The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach

Category: politics

  • Death and The Pardon

    It was announced yesterday (2006 Dec 27) that Gerald Ford, 38th President of the United States, passed away at the age of 93. I will admit that I’ve always had a soft spot for the Ford presidency, derided in popular culture as one of the least effective in history. I generally root for the underdog, so I was once in the habit of quoting the stats that showed how Ford had begun to get the economy back in motion, had begun the rebuilding of American military strength after the Viet Nam debacle, and so on. I still think Ford deserves more credit for doing a difficult, almost impossible, task and doing it with some grace. Also, Ford was perhaps the last of the civil service Presidents: someone who saw government as part of the solution and not a problem in itself; someone who thought that the greatest calling for a citizen is to serve his fellow citizens.

    On the other hand…
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  • Review: Interface

    Interface
    by Neal Stephenson and J. Frederick George
    (c) 1994
    Bantam Dell

    InstaRating: 3.5 out of 5
    An experimental biochip is implanted in a governor of Illinois after he suffers a massive stroke. Its stated purpose is to repair the connections in his brain, giving him access to speech and motor skills again. Unknown to many, the chip also gives him access to up-to-the-second live polling data, making him an unstoppable Presidential candidate. But more than that — the chip gives a shadowy network of power-brokers access to him — making him their perfect candidate…

    Lots of spoilers follow.

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  • Politics and Teaching

    So, Election Day has come and gone. I took time to talk about it in each of my classes today — and yes, I know I teach physics; more on that later — and I thought I’d ruminate some here. Full disclaimer: I am a lifelong Democrat who had been reasonably certain they’d find a way to screw it up yet again. (Who knew they could make Kerry disappear?) And I am ecstatic over the triumph of the Democrats in both the House and the Senate. But this isn’t a victory lap. It’s about politics and teaching.
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  • From 2001 October 7: I Want to Speak Now

    2001 October 7:

    I want to speak now.

    I have wanted to speak since September 11. The words would not come. The attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon was, almost literally, unthinkable. And language is the substrate of thought. Scholars have often claimed that what you cannot say, you cannot think. I have learned, a little, that the opposite is true.

    The terrorists committed crimes on so many levels, it staggers the mind: on the global and personal level; publicly and intimately; on the field of history and transcending history. One more can be added to their list of offenses: They took away our voice. For too many days we as a people lost our voice. We were silent in shock or quiet from deference. We remained still because we had lost our confidence, our unspoken faith in a world that rewarded virtue and understood human frailties. We had our universe of discourse, our common cultural dictionary, ripped from us violently and tossed upon the dustbin of history.

    I want to speak now.
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  • And the Sky Swept Clear of Angels : 9/11, 5 Years, and Lost Worlds

    Though exiled to the swamps of New Jersey, I am a native New Yorker; and so this date arrives every year like a punch in the gut. I no longer think of the attacks every day, but it took 18 months before that ceased. When I do think of them, I am immediately transported back to the moments the Towers fell, and I am nearly overcome again by shock and grief. The victims at the Pentagon and on Flight 93, and their families, deserve our respect and our sympathy; but for me, 9/11 was and is and will always be about an attack on my city — the most primal fear of the civilized human.

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  • The Dignity of Labor

    Today we celebrate Labor Day for approximately the 119th time. A teacher friend of mine calls Labor Day less a holiday than a stay of execution, especially since we begin in earnest the day after. And for years people have made the joke that we celebrate labor by taking a day off from doing any. But it’s a good time to reflect on the role of labor in society.
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  • Uncle Pennybags a Socialist?

    I’m really not a fan of the me-too blog, which just strings together links to the original thoughts of other. But I saw this on Cosmic Variance and thought it was brilliant, so here we go: “Lessons from Monopoly“. It’s an interesting analysis of the socio-economic implications of the Parker Brothers game. As seems to be the case (in my opinion) every time critical thinking is applied to the underpinnings of our economy, it turns out to be a good argument against the current winner-take-all capitalism worship which infects this nation.

  • Another chime in the death knell of the Republic

    The end of a democracy comes when participants start gaming the rules to ensure particular outcomes, rather than following the rules and allowing voters an honest chance to influence government. We have reached and, I would say, starting wading across that Rubicon.

    Today, another madness has been added to the sad litany of rules-gaming and partisan manipulation.

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  • What’s the Matter with Kansas?

    Today, at least, nothing. In a curiously intense summer primary contest for the state Board of Education, the day was won by people who believe that the science standards should reflect, you know, actual science. Their opponents were a cabal of Intelligent Design boosters. There’s a nice wrap-up at Forbes.com and a more gung-ho, in-your-face summary at Thoughts from Kansas.

    The Forbes piece quotes a Kansan named Ryan Cole, “I feel like if you give two sides of something, most people are intelligent enough to make up their own minds.” I wonder how many ID proponents would be OK if the history course started teaching Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code version of early Christianity, because after all, millions of people have invested in it.

    Yay for the good guys that will put Kansas back into the mainstream on science education. But boo for all of us that we, a supposedly advanced and enlightened nation, need to fight this same battle over and over again.

  • Signature Abuse

    A lot of attention lately has been focused on “presidential signing statements” — declarations by the President as to how he intends to interpret the statutues he signs into law. Though the signing statement has existed for the history of the Republic, the current President has grotesquely expanded its use. In a report by the American Bar Association, it is noted that, from the founding of the Republic through the inauguration of President George Walker Bush, the signing statement had been used fewer than 600 times. In President Bush’s six years, he has issued over 800 such signing statements. Moreover, he has aggressively used these statements to stake out his political position, to override Congressional intent, and to establish himself as the only arbiter of the constitutionality of his actions.

    What are the implications for the Republic?

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