Is anyone reading this thing?

According to "statistics," it looks like people read this blog even though I never post on it. Weird. In honor of you, my loyal audience, sticking with me, here is something to make the holiday season more enjoyable.

Possibilities

Today the wifewoman and I are taking home a new car (generously owned by the bank). She will learn how to drive and then I will have a free chauffer for the rest of my life. Yay!

Trepidation

I am heading out this afternoon to interview for a part-time gig teaching history to children. I am incredibly nervous. I also am currently unemployed and see very little avenues for me to get a job in the future, which puts even more pressure on my to NOT EFF UP.

Goddam crippling self-doubt!

On a further note, the Egypt thing is pretty interesting: here is my man Zunguzungu's collection of information, and here is Texas in Africa

Back back y'all

Just got back from what can generously be called a... year-long hiatus. I was in China, and the efforts it took to get on blogspot were just not worth the crap that came out of my fingertips. But in America, all my half-formed ideas can be thrown out with no real effort, and like the proverbial stack of ninja stars rapidly being flicked away with little accuracy, hopefully one of my thoughts can stick. To something. I do not know, similes are not really my thing.

I hope to learn Mandarin (HSK 4), become a more solid bboy, and dunk, by the end of this year. Those are my unofficial New Year's resolutions. I am also going TRY and blog more, but I keep telling myself that and it never works out. Consider it a secondary resolution.

I also just realized that somebody who I gave a shout out to actually responded. Did NOT expect that to happen... I need to figure out the intricacies of blogging. And by intricacies of blogging, I mean when somebody comments on a post.

Where was this guy when I was writing my Thesis?.

So Zunguzungu posted something on plagiarism, itself picked up from Da Chronic(ill) and it really got me thinking. See, I already live in society where cheating in education is... not quite accepted, but not quite frowned upon either. I can put up some more juicy stuff on edits (My favorite story so far is about Chinese 'shooters;, dudes who are paid to ace English exams and who work pretty out in the open, except when it comes to actually taking the exam). Now, I only give simple exams, and while I did have dreams of teaching writing once, my dreams were crushed under the boot of the admins here. Still, when I cannot successfully explain to the kids I am mentoring for graduate school that, 'I do not care if everyone else in China is doing it, writing your own letter of recommendation and having a professor sign off on it is NOT COOL' I mean I must take a good, hard look at what kind of education produces these ideas.

And the answer is simple: The Perfect Republican Educational System.

All testing. Abstinence. No teacher's unions. Schools are only judged by the amount of high-wage earners they produced. Nobody has the foggiest notion of what 'critical thinking' looks like. Students are in cutthroat competition with one another for grades, which at some point down the line actually do equal money (though I have yet to figure out the formula).

Anybody who has taught in China can talk about the frustration of asking a question to one student and having their immediate neighbors murmur the answer to them. Still, what do I expect when their whole lives the only thing that matters is THE RIGHT ANSWER. How you get such an answer is pish-posh. Rather than combat the culture of cheating (which is a Quixotic quest if there ever was one, because you must change the entire educational system in China), I just design my classes so there is no real way you can cheat (interviews, music videos, team activities, et al). Still, I have the luxury of teaching Oral English (and by teaching, I mean just looking like a white guy and showing up, the only two requirements to do the job), so actual classes (like Marketing or Management) with actual exams are an entirely different kettle of fish (and I totally plan on relaying some of the all-time GREAT cheating stories from my colleagues...)

Which brings us back to the fear of plagiarism in the first place: perhaps it is from our 'Western notions of individualism' (rolls eyes), but what do you expect when the United States tertiary educational system has been going to hell for three decades. The university-as-business model is complete bullcrap and I would rather end the facade now and just declare universities trade-schools and figure out ways get actual centers of higher learning built. An essay is not just an assignment to be done, but a demonstration of thought. I ran a (disastrous) attempt at making drafts mandatory for students' first essays back when I was a TA, because... well, somebody had to teach them how to write. Did not work out that well, but still. However, as we shortchange education in the crazy belief that universities are only valuable if they prepare us for the job market, guess what, more kids are not going to see ANY value in writing their own papers, because the grade they get for their work is the reward for their relatively meager investment. The actual essay itself is worthless, and instructors have been kind of pointing to that fact. Sigh.

I wonder what Irrational Patriotism looks like?

This reminds me of this one time when this dude called for 'responsible White Supremacists' or some such.

What is wrong with me?

So TNC picked up on something that I saw posted on The American Prospect. Basically, a campaign to end anti-gay bullying in school has morphed into a softer attempt to point out the injustices of school bullies in general. Well-meaning leftists, step back! Or some such. I find this position of 'unique oppression' philosophically infuriating, but that is not what is being argued for here. Instead, as TNC so eloquently argues:

"I think sometimes, we should accept that we don't understand--at least not yet. There's nothing wrong with just being angered and appalled, but not quite getting the full depth of the experience.

The chasm is real. And bridges are built. not conjured."

All well and good, except that I could not disagree more (and once again partake in internecine leftist infighting). Still, I am not going to argue TNC now on a tactical level (though in the wake of the Obama administrations pretty weak record on gay rights, I do not think pushing for specific gay-friendly policies is a winner at this juncture). I am just a guy on the computer, and because I have contributed so little to the LGBT cause (there was a benefit march literally twenty minutes away that I did not go to, christ I'm useless), I have not earned the right to disagree with TNC and his peeps on his hometurf.

Instead, I am looking at myself. I have a vision of a universal society, of universal humanity. Of treating everyone with dignity and respect. I also have a much darker vision of everyone being the same (however defined), and rather than celebrating our differences I want us to have none. It is the only way I can function. The universal versus the provincial )if one would allow me the opportunity to call the suffering of the LGBT community as 'provincial') is the defining point of my liberal vision. And the more time I spend reading and thinking, I realize just how far away I am from... the acceptable Left? The current Left? Whatever it is, I am not (though I wish I were). It does come down to this idea of the Universal though, and without it, I see no reason to not just be a Republican. I realize that this gets into discussion of Privilege, or Derailing, et al., but if the defending the Provincial is what I am supposed to do, I cannot do it. The fact that TNC and his peeps passionately agree with this just make me... wonder: what is wrong with me?