More Quotes . . .

I love to collect quotes. You'll find hundreds of them under the category "Quotes." Here is a set of quotes I've collected over the past 2 months: "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." Voltaire (1694 - 1778) "An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field." - Niels Bohr (1885 - 1962) "I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed." -Michael Jordan "Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions." - G. K. Chesterton (1874 - 1936) ‎"Study: An increasing number of Americans lack the reading and math skills to do anything but run for President." Andy Borowitz "Those who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being governed by those who are dumber." - Plato Three o'clock is always too late or too early for anything you want to do. - Jean-Paul Sartre (1905 - 1980), Nausea (1938) "Vendredi" There is no reciprocity. Men love women, women love children, children love hamsters. - Alice Thomas Ellis There are painters who transform the sun to a yellow spot, but there are others who with the help of their art and their intelligence, transform a yellow spot into the sun. - Pablo Picasso (1881 - 1973) Doing what you love means dealing with things you don't. - David Shore, House M.D., Last Temptation, 2011 "Of course I believe in free enterprise, but in MY system of free enterprise, the democratic principle is that there never was, never has been, never will be, room for the ruthless exploitation of the many for the benefit of the few." -Harry S. Truman Just think of the tragedy of teaching children not to doubt. - Clarence Darrow (1857 - 1938) “Get used to the idea that death should not matter to us, for good and evil are based on sensation. Death, however, is the cessation of all sensation, hence death, ostensibly the most terrifying of all evils, has no meaning for us, for as long as we exist, death will not be present. When death comes, then we will no longer be in existence.” - Epicurus “If I were wrong, one would be enough.” - Albert Einstein "... when people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together." - Isaac Asimov belongs in Skepticism 101 "The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity." Dorothy Parker (1893 - 1967), (attributed) "It is not necessary to understand things in order to argue about them." Pierre Beaumarchais (1732 - 1799) "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it." Upton Sinclair (1878 - 1968)

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The world through the lens of a college English teacher

At Orion Magazine, college English Instructor Erik Reece has written an excellent essay exploring the role of schools in modern society. The conversation is expansive (covering such things as John Gatto, Citizens United and the trashing of the environment), yet the bases of his essay are his personal interactions with thousands of English students. Here's the launching point for Reece's essay.   He asked his college freshmen English students to write an essay on the following topic: "Evaluate the education you received over the last four years."   Here is his summary of types of responses he received:

  • Many teachers show no passion for their subjects.
  • Many teachers don’t seem to know their subjects very well.
  • Teachers often have very low expectations for their students and very lax standards (late work is rarely penalized).
  • Many teachers are afraid to engage students in real critical thinking or actual dialogue; they simply rely on handouts and lectures.
  • Assignments don’t seem relevant to students’ “real” lives.
  • Many teachers only “teach to the test.”
  • The majority of the work is far too easy and leads to boredom.
  • Students express an overwhelming feeling that only their attendance and test scores are important to teachers and administrators.
Again, this is the starting point for a highly worthwhile piece of writing.   I invite you to take a look.

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Paul Ryan’s pay per view town hall meetings

Here's what happens when an ideologue politician like Paul Ryan avoids answering hard questions out in the public. When you threaten well-established social safety net programs, the program beneficiaries are quite willing to pay $15 to actually get a little face time with you, even if it means they will be arrested. When you don't hear them out, they will get annoying and disruptive. They know that when you are not inviting real criticism, the people in the audience are hearing what amounts to propaganda, which is not a meaningful political process. The test of a true leader is one who is willing to take serious inconvenient criticism to heart.

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