Making it Official
APELCers, although we’d know the “presumptive” candidates would be their respective parties’ nominees for many months, Barack Obama’s and John McCain’s nomination acceptance speeches at the conventions in Denver and St. Paul made their candidacies official.
I’ve posted an extra-credit opportunity for you on your class page in which I’ve asked you to analyze, and compare and contrast each candidate’s presentation. Here’s video of both for you to consider as you work out the optional assignment:
Barack Obama, Democratic National Convention Nomination Acceptance Speech, Denver, Colorado, August 28, 2008.
John McCain, Republican National Convention Nomination Acceptance Speech, St. Paul, Minnesota, September 5, 2008.
Tonight in Minnesota
John McCain’s running mate Alaska Governor Sarah Palin will officially present herself to the American people shortly according to CNN’s countdown clock. Although, she’s not the first woman to run on a presidential ticket (Geraldine Ferraro ran as Democratic candidate Walter Mondale’s vice-presidential pick in 1984; they were demolished in an uprecedented 49 state win by Ronald Reagan and his vice-president Geroge HW Bush), Palin is part of a historic race that will either result in the first black American winning the White House or the election of America’s oldest president and the first female vice-executive under the oldest. I hope you’re watching.
Some interesting news has followed Palin’s candidacy, notably the Governor’s admission that her seventeen year old daughter is five months pregnant. The media storm that surrounded this admission’s been intense and has engendered much discussion particularly about the boundaries between the public and private lives of elected officials. Yesterday I heard this piece on NPR: “Social Conservatives’ Support For Palin Unwavering”. (Pay attention to Summer Vanderbilt’s comments about the “exciting party” full of “different turns” at the end of the piece.)
Is it possible to separate the public and private lives of our leaders? Of ourselves? If our private morals and belief govern our behavior and decisions, how can we leave these at home, so to speak, when we walk out our doors? What think you? Click “Leave a Comment” to share your thoughts.
Wondering about the history of the modern Republican-conservativism? Have a listen to this NPR piece which details the national rise of one of my heroes, Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater (whose autographed photo sits on the northwest bookshelf in T-12): “1964 Convention Established GOP As Conservative”.
AP Language Class Notes
Seniors and juniors, second period saw Marie tell us about Zoroastrianism; Sam, Baha’i; Andre, Mormonism; and Elise, Hinduism; fifth period processed the anti-Pride Time rhetoric plastered all over campus today and began watching The Persuaders .
Fifth period meted out the speaker, context, audience, argument, presentation (logos), common grounds and values (ethos), emotional anticipations and manipulations (pathos), call-to-action, and effectiveness of the shellacked handbills, though I reminded everyone that while the non-violent pamphleteering-style resistance was admirable, the flyposting aspect was troubling―the custodians, not the posters, will be responsible for scraping the handbills off the concrete.
But note that while you, students, are taught in school to admire and emulate the spirit of the status-quo-resistant activist-reformer (Paine, Wilberforce, Wollstonecraft, Douglass, Anthony, Gandhi, King), the guerilla act was little admired by the-powers-that-be, one going so far as to call the posters “poison”.
I snapped a couple of photos of part of the scene. I’ll post those and a recreation of the mocking pamphlet itself (along with its original positive counterpart) later, and I’ll further address the frustration at the lack of voice Chloe mentioned and possible solutions for interested students to explore.
Bring food to our last class. (I like the bacon, egg, and cheese burrito from Nico’s.)
MOZART’S BALLS: Yes, the confection bearing the name is real. Popularly known as Mozart’s Balls by travelers and tourists, the Mozartkugeln (Mozart balls) (pistachio, marzipan, nougat, and chocolate) were introduced by an Austrian confectioner in the closing years of the 19th century. They don’t taste very good.
AP Language Class Notes
Objective: APELCers completed a practice timed-writing.
You completed your third practice free response essay today, juniors and seniors. Tomorrow and Wednesday you’ll complete the multiple-choice section of the practice exam. I’ve posted details for the optional pre-exam self-evaluation; you must have completed all three practice timed-writings and the multiple-choice practice to get credit for the self-evaluation. The details for the reflection letter have also been posted. Please attend them.
