Gene Marks’ advice to poor black kids is also about as ignorant and trollish as #whitelove can get.

Marks wrote this week:

If I was a poor black kid I would first and most importantly work to make sure I got the best grades possible. I would make it my #1 priority to be able to read sufficiently. I wouldn’t care if I was a student at the worst public middle school in the worst inner city. Even the worst have their best. And the very best students, even at the worst schools, have more opportunities. Getting good grades is the key to having more options. With good grades you can choose different, better paths. If you do poorly in school, particularly in a lousy school, you’re severely limiting the limited opportunities you have.

And I would use the technology available to me as a student. I know a few school teachers and they tell me that many inner city parents usually have or can afford cheap computers and internet service nowadays. That because (and sadly) it’s oftentimes a necessary thing to keep their kids safe at home than on the streets. And libraries and schools have computers available too. Computers can be purchased cheaply at outlets like TigerDirect and Dell’s Outlet. Professional organizations like accountants and architects often offer used computers from their members, sometimes at no cost at all.

If I was a poor black kid I’d use the free technology available to help me study. I’d become expert at Google Scholar. I’d visit study sites like SparkNotes and CliffsNotes to help me understand books. I’d watch relevant teachings on Academic Earth, TED and the Khan Academy. (I say relevant because some of these lectures may not be related to my work or too advanced for my age. But there are plenty of videos on these sites that are suitable to my studies and would help me stand out.) I would also, when possible, get my books for free at Project Gutenberg and learn how to do research at the CIA World Factbook and Wikipedia to help me with my studies.

I would use homework tools like Backpack, and Diigo to help me store and share my work with other classmates. I would use Skype to study with other students who also want to do well in my school. I would take advantage of study websites like Evernote, Study Rails, Flashcard Machine, Quizlet, and free online calculators.

Forget poor black kids, all of that is solid advice for any student who wants to be exceptional, to excel, to make their mark on the world. The advice, however, reminds me of an experiment I conducted several years ago. I wrote a letter to my 13-year-old self, filled with advice on how to make my life easier and future self a better person. That letter too was filled with solid advice. Guess how much my adult self implemented? Not much.

As I expected, Ta-Nehisi Coates writes better, and kinder, words to make Marks’ error plain.

What all these responses have in common is a kind benevolent, and admittedly unintentional, self-aggrandizement. These are not bad people (much as I am sure Mr. Marks isn’t a bad person), but they are people speaking from a gut feeling, a kind of revulsion at a situation which offends our modern morals. In the case of the observer of slavery, it is the chaining and marketing of human flesh. In the case of Mr. Marks, it’s the astonishingly high levels of black poverty.

It is comforting to believe that we, through our sheer will, could transcend these bindings — to believe that if we were slaves, our indomitable courage would have made us Frederick Douglass, if we were slave masters our keen morality would have made us Bobby Carter, that were we poor and black our sense of Protestant industry would be a mighty power sending gang leaders, gang members, hunger, depression and sickle cell into flight. We flatter ourselves, not out of malice, but out of instinct.

Still, we are, in the main, ordinary people living in plush times. We are smart enough to get by, responsible enough to raise a couple of kids, thrifty to sock away for a vacation, and industrious enough to keep the lights on. We like our cars. We love a good cheeseburger. We’d die without air-conditioning. In the great mass of humanity that’s ever lived, we are distinguished only by our creature comforts, but on the whole, mediocre.

While we can not all be exceptional, half of us have to be below average, we can at least be afforded exceptional opportunities to discover our potential for exceptionalism.

Originally, the trailer was available for embedding and the full show was avialable through the CBC and Vimeo, but those links are now broken. I work with students with Autism Sepctrum Disorder. I see and feel the frustration of parents who need answers. The comments on the CBC page are just a hint of the conversations that take place.

Sadly, I think that, like the common cold and cancer, no single answer is likely to emerge.

Maggie Koerth-Baker wrote a piece for Boing Boing this week asking the question: Who Is A Journalist?

That we even feel a need to ask the question upsets me, and I have bona fide credentials from Ohio University’s Journalism College stating in clear language that I are a journalist. That piece of paper is roughly the equivalent of a dozen sheets or so of Army toilet paper.

A journalist, like a writer, is a person who in the first case, journals and in the second case, writes. Degrees, audiences, publications, none of that matters. We get hung up on this because as a way of restricting First Amendment rights, we have woven tortuous laws protecting journalists who fit a narrow — typically employed by a publication or broadcaster with enough money to hire lawyers — definition of who is a journalist.

