Although my early years were spent in the tail end of the Cold War — I was already a teenager when the Berlin Wall came down — I wasn’t educated about the threat of nuclear war when I was younger. I never took part in any drills about what to do in the event of a bomb strike, and it wasn’t until I was much older that I understood what all that “Duck and Cover” stuff was really about. (Strangely enough, my first taste of…
America hits peak anti-intellectualism: Majority of Republicans now think college is bad (salon.com) I was part of the generation that first clued into the joy of Nickelodeon during the rise of cable TV in the 1980’s, but when the network was still so young that there was no such thing as Nick at Nite. Even at a time when most television networks ended their “broadcast day” and went off the air every night, it was still jarring to have Nickelodeon switch over to static in…
Asking anyone to the left of Joe Lieberman to pick the thing they hate the most about the current administration is like asking a parent to pick their favourite child: They probably have one, but they’re too polite to mention it. There’s a strong temptation among many of us to simply avoid discussing our own personal sore spots with things in Washington right now, for fear of sounding like we’re not concerned about the problems that the people around us have, friends and strangers alike.…
College Access Index Shows Shrinking Levels of Economic Diversity (npr.org) Senate Republicans Reject DeVos’ Proposed Education Cuts (rollcall.com) DeVos Says More Money Won’t Help Schools; Research Says Otherwise (npr.org) I was teaching a composition class in Toledo a few years ago, and in that class I had a student who always wore sports-themed clothes. He was a Red Wings fan, so I was able to get him to talk whenever I brought up the team’s fortunes (at least they made the playoffs that year, grumble…
A few weeks ago, when Rachel Maddow released two pages of one of the president’s old tax returns, many people criticized her for waiting until the second segment of her show to get to the actual release; even Stephen Colbert did a full-on parody of Maddow’s on-air style on his CBS show. For those of us who watch Maddow’s show regularly, though — I don’t always agree with her, but she does have the best prime time news show out there right now (which may be…