Posts Tagged ‘Kay Hagan’
Wednesday Is Friday and the Living’s Easy
* Half the professoriate will kill the other half for free.
In other words, while a few already well-paid superprofessors get their egos stroked conducting experiments that are doomed to fail, “second- and third-tier universities and colleges, and community colleges” risk closing because Coursera and its ilk have sent higher education price expectations through the floor and systematically devalued everybody else’s work. And they get to do all this while dispensing a produuct that they know is inferior! Jay Gould would be proud.
* The irony, of course, is that “business” logic can kill its own host, like any parasite. When taken as an end in itself, it destroys everything — and then there’s nowhere else to invest, no more areas producing real values that can be syphoned off into the giant pool of money. The imaginary values that finance has racked up then become the object of a game of hot potato, furiously churning through the system until the point when they simply disappear (i.e., lose all their value). That’s what running everything “like a business” does — it trades real value for imaginary value that is then destroyed.
* Just because it’s totally ineffective doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it: A study by the Pew Charitable Trust in 2011, which looked at school closures in six US cities, found that school districts end up saving less than had been predicted. But think of all the other advantages school closings offer!
A University of Chicago study focusing on schools closed between 2001 and 2006 found that only six percent of displaced students ended up in high-performing schools.
And 42 percent of students continued to attend schools with ‘very low’ achievement levels. A year after changing schools, students’ reading and math abilities were not any better or worse.
Students who did go to better-performing schools also had to travel an average of 6km to get there – which critics say risks the safety of students who have to go through neighbourhoods containing rival gangs.
And here, at the limit of life that idling alone brings into view in a nonthreatening way, we find another kind of nested logic. Call it the two-step law of life. Rule No. 1 is tomorrow we die; and Rule No. 2 is nobody, not even the most helpful robot, can change Rule No. 1. Enjoy!
* Junot Diaz Talks Superman As An Undocumented Immigrant On The Colbert Report.
* The Essential Verso Undergraduate Reading List. Makes me think I really need to start including more theory on my syllabi.
* MOOCs we can believe in? One of the most remote outposts of Jesuit higher education is tucked away in dusty northwest Kenya, in a place whose name means “Nowhere” in Swahili. There, at Kakuma Refugee Camp, a small group of students — refugees from several neighboring African countries, including Sudan, Ethiopia and Somalia — are enrolled in online courses taught by 28 Jesuit colleges, mostly in the United States. The course is part of the Jesuit Commons project.
* Unexpected: SCOTUSblog now thinks there’s at least five judges who will vote to strike down DOMA. Meanwhile, McCaskill seems to have triggered Hagan to announce her support of marriage equality.
* Ripped from the stuff Fox News usually just has to make up: Gov. Rick Scott of Florida has stepped into the fray over an offensive classroom exercise at Florida Atlantic University in which students were asked to stomp on a sheet of paper with “Jesus” written on it.
* Boston College threatens disciplinary action against students distributing condoms.
Boston College officials sent a letter to students on March 15 demanding an end to student-run “Safe Sites,” a network of dorm rooms and other locations where free contraceptives and safe sex information are available.
Students living in the “Safe Sites” were told in the letter that the distribution of condoms is in conflict with their “responsibility to protect the values and traditions of Boston College as a Jesuit, Catholic institution.”
* Mexican town finds more security by throwing out the police.
* Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal considers the Singularity.
* xkcd considers the past as another country … with an outdated military and massive oil reserves.
* And making the rounds again: The 50 Most Perfectly Timed Photos Ever.
Kay
Facing public pressure, including a threatened campaign from MoveOn, Kay Hagan has now endorsed a public option in a health care, clearing the bill to move out of committee.
Senator Franken
What can we expect from the Democrats now that Al Franken is their 60th Senator? Ezra Klein points out that 60 is a big number, one not achieved by either party since 1974. Open Left thinks this is a boost to the public option in health care. Grist looks ahead to climate change and the Senate version of ACES. The Nation talks filibusters.
