June 2011
Awful Ideas in Teaching: Incentive Pay →
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Meaningful & Useful Work Towards Understanding
Well, sure. That would be my point: When something like using the ultimate serial comma is a choice, it makes that comma valuable, meaningful, useful.
As I teach my writing students, the command to use results in less understanding of language. I ask my students not to use style guides, to write willing to make mistakes. When writers understand they have choices, writers learn to better...
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Oxford Comma Dropped →
Nobody uses whom anymore, people willfully split infinitives, sentences purposefully ended with prepositions, and now the serial comma is to be avoided as a general rule. Prescriptivists are likely going to be really pissed a new edition of an Oxford University guide suggests a comma can be used, however, if it assists meaning or resolves ambiguity. OMG! A style guide suggesting usage based in...
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Amy Poehler's Planned Parenthood Letter →
Requested Link…Occidental^^ It was originally an e-mail.
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You know who's awesome? Amy Poehler.
Hi ____,
You know who is awesome? Cecile Richards. She’s the president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America. She’s smart, she’s tough, and she’s totally dedicated to fighting for women’s health. And you know who else totally rules? Every single doctor and nurse and receptionist and volunteer who shows up at a Planned Parenthood health center to make sure...
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The History of the English Language in 10 Minutes →
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I just remembered how much I love Gwendolyn Brooks
That’s all.
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Really...
…don’t send me crap about Stefan Molyneux. I think he’s a fraud.
I know that’s not popular around Tumblr, but that’s my POV. Look at what I posted last about Libertarianism, or any of my past posts about it. I’m pretty consistent with my criticism and pretty clear about why I think the way I do.
I think you can tell a lot about a guy by the company he keeps....
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On Libertarianism
We have only one thing in common, as a result of what should be permissible original social difference, and that is our human being. For all our difference, that is the same.
When you hear libertarians speak about individual liberty, it’s important to think first about what they are doing with their dehumanizing liberty discourse. The purpose is never about liberty itself. That may be the...
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Keli Goff says:
“All illegal immigrants are not created equal.” That’s a direct quote from the MSNBC rant Dylan Ratigan permitted Keli Goff yesterday.
Once again, Keli, fuck you. You’re the worst kind of hater.
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Keli Goff uses Racist Tropes in Argument about...
I don’t know what Keli Goff did to earn her right to be a US citizen other than be born in the US, live in the US, use natural resources in the US—you know, eat, breathe, shit in the US. She’s privileged though and apparently privileged enough to believe that she has the right to tell all of us who is more American than others—privileged enough to make very lazy arguments...
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(Not really) On the Road
That’s what I was thinking. I like how the directors attempt to turn their exploration of anarchism as American into a road trip. As if they were on a journey rather than a series of planned interviews.
Oh and then Hess mentions Ayn Rand and I threw up in my mouth. You know…
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Anarchism in America (1983)
Horrible documentary. Just horrible. Riddled with sympathy for Karl Hess’s brand of market anarchism. Nothing like filmmakers trying to tie anarchism to the American Dream: The entire thing sounded like misleading propaganda for American Libertarianism.
Anarchists like to complain about titles and tags as distractions. You have to look at who’s making the complaint. It’s usually...
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Representations
The over-represented in public discourse, if you will, are never represented. Are you thinking about this slippage in the term representation? That’s what I’m on about. The wealthy have heaps of unearned ambition afforded them and are freed from representation in public discourse. It’s gotten so bad, that the mainstream throws a fit if we suggest taxing the rich. The...
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Neoliberals...
Sure love using the gay community as cover for their agenda.
“Reading Dante is unquestionably more cultured and intellectually edifying than...”
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Justice Antonin Scalia, emphasis his, writing the opinion of the court in Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Assn., which, in a 7-2 decision, struck down a California law prohibiting the sale of violent video games to minors. (via sonicbloom11)
It warrants mention that Scalia wrote his opinion over...
