Anyone in the market for a good used machine tool should talk to Noel Dempsey, a dealer in Richmond, Virginia. Noel’s bustling warehouse is full of metal lathes, milling machines, and table saws, and it turns out that most of it is from schools. EBay is awash in such equipment, also from schools. It appears shop class is becoming a thing of the past, as educators prepare students to become “knowledge workers.”
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I began working as an electrician’s helper at age fourteen, and started a small electrical contracting business after college, in Santa Barbara. In those years I never ceased to take pleasure in the moment, at the end of a job, when I would flip the switch. “And there was light.” It was an experience of agency and competence. The effects of my work were visible for all to see, so my competence was real for others as well; it had a social currency. The well-founded pride of the tradesman is far from the gratuitous “self-esteem” that educators would impart to students, as though by magic.
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Following graduate school in Chicago, I took a job in a Washington, D.C. think tank. I hated it, so I left and opened a motorcycle repair shop in Richmond.
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There was more thinking going on in the bike shop than in the think tank.

wonderful wonderful essay which reminded me strongly of "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance"

The New Atlantis - Shop Class as Soulcraft - Matthew B. Crawford

“It seems almost certain that the modern global slave trade is larger in absolute terms than the Atlantic slave trade in the 18th and 19th centuries was,” notes an important article about trafficking in the current issue of Foreign Affairs. It adds, “Just as the British government (after much prodding by its subjects) once used the Royal Navy to stamp out the problem, today’s great powers must bring their economic and military might to bear on this most crucial of undertakings.”

A Cambodian Girl’s Tragedy: Being Young and Pretty - New York Times

In this town of 120, 000 people, one not only feels the bitter cold but also the white heat of the technological revolution. As well as the principal research and development offices of Nokia and 800 other high-tech companies, there are probably more Ph.D.s per square meter in this compact old paper-milling town than anywhere else on earth.

This astonishing intellectual creation can be laid at the feet of the Finnish educational system, considered by all who survey it, including the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, as possessing the best school system in the world. Finland is also reckoned to be in the top three of the world's most competitive countries.

Why? "Teachers are respected," says Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen. "High talent is attracted into teaching. It is considered to be one of the most important professions."
...
In short, the Finns work at it. Unencumbered by a class-stratified educational system, they have shown that equality aids progress, rather than hindering it.

Magic in the classroom - Opinion - International Herald Tribune

Watching “Eyes on the Prize” again was like reminiscing with an old friend or relative about the bad old days that, in some important respects, were also the good old days.

Already the story so brilliantly told by this masterpiece of documentary filmmaking, the civil rights struggle of the 1950s and ’60s, is fading, like the images on old film stock, from our collective consciousness.

It’s fantastic to have a memorial to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on the National Mall in Washington. But “Eyes on the Prize” is the most powerful reminder we have of how broad the struggle was, how many people of great courage — from small children to very old men and women — signed on to it, how many of them suffered and sometimes died, and what all of us owe to all of them.
...
“Eyes” first ran in 1987 and is being shown again this fall on PBS. Understated, mostly in black and white, it has lost none of its startling emotional impact. There were moments, as I watched the episodes unfold, when I wanted to jump through the television and throttle somebody.
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“Eyes on the Prize” is a demonstration that even the greatest challenges can be overcome. It’s a national treasure, important for all the reasons that history is important.

A Story of Struggle and Hope - New York Times

As activists organised by the group Stop Climate Chaos gather in London to demand action, one of Britain's top climate scientists says the language of chaos and catastrophe has got out of hand.
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I have found myself increasingly chastised by climate change campaigners when my public statements and lectures on climate change have not satisfied their thirst for environmental drama and exaggerated rhetoric.
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The IPCC scenarios of future climate change - warming somewhere between 1.4 and 5.8 Celsius by 2100 - are significant enough without invoking catastrophe and chaos as unguided weapons with which forlornly to threaten society into behavioural change.

I believe climate change is real, must be faced and action taken. But the discourse of catastrophe is in danger of tipping society onto a negative, depressive and reactionary trajectory.

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Chaotic world of climate truth

Can gardening help reform habitual drug abusers? Celebrity gardener Monty Don has taken a group of ex-offenders under his wing, and two years into this pioneering project, is starting to see rewards.
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The effort so far has been "hard, grim and battling" says Don. Their low came when one of the group, Martin, died.

"When somebody you know, 23, is found dead with a needle in their groin in the lavatory, that is a horrible disaster, a tragedy so it's shocking."
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High points came with an open day where families, friends and even police and magistrates, were invited on site "to eat our sausages from the pigs we raised and salads we had grown".