The problem arises from how the First Amendment is written:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Ah, those pesky commas and semi-colons. The text in bold could have been written: or abridging the freedom of speech, or abridging the freedom of the press; See the difference?

We all get to stand on a soap box and speak our minds and we all get to publish what we write using a printing press. The amendment doesn’t understand the press to mean the men and women gathering news and writing about what they learn, the press literally means the freedom of anyone who owns a printing press to publish what they want.

That worked just fine until along came radio, and later television. Own a press, no matter how simple — how I do miss mimeographs — and you could use it as you saw fit. The government managed to throttle radio and television by declaring the public airwaves a scarce resource that had to be hoarded by licensing.

Then the Internet happened. Holy shit, anyone could publish anything for free, or near enough as it makes no difference, which brings us back to Koerth-Baker’s question.

So far, the government has not been able to throttle the Internet the way it did radio and television (although it continues to try, the most recent permutation of trashing the First Amendment is the insidious and disengenuous Stop Online Piracy Act.

Until someone can convince me otherwise, any person reporting their experiences, impressions and reactions to an event in their life is a journalist. To believe otherwise is to further relinquish our First Amendment rights to the one percent.

David Gans and Doug Kendall write:

What conservatives such as Olson and Calabresi have slowly been recognizing is that it is inappropriate to look to the intentions of the Framers of the 14th Amendment to trump the actual text they wrote, the cardinal sin in constitutional interpretation if ever there were one. It is the text that guides and binds judges, and the text of Section 1 of the 14th Amendment broadly supports protection of fundamental rights and equality under the law for all persons, not just former slaves. In ratifying the 14th Amendment, the American people redeemed the Constitution from the sin of slavery by adding to our foundational charter a universal guarantee of equality, covering every person in the United States. As Calabresi emphasizes, under the original meaning of that text, all systems of caste and subordination violate the 14th Amendment.

I was particularly taken in reading the analysis of Gans and Kendall as regards how:

[T]he emerging consensus and embrace of originalism by Justice Ginsburg reflects just how rapidly the debate over constitutional interpretation is shifting. Her willingness to acknowledge that fidelity to constitutional text leads to greater equality is a signal that originalism isn’t the sole province of conservatives anymore. The inevitable result: One by one, the shibboleths of the right about the “original” meaning of the Constitution are being discredited, while progressives increasingly embrace the Constitution’s text and history.

As a matter of research on my current novel project I am deeply immersed in the second American revolution — Reconstruction — and to fully understand that, I have been slowly making my way through texts on the 14th Amendment. The three texts that I am pouring over at present are: Reconstruction : America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877 by Eric Foner,
Black Reconstruction in America by W.E.B. Du Bois and The Framing of the 14th Amendment by Joseph James.

Andrew Gelman and Kaiser Fung write:

It’s hard to be sure what process an author uses. But by appearances, the way the authors of the Freakonomics series make their work is too linear [see illustration below] to provide adequate vetting of research. In SuperFreakonomics, for instance, economist Steven Levitt trusts authors of primary research whom he knows or respects. Journalist Stephen J. Dubner trusts Levitt’s assessment of their work, and together they create narratives about it. The book’s editors seem by and large to have trusted the authors’ account, delivering it to readers who place trust in the Freakonomics brand. Although there may be more opportunities for feedback along the way than outsiders can discern, the problems and errors encountered in the authors’ work suggest that there is room for improvement.

An ideal process for the popularization of statistical analysis [Mouse over illustration] includes many steps and is far from linear. One example of what such a process might look like is shown above. The popularizer carefully interviews primary researchers, or writes thoughtfully about his or her own work; seeks out and questions authoritative secondary sources; circles back to clarify points with the original researchers; ponders the evidence; crafts a story; works both alone and with a trustworthy editor to revise and shape the piece; and only then delivers it to the public. The process changes dynamically in response to discoveries the popularizer makes, new questions he or she uncovers, and complications that pop up along the way.

Gawd forgive me for quoting President Ronald Reagan: Trust, but verify.

Julian P. Heicklen is on trial for jury tampering in New York because he wants the fourth branch of government, juries made up of citizens, to know their rights.

In Georgia v. Brailsford, 1794, Chief Justice of The United States John Jay wrote:

It is presumed, that juries are the best judges of facts; it is, on the other hand, presumed that courts are the best judges of law. But still both objects are within your power of decision… you [juries] have a right to take it upon yourselves to judge both, and to determine the law as well as the fact in controversy.

