A Wandering, Disjointed Post on Professionalism and Some Other Stuff

I am discovering that my definition of professionalism might not be the same one used by other people I work with.
To wit:
Professional = Soulless and Objectifying
See?
Don’t get me wrong – I understand where the perception of a need for professionalism, professional behavior, professional ethics, etc., comes from, and by and large I don’t disagree. [...]

Speechless…. and Highly Amused

The Air Sex Championships.
1. Semi-surprisingly, the link is work-safe, and as far as I can tell, the event itself is pretty clean.
2. YATTA! (A reference to the heads of the six men on the right side of the screen)
Search for Yatta on Youtube or Google Video and watch it in all its [...]

Author Courtney Martin on Feminism

While this is an otherwise straightforward column, I really liked this bit:
Educated choice: Both men and women need to have access to choices and, even more, they need to have the tools necessary to make good choices. It is not enough to just say that women should have access to abortions, for example. They also [...]

The triumph of appearance

Interesting news:
WASHINGTON (AFP) — A new poll Monday showed Democrat Hillary Clinton losing a general election to all top Republican White House hopefuls, in a new sign that biting political attacks may be harming her 2008 campaign.
The Zogby International hypothetical 2008 matchup, reversing months of Clinton dominance over the Republican field, came as her camp [...]

Hering’s Sense of Self-Preservation and/or Common Sense

Apparently it kicked it just long enough for him to write this editorial.
Funny, though – he omits any discussion of why a nonpartisan SecState is good, or why the job has party affiliation attached to it in the first place. He also omits, well, anything else – including his usual attitude that almost always [...]

John Howard: Australia :: Dick Cheney : United States

The big difference is that Howard was willing to put himself in public, at least a bit.
Heck, they even look the same – short, old, balding, pudgy white dudes. (Of course, it’s not hard when the pool of elites to draw from is almost exclusively overweight old white dudes, but hey – sometimes they [...]

300 dead by taser in the U.S. this year alone

…this is the last one, I promise. But I felt a need to at least post the link.
This is why I despise tasers and police-state tactics.
This needs to stop.

Chris Matthews does something right

Normally that guy is pretty insane, especially when it comes to gender. This time, he gets one right. This is in regards to asking why anti-abortion activists don’t seek criminal penalties against women who get abortions:
MATTHEWS: It just seems like you make a basic political judgment that would blame the doctor, when, [...]

NYT’s "100 Notable Books of the Year"

I might have to take a closer look at this.
… what’s with all the prices? I hope those are just for the hardcovers.

Australia’s Howard is out

Good frackin’ riddance. That guy is incredibly racist. Everything I saw come out of his government was Bush-lite and/or neoliberalism 101. Plus, he’d been PM for 10 or 11 years or so (way too long, in other words).
I hope Rudd is better, especially on Aboriginal issues…. but I doubt he will [...]

DH: Alexander amends motion re: firing Robinson

I have one question: Did Meadowbrook know about his misreading of the statute beforehand, or did he really find out when the DH ran the story the first time?
Either answer’s not good – the former means that he was playing politics in a bad way, and the latter means that he’s not all that [...]

LTE on Williams’ Column

[Sometimes I capitalize post titles and sometimes I don't. I wonder why.]
Anyway, there is a letter to the editor in the DH responding to Ben Williams’ Young Voices column.
An excerpt from the letter:
In closing, I must summarize that at least one student has been able to overcome the lack of leadership within our school [...]

Get Off My Lawn Or I’ll Shoot Edition

Of course it’s Hering. Who else would it be?
I’ll keep this short – I have better things to do:
The same issue has come up in Oregon in connection with public schools. A Medford teacher challenged her school district’s policy that barred her from being armed on school grounds. She went to court and lost, [...]

The History Boys

Picked this film up at random this evening and watched it with two friends.
It was amazing.
I don’t want to give away any plot information, but here are three things that were raised during the film:
1. Student-teacher relationships, including power dynamics.
2. Pedagogy, specifically modern vs. postmodern understandings of truth, history, and literature.
3. Masculinity, [...]

Alexander wastes everyone’s time – again

LT has already posted on this, but I want to point something out that I noticed while reading the dead tree version of this story:
Alexander is asking the court to interpret the contract in light of an Oregon statute, ORS 342.845, that states school boards “may elect not to extend the administrator’s contract for any [...]