[Update: A fuller discussion of Peak Oil and the A Crude Awakening documentary is taking place at Crooks and Liars. Skeptics and believers are listening and debating there.] I wonder if Cassandra, as the Greeks approached Troy, got more silent indifference from those she tried to warn, or instead argumentation and debate? My guess is [...]

I’m in Korea, and so out of the loop about much of American culture. Maybe you’ve already heard about the Yes Men, but they’re new to me – and they’ve blown me away. If you’re a regular reader, you may know that I’m a huge fan of satire, especially that of Jonathan Swift and Voltaire. [...]

I’ll probably get another B+ for this. Teacher loves this novel, Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. This student disagrees. ‘-) And for you “English-y types” from the last post, thanks for your feedback. I try to clarify things here. More homework from my AP Lit workshop. I worked harder on the style and ideas for this [...]

IraqBodyCount.org reports between 68,000 and 79,000 confirmed civilian deaths in Iraq since the invasion in 2003. By “confirmed” they mean reported by two independent journalistic sources. JustForeignPolicy.org and the Lancet estimate that, based on the confirmed numbers above, Iraqi deaths due to the invasion are at 15,000 short of 1 million dead Iraqis. In four [...]

[Update 2 AUG 07: A much better follow-up post on HOD here.l A little light summer reading: Joseph Conrad's "classic" Heart of Darkness. Skip it unless you want to defend its merit. I loved it in my 20s, but now it seems such a joke. Anybody want to show me what I'm missing? Here's my [...]

Sometimes you wish you could just crawl into your monitor and come out in your anonymous reader’s room for a hello and a chat. Look at the beautiful Google search terms that led this Port Washington, New York visitor to my “Teaching Grammar on the Titanic: On Fear and Irrelevance in Education” post: “Concrete, real, [...]

This community is so friendly. When I started blogging, it took probably a month or more for me to get five comments from “anybody out there.” Anthony got five on Day One. That’s just nice. (Photo credit: Angel In My Hand by mighty_falcon on Flickr.)

I posted earlier about Anthony’s epiphany – that the edublogosphere and www generally offer better learning, and for free, than his US $2,000/term graduate program in educational technology – and his decision to opt out. [Clarification: Anthony didn't really say he was "dropping out" of grad school. He said he was stopping for a while [...]

“For Zeus the Helmsman laid it down as law,that we must suffer,suffer,suffer,into Truth. –Aeschylus, The Oresteia “Imprisonment of the Mind” by ccr_358 on Flickr. The first half of this post is written in the (very real) voice of an angry student wanting to “quit school.” The second half is a preview of an upcoming podcast [...]

Patrick Higgins Shows the Love (Nice poster skills!) So I’m hanging out with Mac last night, late, in Korea, doing homework for my (sorry) pretty uninspiring UCLA online workshop, and then Mac said: Brrrrriiing. It was Patrick Higgins (of the excellent Chalkdust) in New Jersey, on Skype. He was giving the second day of his [...]