Sadly, change is not on the horizon. There is no public consensus or even widespread inkling that education might ideally accomplish more than certifying prospects for flexible global labor markets, aside, that is, from keeping kids from killing each other before they graduate. To judge by the rhetoric of our current presidential candidates, the Internet in every classroom, a metal detector at every door, and "we" may not have much of a problem with education as it is.
The transcripts of the on-going Microsoft antitrust trial make interesting reading if, like most Americans, you can appreciate the courtroom drama of posturing overpaid attorneys, evasive expert witnesses, a bored and biased judge who seems content with being reversed on appeal, and ream after ream of legalese bullshit. It’s better than the OJ trial. There’s…
This is what happens to the imagination when you grow up on Rocky & Bullwinkle & Friends and suddenly find yourself over 40.
This power of words, in the largest sense, to bound and shape our most basic human realities is the reason we should be frightened by the wave upon wave of global corporate media mergers of the last two decades.
America has a problem in happiness. We all want to be happy, all the time. And whenever we do feel happy, we’re sooner or later unhappy that we’re not happier still. "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness."
The book is The Travels of Lao Can by Liu E (1857-1909). Lao Can is "Mr. Derelict," and the book was written in 1905 when Liu E was feeling rather derelict himself, beginning what was to be the final down slide of his fourth and last career, as a kind of public works adviser on mines, railways and, especially dear to his heart, the annual flooding of the Yellow River. His first three career attempts, scholar, physician and businessman, hadn’t turned out that well either.
It’s too bad the Chinese government isn’t here to crackdown on this whitewash public relations cult, but no wonder that it’s being funded through Southwest Voter by Disney, Arco and AT&T, and reported glowingly by the Times Mirror Company. Certainly, none of these corporate giants need much reminding that Latinos will not be a numerical minority in California much longer, however much the Southwest Voter Leadership Academy seems devoted to training young Latino activists to forget it.
Stay tuned for further spine-tingling adventures!!!
There is nothing that keeps wicked men, at any one moment, out of hell, but the meer pleasure of GOD.
By the meer pleasure of God, I mean his sovereign pleasure, his arbitrary will, restrained by no obligation, hinder’d by no manner of difficulty, any more than if nothing else but God’s mere will had in the least degree, or in any respect whatsoever, any hand in the preservation of wicked men one moment.
The vainglory which consisteth in the feigning or supposing of abilities in ourselves, which we know are not, is most incident to young men, and nourished by the histories or fictions of gallant persons; and is corrected oftentimes by age and employment. Sudden glory is the passion which maketh those grimaces called laughter; and is…