Deliberate, Insistent, Dumbing Down: "Education" is now a pejorative; or a threat to us all?

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Monday June 20, 2011 · 7:11 AM PDT

2011/06/20 · 07:11

I have noticed that the WSJ since Murdoch shows up in Google News so much more often than a newspaper ostensibly concerned with finance normally does, and for reasons that have only tangential relevance to finance. Most of the links in Google News from the WSJ these days are for Op/Ed articles, of course, and today was no exception. The "spotlight" column of the Google News page linked to this banner:

The War Against Girls

I'll let you read it, and track down the original book it was written in response to, but what I found staggering is the public comments, particularly this one, which I will quote in total below the fold.

Are you aware how horribly "education" is screwing up the world, liberals?

minor update h/t to "swill to power" for catching a rather embarassing typo.
doh.

snafubar

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Saturday May 21, 2011 · 6:36 AM PDT

2011/05/21 · 06:36

Craigs list: "Wurlitzer organ: Make me an offer". It's a 1958 electric organ, my grandmother bought it used in the 80's and played it for twenty years until she died. It's been sitting in a back room gathering dust for eleven years. I just wanted it to go to someone who would enjoy it.

Got a reply in less than a day. We agreed on $50 - and although it cost me as much in gas (and him probably twice that) to drive to a location halfway between us to make the exchange - at least it was going where it would be used.

As my girlfriend and I were moving the organ out the back door, six feet left to go before I put it on the trailer, I told her to swap places with me because I knew the difficult end would be where the threshold of the door is. We'd been dragging it not so much lifting it, but now it had to drop about two inches.

One...Two...Three....

It felt like someone had unleashed a taut garage door spring from my elbow up towards my shoulder. My left bicep muscle was all balled up near my shoulder, there was a weird gap just above my elbow on my left arm that did not look anything like my right arm. Something was missing that used to be in that space. Oh, yeah - and the pain.

Short answer: My bicep is no longer attached to my forearm; it will not reattach itself on it's own. Surgery scheduled for Tuesday morning, because if it is not attached in two weeks or less, it won't ever go back.

$26,000.

snafubar

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Thursday May 12, 2011 · 7:23 AM PDT

2011/05/12 · 07:23

Humans gather in groups because together we have more influence under one banner than if we all carried our own. DailyKos itself is an embodiment of this concept. Now, in DK4, we have "groups" which were ostensibly built into the new framework so that people of like mind can align in their efforts.

Is there a risk that this will subdivide, sequester and balkanize us?

Is there a risk that this encourages us to hide out in the rooms where we know we're amongst friends, and avoid crossing into any room that is not already filled with friends we already have?

This is a short meta diary. Maybe it's too short to post, right now it's just a seed that might grow on it's own.

The recent diary by one atheist who just opened fire on anything religious really made me sick. Pissed off. Growling. I"m an atheist, and a militant one. But walking around with a sword in the air demanding the elimination of my adversaries is the antithesis of what this country is about. We are the United States of America - what are we united about anymore?

DailyKos was meant to united us in common cause for left-leaning causes; but how do we avoid the corrosive effects of subdivision to the point we're swimming in so many directions that the main thrust of our efforts loses strenght and purpose?

How do we stop the zero-sum "I am right, therefore you are wrong, STFU", balkanization of the country, the Democratic party, the DK blog family?

How do we avoid the personal, dehumanizing, hand-to-hand blogging that leaves people frothing on their screen and powering down the computer just to avoid a stroke?

One personal note below, and I'll let this diary fuel itself.

snafubar

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Thursday April 28, 2011 · 7:39 AM PDT

2011/04/28 · 07:39

And that my fellow Kossarians, is the only polite headline I could actually post to give just a hint of how much vomit I've swallowed back down in the last few days.

This joke of a carnival barker, with more arrogance than even the "G"od I don't believe in should be entitled to have, somehow claims it's to his credit that the proof of a known fact is now...proven?

Pardon me, Mr. Trump, but the veracity of the other 43 presidents have yet to be acertained. Better get on that, or you might get fired.

I got a little more bile to vent from my spleen that will only fit over the fold. If you will...

snafubar

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Sunday April 03, 2011 · 8:25 AM PDT

2011/04/03 · 08:25

This was inspired by ExplodingKitchen's diary, "I never thought I would be ashamed of being an American."

...in commiseration;

... in a celebration of our freedom and liberty to say precisely those things which would get our asses kicked (or shot) by those who insist they alone know what freedom (TM) and liberty (TM) were meant to be used for, and who are also some of the same who are sure they alone KNOW who should be entitled to use them. (and of course, who should not).

Let's take this freedom thing out for a ride, shall we, and maybe I'll put up a poll to see if you think that revealing my true name and location would make me famous (presumably my fame would come posthumously).

Here goes -

snafubar

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Thursday January 20, 2011 · 1:33 PM PST

2011/01/20 · 13:33

Let's try some logical tautology to see what kind of audience I'm in:

Are these two statements logically the same?

"All mentally ill people are angry"

and

"All expressions of anger indicate a mental illness"

Answers to this non-poll are below the fold, and why I'm here to tell you that we - as a country - are losing the plot

snafubar

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Monday January 10, 2011 · 4:38 PM PST

2011/01/10 · 16:38

even if there are no real demons.

I floated a poorly-fleshed out diary a while back in the midst of other violence, and I'm just going to lay it out here again to see if it looks different in light of the recent events.

They are building a movement for a new Kristallnacht.

