Doug Noon's Public Library

several important pieces on torture from that past month or two

vagabondscholar.blogspot.com/...torture-watch-10809.html - Preview

5.31.09 torture

via Open Culture blog

oyc.yale.edu/...ction-to-ancient-greek-history - Preview

ancient history greek

Larry Cuban - ...for the past quarter century -- A Nation at Risk (1983) is a suitable marker -- policy elites have redefined a national economic problem into an educational problem. Since the late 1970s, influential civic, business, and media leaders have sold Americans the story that lousy schools are the reason why inflation surged, unemployment remained high, incomes seldom rose, and cheaper and better foreign products flooded U.S. stores. Public schools have failed to produce a strong, post-industrial labor force, thus leading to a weaker, less competitive U.S. economy. U.S. policy elites have used lagging scores on international tests as telling evidence that schools graduate less knowledgeable, less skilled high school graduates -- especially those from minority and poor schools who will be heavily represented in the mid-21st century workforce -- than competitor nations with lower-paid workforces who produce high-quality products.

www.pdkintl.org/...k0812cub.htm - Preview

Larry_Cuban kappan schools

I'm bookmarking this post for the next time I need to find out more about dragonflies.

sarahpuglisi.blogspot.com/...our-dragonfly.html - Preview

comments dragonflies photos

propaganda, mostly

www.google.com/url - Preview

unremarkable, as expected

www.whitehouse.gov/...PreparedSchoolRemarks - Preview

obama speeches

In pointing to a culture of cruelty, I am not employing a form of left moralism that collapses matters of power and politics into the discourse of character. On the contrary, I think the notion of a culture of cruelty is useful in thinking through the convergence of everyday life and politics, of considering material relations of power - the disciplining of the body as an object of control - on the one hand, and the production of cultural meaning, especially the co-optation of popular culture to sanction official violence, on the other. The culture of cruelty is important for thinking through how life and death now converge in ways that fundamentally transform how we understand and imagine politics in the current historical moment - a moment when the most vital of safety nets, health care reform, is being undermined by right-wing

www.truthout.org/090209R - Preview

henry_giroux culture democracy

Right after its publication in July, Streever’s book, “Cold; Adventures in the World’s Frozen Places,” cracked the top 30 on The New York Times’ list of bestsellers for hardcover nonfiction. “Cold” has blanketed the nation, and Streever, a biologist and environmental studies leader for BP Exploration Alaska, has hit the big time.

newsminer.com/...cold-sweeps-nation - Preview

cold books reviews

President Obama's imminent indoctrination of the nation's schoolchildren, there's an education story bubbling up in Texas that could have considerably more far-reaching consequences.,,,Approved textbooks, the standards say, must teach the Texan student to "identify significant conservative advocacy organizations and individuals, such as Newt Gingrich, Phyllis Schlafly, and the Moral Majority." No analogous liberal figures or groups are required, prompting protests from some legislators and committee members. (Read an excerpt here.)

www.truthout.org/090509B - Preview

standards politics

Bailing out banks is not uppermost in the minds of the billion people now facing starvation....In substantial measure, the food crisis plaguing much of the South and the financial crisis of the North have a common source: the shift toward neoliberalism since the 1970s, which brought to an end the Bretton Woods system instituted by the United States and United Kingdom after World War II. The architects of Bretton Woods, John Maynard Keynes and Harry Dexter White, anticipated that its core principles—including capital controls and regulated currencies—would lead to rapid and relatively balanced economic growth and would also free governments to institute the social democratic programs that had very strong public support. Mostly, they were vindicated on both counts. Many economists call the years that followed, until the 1970s, the “golden age of capitalism.”

bostonreview.net/...chomsky.php - Preview

Noam_Chomsky

Reading outside the classroom, however, I began to fit the pieces of history into a larger mosaic. What at first had seemed like a purely passive foreign policy in the decade leading up to the First World War now appeared as a succession of violent interventions: the seizure of the Panama Canal zone from Colombia, a naval bombardment of the Mexican coast, the dispatch of the Marines to almost every country in Central America, occupying armies sent to Haiti and the Dominican Republic. As the much-decorated General Smedley Butler, who participated in many of those interventions, wrote later: "I was an errand boy for Wall Street."

www.zmag.org/...17049 - Preview

howard_zinn

According to the Penguin Companion to Food, which is the foodie’s Bible, “Sourdough bread, strictly speaking, is bread raised with a leaven of flour and water to which wild yeasts have been encouraged to grow, by keeping it warm and allowing it to ferment over a period of days. During this time it sours and develops a characteristic flavor.”

newsminer.com/...s-and-counting-sourdough-lives - Preview

sourdough

It’s time for a fundamental re-evaluation of the criminal justice system, as legislation sponsored by Senator Jim Webb has called for, so that we’re no longer squandering money that would be far better spent on education or health.

www.nytimes.com/...20kristof.html - Preview

prison

From their own home and laptop computers, animal lovers can watch the brown bears feast on fresh salmon at the falls. View the seabird rookery at Gull Island live via remote camera at the Pratt Museum. The SeeBird Cam is visitor-controlled and always on. BearCam is up and live from Katmai National Park. Both can also be streamed from the Pratt Museum Web site.

newsminer.com/...-webcams-focus-birds-and-bears - Preview

alaska animals

Tom Hewitt and Jennifer Canfield embed wtih Strykers to learn about war reporting for UAF journalism program. They're blogging about the experience at Short Timers blog [http://shorttimers.blogspot.com/]

newsminer.com/...f-students-embed-strykers-iraq - Preview

journalism war Iraq alaska

transcript of Sarah Palin's rambling farewell address in Fairbanks, July 26, 2009.

www.themudflats.net/...rewell-address-full-transcript - Preview

palin speeches

Alaska Public Records Law and interviews with administration and other source show a pattern of the Palin administration using public resources and the state's ethics laws in an effort to block and discredit both frivolous and credible charges made against the governor.

Most of the cost so far stems from that obstructionist effort and not the complaints themselves, the Empire's inquiry shows.

www.juneauempire.com/...loc_471000849.shtml - Preview

palin ethics

How Big a Wonk Are You? Your Education Reform Pop Quiz!

How closely have you been following education reform this year? Here is a pop quiz to see if you are on your toes and following the latest trends. The answers will appear in the first comment below. If you want to do some research, there is a link to the source in each question. After you take the quiz, please share any surprises, insights or ideas that came to you as a result. Better than 50% makes you an official EduWonk!

blogs.edweek.org/...ucation_reform_pop_quiz_1.html - Preview

reform

When I was in high school I, like many teens, believed myself to be a misfit, the only alienated person in the room. I found respite in Frank McCourt’s English classes at Stuyvesant High.We knew him as Frank, among the circle of protégés of which I was proud to consider myself a part. English class with Frank involved him sitting on his desk telling us stories about his Irish childhood; then, he passed out purple mimeograph sheets and led us in Irish drinking songs: Nancy Nancy, Nancy whiskey, Whiskey whiskey, Nancy-o.

Everything about Frank was a snub of the establishment.

therumpus.net/...a-remembrance-of-frank-mccourt - Preview

Frank_McCourt writing memoir

I've been on the receiving end of countless emails from adults who send me the latest urban legend as though it were truth. Never received one from a young person. Most kids I know would check out that urban legend at Snopes before sending it on, while most adults don't even know what Snopes is.

michelemartin.typepad.com/...-critical-thinking-skills.html - Preview

critical media literacy