Archive for September, 2003
Meningitis
I never knew, but Helen Keller had meningitis when she was 19 months old. Why is this so important? Because,
… she probably had 19 months of normal exposure to language … (by 18 months, some children start to express structured sentences, showing that they had been understanding them even earlier). So she probably soft-wired her […]
Frog-march
FROGMARCH verb [mid-19th century and still in use] to carry someone face down, one person holding onto each limb; used on drunks or recalcitrant prisoners.
In case your wonder, the term was used by Joseph Wilson to in reference to alleged leaks by senior White House officials, exposing his wife as an undercover CIA operative specializing […]
Reviews
Ever wonder just exactly where all those editorial reviews from Amazon.com come from? Slate has the inside scoop:
You’ve probably never read these magazines, even if you’ve seen their names on book jackets. But they’re helping determine what you read. Together, they make up the big four of book industry trade journals, aimed at publishing insiders: […]
Ranking
I have long been amazed at the number of stupid T.V. shows that are made up of meaningless lists. The ultimate example of this is Rank. Each episode is basically a count-down from some number, I’m not sure if they start at 10 or 20, or what (I’ve not seen a whole episode), down to […]
Symmetry
So, you start a company to privatize education and take on the teachers unions. Your company fails miserably both in terms of the market and academic success. Then after you’ve hollowed the company out to cover your other bad debts friendly pols come along to bail you out with a couple hundred million […]
Said
Edward Said, the world-renowned scholar, writer and critic has died aged 67, it was announced today.
Here is one of the last things he published before he died:
All over the world people are all experiencing the quandary of a revolution in thought and vocabulary in which American neo-liberalism and “pragmatism” are made on the one hand […]
Climate
Some people continue to deny that human activity affects climate change (global warming), despite evidence to the contrary. But an ingenious new study makes the case for human impact on the climate even more convincing:
Piers M. de F. Forster and Susan Solomon of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration analyzed temperature data collected from more […]
Failure
The entire mission of “No Child Left Behind” is to eventually label every single school in this nation as “failing“—it’s a backdoor way of forcing vouchers or privatization or whatever the hell they want this time.
How do we know this? Because:
The main thrust of the bill is that it requires all schoolchildren to be “proficient” […]
Revision
This is amazing. There have been lots of lists of lies told by the Bush administration, but Sam Smith has actually edited together all these lies into a coherent narrative about the war. (Albeit a completely deceptive and false narrative.) Here is a sample:
The United States approached its postwar work with a two-part resolve: a […]
Portability
Escape Cell Hell - And Take Your Phone Number With You!
Dropped calls. Dead zones. Poor service in general. If you’re like many cell phone users, these problems have led you to consider switching carriers. But of course, if you change carriers you would have to change your phone number too.
That’s about […]
An anthropologist and documentary filmmaker, 
