Looks like it’s going to be ALMO, but maybe it should be Ana Puga given her fearlessness.
As a cyclist who cut his teeth in Los Angeles, I am comfortable in traffic, but this tour around Mexico City begs the question, can one be too comfortable in traffic? Without a doubt. Still, this is so BADASS on many levels, including her flat out speed, I can’t help but embrace it.
Mexico City like you’ve never seen it.
With nary a single “chili pepper” signifying hotness on my personal RateMyProfessor.com page, my academic career remains incomplete.
And now this announcement. No More Chili Pepper: RateMyProfessors Ditches ‘Hotness” Ratings. Something about high levels of sexual harassment of women in the sciences and technology.
I was certain this was the year. Or next. Or for sure, the one after that. Now the window doesn’t close, it slams shut, never to open.
I will come to grips with my fate. Someday. Maybe.
Of course Karl Rove is down with Trump’s tax cuts.
“President Trump is justifiably proud of passing tax reform last December, telling audiences ‘because of our tax cuts, you can keep more of your hard-earned money.’ He’s right: American taxpayers will save $75 billion this year and $189 billion next year, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation.”
To which any thinking person should ask, “WHICH American taxpayers will save those estimated billions?” Rove leaves out that the savings are skewed to the New Aristocracy of which he is a charter member.
Proving he’s the exact kind of Establishment Republican the Trumpeters despise almost as much as Democrats, he notes that, given the evolving Trade War, Trump’s tax cuts will be cancelled out by higher prices on imports coupled with some job losses.
“Yet the president’s tariffs on imports could negate much of the tax relief he’s been bragging about. These levies are not paid by foreign countries or companies. They are passed on to American consumers in the form of higher prices for either foreign or U.S.-made goods.
The Trump tariffs are now clawing back tax savings at a rate of roughly $10.6 billion per year. The levies already in place include 25% on steel (imports in 2017 were an estimated $23.4 billion), 30% on solar panels ($8.5 billion), 10% on aluminum ($18 billion) and 20% on washing machines ($1.8 billion). That’s chump change compared with what may be coming.”
The harsher the left’s criticism of all things Trump, the more inclined Trumpeters are to blindly follow him. Eventually, inflation and increased outsourcing of manufacturing jobs will test their knee-jerk, self-sabotaging love. Right?
Many moons ago, when my Guilford College students started doing multimedia presentations, their overlapping words, sounds, and pictures made it more difficult to grasp their ideas. The sum of their disparate media rarely equaled the individual parts, let alone superseded them.
We’re still mired in multimedia messiness.
Case in point, Isaacson’s stories of Steve Jobs telling people who had worked nonstop for months on their PowerPoint pitches to him to just talk to him. “Close your laptop,” he’d say within a slide or two, “and just talk to me.”
When combining media, error on the side of fewer. Less is usually more. More spices will not necessarily make your spaghetti sauce taste better. More words, sounds, and images will not make your audience embrace your ideas, your arguments, your art.
Sometimes though, people combine media in ways that are truly synergistic. There’s no formula though, it’s art.
For example, first listen to this new song, Big God by Florence and the Machine. Then watch the video.
Maybe it’s because I dig modern dance, but the video performance is far more moving and memorable than the song by itself. One plus one equals far more than two.
The next time your combining media, consider reaching out to Florence Welch for help.t to
1. I need another bike.
2. Swedish researchers say commute long distances for work at your and your partner’s own risk.
3. What does stand up comedy really pay? Brutal way to not make a living.
4. Those of you who are like me, meaning people with extensive life experience, get with the program—privacy is dead. As proof, dig The Verge’s “What’s in Your Bag” feature. Someday, maybe, they’ll get around to famous bloggers and ask me what’s in my bag. Because I know you’re dying to know.
Warm, interminable light belies the tipping point.
Darkness descends.
Yellow and Blue take leave.
Gray subs in.
The rabbits take leave.
Wet leaves sub in.
After attending my first Quaker meeting in North Carolina 25 years ago, someone approached me. “You know,” he said with a hushed voice, “we’re not going to invite you back.” It wasn’t rude, the message was simply, “Cool if you return, cool if you don’t.”
Evangelicals are the opposite, their whole raison d’être is to persuade others to believe and behave like them. So when it comes to immigration, what do they want non-believers, Quakers, more social justice minded Christians, and the huddled masses to believe?
In “Why Rank-And-File Evangelicals Aren’t Likely To Turn On Trump Over Family Separation”, fivethirtyeight.com explains that for now they want everyone to just “. . . obey the the law and defer to the president’s authority.”
“Robert Jeffress, the pastor of Dallas’s First Baptist Church and a strong Trump supporter, told FiveThirtyEight that the separation of children from their parents was ‘disturbing’ but quickly added that Trump has the “God-given responsibility” to secure the border in the way he deems appropriate and punish people breaking the law, even if it appears harsh.”
When the national political pendulum inevitably swings, and a newly elected liberal president promotes more progressive immigration policies possibly including amnesty, don’t expect Robert Jeffress to wax philosophic about deferring to the president’s “God-given responsibility”.
