Reports suggest UVa board wanted president to eliminate language programs

Apparently, her defense of the classics and German was among the reasons UVa recently ousted the presudent. As a grad student needing to beef up my foreign kanguage credentuals, I took the summer German course Herr McDonald comments on here. William C. McDonald, director of undergraduate studies in German at the university, stressing that he…

9-Year-Old Who Changed School Lunches Silenced By Politicians

This young blogger has learned a very important lesson about power and privilege. I’m sure the story does not end here. We anguish about getting kids to be enthusiastic about healthy, sustainable food — to not prefer the bad stuff, not waste the good stuff, and not be entitled little monsters who whine about when their next…

Woodward and Bernstein: Could the Web generation uncover a Watergate-type scandal? – The Washington Post

Yale journalism students say they could have easily broken the Watergate scandal themselves, simply by Googling for keywords. “This is Yale,” Bernstein said gravely. “That somehow the Internet was a magic lantern that lit up all events,” Woodward said. “And they went on to say the political environment would be so different that Nixon wouldn’t…

Shepard Fairey Pleads Guilty Over Obama ‘Hope’ Image

The street artist Shepard Fairey, whose “Hope” campaign poster of Barack Obama became an enduring symbol of his last presidential campaign, pleaded guilty Friday to a charge stemming from his misconduct in trying to bolster claims in a lawsuit over which photograph had been used as a basis for the poster. Shepard Fairey Pleads Guilty Over…

The New York Times public editor’s very public utterance

Now, it’s worth noting that Brisbane’s question makes perfect sense, considered from the newsroom’s perspective. Romney’s claim that Obama makes speeches “apologising” for America isn’t readily amenable to fact-checking. Instead, Romney relied on what are sometimes called “weasel words”, in which an allegation is alluded to, without being made head-on. (Romney, for instance, never quotes…

The (Manic Pixie) Dreamgirl to “Ease the Revolutionary Mind” » Cyborgology

Whereas a mere couple decades ago, one could simply point a finger at the mass media and their powerful cultural producers as the source of most offensive stereotypes about minority groups, Web 2.0 technology and the #Occupy movement shows us how stereotypes can be perpetuated, embellished, nay, even constructed at the grassroots level, by men…

Micheal Flaherty: The Latest Crime Wave—Sending Your Child to a Better School – WSJ.com

Even when I mentally adjust for the alarmist rhetoric, I find this truly frightenting. What a pathetic use of resources… what a painful sign that our public schools are failiing, when they circle the wagons like this and villify their neighbnors, in an attempt to keep their local systems afloat. Other school districts use services…

Johnstown, PA. High School Cancels Play Due To Islamic Setting

Kismet is set in ancient Baghdad, a time historians call “The Islamic Golden Age.” Johnstown is in western Pennsylvania. “Flight 93 flew right over our heads,” school Superintendent Thomas Fleming Jr. explains. United Airlines Flight 93, of course, plowed into the ground nearby on Sept. 11, 2001, after the hijackers were overpowered by the passengers…