If you’ve ever been driving somewhere and have gotten really lost—I mean nothing looks familiar, don’t know how I got here, and have no clue how to get where I need to go lost—and then, due to maps, a helpful stranger, or blind luck, you experienced the profound relief of finding yourself on the right road heading in the right direction, you’ll understand a little about how I felt when I saw the headline, “Panel Proposes Single Standard for All Schools.” Full Story »

When teaching writing and communications, you always stress a basic lesson: show, don’t tell. In the spirit of showing, not telling, what I mean by show, don’t tell, I offer the following two examples.

First, from TPM: Full Story »

CNN reported last week on a new study showing that liberalism, atheism and sexual exclusivity in males are linked to higher IQ scores. The findings are intriguing, for all the obvious reasons.

Evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa at the the London School of Economics and Political Science correlated data on these behaviors with IQ from a large national U.S. sample and found that, on average, people who identified as liberal and atheist had higher IQs. This applied also to sexual exclusivity in men, but not in women. The findings will be published in the March 2010 issue of Social Psychology Quarterly.

Reactions have been all over the place, but there’s been strong suspicion of the findings from both “liberal” and “conservative” corners (especially conservative, as you’d expect). Which is good. Full Story »

I walked into the classroom hopped up on caffeine and adrenaline. I’d gotten to the room early—a drab box on the second floor of of our largest academic building—with the intent of staking out my territory well in advance of the freshmen, but a few of them had already beaten me. Looks like I wasn’t the only one who wanted to get a jumpstart on the first day of class.

Full Story »

Colorado is a beautiful place and it always ranks right at the top of those most desirable places to live rankings (heck, a new poll says the People’s Republic of Boulder is the happiest place in America), but be clear about one thing before you pack up the family to head this way: a consistent voting majority of our citizens are butt-stupid when it comes to taxes. We’re the ones who blazed the trail for the “Taxpayer Bill of Rights” (TABOR) movement, and we’ve been paying a steep price for it ever since. For instance:

• Under TABOR, Colorado declined from 35th to 49th in the nation in K-12 spending as a percentage of personal income.
• Colorado’s average per-pupil funding fell by more than $400 relative to the national average. Full Story »

On February 3, an official Pennsylvania State University (PSU) administration inquiry into four allegations of research misconduct against Dr. Michael Mann found that three of the four allegations were without merit. The fourth allegation was referred to a investigation committee because the administrators concluded that PSU faculty were more qualified to rule on the fourth allegation than were the administrators.

Shortly thereafter, PSU started being accused of risking its reputation by “whitewashing” the inquiry with a cover up designed to protect Dr. Mann. The accusations came in form of press releases from think tanks, blog posts from media pundits, as well as some traditional media outlets. A typical example was the Fox News report that Republican Represntative Darrell Issa had called for freezing all federal grants to PSU and Mann until PSU “settled all the charges” against Mann, suggesting that perhaps money was the reason that PSU was allegedly covering up Mann’s supposed research misconduct.

S&R decided to investigate the “whitewash” claims to determine if they had any substance. Here’s what we discovered. Full Story »

We rarely do link-throughs, but I came across an interesting conversation yesterday. It began with Don Peck’s Atlantic essay on “How a New Jobless Era Will Transform America,” and then quickly moved on to our friend Ian Welsh’s thought-provoking reply. A snippet:

Because any economic growth right now increases the prices of oil, which then strangles the economy, you must reduce dependence on oil, or you can’t fix your problems.

Because banks aren’t lending, and because they are a net drag on the economy having destroyed more wealth than they created, you must break up the major banks or take other similar actions to the same ends, or you don’t fix your problems. Full Story »

by Shelley Jack

Mamasita! Mamasita! Psst! Psst! Psst!

Taunting, yet playful faces of men passed me by on uneven sidewalks, working diligently to make eye contact. I was lost, again, on a street in downtown San Jose, Costa Rica, walking quickly, head down. Only a few months in to my year-long stay as a business English teacher in the country, the unpredictability of the road and transportation systems continued to challenge even my most adventurous side. When I finally arrived at my destination, three hours into what should have been a 30-minute walk, I sat down and cried one of those long, cleansing cries. I felt dirty from a steady stream of what we North Americans might refer to as aggressive cat-calling or ogling. I was drenched in sweat and tears, and I was painfully conscious of my light skin, blue eyes. Worst of all, I was immersed in a kind of fear that most of my countrywomen never have to face here on the streets of America. Full Story »

My students have expectations of me that I display like banners.