Jeffress isn’t saying Trump is advocating exactly what evangelicals think Jesus might if he were advising on immigration policy today. In fact, I don’t think he’s referencing Jesus’s interactions with the poor and dispossessed at all. He’s saying everyone should respect the authority of the president because us evangelicals share his views on immigrants.
What are those views?
“. . . polling on white evangelical Protestants has shown that they’re more likely than any other religious group to support hardline immigration policies and to have negative views of immigrants overall. A recent survey by the Pew Research Center found that 70 percent of white evangelical Protestants are in favor of expanding the border wall between the U.S. and Mexico.”
Does crossing the border illegally give evangelicals cart blanche for thinking of immigrants negatively? How does that justify their “hardline immigration policies” given Jesus’s preference for the poor, the downtrodden, the illegal? Evangelicals, what’s the biblical basis for your viewing immigrants so negatively?
“These findings line up with results from other surveys too, like a 2017 poll from the Public Religion Research Institute that found that white evangelical Protestants were the only religious group in which a majority (57 percent) said they’re bothered when they encounter immigrants who don’t speak English. They were also the likeliest to say that they have little or nothing in common with immigrants.”
I wonder if Jesus was bothered by people who spoke different languages? I wonder if he felt like he had little or nothing in common with those crossing borders. Also, I wonder how many evangelicals really know any immigrants on a personal level. My guess is, for the vast majority, immigrants are abstractions largely created by conservative news outlets that play on their default fear of the unfamiliar. Do evangelicals have more than sporadic, cursory, largely economic interactions with immigrants?
I’m lucky to be married to someone who teaches numerous immigrants English. A few have become family friends. The one distinguishing characteristic among all of them is their incredible work ethic. I find that, coupled with their desire to improve their families’ lives, tremendously inspiring.
“Daniel Cox, the research director at PRRI, said these findings help explain why evangelicals aren’t likely to abandon Trump over the child separation crisis, even if they’re troubled by it. ”More than other groups, white evangelical Protestants seem to perceive immigrants as a threat to American society,’ he said. ‘So even if they don’t like this particular policy, they’re on board with Trump’s approach to immigration in general, and that makes it likelier that they’ll see this as a tactical misstep rather than a breaking point.'”
How will evangelicals’ “hardline immigration policies” impact their efforts to fulfill their destiny by continuously adding to their fold? They must hope to convince potential converts that immigrants are a detriment to our nation’s well-being. And to ignore our nation’s history. And to fear cultural differences. And to defer to this President’s authority (but probably not the next).
Good luck with that. Thomson-DeVeaux concludes, “Hardline immigrant policies won’t necessarily work forever.”
“Past PRRI polling has shown that younger white evangelicals are much likelier than older white evangelicals to believe that immigrants strengthen the country or to agree that immigrants are the victims of discrimination, which may reduce their support for restrictionist immigration policies in the long term.”
When it comes to evangelicalism, the future can’t come quick enough.
According to the WaPo, several private schools in the D.C. area, including Sidwell Friends, are scrapping Advanced Placement (AP) classes.
The schools issued a statement explaining:
“Collectively, we believe a curriculum oriented toward collaborative, experiential and interdisciplinary learning will not only better prepare our students for college and their professional futures, but also result in more engaging programs for both students and faculty,” the schools said. “We expect this approach will appeal to students’ innate curiosity, increase their motivation and fuel their love of learning.”
There’s little educational value in the Advanced Placement program. It’s primary purpose is to give privileged kids a leg up on their peers.
The scrapping of AP classes is a smart move, but lets not kids ourselves, Sidwell Friends and company made this move not just to appeal to students’ innate curiosity, increase their motivation, and fuel their love of learning. No doubt they expect the new and improved curricula to do an even better job of preserving their students’ privilege. That’s the lifeblood of those schools.
They’re very different one from another. Too often, people paint them with a broad brush.
The Buffets, Gates, Bloombergs, Allens are intent on contributing to the common good. Big time. In the case of the Gates Foundation, they seek to enhance global healthcare and reduce extreme poverty, and in America, to expand educational opportunities and access to information technology.
Then there’s the oil billionaires Charles G. and David H. Koch. Read what motivates them, in “How the Koch Brothers Are Killing Public Transit Projects Around the Country“.
“The Kochs’ opposition to transit spending stems from their longstanding free-market, libertarian philosophy. It also dovetails with their financial interests, which benefit from automobiles and highways.
One of the mainstay companies of Koch Industries, the Kochs’ conglomerate, is a major producer of gasoline and asphalt, and also makes seatbelts, tires and other automotive parts. Even as Americans for Prosperity opposes public investment in transit, it supports spending tax money on highways and roads.
‘Stopping higher taxes is their rallying cry,’ said Ashley Robbins, a researcher at Virginia Tech who follows transportation funding. ‘But at the end of the day, fuel consumption helps them.'”
The Koch brothers oppose whatever slows their fortune from growing ever larger. Things like low income people gaining mobility and conserving natural resources.
David Koch’s networth is between $50 and $60 billion. How much is enough? Based on his actions, no amount.
Pressing Pause 