[This space has  been quiet because I've been fact-checking and otherwise researching my Unsucky Gilgamesh chaptersso far (which I hope to publish as a book when finished) and, since school started two weeks ago, writing for my students. The below is one such piece for my History of China students. There's no reason other students [...]

Why is Mark Twain’s autobiography only coming out now, 100 years after his death? Because he stipulated so before dying. What he expresses in these screenshots from a PBS Newshour clip of the manuscript suggests why he might have wanted these thoughts to stay silent for a century. And they’re strangely resonant in our own [...]

It’s weird to call him a prophet, what with all the F-Bombs and other NSFW obscenities he drops, but consider that this dead jester said the below in 2005. Prophetic indeed. . (h/t to Hullabaloo)

Readers of George Orwell’s Animal Farm should remember Squealer, the pig whose “journalism” manipulated the entire animal society into unquestioningly supporting the dictatorial pig Napoleon. If they studied Animal Farm in the classroom, the depressing odds are they learned it as a good, all-American attack on socialism. The most simple-minded of our teachers make a [...]

A teacher recently dismissed, I gather, for encouraging critical thinking in her class in (where else?) my native United States writes: I am stunned by the number of “conservatives” who truly appear to loathe teachers. What is up with that? Why the distrust of educators? And all I can say is, “Come teach in Asia. [...]

Gasland is one to watch: . Anybody want to place bets that we’ll be buying oxygen at 7-11 within the next 20 years?

Democracy – the rule of the people at the heart of the American political ideal — and plutocracy, the rule of the wealthy and the tumor at the heart of America’s political reality: both are looked on as very problematic things  in wisdom traditions both Eastern and Western. A few snapshots will serve: Jesus’ Needle: [...]

Lots of film-making skills to learn from — ironic soundtrack, archival footage editing, lighting and superimposition, on and on — in this staggering video. Oh, and the writing’s not shabby either: William Burroughs’ “A Thanksgiving Prayer”: . .(h/t Hullaballoo)

Lastly, the superstitious man becomes a fanatic, and then his zeal becomes capable of all crimes in the name of the Lord. Voltaire – ON SUPERSTITION – Toleration and Other Essays

Hear, hear: University students worried about getting a job see the study of the humanities as a waste of precious time. . . . Times are hard for humanists. But when economic growth becomes the focus of education, both democracy and human decency are in jeopardy. In her new book, Not For Profit: Why Democracy [...]