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Girl Moved To Tears By Of Mice And Men Cliffs Notes
CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA—In what she described as "the most emotional moment" of her academic life, University of Virginia sophomore communications major Grace Weaver sobbed openly upon concluding Steinbeck's seminal work of American fiction Of Mice And Men's Cliffs Notes early last week.
From The Onion
Courts Turn to Wikipedia, but Selectively
January 29, 2007
By NOAM COHEN
When a court-appointed special master last year rejected the claim of an Alabama couple that their daughter had suffered seizures after a vaccination, she explained her decision in part by referring to material from articles in Wikipedia, the collaborative online encyclopedia.
See also Lackey's Class Links: Wikipedia
With Arrest of DJ Drama, the Law Takes Aim at Mixtapes
By KELEFA SANNEH
NYTimes January 18, 2007
Cracking Down on Mixtape CDs
By JEFF LEEDS
NYTimes January 22, 2007
See also Mixtapes: The Other Music Industry at MTV.com
Recording Industry Association of America on Music Piracy
In Douglass Tribute, Slave Folklore and Fact Collide
By NOAM COHEN
NYTimes
January 23, 2007
The Underground Railroad and the Use of Quilts as Messengers for Fleeing
Slaves
I believe that through the act of living, the discovery of oneself is made concurrently with the discovery of the world around us which can mold us, but which can also be affected by us. A balance must be established between these two worlds — the one inside us and the one outside us. As the result of a single reciprocal process, both these worlds come to form a single one. And it is this world that we must communicate.
Exhibits at the International Center Of Photography, The Washington Post and the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson
The Sandbox, our command-wide milblog, featuring comments, anecdotes, and observations from service members currently deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. This is GWOT-lit's forward position, offering those in-country a chance to share their experiences and reflections with the rest of us. The Sandbox's focus is not on policy and partisanship (go to our Blowback page for that), but on the unclassified details of deployment -- the everyday, the extraordinary, the wonderful, the messed-up, the absurd. The Sandbox is a clean, lightly-edited debriefing environment where all correspondence is read, and as much as possible is posted. And contributors may rest assured that all content, no matter how robust, is currently secured by the First Amendment.
From Doonesbury@Slate
There now is your insular city of the Manhattoes, belted round by wharves as Indian isles by coral reefs- commerce surrounds it with her surf. Right and left, the streets take you waterward. Its extreme downtown is the battery, where that noble mole is washed by waves, and cooled by breezes, which a few hours previous were out of sight of land. Look at the crowds of water-gazers there. - From Moby Dick, by Herman Melville: Chapter 1
Actually, as we know, the new commercial education is fun for everybody. All you have to do in order to have or to provide such an education is to pay your money (in advance) and master a few simple truths:
I. Educated people are more valuable than other people because education is a value-adding industry.
II. Educated people are better than other people because education improves people and makes them good.
III. The purpose of education is to make people able to earn more and more money.
IV. The place where education is to be used is called "your career."
V. Anything that cannot be weighed, measured, or counted does not exist.
VI. The so-called humanities probably do not exist. But if they do, they are useless. But whether they exist or not or are useful or not, they can sometimes be made to support a career.
VII Literacy does not involve knowing the meanings of words, or learning grammar, or reading books.
VIII The sign of exceptionally smart people is that they speak a language that is intelligible only to other people in their "field" or only to themselves. This is very impressive and is known as "professionalism."
IX. The smartest and most educated people are the scientists, for they have already found solutions to all our problems and will soon find solutions to all the problems resulting from their solutions to all the problems we used to have.
X. The mark of a good teacher is that he or she spends most of his or her time doing research and writes many books and articles.
XI The mark of a good researcher is the same as that of a good teacher.
XII. A great university has many computers, a lot of government and corporation research contracts, a winning team, and more administrators than teachers.
XIII. Computers make people even better and smarter than they were made by previous thingamabobs Or if some people prove incorrigibly wicked or stupid or both, computers will at least speed them up.