I’m still going over the third drafts of your worldview papers, so I’ve changed the due date for your final drafts to Monday, May 12 ; presentations will still begin on Thursday, though. A summary form for your presentations are posted on your class page; you must use these for your presentation, and you must provide a copy for me and your fellow students. (I’ll change the font size tonight so that you can fit it all on one page.)
I’ll close with some observations about your latest paper drafts. I’ve noticed, despite my repeated warnings and instructions, some troubling trends:
- Many of you haven’t included citations within the body of their paper and many of your papers lack a proper Works Cited page;
- Many of you have included random, rather than purposeful, images with no explanations, and many of you have only used internet sources;
- Many of you have written mere summaries or, even worse, appreciations of their topic worldviews—this is not the task.
Several of you are still having trouble with the idea of critically evaluating others’ beliefs and ideas. Understand that once individuals or groups publicly submit their ideas to the agora , they must be willing to answer questions and defend criticisms of their claims. This is what keeps many of us believing we have no right to judge―not that it’s not correct or fair to criticize others, but rather it’s because once we begin to evaluate others’ claims we then have to be willing to defend our own ideas against questioners. The possibility of that kind of scrutiny is frightening, especially when realize we may not really know the bases upon which our personal worldviews are founded and how to answer challenges.
It’s vital that you be comfortable discussing and evaluating others’ and your own ideas, intelligently, as inoffensively as possible, without rancor. If you can’t, then you must submit to the notion that all ideas are above reporach, all ideas are equal, and all ideas are true, and if those things are are true learning comes to a stop because no one idea is better than another. Even Siddhartha Gautama judged Hinduism unable to resolve man’s existential predicaments and went on to develop his own (very systematic and rigorous) philosophy. Further, America’s founding fathers judged republican democracy better than monarchy, and the people of the Eastern Bloc nations judged liberal capitalism better than totalitarian communism.
Please attend the observations I’ve listed above to ensure you earn the best grade possible. And I’ll offer one more reminder about spelling and conventions: any more than three obvious errors of formal, academic English in your final draft will result in a drop of one in your final grade.
AP Language Class Notes
Objectives: APELCers 1) completed a practice timed-writing, and 2) evaluated their own and their peers’ timed-writing performance.
Period 2, today you wrote a practice timed-writing, a synthesis essay, which many of you found easier or at least better than timed-writings 6 and 7. You worked in groups and assessed your and your peers’ performance.
A couple of quick items on the importance of worldview. I hope you’re paying attention to the media coverage of our current presidential campaign, because worldview has taken center stage for two of the hopefuls.
Barack Obama has had to distance himself from Jeremiah Wright , his former pastor, for comments the latter’s made on a recent series of speaking engagements .
Meanwhile, John McCain has had to deal with the heat generated by the endorsement of Christian Zionist and Texas megaminster John Hagee , who himself has made controversial comments about Catholics and God’s supposed retribution on New Orleans .
Developing the skills to sort through these ideas and rheotric is essential for critical particiaption in the agora, students.
AP Language Class Notes
Objective: APELCers 1) outlined approaches to writing synthesis essays, and 2) attempted to resolve the reformer’s dilemma.
Fifth period, you began by looking over your first timed-writing source packet and the packet the sub handed out on Monday with which you plotted various use of resources to support synthesis arguments. You then looked over several premises that argue in favor of cultural relativism (pertinent to our study of Things Fall Apart , you current worldview papers, and critical thinking about deductions) and attempted to solve the reformer’s dilemma which states, briefly, that if all cultures and the moral doctrine which obligate their constituents to act are relative, reformers (think Franklin, Gandhi, Lenin, King, et cetera) who try to change conditions within society have no foundation for their activism.
