or the previous blog (Nemesis) this is no revelation (ah, damn, a visual term). I think it is an enormous calamity: we are dominated by the visual sense. Almost entirely excluding all other senses. (Robert Harrison, in a recent podcast on “listening” which prompted this rumination, suggests that perhaps taste…
Against the Digital Nursery
Against “technology” consultants “integrating” education and technology “in the classroom.” Against the Society of ED TECH creating the professional “experts” that insist schools MUST HAVE iPads etc. in the classroom in order to prepare for the “future.” Today’s news: iTeach. Mindless drone teaching–how to make distraction prettier and make it seem like “learning.” First iTeach Academy helps teachers teach technology The academy, which was funded…
A Gospel Truth
It’s nothing new, but we must keep these things in front of us…recall when we found out that the US Military had infused (was it already) Christian War Theology as a way to influence (brainwash) its members (men and women with guns encouraged to use them to kill people) in what has been presented to this overwhelmingly Christian Land as a War of Religion. God…
What Advance in Happiness?
The following is from Chapter 18 of Melville’s Typee. The character Marnoo is a “tabu” person who can travel relatively freely among all the tribes without eliciting historical animosities due to his “exceptional” qualities (one being his ability to speak English after being aboard a ship for several years and then returning to the island). In this excerpt Melville’s protagonist and narrator, Tommo (how the…
The Abject Failure of Humanity’s “Promise”
In Salon there is this horrifying little piece (“Let’s Watch a Murder“) regarding the popularity of reality horror-porn. Here’s how it begins: The YouTube video shows Robert, a 28-year-old from Dayton, Ohio, grimace and light up a cigarette. Moments later, he’s gagging — and it isn’t from the smoke. It’s what is unfolding before his eyes. You can see the glow of his computer screen…