This semester, on the first day of classes, I asked them, “What do you expect of me?” I had them all get out a sheet of paper and write those expectations down.

We had already talked about their expectations for the class. As it happens, I’m teaching six classes at the moment—a double-overload—and each one is different. That means six different sets of expectations. Each class focuses on writing skills, and each class contains a strong media ethics component, but each class offers unique things, as well: radio, internet, multimedia, rhetoric, speechwriting, public relations, events management, literary journalism.

Students can expect to get a lot of different things out of all those different classes.

But it’s important to know, too, what they expect of me. “Tell me what you expect of me, as a professor, as a person, as a communications professional—however you approach it,” I told them.

I invited them to keep their answers anonymous if it would help them be more honest. Most of the students put their names on the papers anyway. No shame in expecting something from your professor, after all.

When the students finished, I collected the papers and read them aloud: Full Story »

The Craftsman, by Richard Sennett
Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work, by Matthew B. Crawford
Makers, by Cory Doctorow

Years ago, when we lived in the middle of New Jersey, I managed to get myself elected to the local school board, mostly by accident. This wasn’t exactly the plan—it was the incumbents, and me, and I just did it so that there would be a contested election. To my surprise, I got elected. And one of the first things I got to do, after dealing with the budget that got voted down that year for the first time in living memory, and the proposal to get rid of the German teacher (which passed), was deal with the proposal to get rid of the shop program and replace it with something that had “technology” in whatever the rubric was, presumably because everyone in the shop classes was now going to become a “knowledge worker.” I spoke against the plan, but I think I lost the argument, which was not unusual. I voted to keep the German teacher, and that didn’t work out either. Full Story »

In case you haven’t heard, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is dead, done in by the nefarious failure to check a single reference in a 3000 page report. Or rather, that’s what climate disruption deniers want you to think. Here’s what’s really going on.

Back in 2007, Working Group 2 (WG2) of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) put together a large list of what climate disruption was likely to impact around the world. One of the impacts was reduced availability of fresh water due to rapidly melting glaciers around the world, and especially in the Himalayas. One of the specific claims was that all Himalayan glaciers could melt by 2035, an amazingly and likely unrealistically fast rate of melting. After an Indian government minister questioned this claim, scientists looked into it and found that the date was incorrect and that internal procedures for vetting references weren’t followed in this particular case. As as result, the IPCC has issued a formal statement of apology for the error.

And if this were about any other topic except climate disruption, that would be the end of it. Full Story »

The Heartland Institute, an organization known to have pushed a pro-tobacco, “smoking is safe” agenda in the 1990s on behalf of Phillip Morris and that now pushes climate disruption denial, released a short “news” article on February 1 titled “Meteorologists Reject U.N.’s Global Warming Claims.” The article distorts the survey it purports to be reporting on and ignores the associated Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (BAMS) paper’s conclusions in favor of Heartland’s political position. Full Story »

Something wicked this way comes.

• Item: Former White House Press Secretary Dana Perino says “we did not have a terrorist attack on our country during President Bush’s term.”
• Item: GOP apologist Mary Matalin says President Bush “inherited the most tragic attack on our own soil in our nation’s history.”
• Item: Former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani says “We had no domestic attacks under Bush; we’ve had one under Obama.”

There are a number of problems with these assertions, not the least of which is that when Saudi terrorists started flying hijacked jets into large buildings on September 11, 2001, George W. Bush had been president of the United States for the better part of eight months. The lapses in memory noted above are all striking, but especially so in the case of Giuliani, who was, from September 11 until he dropped out of the presidential race on January 30, 2008 (a span of roughly 2,332 days, if my math is accurate), unable to say so much as “hello” without somehow shoehorning “9/11″ into the conversation. Full Story »

The AEJMC News jury has rendered its verdict: As a print journalism professor, I am a dinosaur. I suspect many professors like me — bred through long newsroom careers and leavened, in many cases, with doctoral education — feel the same. Outdated. Web 3.0 inadequate. Multi-media insufficient.

In the past year, had I sought a professorship to teach print news reporting, writing, and editing, I’d be hard-pressed to find a job despite my two decades of experience and a really expensive piece of PhD parchment. A reason: Several thousand highly experienced, talented print journalists have been shitcanned by their newspapers in the past two years. But print professorships are few, making it a buyer’s market, writes Joe Strupp at Editor & Publisher.

