Radical Transparency

(in case the other blogs need a friend)

Tags



 
Posts filed under

anti-intellectualism

December 11, 2008

Maybe Give NPR the TARP Table Scraps?

Micaela the Intern just sent me this.

Definitely the first time Perez Hilton has ever showed up on this blog.

And that fact (and his post) raise a few questions:

A. Is Perez actually sad about NPR?* Seems like lots of his readers (an impressive percentage of whom, hilariously (and awesomely), represent themselves with pictures involving boobs or shirtless dudes) are not sad.

2. Is NPR really liberal? Is it really offensive to the Perez Hilton community? Or might some of those people just be spitting back anti-intellectual propaganda? Someone sometime somewhere some way convinced them that the elites were out to get them, and they get freaked out by anything that feels in any way academic or theoretical or learned (that how you spell lear ned?)?

d. Huge bummer that NPR is feeling the financial squeeze. I think they create real value. Great news. Great interviews. Great analysis. And, while pledge drives make me crazy, I love the theory behind their voluntary subscription model. They ask people to name their own price, to pay what they can. And that makes so much sense in so many ways. Clearly, it's vulnerable, however. I'll be curious to see if they step up the fundraising efforts in some way.

*Note: Sorry to show my liberal bias with a link to The Huffington Post.  I don't really even like The Huffington Post.  But they post the whole cutbacks memo from the NPR CEO, and I figured that's probably the most useful thing to read at this point.
Comments [0]


November 09, 2008

Translating a Nerd

I quote below from an American nerd athlete artist.  He's relieved at the American electorate's ability to choose the intellectual candidate.  But his comment intends to celebrate neither American nor Chinese culture.

We live in a country where the nerd gets beaten up in middle school.  In China, the nerd is the bully.

I did not know this about China when I lived there.  I never saw it happen, never heard stories about it until today.  But it does make sense.  Good grades earn big teacher love and, with it, positions of authority in classrooms.  And there doesn't exist a school-connected athletic infrastructure to balance the power.  Validation comes first for the successfully academic minds and significantly later, if at all, for anyone else.

Anyone have any experience with this?  I'd love to know more.

Comments [0]


October 30, 2008

Ignorance or Strategery?

Sarah Palin doesn't like fruit flies.  Do we know why?

Does she think they are tiny and silly and dirty and thus obviously totally scientifically useless?

Or does she worry about the implications of research that deals with genes and genetics?  Might she think fruit fly research lies on a slippery slope toward acknowledging truth in evolution?

Thank you GOOD Blog for making me wonder about this.  But why, GOOD Blog, did you react to my submitted comment so coldly?  You didn't post it.  You didn't tell me it