I came into political awareness in while living in North Carolina, where Jesse Helms always got re-elected by small, narrow minds who only had to hear him repeat three things:

Things are bad all over.

That group of people over there, "THEM", they did it all.

(the third step was self-initiating as the fear and anger took over)

We - anyone who's not a RW kool-aid consumer - are being villified as the root of all evil. This "go get 'em that fucked up your country" hysteria may be gaining enough inertia that it can't be stopped before the blood really flows.

I don't know.

end diary

Crier John's tears strangely absent in the wake of genuine trauma

snafubar

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Sunday January 09, 2011 · 12:14 PM PST

2011/01/09 · 12:14

I'm laying this out for the record. I despise John Boehner, and I'm going to post a comment with a few videos that I put up this morning in an open thread.

This man does violence to the concept of the word "human"; he cries over symbolism and nationalistic hubris, but the deaths of six people in the act of savage abject rage that has gravely wounded a member of his own congress shows him standing without nearly any emotion at all.

This is a sign of something seriously twisted about this "man".

Watch these two videos, and I present my remarks as part of that glorious freedom of speech my Republican "friends" and neighbors think I am so unappreciative of (which they alone in ,their view, have protected for me)

snafubar

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Saturday January 08, 2011 · 1:20 PM PST

2011/01/08 · 13:20

I'm just going to drop this and leave. I must turn off the TV and the internet or I'm just going to eat my face with my bare hands.

This is my country?

"Unfortunately, the left is using this tragedy to score political points. Rep. Giffords was on Gov. Palin’s target list for defeat this past November. The left claims Gov. Palin has blood on her hands. So does the tea party movement."

Eric Ericson says the left is somehow using a tragedy to score politcal points when at this hour we don't even know who has died.

What follows below is a diary that I posted in 2008. I don't have the patience right now to dig through the news archives and count the number of shootings we've had since I wrote it. It was after Virgina Tech, but before Ft Hood and Binghamton.

I said earlier that small acts of violence are going to require the law enforcement to do something; then the RW/Tea Party "Patriots" are all going to scream that whatever the cops did is defacto proof of the police state they all think Obama is planning, and then it's all over.

I'm not sure if we're there yet or not.

Old diary beneath the fold.

snafubar

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Monday November 15, 2010 · 2:11 PM PST

2010/11/15 · 14:11

I'm going to drop this and leave. I can show you where it went last time; I had a few of you kind and generous people get into my head and inspire thoughts that we're not allowed to talk about here either.

Either way, six years ago today, I came home from a new job, my first job with the title "engineer" in it, to tell my father - an engineer of 32 years how it went. He was laying on the bed, aparently dead of a heart attack or stroke as he was putting on his slippers. There was no autopsy, the M.E. said cause of death was "natural causes". The receipt from the liquor store was dated the 13th; there were two empty half-gallons of gin in the closet. A gallon in 30 hours was deliberate.

Because smoking four packs of cigarettes a day, starting when he was 12 until the day he died is "normal". Because after throat cancer cost him his tongue and he drank Gin through his feeding tube a quart at a time, this was "natural causes"

snafubar

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Monday October 25, 2010 · 12:28 PM PDT

2010/10/25 · 12:28

Juan Williams (and Faux News, which will never pass up a chance to make NPR the socialist Antichrist) are bleating all about free speech.

Stop. Just fucking stop. I mean it, fucking stop.

Freedom of speech means the government can't take your sign down, disperse your peaceful gathering, or pull the plug on your printing press, website, or radio/TV station. But you, Juan, like Rush Limbaugh and like the whole stupid galactially dense mass of the Tea Party paid-to-sayits (rhymes with patriots) have forgotten the bigger picture:

You live in a society where others are "free" to disagree with you. NPR diagreed with Juan Williams, and they fired him. That's capitalism, baby.

There's more of my screed below

snafubar

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Saturday September 11, 2010 · 12:03 PM PDT

2010/09/11 · 12:03

Anniversaries about tragedies are supposed to inspire us to move forward. How is that working out?

In 2009 I wrote a diary about how the metaphysical significance of the Gregorian calendar only means that the Earth has orbited the Sun to the same location since the last time we called it "September 11th"; and yet, it's not the same location in space at all.

In 2008 I wrote that if we're really worried about the loss of 2978 lives, we're not worried about saving the next 2978 as much as we care about who's to blame for their deaths. We ignore things that we could easily change that would save them - but choose not to because the effort required from us as individuals is inconvenient. Instead, we tilt at windmills over stuff that is largely not under our control, because ranting about it gathers a larger and more bloodthirsty crowd that is easily manipulated for many other ends.

I went to Purdue University, where a legend which involves the phrase "one brick higher" is recalled.

Follow me, one brick higher, if you will, please.

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Deliberate, Insistent, Dumbing Down: "Education" is now a pejorative; or a threat to us all?

I sold a Wurlitzer for $50 and it cost me $26,000

Intramural Team Jerseys at Daily Kos - are groups more wedge than glue?

Planet Earth is Round. Trump claims credit.

There is no shame in sometimes being ashamed to be an American.

Anger is not a mental health condition

Republican demonization will lead to slaughter of "demons"

Crier John's tears strangely absent in the wake of genuine trauma

Redux: What number did you pick in the pool? (from 2008)

Health care, Smoking, you know where this is going...

Hey Juan, your free speech is just fine. You are a victim of Capitalism...

One Brick Higher; an essay on Anniversaries