All of this stuff about morals and reality and knowing and being and truth may seem strange to you, but if you consider all of the literature you’ve ever read (even back to your freshman texts like The Odyssey , To Kill a Mockingbird , Romeo and Juliet , Of Mice and Men ―fresh in my mind since I’ve been teaching these this year) and all the literature you’ll read in the future, especially in college and university, you’ll see that such metaphysical, ontological, and espitemological concerns form the backbone of all canons of art and discussions of social issues from ancient history to the present day. I hope that our analyses will provide you opportunities that you might not otherwise have to think critically about these issues.
Campaign Art
Well, Tuesday’s poltical action in Rhode Island, Ohio, Texas, and Vermont turned out better for some than others. Hillary Clinton survived, and Mike Huckabee didn’t, the former (arguably) less expected than the latter. Maybe it all came down to campaign art.
Campaign graphics and logos are important, more important, perhaps, than many of us realize. Indeed, I was suprised to learn about the intricate rhetorical subtleties of the various campaign logos while I listened to a recent interview with Wired magazine’s Scott Dadich on campaign art at the The Economist’s “Democracy in America” blog. Salon.com also recently posted a piece on the same: “May the Best Logo Win”.
National Grammar Day
Students, imagine I was teaching you astronomy and I instructed you that our sun and planets revolve around the Earth. Or consider I was teaching you history and I advocated the oppression of the lower class because I believed its constituents socially and economically incapable of functioning autonomously in society. Or imagine even that I was teaching you biology, and instructed you that certain races of people were inherently physically and intellectually superior to others. At best, you’d think me ignorant and bigoted, at worst, stupid and racist.
Unfortunately, many pop-grammarians and even educators happily perpetuate the unscientific, incorrect, and prejudiced belief (as unscientific as the Ptolemaic conception of the relationship of heavenly bodies, as incorrect as a class of people’s ability based upon its economic disadvantage, and as prejudiced as the idea of inherent racial superiority) that certain grammars are better, purer, more acceptable and palatable than others. Ideas like these that give rise to such inanities as National Gammar Day, sponsored by the Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar.
Nathan Bierma, at the Chicago Tribune, weighs in on the dubious festivities and admits his ambivalence: “Don’t get carried away on National Grammar Day”. Arnold Zwicky, linguist at Stanford, is a bit more pointed, though: “National (OMIGOD) Grammar Day”.
So what’s the controversy? Well, it has to do with the distinction between grammar and usage and the surrounding language myths. These myths began many centuries ago and persist to this day and vex the uniformed usage-police (who curiously give Shakespeare a pass) and hurt the usage-violators who suffer under the scornful red pens of the former.
Well, what’s grammar? And what’s usage? Objectively, grammar is the machine that makes capable, drives, and accounts for human speech. Usage is a list of prescribed rules of written English and has to do with mere matters of taste and preference, for example, that one should not split infinitives. In her book Ancient Rhetorics for Modern Students, ASU rhetoric professor Sharon Crowley argues that “usage rules are the conventions [. . .] Americans use to discriminate against one another” (282).
For the real story about how language and how it works, PBS’s site Do You Speak American?, born from Robert MacNeil’s documentary of the same name, and inspired by his previous work on The Story of English, is a rich resource for earnest, curious, amateur linguists and for ill-informed, pretentious, pietistic pop-grammarians alike. A good place to start is with Edward Finegan who describes the differences between prescriptivism and descriptivism in “What is Correct Language?”.
Other contributions to the site include John Algeo’s chapter from the book Language Myths (I have a copy in my room) in which he tackles the idea of language decay, “Americans are Ruining English”, and Walt Wolfram’s article in which he describes processes of linguistic evolution, “The Truth About Change”. And if you don’t believe these linguists, who can doubt trustworthy NPR contributor Geoff Nunberg who discusses the “the decline of grammar” in “Language Diplomacy”.
I encourage you to begin to really examine your own assumptions about the relationship between language and society by further investigating language prestige and prejudice at the PBS site. Then check out Peter Patrick’s Linguistic Human Rights page, particularly his Ten Linguistic Axioms (and see also his page on African American English).
Happy National Grammar Day!
Linkjam!
