or Telling Lies to Children, or Education in America. So, do you remember when you were a child and someone asked you, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” I don’t either, but let me ask differently, have you asked any child this? This magical, mystical, and ultimately mystifying question was answered [...]
Tag Archives: herald times
Girls Do Science!
Or, Learning Meaningless Utilities Today, via the local newspaper (Bloomington’s The Herald-Times), comes an illustration of the modern mind “on science.” My friend Monkeywrench is in my ear…slow down, find some common ground. It’s not easy, Wrench. We are given an incomplete presentation (as our apperceptions always are) and asked to believe in it as [...]
Master and Commander: Can a Mormon Be Man Enough for the Murder Machine?
Today I opened my morning paper to discover a very large headline in the “Neighbors/Religion” section (we don’t have time to discuss this formatting decision, focus!): “Would Monroe County vote for a Mormon?” This was an unfortunate piece to say the least, and I said more in comments and I’d like to share both the [...]
The Principal is not your Pal: Backstabbing as Pedagogy
From the Bloomington Herald-Times this morning (1/9/2012) comes this betrayal of learning and education. I had intended to simply excerpt but it is too valuable as an example of the way the Project Loving Capital Profiteers are erasing what is human one institution at a time. I’m pretty sure, though, that the public school is [...]
The Loss of Soul: Corrupting Language and Stealing Common Understanding
Today our newspaper editorialized that the “fight’ over “right-to-work” legislation “should just go away” (seriously, that’s the headline). Here’s their primary argument: The so-called “right-to-work” issue has already disrupted the Indiana General Assembly. The Republicans’ insistence on making it their top legislative priority has been met by Democrats failing to show up for work again [...]
“Can ponwyi”–The Grace of Gods by Force
In Acholi, a language of the Acholi people of Northern Uganda, “can ponwyi” literally translates as “disaster and poverty teach you.” (Allen, “Postscript: a kind of peace and an exported war,” 283)* This might put one in mind, in the Western tradition of literature, of Aeschylus’ Agamemnon: Zeus sets men on the path of wisdom, [...]
Antipodal Responses to Authority
Recall this from Kropotkin: throughout the history of our civilization, two traditions, two opposing tendencies have confronted each other: the Roman and the Popular; the imperial and the federalist; the authoritarian and the libertarian. Now, regarding a local protest of a recruiting visit at Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business by a representative of J.P. [...]
Fronting Intervention: Using Invisible Children to Sell War to Children
You know, don’t you, that you have to invite vampires into your home or they are not capable of entering, or better, they are forbidden to enter by some kind of law that governs the undead. (It’s important to have rules in the necromantic realms as it shows that there is order in all of [...]
Counter-Balancing Propaganda–Does It Matter?
If, as our bleeding edge neuroscience computer-techs tell us, we are prone to believe in one or another political morality without need of empirical evidence, which might be called, in a simplified manner, the tribe of the Father or the tribe of the Mother, what good then to counter propaganda that deliberately serves one or [...]
Drowning in Bathtubs: (Dis)Trusting Public Officials
Before we start, recall that Grover Norquist (best friends with guys like felon Jack Abramoff and moral majority manipulator Ralph Reed, reprehensible thugs of the Machiavellian political underclass), chieftain of corrupt practices masquerading as “tax policy” positions and anti-tax pledges is a man of considerable influence in government and has been for decades. (Who are [...]