I’ve been called to jury duty once but never served (the case ended in a plea) but I can see and understand the sense of framing the central role of the jury as the final bastion against unjust laws. The One Percent may be able to buy the legislature, the executive, hell, even the judiciary, but they cannot buy off every single member of he 99 percent.

By some estimates between 4,000 and 5,000 members of the Occupy Movement have been arrested and may face trials in the coming months. Prosecutors must be concerned that if even one unemployed, foreclosed upon, citizen makes it into the jury box, the State’s case may be worthless.

Coel Hellier writes:

The topic of religion in the Third Reich is much too large to provide anything but a brief summary here. A good book-length account is Steigmann-Gall’s “The Holy Reich”, which demonstrates that the majority of the leading Nazis considered themselves to be Christian, with a minority also having leanings to Nordic/German pagan folk-religion. See also this accessible compilation of religious quotes, photos and artifacts by leading Nazis (a compilation from which the photos displayed here are taken).

Nazi theology, however, departed from mainstream Christianity in regarding the Christian churches as misguided and having been corrupted from the original aims of Jesus by Jewish influence, particularly that of Paul. The Nazis claimed that Jesus was not a Jew, but instead an Aryan (again, to the Nazis these were separately created races).

Once again, Ann Coulter and her ilk just can’t stand up to the light of inquiry.

Via Mano Singham…

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

From The Nation:

Angela Davis has noted that one of the failures in our collective memory of the 1963 bombing of a church in Birmingham is that we have forgotten the names and activist leanings of the four girls—Carole, Denise, Addie Mae and Cynthia—who are often merely reported to be four black girls who died in the bombings. In fact, the burgeoning activists were preparing to give a presentation about civil rights at the church’s annual Youth Day program. Rosa Parks, before she refused to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, had just finished a course on nonviolent action. To neglect the activist background and intention of these women is to believe falsely that historic moments like the civil rights movement “just happen.” In fact, years of organizing and strategizing bring about their birth. Travis Holloway, a poet, political philosopher and activist at Occupy Wall Street, believes this movement has the potential to go beyond mere words and slogans (though, he writes in a recent piece, these help), and like the civil rights movement, to effect real change. Along with suggestions from a wide range of activists, here are “Ten Things” to keep the Occupy movement going and build a foundation for long-term change.

Holy ^*^&%#$^*W#$%&^*&($ Batman…

Lou Chibbaro writes:

The Virginia State Board of Social Services voted 5 to 1 on Wednesday to allow licensed adoption agencies to refuse to approve adoptions or foster parents based solely on a would-be parent’s sexual orientation as well as six other characteristics.

The board took that action by rejecting for the second time this year an adoption related rule change first drafted in 2009 by state social services officials under former Governor Tim Kaine.

The proposed change called for banning discrimination in the state’s adoption and foster care system solely because of someone’s sexual orientation, religion, age, gender, disability, political beliefs, or family status.

Rachel Maddow also had a few thoughts at timemark 8:25…

Kim 515 speculates:

When the hobbits return to the Shire after their journey to Mordor, Gandalf leaves them close to Bree and goes towards Bombadil’s country to have words with him. We do not know what they say. But Gandalf was sent to Middle Earth to contend against Sauron and now he must depart. He has been given no mission to confront Bombadil and he must soon leave Middle Earth to powerless men and hobbits, while Bombadil remains, waiting to fulfill his purpose.

Kim is not the first to ponder the origins of Tom Bombadil.

Pickin’ & Trimmin’ from Matt Morris Films on Vimeo.

0506: Animals and me

It only takes a girl…

Via Shamash…

Tim Russo writes:

So, I just watched tonite’s GA livestream (in our new office!), and it was reported there that the City of Cleveland is threatening to take down the meditation area of the info tent on Public Square on Wednesday because they say it is “an eyesore”.

First, I’m still exhausted and enraged from the Orwell action, so I may not be in the right frame of mind to comment on this adequately, and second, please, I beg of you, I really don’t want to get into a “tent trogs vs. non-tent FBers” debate (tent trogs is their term for themselves, I use it in love!). But I really have to comment on this, because I feel some responsibility.

I posted the video below, “Occupy Cleveland Preps for Winter” on Tuesday night. The very next day the city began inspecting the tent almost hourly, and that has Continue Reading »