Something I’ve come to dislike after noticing it during post-9/11 discussions of the different roles women play in Western and strict Muslim cultures: the magazine rack at the supermarket, where images of provocatively-clad young women dominate the covers. I dislike the exploitation of “the valences of lovemaking and motherhood,” as John Taylor Gatto calls [...]
John Taylor Gatto is an award-winning school teacher turned education reformer. His “Seven-Lesson Schoolteacher” is a classic. From his latest book, The Underground History of American Education: A Schoolteacher’s Intimate Investigation into the Problem of Modern Schooling, here is his “recipe for empty children.”
Gatto writes, “If you want to cook whole children, as [...]
On Sunday the 15th, Dave and I went to visit the Rodriguez-Cantres family for a great lunch and wonderful afternoon conversation. Lizette and Ramon are remarkably accomplished people, but I think the coolest thing they’ve done is raise their boys, Tomas and Gabriel. They spend a lot of time really being with the [...]
Excerpts from WashingtonPost.com:
Free from the scrutiny of military lawyers steeped in the international laws of war, the CIA and its intelligence service allies have the leeway to exert physically and psychologically aggressive techniques, said national security officials and U.S. and European intelligence officers.
“If you don’t violate someone’s human rights some of the time, you probably [...]
To continue the travelogue: Saturday the 14th was “Slice of New York” day for us. My gracious New York hosts, brother David and Tiffany took me out for a day on the town.
We had lunch at an outrageously good little hole-in-the-wall cafe off Bowery, then saw a matinee performance of Mamet’s Boston Marriage at [...]
Overheard a couple of twenty-somethings in line ahead of me at Best Buy:
“Star Wars ain’t that good anymore.”
“Yeah, it was something when it came out, but…”
“Now, Lord of the Rings, that’s good.”
“Yep, and the second one was even better than the first.”
“Yeah. Lord of the Rings is the Star Wars of our generation.”
Greymatter got bollixed up after the previous post, and I finally had time to debug the problem and fix it.
I like the way Greymatter operates (which is not to say I won’t replace it some day), but the code is, shall we say, a little idiosyncratic (which is not to say I don’t value idiosyncracy [...]
Back home safe and sound in the San Francisco Bay Area. I had a Homeland Security chuckle (ouch!) today on the plane. To Keep Us Safe, the airline served our food with metal spoon and fork, but a plastic knife. The knife turned out to have some pretty effective serrations; I slipped [...]
… or stupid network, or end-to-end. That’s why the Internet has fostered all the innovation it has, and it’s a critical feature to keep.
Two great articles: Larry Lessig on preserving the net’s neutrality and David Weinberger on “quality of service”.
Section 508 and Accessibility for Web Sites is a very nice-looking presentation in CSS by Molly Holzschlag, set up for OperaShow and still looking great in a regular web browser. Via Simon Willson.