Not very well. If you haven't yet seen the following video featuring Jamie Oliver (part of his extremely well-executed six-part "Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution" television series), you are in for a treat. Oliver has a genius for making the life-or-death issue of nutrition engaging.
I'm really getting tired of progressive organizations sending me emails with disturbing headlines, colorful call to action links and THIS: No links to any independent information that would allow me to really understand whether the organization's claim is true. If the problem concerns pending legislation, send me a link to the legislation so that I can verify the problem myself. If the claim is the supposed existence of a dangerous food or drug, send me a link to a neutral site so that I can go read about the alleged problem myself. I am not persuaded by circular links back to your own unsubstantiated claims -- I don't care how many times YOU make the claim on your own pages. I want reassurance that it is true before I take any action at all. I'm not going to write to Congress just because you give me a scary headline and tell me to. I sympathize with many (not all) progressive causes, but I will never simply take it on faith that I need to write my Congressional reps just because an organization tells me to (even an organization that has been somewhat credible in the past). Do you hear me, Move-On, and all you others out there? Do you think that your followers are stupid? sheep? Stupid sheep? Come on. If you've got a legitimate cause that needs attention, provide us with the means to independently verify your claims. For many years, I've seen this tactic used in many right-right calls to action. For example I receive link-less material such as "Click here to write your representatives because OUR public schools won't allow students to voluntarily pray at recess!!" It's a shame to see this tactic spreading to so many progressive organizations, however. It is a disreputable tactic meant for people without brains.
Hate = total lack of empathy. At least that's how I define it. That's what I see in this incredibly disturbing photo. Once you understand what happened to this woman, it is all the more disturbing.
As I've often written, I love quotes. Ever since I was a pre-teen. Mini-explosions in small strings of words. A novel in a single sentence! I collect lots of quotes and I occasionally publish my favorites in small groups on this website. If you want to see other batches, simply choose the (left side margin) "category" called "quotes." I hope you find these fun, challenging, mind-stretching and sometimes disturbing . . . Confusion is always the most honest response. -Marty Indik A poet more than thirty years old is simply an overgrown child. -Mencken Our quaint metaphysical opinions, in an hour of anguish, are like playthings by the bedside of a child deathly sick. -Samuel Taylor Coleridge A cult is a religion with no political power. -Tom Wolfe Conceit is God's gift to little men. -Bruce Barton Great persecutors are recruited among martyrs whose heads haven't been cut off. -E. M. Cioran Universities are of course hostile to geniuses, which, seeing and using ways of their own, discredit the routine: as churches and monasteries persecute youthful saints. -Ralph Waldo Emerson One should respect public opinion insofar as is necessary to avoid starvation and keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny. -Bertrand Russell Gratitude is merely the secret hope of further favors. -Francious de la Rochefoucauld Satire is often the reflection of a kind of moral nausea. -Crand Briton The subtlety of nature is greater many times over than the subtlety of the senses and understanding. -Bacon Truth: An ingenious compound of desirability and appearance. -Bierce I'm worried that students will take their obedient place in society and look to become successful cogs in the wheel - let the wheel spin them around as it wants without taking a look at what they're doing. I'm concerned that students not become passive acceptors of the official doctrine that's handed down to them from the White House, the media, textbooks, teachers and preachers. -Howard Zinn Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy. -Franz Kafka Sentimentality is a superstructure covering brutality. -C. J. Jung People travel for the same reason as they collect works of art: because the best people do it. -Aldous Huxley [more . . . ]
I really enjoyed this TED lecture by full-time ninth grade math teacher Dan Meyer. His main point is that modern math textbooks do so much hand-holding that they fail to inspire students to think through the problems. Instead of teaching math, they teach students to "decode" the problems by all-too-apparent reference to the exemplars. As a result, many math texts cultivate impatience. Dan argues that we've got to stop thinking about math as merely computation skills. In support of this point, he quoted a man named Albert Einstein: "The formulation of a problem is often more essential than its solution, which may be merely a matter of mathematical or experimental skill." Dan is doing his best as a teacher and a blogger to change the way students look at math class. I should not be something students resist, but rather embrace. His approaches to teaching math are easy to understand, and he offers many creative applications along the way. Meyer's work brings to mind the writings of John Paulos, who bemoans rampant American innumeracy (and see here).