With Chris Jordan’s photo series still stuck in my head, I thought it time to post the art links that have been backing up.
First, Peter Plagens asks in a Newsweek article if, with the advent of new technologies, “Is photography dead?”. Probably not, as publications such as National Geographic continue to celebrate the medium with its list of the top ten photos of 2007 (dig the cloud leopard of Borneo, third picture in). But then who needs photographic images if others can capture with paint and canvas what light imprints on treated film, such as these “9 artists who will blow your mind”.
It’s easy to be fooled by the photoreal images at the former link, but how difficult is it to fool discriminating art professionals? Apparently, not too difficult, at least not for Freddie Linsky who, according to a Daily Mail article, fooled “the art world into buying his tomato ketchup paintings”.
Perhaps art appreciation is a matter of perspective, but in the case of several sidewalk painters, perspective is everything as can be seen here: “New 3D Sidewalk Paintings”. And there’s plenty more unusual, and non-traditional art to be seen the world over; just witness these “33 Weird Statues and Sculptures Around The World”.
The sculptures at the former link may make some scratch their heads and wonder: “Do all we or others say is ‘art’ qualify as such?” Some creative graffiti (pay attention Danielle) might be argued to have artistic merit. Consider, for example, these “7 Unusually Geeky Approaches to Graffiti”.
Innovations in science, math, and technology offer other new opportunities for artistic expression. Dig these exploding nano-wires, these fractal art contest winners , and these symmetric energy pictures.
Enjoy the art, boys and girls.
Linkjam!
Mostly for APELC students, here’re some links I mentioned to you which are germane to our recent activities.
After reading “On Compassion” by Barbara Ascher, I referenced “A Dollar a Day”, a recent, four-part BBC documentary. Worth listening to and wondering about when you plunk down $4.00 or more for a Starbuck’s macchiato.
Eric Wilson, author of Against Happiness: In Praise of Melancholy, was interviewed on NPR this week about engaging melancholy. Interesting listen in consideration of our late encounter with John Stuart Mill’s and his thoughts on happiness.
Finally, here’s an article from Newsweek, particularly noteworthy for Blaise and Eliza who’ve recently referenced the “safety” of one of Amsterdam’s most famous attractions for their argumentative papers in favor of legalized, regulated prostitution: “Turn Out the Red Light?” Seems like the fun’s over in that very special and unusually aromatic section of the city.
Linkjam!
Last week I came across a series of photographs by Chris Jordan, Running the Numbers, in which he makes manifest the vast consumption habits of the American people. (His other series include another on American consumption, Intolerable Beauty, and one on the the devastation suffered in the Gulf Coast in 2005, In Katrina’s Wake.) Several APELCers asked me to post the link to the very remarkable images, and, certainly, they’re rhetorically rich and worth looking at in class.
I’ve collected a few links in the past couple of months about consumption, waste, and recycling. The first is a piece about Ari Derfel, who kept his trash for an entire year to see just what one person was capable of generating.
Another is an opinion from The Economist entitled “The truth about recycling”. This is particularly important when one considers the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, continent-sized patches of trash floating in the Pacific Ocean.
Perhaps you’re not aware of just what can be recycled, so you might check here: “21 Things You Didn’t Know You Can Recycle”. And get active and get more information from the National Recycling Coalition.
AP Language Class Notes
Objectives: APELC students argued and defended a position on a current issue.
Juniors and seniors, today you tackled the following article from The Daily Mail: “Britain kow tows to China as athletes are forced to sign no criticism contracts”. In a delicious twist, I asked you to defend China’s request of participating nations’ athletes, which I thought might be good practice, that is, you fighting for a controversial, perhaps unpopular position.
The discussions were interesting, but Shawn made an incisive point when he suggested that those athletes who felt strongly about the problem of China’s human rights violations should boycott the games altogether, forsaking their training for the sake of their oppressed fellows. How might Tommie Smith and John Carlos have acted differently?
