Ah-nold is on the board of U.S. English: While media reports in recent days have focused on Schwarzenegger’s support for Proposition 187, the controversial 1994 referendum that denied government benefits to illegal aliens, virtually nothing has been said about the multi-millionaire actor’s 15-year association with U.S. English, an organization that seeks to establish English as [...]
One myth that never seems to go away is the “divine inspiration” of the artist. People refuse to believe that artists work hard, study, take notes, etc., preferring to think of them as half-mad idiot-savants who are struck by the spirit of their work as if by a bolt of lightening. For all my admiration [...]
“With all my admiration for Noam Chomsky, I partially disagree with him. Its an underlying premise of his work that you don’t have to do any theory – just tell all the facts to the people. The way ideology works today is much more mysterious … People just do not want to know too much. [...]
Opposition to Bilingual Education is popping up again in yet another state – this time its Florida: The unfortunate reality is that it takes away the incentive to learn English. That dooms many of them to low-wage, physically demanding jobs — not exactly the American dream. … Bilingual education, particularly, has been a disaster. Neither [...]
I was reading Noy Thrupkaew’s discussion of recent Gay-themed TV shows in The American Prospect, when this caught my eye [my emphasis]: Indeed, the presence of a straight man seems to offer an excuse for heterosexual viewers to test out their “gaydar,” their ability to discern queer from straight. The producers flatter themselves in the [...]
The split between the GOP and the scientific community began during the administration of Richard Nixon. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, protests against the Vietnam War captured the sympathy of the liberal academic community, including many scientists, whose opposition to the war turned them against Nixon. The president characteristically lashed back and, in [...]
I’m starting a new campaign: Arrest Ashcroft for “Conspiracy against Civil Rights“!!! This law dates back to the reconstruction era and has mostly been used against the KKK. But reading the text, it seems like we could easily use it against Ashcroft: If two or more persons conspire to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any [...]
With the California Recall on everyone’s mind, I was wondering about the history of California’s experiment in “direct democracy.” The key issue is the budget, which interestingly has been largely taken out of the hands of the governor’s office by previous referendum. The author of The Future of Freedom, Fareed Zakaria, has this to say: [...]
Taken from a Monty Python skit were vikings sing a tribute to the canned meat, the word is no inextricably tied to junk e-mail and even Hormel Foods can’t get it back. Although there were chain e-mails as far back as 1982, the word “spam” was first used to describe undesired mass postings to the [...]
Orcinus has an important post today, read it! Between 1882 and 1942, according to statistics compiled by the Tuskegee Institute, there were 4,713 lynchings in the United States, of which 3,420 involved black victims. Mississippi topped the list, with 520 blacks lynched during that time period, while Georgia was a close second with 480; Texas’ [...]