It is absolutely true that the “hero” rhetoric that is attached to all things related to the U.S. military is used to shut down real debate about the merits of what exactly it is that all those heroes are doing out there. If all soldiers are heroes, then all soldiers are righteous. If all soldiers are righteous, then the soldiers’ cause is righteous. The soldiers’ cause is war. Therefore the war is righteous. This is one of the oldest tropes in the “Manipulating the Free Press During Wartime” handbook. You need only look back at the profusion of American flag graphics and distinct lack of pointed skepticism that defined the U.S. media in the run up to the Iraq War to know how well this tactic works. It is easy for a TV network and its pundits to be patriotic. Theirs is a cheap patriotism. It is a patriotism of platitudes and comfortable symbols and cartoonish enemy villains to be opposed. Dissenters are just easy weenies to be picked on in the media schoolyard.
May 31st, 2012
Rhino vs. Seal Milk
Mammals are the only animals that provide their young with milk. Whether low-fat, as in black rhino’s milk at 0.2 percent, or high fat, as in hooded seals’ at 61 percent, milk provides nutrition, hormones and growth factors, and antibodies that confer immunity against various diseases.
Sexy Orchids Make Lousy Lovers by Marty Crump, 2009.
(Source: ingridrichter)
May 30th, 2012
So in one week we’ve got three cannibal cases in Florida, a man spitting blood all over a highway patrol officer, another man disemboweling himself and then throwing his intestines at two police officers, and a woman beheading her infant and eating it’s brain…….
(via pragmatic-realist)
(via did-you-kno)
clayboard experiment
(via bookspaperscissors)
Recent studies on literacy reveal that black males are fast becoming one of the most illiterate groups in our society. Many incarcerated black males live most of their adult lives in prisons. In past times, prison has been a location where many black males discovered books and reading for the first time in their lives. Conservative forces in our nation want to deny all prisoners access to books, claiming that reading is a luxury and not a right. Depriving prisoners of the right to read is deemed deserved punishment. That anyone should wish to deny access to literacy in our nation threatens the future or democracy.
bell hooks, in her book “Teaching Critical Reading”
(Source: bowfolk, via thedismembermentflan)
MaMuse - Down On the Altar
Saw these local Chico ladies this evening. Their voices sound like angels.
May 29th, 2012
Give me books, French wine, fruit, fine weather and a little music played out of doors by somebody I do not know.
John Keats
(Source: carouselinparis, via teachingliteracy)
A photographer for over sixty years, Roger Mayne is best known for his post-war studies of London neighborhoods. Click-through for a photo slideshow of a selection of his work, now on display at the Gitterman Gallery: http://nyr.kr/N7zq0u
(via newyorker)