BBC NEWS | Magazine | Digging out of drug abuse

Decius wrote:

adam wrote:
I, although I'm English, believe in a decent America, a moderate America that speaks at the ballot box but is generally quiet and modest.

Thanks Adam... Its been noted somewhere that our political parties have become dominated by the fringes.

First, you've got to be a hot shirt to want to get involved in the first place. Most nonlawyers are too focused on their lives to become really involved in politics.

Second, you're not welcome if you're not partisan. You have to work for one team or the other. Its a party system, and people who aren't playing don't go far. (For example, I think given the age of this blog, if it was clearly partisan one way or the other it would be a lot more popular than it is, because partisans who have the attention of a lot of people would promote it because it serves their interests. It doesn't serve interests, and so it isn't useful. Same thing with people in the political system. If you want to get ahead you have to pick a side.)

Third, the candidates are largely chosen by the powerful members of the parties. They hold primaries, but you have to get into the primary, and the primary doesn't have all of the power, in particular with regard to the Presidential election.

There is a hell of a lot of money in the system, and its really directed by two small groups of people. Its even questionable whether access to one of those groups is a meritocracy, as our Congressional positions have become increasingly hereditary. The sons have instant access to the circles that control access to the primaries.

The sources of dialog are mostly controlled by this money. There are a few outliers like MSNBC who clearly serve other interests. But most of the big outlets are either left or right.

I hope you're right, that there is this great, silent, moderate America, but it has no voice, and its hard to beleive that its real when you never hear from it...

I disagree the world has heard from it in art and felt their acts. I would add to my list (ie the farmers in Steinbeck etc) by including Band of Brothers. A country that produces Major Winters and the men of Easy company has clear hidden depths like a sunlit lake. Keep your eyes on the prize brother.

RE: Media Matters - Media uncritically reported Bush's false claim

Decius wrote:

BUSH: The Democrats just follow a simple philosophy.

Just say no.

When it comes to listening to the terrorists, what's the Democrats' answer?

It's just say no.

When it comes to detaining terrorists, what is the Democrats' answer?

Just say no.

When it comes to questioning terrorists, what's the Democrats' answer?

AUDIENCE: Just say no.

BUSH: When it comes to trying the terrorists, what's the Democrats' answer?

AUDIENCE: Just say no.

BUSH: So when the Democrats ask your for vote, what's your answer?

AUDIENCE: No!

Mr. Bush's own lawyers argued "just say no" on the matter of trying terrorists, preferring instead hold them forever without trial:

There is no obligation under the laws and customs of war for the military to charge captured combatants with any offense and, indeed, the vast majority of combatants seized during war are detained as a simple war measure without charges. Similarly, there is no general right to counsel under the laws and customs of war
for those who are detained as enemy combatants.

John Kerry has been getting tarred and featherd for 24 hours because of a misinterpretation of something he said. He didn't mean it, but half the country is mad as hell about it anyway.

As someone who cares about the system of checks and balances, civil liberties, and the rule of law, I agree with Democrats who've argued that the President should follow FISA. I don't think the President should be able to apprehend someone in an airport in Chicago and call it a "battlefield detention." I don't think the President should be able to detain people, citizens in particular, indefinately, without charges. I think these things strike at the very heart of the fundamental underpinnings of our system of government and I am mad as hell about it.

Am I misinterpreting the above remarks when I conclude that the President thinks I'm opposed to combating terrorism because of my concerns? No. I'm not. He means it.

Why is it OK to tar and feather one man for something he didn't say, but no one would raise a finger to question another man for something he did say. THIS is offensive! Why isn't anyone, anywhere, expressing any anger about this?

because in many ways you have a silent majority and I don't mean that in convensional terms there is some sort of built in GOP majority or moral majority, with all the built in assumptions about social morality that implies. I, although I'm English, believe in a decent America, a moderate America that speaks at the ballot box but is generally quiet and modest. The farmers of John Steinbeck. The sheep hands in Bareback Mountain. The world of Garrison Keillor. Small town America in It's a Wonderful Life. Twelve Angry Men. People, if I may be so bold, like you Mr Cross.
The Democrats may not take the Senate and lessons in humility are hard to learn but I think Nemesis has noted the hubris of certain politicians and I think maybe planning to pay a visit.

RE: Media Matters - Media uncritically reported Bush's false claim

Bride burnings, honor killings, female infanticide, sex trafficking, mass rape as a weapon of war and many other hideous forms of violence against women are documented in a report released last month by the United Nations.

The report, a compilation of many studies from around the world, should have been seen as the latest dispatch from that permanent world war — the war against women all over the planet. Instead, the news media greeted its shocking contents with a collective yawn.

note rape within marriage was only made illegal in the UK in 1994
see here at a government website for conformation

Punished for Being Female - New York Times

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