StickWithANose

My favorite….
10: Talk like William Shatner: “Hey… kids. Time… to… take out the trash.” They’ll soon wonder who holds the patent on this eloquent way of speaking.
More at Wired.

News this week out of North Carolina provides a window into how the corporate take-over of public education continues apace: EdWeek
Faced with a yawning budget gap, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school board last week approved plans to let go of hundreds of teachers, basing that decision on the teachers’ low performance on evaluations, rather than on their [...]

The next time Stick loudly proclaims: “To the wine bar!” followed by a regal hand clap… Cut him off! [Physical restraint acceptable]
Head hurts too much to even consider making a real post…. See you tomorrow.

Educational Bribery in Action: Tennessean
Advocate of Arbitrary Torture Shows Lack of Ethics: LGM [aka. A primer on why people blog under a pseudonym.]
Selling Computers in China Means Selling Soul: NYT
What’s Wrong with Financial Television: CJR
How to Fix Financial Television: Big Picture
What’s Wrong with Financial Television [redux]: Big Picture
1984: Wired

This fluff piece in EdWeek really touched a nerve. On its surface, the article is another contribution to a long line of Horatio Alger stories documenting the unlikely success of government officials who have risen to the top of their profession, but there is an internal contradiction to this story that raises my blood pressure.
This [...]

Michael Pollan or Michel Foucault? You decide.
Bankruptcy and Medical Bills: BusinessWeek
Democratic-Industrial Complex: Hullabaloo
Economics Is Hard for Sarah Palin: LGM
Fraudulent U.S. monthly jobs-report: Seeking Alpha
Myth of the Rational, Efficient Market: Big Picture

Animal Spirits has posted a telling collection of graphs that lead to a rather disturbing conclusion: [h/t Naked Capitalism]
The forecast is for more bitter fighting over a dwindling pie until growth stalls completely in about five years.  That is when the real crisis begins.
In the meanwhile the allocation of economic pain will reveal the usually [...]

One of the central contradictions of the market-based education reforms promoted by think-tanks, business groups and the White House is that these reforms are predicated on the perceived educational need to produce high-performing students with the creative-innovative skills to develop new technologies, grow new industries and establish a foundation for continued economic growth in a [...]

The New York Times offers up another example of the continuing failure of the Fourth Estate to fulfill its prescribed role in reporting on education policy. With rapidly shrinking budgets, the news stories emanating from the ‘Old Grey Lady’ are constructed from a mish-mash of press releases and vapid interviews with a narrow subset of [...]

Today’s must read for the health care debate. [h/t Lykins]
Tennessee Joins Other States In Developing Uniform Curriculum: Tennessean
Benny & The Feds: Naked Capitalism
Arne Duncan tells 3 whoppers about his ’success’ in the Chicago Public School System: Schools Matter
Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack of Black Privilege in the Age of Obama: We Are Respectable Negroes