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An 8th Grade Exam from 1931
Honestly, I don’t know what this says about anything. People will use documents like this to illustrate all sorts of hysteria and projection. On the other hand, I can say that such a test would illustrate the ability for students to use lessons in conjunction with their own life experience to write a short essay and that makes me happier than the notion that public school students are...
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Tim Howard is a Douche Bag
Well, it may be weird for non-football fans. From what I’ve read, in his rehearsal, the guy used more English. So, you can say it was unexpected. But for a player to comment on it is unacceptable.
We are football fans. It’s a global sport. In addition, The Gold Cup is not a United States’ tournament, it’s a CONCACAF event. Many cultures are represented. And we’re...
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Tim Howard is a Douche Bag
Tim Howard should be embarrassed with himself after the US loss to Mexico with his hateful and jealous whining about the Spanish-language awards ceremonies after the final of the Gold Cup.
We are Americans. We speak many languages. We are many kinds of people. I LIKE THAT. I know that bums a lot Americans out who fancy a notion that the United States is a fantasy land for white people and their...
Pelican Bay Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity →
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Rainy Rain Rain Rain
장마 is on pause for a few hours. Looks like a lot of rain next week. Some sun on Tuesday is possible.
Seoul is always nice when the days long rain pauses for an afternoon and early evening. The pollution is restrained, the air clean, the dirt temporarily washed from the streets.
The mold creeps back up the walls of our porch and the worms scatter across the concrete to escape drowning. The feral...
State Dept Threatens Prison for US Participants in... →
fuckyeahmarxismleninism:
Israeli officials have been ratcheting up their rhetoric in demanding that the world unite to stop humanitarian aid from being delivered to the people of the Gaza Strip, calling such attempts an existential threat to Israel and a “deliberate provocation” by the world.
While this hasn’t resulted in European nations or others stopping humanitarian groups from moving...
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dagMix: Songs that go together better
Michael Franti & Spearhead’s “Say Hey (I Love You)” from All Rebel Rockers
Elvis Costello & the Attractions’ “Love for Tender” from Get Happy!
(It’s the piano and the tempo together. Franti’s syncopation is cool. Next time I dj, when I get everyone dancing, I’ll try to loop the intro of “Love for Tender” into the Franti...
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dagSounds: Billy Bragg, The Whole Peel, 5 vols
from Music Ruined My Life, the coolest thing on the Internet this weekend.
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[Calamities of Nature] Holy Hypocrisy
Don’t go stats geek on me for posting this. It’s a fun weekend post and not worth arguing about. After all, it confirms our suspicions rather than critically examines them. It’s funny. If you want to geek out on the stats and whether they’re weak or strong and for what reason, go to the comments on Calamities and talk about it. The debate has already begun…
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“You Can’t Have Capitalism Without Racism ..”
– Malcolm X (via wavesfadingwords)
Waves Fading words: Non-violence and the narrative... →
wavesfadingwords:
On Sunday June 5, hundreds of Palestinians gathered outside the Qalandia checkpoint separating Jerusalem and Ramallah. They were part of an unarmed demonstration marking the anniversary of Israel’s takeover of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1967, known as Naksa Day. Simultaneously,…
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Kansas is not going to be abortion-free
Kansas is not going to be “abortion-free”. People will continue to abort pregnancies regardless of law.
Kansas may be the first place where women cannot seek safe abortions. That’s how to write it because that’s the truth.
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Michelle Rhee's Students First has nothing to do...
It’ll come as no surprise that Students First was mightily involved in Michigan’s four educational bills targeting teachers.
#StudentsFirst internal briefing documents
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dagNotes: Notes On Whiteness, White Power,...
Bear with me fleshing out some language.
This is the mistake they* make: that whiteness is a quality we can sense, that it’s in some significant way material. That we can examine it and eradicate it without transforming society. It’s talked about like it’s a simple sin, a mistake, a form of revisionism, or an act, sometimes rising to a crime. We use words like transparent and...