XIV. The main thing is, don't let education get in the way of being nice to children. Children are our Future. Spend plenty of money on them but don't stay home with them and get in their way. Don't give them work to do; they are smart and can think up things to do on their own. Don't teach them any of that awful, stultifying, repressive, old-fashioned morality. Provide plenty of TV, microwave dinners, day care, computers, computer games, cars. For all this, they will love and respect us and be glad to grow up and pay our debts.
XV. A good school is a big school.
From Wendell Berry, The Joy of Sales Resistance
Thoreau's "Civil Disobedience" originated as a Concord Lyceum lecture delivered by Thoreau on January 26, 1848.
While Walden can be applied to almost anyone's life, "Civil Disobedience" is like a venerated architectural landmark: it is preserved and admired, and sometimes visited, but for most of us there are not many occasions when it can actually be used. Still, although it is seldom mentioned without references to Gandhi and King, "Civil Disobedience" has more history than many suspect. In the 1940's it was read by the Danish resistance, in the 1950's it was cherished by people who opposed McCarthyism, in the 1960's it was influential in the struggle against South African apartheid, and in the 1970's it was discovered by a new generation of anti-war activists. The lesson learned from all this experience is that Thoreau's ideas really do work, just as he imagined they would.
THE SPIRIT OF DISOBEDIENCE: An invitation to resistance
Curtis White
Harper's Magazine
April 2006
The Thoreau Problem - When the route to paradise threads through prison
Orion Magazine
The Blog of Henry David Thoreau
Methinks I should hear with indifference if a trustworthy messenger were to inform me that the sun drowned himself last night.
Estimated acres of forest Henry David Thoreau burned down in 1844 trying to cook fish he had caught for dinner: 300
From Literature @ Harpers.org
Every continent has its own great spirit of place. Every people is polarized in some particular locality, which is home, the homeland. Different places on the face of the earth have different vital effluence, different vibration, different chemical exhalation, different polarity with different stars: call it what you like. But the spirit of place is a great reality. The Nile valley produced not only the corn, but the terrific religions of Egypt. China produces the Chinese, and will go on doing so. The Chinese in San Francisco w ill in time cease to be Chinese, for America is a great melting pot.
From Studies in Classic American Literature by D.H. Lawrence Chapter 1: The Spirit of Place
The Sense of Place by Wallace Stegner
How will the next generation read and write?
"A generation ago, a teen who couldn't read well could still participate pretty fully in the social conversation among peers," says Timothy Shanahan , president of the International Reading Association . "But with so much written chatter, being able to read and write have become definite social advantages. There is simply much more pressure to know how to read than in the past when it comes to conversation, shopping, or work."
Edgar Whan - Inspiring Minds Spring 2002 Ohio Today Online
Edgar Whan discusses Raymond Carver at WOUB's Wired for Books
Who Needs Harvard?
by Gregg Easterbrook
The Atlantic Monthly October 2004
The pressure on smart kids to get into top schools has never been higher. But the differences between these schools and the next tier down have never been smaller.
3,000 Americans Dead in Iraq: Faces of the Dead
New York Times
January 1, 2007
Pete Seeger: The Protest Singer (PDF file)
Alec Wilkinson
New Yorker
April 17, 2006
Penned by Pete Seeger during the Vietnam War, "Bring 'Em Home" quickly achieved anthem status in the anti-war movement. Springsteen first recorded the song in January 2006 and added a final lead vocal during his European tour, at a studio in Oslo, Norway. His poignant rendition, performed frequently on the Seeger Sessions tour, adds several new verses and connects the song to a much earlier topical song, "When Johnny Comes Marching Home." "Bring 'Em Home" was written in 1965 and originally released on Pete's 1971 Columbia album, "Young vs. Old."
"Bring Them Home" by Pete Seeger with Billy Bragg, Ani DiFranco & Steve Earle
Video - young Pete Seeger singing "Bring 'em Home"
Pete Seeger lyrics to Bring Them Home
Bruce Springsteen's rendition of Pete Seeger's Bring Them Home
