The things is: it makes folks uncomfortable. I haven’t found a lot of folks who genuinely like talking politics, even though it impacts their daily lives.

Tonight, I was able to pick at a neighbor’s brain. Dave, he was born in Saudi Arabia. He went to “English Schools”. So, when I meet folks who have been educated outside of the US (where I was educated), I’m always interested in how and what they were instructed. But they, like Dave, are always hesitant. –Such as having fears that I will judge them as privileged, or elite. But it is a sincere interest on my part: I was educated here, in the US, in Indiana, in public schools, and I know how it went for me. I have friends. I talk to them. They’ve gone to public schools, some of them. I know how it was for them; and so I’m interested in what the differences are and what really works. To get folks knowledgeable, to get them interested in the daily realities of their lives. Not sports bullshit. Not celebrity bullshit. But, for example, to know that Mitt Romney or, especially, Tom Tancredo are fucking asshole fascists. These are the things we should know.

So, I start asking questions.

Like what they’ve learned about “American History”. And beliefs. Such as, do they “believe in a creator“? (Although we profess to have separation of Church and State, we really don’t so much.)

How do we handle these things?

Am I so extreme as my opponents? –That I even think of them as opponents? (E.g., Shouldn’t someone without a uterus who wants to control uteruses be seen as an opponent by someone who has/had a uterus? I ask you.)

Should we not just collect social surveys, and social data, but utilize this data? Analyze this data? Critically? And make suggestions for improvement? That helps not only ourselves, but others, equally?

Am I so disillusioned?

The Bush administration pleased farmers and frustrated environmentalists Monday by declaring that pesticides can be sprayed into and over waters without first obtaining special permits.

The reason? Capitalism, of course, that which always wins over life.

“We need to act fast to stop mosquitoes when they are found,” argued Jim Tassano, a pest-control operator in the California foothills town of Sonora. “Any delay results in adults emerging. It is far cheaper and much more effective to kill them as larvae … (and) if a permit is required, the costs would skyrocket.”

The framing of this article makes me twitch. Also, Michael Doyle can hum on my ovaries.

The EPA is now also taking it upon themselves to redefine words:

EPA officials concluded that a pesticide, when it’s deliberately applied, isn’t a “pollutant” under the terms of the 1972 Clean Water Act.

This is the power to define in action. A substance is not a “pollutant” when it is “deliberately applied”. Why?

EPA officials note that lawmakers didn’t specifically include pesticides in the list of items covered under the Clean Water Act.

I smell bullshit. What I won’t be smelling are the “non-pollutants” in my food and water, or those wafting from the dead carcases of the polluted bodies living in sprayed areas.

Apparently no one in the Environmental Protection Agency [sic] has read Rachel Carson‘s Silent Spring. But I bet they passed their economics courses!

The article, a heavily biased story in favor of big business, also states that,

Environmentalists, though, note that mosquito-killing chemicals can also poison shrimp, frogs and other aquatic innocents.

Not the innocents! What that short sentence means is that natural ecosystems and living beings are going to get fucked, yet again, for the love of God Money.

This culture is insane.

EDITED 07-24-08: Link to news article expired.

… provides a state-of-the-art teaching and learning environment that streamlines course management for faculty, offers capabilities to help improve student outcomes, and creates powerful efficiencies institution-wide.

Now, I don’t know much about the statistics of “improved student outcomes” or exactly how “powerful efficiencies” are “created institution-wide”, but the majority of my professors have used WebCT to post our grades and maybe, maybe to post class notices or PowerPoints (like my Marriage instructor does). WebCT also includes a message board-type feature, complete with post threading. This, I find, is the most useful feature, although the post editing interface (hell, the entire WebCT user interface) could stand to be improved upon (but I’m just anal about interfaces).

We’re using the message board feature this week for our Seminar class discussions, meaning my fellow classmates will be posting their thoughts for me to tear apart read and comment upon. Right below the text box is the option to “Use HTML” and me being me, I can’t get enough HTML into my posts. It just looks neat, you know?

So I added a post entitled, “Using HTML”, giving my classmates (who often struggle with putting paragraph breaks in their posts – it’s just an extra push of the Enter button, y’all!) a crash-course in HTML. Nothing fancy, just how to use italics, bold, blockquote, and add hyperlinks.

I realize how geeky (or perhaps nerdy) this will make me seem, but I’m getting a bit tired of jumbled text, unformatted text, and run-on paragraphs.

I code, therefore I am.

We could learn a lot from crayons.
Some are sharp, some are pretty and some are dull.
Some have weird names, and all are different colors,
but they all have to live in the same box.

My signatures that I rotate, on the other hand, are not as warm and fluffy:

Once you understand something about the history of a people, their heroes, their hardships and their sacrifices, it’s easier to struggle with them, to support their struggle. For a lot of people in this country, people who live in other places have no faces. And this is the way the u.s. government wants it to be. They figure that as long as the people have no faces and the country has no form, Amerikans will not protest when they send in the marines to wipe them out.

-Assata Shakur, Assata: An Autobiography

and

Today I saw a bumper sticker that said, “Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich.” I think that’s right, but it’s also only part of the story. I think that the judicial system is also what keeps the poor from murdering the rich. And the police. And what we are taught in school keeps the poor from murdering the rich. The stories we are taught at home from infancy are what keeps the poor from murdering the rich. The belief that it is acceptable to be rich is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich. The desire to be like them keeps the poor from murdering the rich. None of this, of course, keeps the rich from murdering the poor.

- Derrick Jensen, The Culture of Make Believe

and

The most important piece of technology in any classroom is the second hand of the clock. The purpose is to teach millions of students the identical prayer: Please God, make it move faster.

- Derrick Jensen, Walking on Water: Reading, Writing, and Revolution

Celebrating diversity in our classrooms is a great ideal, but what about the reality of student’s lives and the world(s) in which they exist? Can they see themselves reflected in the first quote? What, if any, empowerment do they glean from it?

I believe the folks we would address makes the difference. I will not be looking to teach in middle-to-upper-middle class districts and I fear messages of “can’t we all get along?” won’t be swallowed so easily. Conflict (be it race, class, or otherwise) is a constant for most students in so-called disadvantaged districts and we ought to give attention to this.

I am very much looking forward to my summer education courses.