Whose skepticism?

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Sunday September 27, 2009 · 6:20 AM PDT

2009/09/27 · 06:20

In "The College Calculation," David Leonhardt examines the "skeptical case" against higher education and concludes that a college education is indeed better than nothing. But in addressing the skeptics, Leonhardt undermines his own case and unwittingly reinforces the idea that a college education has to be expensive, forcing students into a terrible choice between a well-educated lifetime of debt (and horrendous hours to make the money to pay it back) on the one hand, and no college education at all on the other. Leading one to wonder: why can't we simply commit to completely open access to higher education even when our own studies and our own arguments lead us in that direction?

bp43606

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Thursday July 23, 2009 · 8:17 PM PDT

2009/07/23 · 20:17

"I was born..." All the slave narratives begin this way, with an affirmation that the narrator was, just like you and me, born. But the slave narrators know that what should be the most inconsequential, obvious, and non-controversial statement was an act of defiance. For often it was not clear when the narrator was born, and often the date and place of birth was never revealed, kept secret so that the slave would never find his or her mother and father, brothers and sisters. Read the passages that begin "I was born..." and remember that nobody told the narrator happy stories of the birth. The declaration "I was born" and whatever followed that--stories of family, friends, stolen attempts to learn to read and write--was the product of painful research, of reconstruction and not of shared memory. But you had to know when and where you were born. The narrator to say something about being born--when, where, to whom--or be cut free from even the meager ties to land, property, family, history that the narrator might have claimed. "I was born" is the first true statement and the foundation for everything else one might say.

bp43606

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Monday July 06, 2009 · 8:43 AM PDT

2009/07/06 · 08:43

TPM Muckraker did some digging on the manufactured scandal du jour surrounding a few leaked emails from EPA administrators that appear to orchestrate an agency-wide cover-up of an EPA report that debunks global warming and undermines Obama's cap-and-trade rules. TPM talked to the author of the report and discovered:

bp43606

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Wednesday March 25, 2009 · 8:56 AM PDT

2009/03/25 · 08:56

I began this entry yesterday, wanting to get it over with early. But the entry dragged on and I had to go to meetings. The entry concerns an article making the rounds of the faculty email boxes on my campus, and elsewhere, I imagine. The article is a gloss or exposition of Thomas Bertonneau's essays posted at the "Pope Center"that bring considerable intellectual weight and scholarly insight to convince us that college students are stupid. When I left off, I was just about to examine some of the key claims of the article: [Edited for clarity]

bp43606

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Tuesday March 24, 2009 · 12:23 PM PDT

2009/03/24 · 12:23

Those of us who teach in large, urban universities with open admissions policies are sometimes on a cycle of frustration. We will teach attentively for months and years with patience and generosity, but when the cycle peaks, we collapse into rage and despair, a carnival of blame, hatred, and resentment focused on our students and, indirectly, on our own miserable lot. Corresponding to these cycles, it seems, is a publication schedule for angry screeds that try to express--often in generational terms, and I'll say more about this later--just why it is our rage is justified.

bp43606

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Thursday September 25, 2008 · 4:26 PM PDT

2008/09/25 · 16:26

In honor of Banned Books week, I offered the following to some of my students and colleagues. Enjoy.

One of the more astonishing revelations of this presidential campaign season is that a vice-presidential nominee once floated the suggestion that a librarian remove books from a local library in order to respond to citizen complaints about the book’s content. Whether anyone who has ever contemplated banning a book is remotely or conceivably fit for high office, or any office other than the one around the corner from the bathroom with the broken fluorescent lights, is a question on which I have some opinions but will not attempt to answer in what follows.

bp43606

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Thursday June 26, 2008 · 5:47 AM PDT

2008/06/26 · 05:47

After Chris Matthews again made the now decidedly unfunny gaffe confusing Obama with Osama, I thought it a good time to remind us all that these kinds of slips of the tongue are really much easier to make than you might think.

bp43606

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Monday April 03, 2006 · 7:45 PM PDT

2006/04/03 · 19:45

Hard on the heels of reports of Sherrod Brown's all-expense-paid trips to Florida, Europe, and The Orient, Ohio, vying with New Jersey for the most corrupt state in the nation by all appearances, finds out that Ken Blackwell owns stock in Diebold. Not inherently bad, of course, since Diebold will keep winning elections for Republicans into the foreseeable future and God only knows that they will be richly rewarded for it. It's bad because this particular bible-thumping, abortion-hating Republican candidate for governer is the Secretary of State and was responsible for forcing Diebold machines on thousands of precincts in Ohio.

You would think that crooks would make some effort to be less transparent. Not in Ohio! Here's from a Kos diary - "Hypothetically Speaking" - in 2005: Read More

As goes Ohio...

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Friday February 24, 2006 · 10:23 AM PST

2006/02/24 · 10:23

As they say at the Toledo Storm, "Come on folks, let's Count 'Em Up!":
Read More

Some Questions for Scalito/Wallacito...

bp43606

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Sunday December 18, 2005 · 6:50 PM PST

2005/12/18 · 18:50

I've discussed Scalito and his involvement in CAP here andhere and, derivatively, here. Armando links to this article, which confirms my suspicion that there is much much more to say about this issue:. Read More

Alito can't remember?

bp43606

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Thursday December 01, 2005 · 5:58 AM PST

2005/12/01 · 05:58

Alito can't remember being a memberof CAP--even though he put it on his ~~resume~~ job application in order to curry favor with the Reagan administration. He can't be serious...can he? Read More

Alito and CAP: Conservative Apologetics

bp43606

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Wednesday November 30, 2005 · 8:42 AM PST

2005/11/30 · 08:42

Captain's Quarters, predictably enough, defends Alito's membership in CAP, explaning that it was an unholy combination of youthful indiscretion and harmless membership sans obligation or responsibility. This is complete nonsense and irrelevant if the issue concerns the assessment of Alito as a candidate for the supreme court (though it's nice to see even a winger admit that it's SOME form of indiscretion). [Crossposted at CatchingFlies] Read More

RSS

Whose skepticism?

I don't know where I been born...

Science, Politics and Climate Change

Boastful Dunces, Part II (Higher Ed.)

Boastful Dunces and Resentful Incapacity

Celebrating "Banned Books" Week...(For Sarah Palin)

Slips of the tongue easier than you might think

Blackwell Loves Diebold...

As goes Ohio...

Some Questions for Scalito/Wallacito...

Alito can't remember?

Alito and CAP: Conservative Apologetics