Professor Edward Schlosser wrote an interesting piece in Vox about, in part, the power his students have to call the shots these days. I can attest that it’s at best, defeating, and at worst, absolutely terrifying. First of all, to clarify, my students are typically a delight, but the current
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A Puff of Absurdity: On Words and Virtue
Scott Long wrote an excellent article separating the act of supporting free speech from the act of supporting the words and images created by Charlie Hebdo. But I disagree with this one bit: “Words don’t kill…” As I said in a comment there, too many young people have lost lives
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: The Tao of Environmentalism
At Politics Respun, Stephen Elliott-Buckley suggests we make decarbonizing our New Year’s resolution. In a fit of frustration, I commented thusly: What does it look like to join you? I mean I’m totally in, but what do I do to “seriously begin to decarbonize”? How to stop this? I already
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On John Stuart Mill, Free Speech, and Climate Change
I got caught up in a few arguments about climate change recently that just reinforced to me, that there’s still such a strong bashlash against the entire idea that we’re unlikely to move forward quickly enough to be effective. Paper is trees! My school board is fundraising for the Philippines,
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On Liberty and Death
One of the reasons I advocate for restrictions on personal freedom as a means to save our species from extinction is that I need my own behaviours to be externally regulated! Intellectually, I can assess what I need from what I want – I think better than most even. I’m
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On Education, Stress, and Success
I’m starting another run at the Futures Forum Project: three subjects over two periods with one teacher (two team-teaching this year) that emphasizes an intentional digital footprint as we write for an authentic audience including students from classes in the 14 other participating schools. Whew! There’s no way I can
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