It falls to Donkeylicious to remind us that there are still a lot of bad Democrats, including two who have thus far disappointed me, Kay Hagan and Claire McCaskill.
Wednesday 2
Wednesday 2.
* My North Carolinian readers should consider sending a letter expressing their displeasure to the offices of our senator, Kay Hagan, who as Facing South reports is currently one of the major stumbling blocks for health care reform.
Sen. Kay Hagan
521 Dirksen Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
Phone: 202-224-6342
Fax: 202-228-2563
You can contact her via email at her web site, but a snail mail letter is still best.
* Climate Progress analyzes the concessions made to Collin Peterson to get Waxman-Markey to the floor this week. Kevin Drum and Yglesias has more, as well as a teaser for how much worse the Senate version will be.
* Also from Yglesias: (1) a post on Asimov’s novel The Gods Themselves that intrigued me enough to drop everything and read the book and (2) a report that the Iranian soccer players who wore green in solidarity with the protesters have been banned from the sport for life. The Gods Themselves, I can report, is a great read: in addition to the environmental allegory Yglesias highlights there’s also some really intriguing queer sexuality stuff in the “how aliens have sex” section—very rare for Asimov—and a nice Star Maker-style cosmology regarding the origin of the universe and the fates of planets that don’t solve their energy crises. I think Asimov’s probably right that it’s his best book.
* Squaring off on the suckiness of Transformers II. In this corner, Roger Ebert:
“Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” is a horrible experience of unbearable length, briefly punctuated by three or four amusing moments. One of these involves a dog-like robot humping the leg of the heroine. Such are the meager joys. If you want to save yourself the ticket price, go into the kitchen, cue up a male choir singing the music of hell, and get a kid to start banging pots and pans together. Then close your eyes and use your imagination.
And in this corner, Walter Chaw:
The worst summer in recent memory continues as Michael Bay brings his slow push-ins and Lazy Susan dolly shots back to the cineplex with Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (hereafter Transformers 2), the ugliest, most hateful, most simple-minded and incomprehensible assault on art and decency since the last Michael Bay movie.
* And your webcomic of the day: Warbot in Accounting.
Atheism Wars in North Carolina
Amanda Marcotte differs with PZ Meyers over whether or not Kay Hagan has Thrown Atheists Under the Bus™ in her response to the now-infamous “There is no god!” ad from Liddy Dole. While my initial reaction certainly had some affinity with Meyers’, my pragmatist-to-a-fault half agrees with Marcotte:
At the risk of having my cranky credentials revoked, I’ll admit that my reaction to Hagan’s “Ah hell no!” retort to Dole’s ads was sheer delight. Dole handed Hagan a loaded gun, and if Hagan didn’t fire it by out-Christianing her, she’d be a fool, and who wants a fool on your side? They live in North Carolina. The idea that a politician should take a public stand for atheists there is more outrageous than asking as politician to take a public stand for Satanists. Given the choice between token support in public and losing a genuine ally in Congress and having an ally who has to play by rules she didn’t write, I’ll take the latter.
I’m a Godless Atheist, and I Vote
I’m a Godless Atheist, and I vote: Elizabeth Dole desperately wants me to vote for Kay Hagan. (Done.)
Sen. Elizabeth Dole’s latest advertisement suggests her Democratic opponent, Kay Hagan, is a godless heathen.
“A leader of the Godless Americans PAC recently held a secret fundraiser for Kay Hagan,” the 30-second spot says, showing footage of the group’s members talking about their atheist beliefs on cable news.
“Godless Americans and Kay Hagan. She hid from cameras. Took godless money,” the ad concludes. “What did Kay Hagan promise in return?”
At the very end of the ad, a voice sounding like Hagan’s says: “There is no God.”
Don’t get too excited, fellow heathens: as Washington Monthly reports, Hagan called a press conference with her family and pastor to denounce the ad—for lying. Like calling your opponent a Muslim, calling your opponent an atheist is prima facie an insult. God forbid it actually be true!
Local Politics Minute
A post at Grist looks at energy issues in the North Carolina senate race.