June 2011
37 posts
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“T: In a rational choice model, it’s actually, in certain cases, if you get at all behind with your work—all of them have jobs, many of them have children, some of them are not native English speakers, so they’re already at a disadvantage relative to the course that’s being taught to them—and the course that’s being taught to them can’t be “dumbed down to their level” because then the degree becomes meaningless anyway… The rational choice model encourages cheating.
C: And more than six kids probably cheated in your class. Those kids just did it better. Which is actually what the university rewards. When I was in college, I didn’t plagiarize per se, but I certainly learned to cut corners rather than directly achieve. I don’t know about your school, but where I went, the people who were good at cutting corners end up on Wall Street. This is what we’re encouraging.
” —An interesting conversation on plagiarism between a professor and a paid paper writer.
The New Inquiry - The History of Dialogue: Other People’s Papers
“The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars… ” –Jack Kerouac
via courtneybolton
“(5) Perhaps most amazingly of all, this policy of Endless War endures even as official Washington inexorably plans — in the midst of still-booming economic inequality and suffering — to slash entitlements in the name of austerity. Bizarrely, while more and more Republicans continue to recognize the growing foreign policy split in their Party (Ross Douthat and Joe Scarborough are the latest to side with the “isolationists” against the war-mongering neocons), many establishment liberals seem to be laying the groundwork for those cuts. Yesterday, Matt Yglesias said he was “disillusioned” by alarmism over vast income inequality because, he assured everyone, things aren’t particularly good for the super-rich; meanwhile Digby — in a piece highly worth reading — examines how some liberal pundits (her example is Ezra Klein) seem to be doing the GOP’s work (and, more significantly, the White House’s) in (unwittingly or otherwise) justifying entitlement cuts.”
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Today in Endless War - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com
read the stuff that came before this quote, too.
Play
World's oceans in 'shocking' decline
The Real Reason Why Bicycles are the Key to Better Cities
Haiti: US opposed minimum wage rise, cables show
Palookas (Prod. by Marco Polo)
Talib Kweli Ft. Sean Price
Palookas - Talib Kweli ft. Sean Price
AG Eric Holder "demands" return of The Wire, David Simon names the stakes
Apparently US Attorney General Holder is a big fan of the greatest television show ever made, The Wire. This makes sense, because the 2001-2005 HBO series really was amazing, taking a sharp and insightful look into urban communities, politics, policy, and their effect on the so close to real fictional characters in the series.
Maybe Mr. Holder should have paid closer attention to the content of the series, since he didn’t learn anything from it.
David Simon, creator & writer, responds:
“The Attorney-General’s kind remarks are noted and appreciated,” he wrote. “I’ve spoken to Ed Burns and we are prepared to go to work on season six of The Wire if the Department of Justice is equally ready to reconsider and address its continuing prosecution of our misguided, destructive and dehumanising drug prohibition.”
So we will see a sixth season… either when hell freezes over, or when this country decides to take a pragmatic rather than destructive approach to the failed War on Drugs.
Goodnight, Hoppers.
BBC News - Hedge funds 'grabbing land' in Africa →
bbc.co.uk
never underestimate the capacity of the elite to utilize their vast amounts of capital to fuck up the world for the other 99.8%
