Comic Obama Celebrates the Real Obama

Dawn, are you paying attention up there?

Cock of the snook for this to HuffPost.

Fight for Right to Be Ignorant on Darwin Day

See Tangled Up in Blue Guy, who says it right and will help you fight:

They went to all the trouble of creating a cool website, so we know they are serious this time. It’s actually a rather cute site, so I must give them credit for clever color schemes and cartoony icons. I invite you to the wonderful world of a protest movement, so you can fight for the right to be wilfully [sic] ignorant.

We Are the CHOMPions

Sing with me now.

(Is there a Gator chomp animated smilie I can get somewhere?)

While We’re Debating Who Deserves Humanity. . .

As Darwin jotted down in a notebook of 1838, “He who understands baboon would do more towards metaphysics than Locke.”

Not to learn about how the baboons think, but to learn about how WE think.

In the December 30th, 2007 issue of the [New York Times M]agazine, animal columnist Charles Siebert published a touching tribute to two of the most memorable contributors to communication studies: Alex the parrot and Washoe the chimp. With respect and admiration, he honors their place of distinction in our human sciences, while acknowledging the imposition we humans placed on them. His obituary is entitled: “The Communicators.“

See also Creature Comforts from last Sunday, and food journalist Michael Pollan’s 2002 piece about the evolution of how humans think of and treat animals, caused by our needs and changes more than theirs, just as robot theologian Anne Foerst teaches and preaches.

Her philosophy is that everything really is all about us, but unfortunately that means NOT that we should dominate and subjugate when we can get away with it, but that we hurt ourselves spiritually (and often practically too) when we do, and thus we’re the ones who must learn and change, to improve things for ourselves. Not self-sacrifice, enlightened self-interest!

EDUCATION WEEK: No Grade Left Behind

Everything you never wanted to know. . .

What Percent of Americans Are Gay?

I ask because Rick Warren claims it’s two percent while I’ve always had the Kinsey 10% in mind, and somewhere along the line I had internalized the truism that this percentage was remarkably stable since ancient times –

So here’s a Gallup Poll story I found interesting (if not definitive.)

Education or “championship of tax dodges” in BCS excess?

Regular readers know JJ bleeds orange and blue, and that her beloved Gators are headed for the BCS championship game Thursday, and that UF’s famous phenom quarterback Tim Tebow is also famous as one of home education’s best-known personalities.

None of which means JJ can’t see the merits of a public policy argument like this:

“Football fans unfamiliar with the vagaries of 501(c)3 charities might not discern differences between the game played Sunday, when the Miami Dolphins were pummeled by the Baltimore Ravens, and the BCS championship game at the same address. . .

But the old boys of the tax-exempt organizations frolicking in the
skyboxes Thursday must, by law, be engaged in a strictly educational
pursuit. It may look like an ordinary football contest to casual fans, but they’re witnessing an orgy of tax-deductible charity.”

Or of this argument, that football as education is structurally flawed because its public “accountability” system builds in misplaced priorities and warped ranking mechanisms, exactly as I think NCLB’s priorities and accountability structure have warped academic education into a cutthroat game for both staff and students.

Much as I LOVE winning after all the decades of disrespect as hated rivals from other colleges and communities get the glory and the big bucks, I can see these problems and this championship competition week as a good time to suit up and “tackle” them together. If this is another manifestation of Alfie Kohn’s punished by rewards problem, more so-called free market success in education, then “winners” are being hurt too and we’re in the best position to squawk up some change.

Supposedly every problem has a solution that is simple — and wrong. School sure has been there, done that! But how about some solutions now that are creative, complicated and at least sometimes right for actual education rather than just for school-as-big-business?

Bill Ayers on Obama and Education

“Obama is not a monarch — Arne Duncan is not education czar — and we are not his subjects. . .
Democracy, after all, is geared toward participation and engagement, and it’s based on a common faith.

. . .Much of what we call schooling forecloses or shuts down or walls off meaningful choice-making. Much of it is based on obedience and conformity, the hallmarks of every authoritarian regime. Much of it banishes the unpopular, squirms in the presence of the unorthodox, hides the unpleasant. There’s no space for skepticism, irreverence, or even doubt. . .”

Tim Tebow From Oklahoma’s Homeschool Vantage Point

“Tim Tebow a shining example for homeschooled athletes
Different rules: Oklahoma homeschoolers have own teams”

Listen to Oklahoma’s homeschool community, and you’ll hear few complaints.

Perhaps that is because the opportunities are meeting the needs. Just in the Oklahoma City area, there are homeschool teams in basketball, baseball, softball and football among others.

There’s even homeschool fencing.

Still. . . Facilities are lacking. Practices are limited.

. . .Football might be from where the opposition to Oklahoma’s current rules eventually comes.

. . .”You want to know the end answer?” said Tim Flatt, who founded the Oklahoma City Storm homeschool basketball teams and now oversees the National Christian Homeschool Basketball Championships.

“The end answer is the first homeschool dad that’s an attorney whose kids are not allowed to play a sport that he wants them to be able to play … he files a lawsuit. There’s going to be no way to stop them from coming in.”

For more on Tebow’s homeschooling here in Florida: From Tim to Marla, Home Media Invasions

Stonewall Riots

Lapping Up Milk

Have you guys seen Milk yet? Wow.

I generally find more to like than not in theatres stage or film, so you can take my criticism with that in mind, but Favorite Daughter and I were just blown away by this one today at our local art house. This sure isn’t the cross between made-for-tv docudrama and blatant screed I was braced for.

Extraordinary. It was entertainment, education, time travel almost for me. And enlightenment.

In places it reminded us of women’s suffrage in America, particularly as we saw that history in “Iron-Jawed Angels.”

I’m not a Sean Penn fan (well, I wasn’t but this is REALLY something.) I never was an Anita Bryant fan either, even being from Florida and remembering her as our official “orange juice” spokesmodel. Favorite Daughter had never heard of her but certainly has a strong opinion now. Watching the film and thinking about it later, I now find Bryant’s “Save Our Children” bigotry much more ominous and offensive than I did when I was, well, politically not much more than a child myself.

In fairness (not that she deserves it) Wikipedia suggests Bryant repented some years later, good power of story because apparently her epiphany arose when she fell victim to her own patriarchal fundamentalism: