Category: Education

Getting Out Of Your Own Head

Posted on February 26, 2015February 26, 2015 By Mark Tiedemann

I didn’t know Samuel R. Delany was black until I’d read damn near all his books, a project that took some time.Â I’m talking about a revelation that came sometime in the early 80s.Â Now, you might think I was a bit of an idiot for taking that long, but I had zero involvement in fandom prior to 1982 and if there were no jacket photos of authors I had not clue one concerning the first thing about them.Â (Mainly because I actually didn’t much care; it was the work that concerned me, not the celebrity.)

Still, you’d think that the original cover illustration for Heavenly Breakfast, with a portrait of Chip, would have clued me in.Â …

Local vs National?

Posted on November 24, 2014November 24, 2014 By Mark Tiedemann

A curious thing came out of the midterms.Â The fact that a lot of GOP candidates won their races (many by a nose hair) and yet in those same districts more or less progressive referenda also won.Â Legalization of marijuana and the legitimization of gay marriage being the two most prominent.Â This is curious when you consider that for the last umpteen years now the GOP has made its bones by being obsessively loudmouthed social naysayers.Â People seem to have been voting for them because they are opposed to all the things identified as signaling the End Times of Civilization, most of which can be lumped loosely under the rubric of “Permissiveness.”Â …

Vote

Posted on November 3, 2014November 3, 2014 By Mark Tiedemann

Tomorrow is a midterm election day.

I can hear it already.Â Yawn.Â What is it with progressives and anyone left of Attila the Hun? Don’t you remember what happened at the last midterm?Â We had record low voter turnout across the country and in a wide range of close elections—close elections—the Tea Party put enough people in congress to allow for four years of the worst congressional performance in memory.

Let me repeat that.Â Close elections.Â We had an average turnout of 23 to 27 % of eligible voters and by any metricÂ Tea Party candidates took seats riding in on around 13 to 15 % of eligible votes.Â …

Racism: It Begins Early

Posted on October 21, 2014October 21, 2014 By Mark Tiedemann

They were marched into the classroom, single file, and lined up along the blackboard to face the roomful of white faces.Â It would be sheerest invention to say I remember everything about that day.Â The only things I recall had to do with questions about how my own situation was about to change.Â Thinking back, though, I can recall, without remembering a single one of their names, a general tension transmitted between the two groups.Â Groups clearly being treated as groups.Â And the expressions I saw were not the excited faces of new students but the suspicious faces of new problems.…

The Matter

Posted on August 31, 2014August 31, 2014 By Mark Tiedemann

Labels can be limiting and as far as that goes I can agree with those who disdain them, saying they do not like creating or existing in boxes. Fine sentiment. But some labels are useful to accomplish the ripping apart of boxes and the freeing of those trapped in them.

I am a feminist.

Nothing new in my saying that, but times have, superficially, changed, and now a lot of people seem to claim not to know what that means anymore or, worse, claim that it means something which it does not.

Below is a TED Talk by novelist Chimimanda Ngozi Adichie.…

You Don’t Really Mean That!

Posted on August 28, 2014August 28, 2024 By Mark Tiedemann

Kevin Sorbo, who came to public attention portraying a mythical strongman on television, has been saying things about atheists lately. He thinks he has a good bead on what makes us tick.

It began when he wondered why atheists are so angry at something we claim doesn’t exist, i.e. God. Because atheists seem to spend a lot of time talking about him/her/it and being outraged about the subject.

This is deflection. It misses the point. Atheists are not angry at god—clearly, since we do not believe god exists. We’re angry with god’s promoters and acolytes who keep shoving a nonexistent something-or-other in our faces and telling us we’re everything from “mistaken” to the cause of civilization’s collapse to…well, several other things one is shocked to hear come from the mouths of self-professed “good christians.”…

We Were Just Talking

Posted on August 4, 2014August 4, 2014 By Mark Tiedemann

A couple of decades of online conversation has revealed many thing about our culture, about our selves. One is how little most of us seem to consider what we say before we say it.

I recently saw the term “flaming” used in a description of certain problematic exchanges in a forum I till recently frequented.Â I’m sure it’s still in current usage, but I hadn’t thought of the term in some time because I long ago vacated forums and chatrooms where this was a common problem.Â One of the more congenial things about FaceBook is that while flaming (and trolling and all such related hate-baiting tactics) still happens, users aren’t locked into the thread where it occurs.…

It Hurts

Posted on February 7, 2014February 7, 2014 By Mark Tiedemann

By now, I’m sure, many people know about the debate between Bill Nye and Ken Ham.Â Bill Nye, he of the bow tie, the science guy, stepped up to the podium to have it out, toe-to-toe, with Ken Ham, erstwhile champion of creationism, founder of the Creation Museum in Kentucky which has been the subject of continual mirthful derision by anyone with even a scintilla of understanding about science.Â They were to debate evolution versus creationism, which in my mind is like debating the similarities between Einstein and Sasquatch.Â Other than the assertion by certain folks that they are somehow (a) equivalent and (b)…well, really, there is no “b” in this formulation.…

Colloquial For “Why, I Didn’t Mean Nothin’ By It!”

Posted on June 22, 2013June 22, 2013 By Mark Tiedemann

I confess when everyone started talking about Paula Deen this past week, I had a moment or two of complete cultural disconnect.

Who?

Oh, she writes cookbooks and does a show on Food Network.Â Hm.Â So what?

I’m still not altogether sure what she did, what trial she spoke at where she rather obliviously let it be known that she thinks using the N-word is just fine.Â I’m not really interested enough in her—or any other cooking personality—to give much of a damn.Â I don’t read cookbooks (I have several, I couldn’t tell you who wrote them) and I don’t watch Food Network (we don’t have cable or dish), so this is a part of the popular zeitgeist of which I am rather oblivious.…

One Down…

Posted on May 29, 2013 By Mark Tiedemann

I don’t really have a lot to say about Michele Bachmann other than to note that her decision not to seek reelection seems to be a bellwether for the entire Tea Party movement. Â Listening to her over the last several years, especially in her bids for the GOP nomination for president, has been like watching old episodes of the Twilight Zone, where the protagonist wakes up in a world that is similar to but not the same as the one with which he or she had lived in the day before.

Bachmann put herself forward as some kind of Original Intent Constitutionalist during her last campaign, but any examination of what she said and a look at the actual history she was touting seemed to show that her version of what that meant was much like anyone’s version of something they think they understand but haven’t actually studied.…