But there’s another reason: Journalism schools, at least in terms of their job postings, may be shifting identities.
Full Story »

Ten years ago, at the turn of the millennium, Nostraslammy took a stab at predicting the 21st Century, with a promise to check back every ten years to see how the prognostications were turning out. Odds are good I won’t be able to do a review every ten years until 2100, but I figure I’m probably good through 2030, at least, barring some unforeseen calamity. And if you’re Nostraslammy, what’s this “unforeseen” thing, anyway?

Let’s see how our 22 articles of foresight are holding up, one at a time.

1: Researchers will develop either a vaccine or a cure for AIDS by 2020. However, it will be expensive enough that the disease will plague the poor long after it has become a non-issue for the rich and middle classes (although this is one case where political leaders might fund free treatment programs). The end of AIDS will trigger a sexual revolution that will compare to or exceed that of the 1960s and 1970s (unless another deadly sexually-transmitted disease evolves, which is certainly a possibility). Full Story »

Pulitzer- and Emmy-winner William Henry’s famous polemic, In Defense of Elitism (1994), argues that societies can be ranked along a spectrum with “egalitarianism” on one end and “elitism” on the other. He concludes that America, to its detriment, has slid too far in the direction of egalitarianism, and in the process that it has abandoned the elitist impulse that made it great (and that is necessary for any great culture). While Henry’s analysis is flawed in spots (and, thanks to the excesses of the Bush years, there are some other places that could use updating), he brilliantly succeeds in his ultimate goal: crank-starting a much-needed debate about the proper place of elitism in a “democratic” society.

Along the way he spends a good deal of time defining what he means by “egalitarianism” and “elitism.” Full Story »

Still stuck on ideas for a clutter-free holiday gift? Think about supporting your local zoo, museum, or botanical garden.

The world would be a much poorer place without the work of these institutions, whether that work is preserving fine art or wildlife habitat or educational outreach. However, there isn’t much that can be done without financial support. Consider giving a gift of membership. Typical membership benefits include free admission for a year and a guest pass or two, sometimes a bit more. You’ll need to check out the local community, and don’t overlook some of the smaller, less flashy places.

Here in Denver, not only do we have the Denver Zoo, Denver Art Museum, Denver Museum of Nature and Science, but you’ll also find Denver Botanic Gardens, Butterfly Pavilion, Colorado Historical Society, Denver Firefighters Museum, Wings Over the Rockies, and many more. What’s in your area?

Part two in a series.

“Elite” hasn’t always been an epithet. In fact, if we consider what the dictionary has to say about it, it still signifies something potentially worthy. Potentially. For instance:

e·lit·ism or é·lit·ism (-ltzm, -l-) n.
1. The belief that certain persons or members of certain classes or groups deserve favored treatment by virtue of their perceived superiority, as in intellect, social status, or financial resources.le

That definition, while technically accurate enough, could use a bit of untangling, because it embodies the very nature of our problem with elitism in America. In popular use, the term “elite” and its derivatives has been twisted into a pure, distilled lackwit essence of “liberal” – another once-proud word that fell victim to our moneyed false consciousness machine. Full Story »

Part one in a series.

Is there a more radioactive word in American politics today than elitist?

Admit it – you saw the word and had an instinctive negative reaction, didn’t you? If not, then count yourself among the rarest minority in our culture, the fraction of a percent that has not yet had its consciousness colonized by the “evil elitist” meme. If not, you’re one of a handful of people not yet victimized by a cynical public relations frame that poses perhaps the greatest danger to the health of our republic in American history.

Pretty dire language there, huh? Perhaps we’ve ventured a little too deeply into the land of hyperbole? It might seem so at a glance, but in truth the success of any society is largely a function of the things it believes and how those beliefs shape its actions and policies. Full Story »

They say money can’t buy happiness. The same also goes for celebrity, and even the status that accompanies being among the best in the world at your profession. We’ve had ample demonstration of this in recent days.

Robert Enke, the goaltender for Hannover 96 (who currently hover in the middle of the German Bundesliga standings) and a potential member of next year’s German World Cup team, died the other day. His death was apparently a suicide.

“At 1825 (1725GMT) he was run over by a regional express train running between Hamburg and Bremen,” said police spokesman Stefan Wittke. “The train was travelling at the speed of 160-kph.”The player’s friend and consultant Joerg Neblung told reporters: “I can confirm this is a case of suicide. He took his own life just before six (pm).

Enke lost a child in 2006 and has left behind a wife and eight month-old daughter. Full Story »