I said I’d post some links to resources that might help background the issue for those interested, and a good place to start, I think, is with the visceral event from recent memory, the Tiananmen Square massacre of Chinese dissidents in 1989. Frontline highlighted the dissidents’ oppression, first with a focus on The Gate of Heavenly Piece, a vivid documentary film ten years hence, and then in an episode simply entitled “Tankman”, which uses one figure’s “lonely act of defiance” as a critical historical lens.
Be sure to examine Human Rights Watch page on the history of China’s human right abuses. It’s difficult, maybe, to wrap our minds around the fact that other people in other parts of the world don’t enjoy the same rights we are secured here, but because it’s difficult doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try or that we shouldn’t act.
Linkjam!
The primaries are in full swing. The race for the Democratic nomination is 243 delegate-strong Hillary Clinton or 158 delegate-holder Barack Obama’s for the taking. And it appears as if John McCain has edged out over his Republican competitors for the GOP nomination (with 97 delegates, currently), but Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney (29 and 74 delegates each, respectively) are still fighting. Super Tuesday is just a few days away though, and it’ll mean the end of the road for some, although the imperturbable Ron Paul (6 delegates) and the unflappable Mike Gravel are refusing to concede.
It’s unbelievably important that you’re paying attention to the rhetoric of the day, kids, and how the press is covering it all. For example, consider the analysis of New York mayor Michael Bloomberg’s curious evasions about a possibly running as a third-party candidate: “Nature Abhors a Vacuum, and Politics Abhors Clear Statements”. (For more on third-party possibilities, check out The Economist’s latest “Democracy in America” podcast.)
Evasion, chicanery, and scandal, though, isn’t new in American politics. If you interpreted Bob Roberts as an attack on Republican conservatism, understand that evasion, chicanery, and scandal are not the domain of any one single group or party as Shawn pointed out when he cited the Chappaquiddick incident involving Senator Ted Kennedy. Serendipitously, US News & World Report recently surveyed “Great Moments in Campaign History” that included many other noteworthy political and campaign missteps.
How do media manage, frame, and spin all the information streaming in, not only from all of the United States, but from around the world? Dig the recent BBC Documentary series “Making News”. (Discover more the implications of alternative media such as blogging and the role of the press in democracies in the documentary “Press for Freedom”, and go even deeper with FRONTLINE’s extended series, News War.)
For a break in the midst of all the press and politicking, have a look over at the PBS program NOW’s episode on the tradition of American political satire, and then head over to the The Borowitz Report for a laugh.
All this stumping, reporting, informing, judging, deciding, and fighting may seem a lot to keep track of, boys and girls, but some day soon it’ll all be yours to deal with. Be prepared. You can get a start at DeclareYourself.com or RocktheVote.org.
Philosophizing
In the past several weeks, Nigel Warburton has produced four most excellent podcasts over at Philosophy Bites. Take some time to expand your thinking beyond your immediate familiarities and really examine the struggles we deal with daily. You’re gonna hear these names in college anyway, so why not be prepared? Check’em out:
- Ludwig Wittgenstein on philosophy, language, and logic;
- Plato on war;
- Edmund Burke on politics,
- Richard Norman on Humanism.
And, as a supplement to that last one, dig this recent NPR broadcast of an interview with Steven Pinker on the idea of morality as a ’sixth sense’.
Peace out.
Linkjam!
Charity and goodwill aren’t fixed to the holiday season. Here’re some items I found (some that go back to November that I just didn’t have time to post) that may provoke thought or even inspire action for the new year:
There’s the curious story from CNN I mentioned tp some of you before break that highlights an ironic coming-together of the word’s three great monotheistic faiths: “Muslim helps Jew attacked on New York suway”.
In effort to get technology into the hands of learners in underdeveloped nations, One Laptop per Child was highlighted on the NewsHour: “Laptops Offer High-tech Hope in Developing Countries”.
Of course, kids need to be healthy in body as well as mind, and you can help feed families and expand your vocabulary at the same time at FreeRice.com. (Kind of chintzy, but every little bit helps.) And Country Crock has partnered with America’s Second Harvest to help feed families right here in the States, but they need you to tell your story of sharing.
And still back at home, the Alliance to End Homelessness released a study claiming that our veterans make up one quater of the of America’s homeless. While this and other shames are perpetrated on our doorsteps, conditions are even worse in other parts of the world. Doctors Without Borders released it annual Top Ten Most Underreported Humanitarian stories of 2007, and NPR followed up with a piece on the same.
There’s plenty going on in the world boy and girls, but you’re not helpless when it comes to taking action by digging in and helping out.
See you soon.
The Republican Debate
Kickin’ it here with Ryan, Laura D., Carli, Taylor, Tony, Chloe, Hunter, Simone, Mark, and Kelsey. And Marie, and Clay, Paul, Brennan, Laura P., Michael, Julia, and Elise. And also, Aislinn, Katie, Tiana, Alex, Danielle, and Matt. We’re watchin’ Tom, Mitt, Rudy, Mike, Fred, John, Ron, and Duncan battle it out.
Thanks Michael for the pizza, Katie for the popcorn, Aislinn for the cookies! Yeah coming to school at night.
What Would Emerson Think?
In an effort to continue to encourage you students to question your own assumptions and think clearly, objectively about culture and society, let me quote Ralph Waldo Emerson’s words from “Self-reliance” to frame the story that follows:
No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my constitution; the only wrong what is against it. A man is to carry himself in the presence of all opposition as if every thing were titular and ephemeral but he.
How then would Emerson respond to this: “Saudi Rape Victim Gets 200 Lashes and Jail”? The authorities did offer an explanation, “Saudi: Why we punished rape victim”, in which they even justified more than doubling the victim’s original sentence from 90 lashes to 200 as a result of her appeal, and offered further details to validate the punishment.
If people are laws unto themselves and can determine by consensus what is good for their own communities and what is bad, that is, they readily apply the labels good and bad to this and that according to their preferences, can others’ criticism of the such systems be justified? Should we do anything to stop that with which we don’t agree?
What think you? Leave a comment by clicking the link above?
Freaky!
Hey all, as timely as last Friday’s, pre-formal annoucement urging students to avoid “freakin’” at the Pima Air and Space Museum Saturday night comes this controversy out of Texas: “Freaked Out: Teens’ Dance Moves Split a Texas Town”.
Oh, Kevin Bacon, thou shouldst be dancing at this hour: freakin’ teens hath need of thee!
Podcasts
Marie C. was inquiring after podcasts today after I mentioned that I listen to the Online NewsHour’s daily podcast, among many others. Another I listen to is Philosophy Bites, and this week’s discussion about the relationship of philosophy to literature and rhetoric was especially interesting. I recommend you give it a listen.
What’s great about many podcasts it that they’re free and plnety are downloadable through iTunes (you can grab a feed’s link, click “Subscribe to Podcast” under the Advanced, and paste the link in the box that appears, and you’re set). You can find all types of stuff if you look around the iTunes Podcast directory: daily podcasts produced by print and online periodicals, college lectures, documentary programs, and plenty more to keep you occupied and learning. In fact, here’s a link to a former podcast of the BBC’s In Our Time about a subject near and dear to many of you juniors and seniors.
You can find links to some of the podcasts I listen to regularly in the sidebar near the bottom of this page. I recommend them all to help you increase your awareness of the events that have shaped and are shaping our world.
Sin City, USA
Last night’s Democratic Preseidential debate was held in Las Vegas; it was broadcast from UNLV. Nevada has earned an early caucus slot this presidential election cycle, different from previous years, and so the state’s issues have been in the news as candidates have been paying significant attention to Nevadans’ needs (thus the geography of the last night’s contest).
In the lead up to the debate, the Online NewsHour presented a comprehensive series of reports on the Silver State’s state: “Big Picture: Las Vegas”. A great series well worth taking a look at. It’d do you well to be informed, and you may find that Nevadans and Arizonans share some common concerns.
I’ll be posting the question form later tonight for those that took advantage of the extra-credit opportunity last night. Get it to me by the end of the middle of next week, please.