Last week, you told professors at the University of Wisconsin that they needed to “work harder.” You were making a case that the Wisconsin state budget crisis could be ameliorated by increasing employee efficiency, and you suggested having faculty teach at least one more class. I’m not going to talk about whether or not the budget crisis is manufactured (some have argued it could be solved by accepting federal funds for the state’s Badger Care health program), or whether your real goal is really partisan politics, and not fiscal responsibility.
Instead, I want to talk about the myth of the lazy professor, a stereotype that you’ve reinforced with your comment. I spent 2005 to 2012 at the University of Wisconsin, where I obtained a PhD in the Department of Geography; I am now an assistant...
Politics
Dear Tony,
As we all know, earlier this year you decided that Australian families must vaccinate their children, or else lose government benefits.
And then you also decided that all vaccine exemptions would be cancelled, except the rare medical one.
Well, Tony, something just happened in Washington DC that leaves you hanging out on a very dangerous limb, unless you can suppress all mention of it in the Australian press.
US Congressman Bill Posey, speaking on the House floor (July 29), read a statement from a senior scientist at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). The scientist’s name is William Thompson, and he is a whistleblower.
In 2004, Thompson and several other CDC scientists authored a study on the MMR vaccine and its potential connection to autism. The study was...
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Straight to the point, you are a dead-man-walking, Mr. Vice President! The current ZANU-PF shenanigans that involve the deadly purges, witch hunting and name-calling are obvious pointers.
Never think that because Robert Mugabe gave you the Vice Presidency post he likes you, he is actually afraid of you! "To kill them, tame them," goes the saying.
Much said, it is my belief that you should not be intimidated into extinction without challenging the evil dictator and his wife.
Right now many Zimbabweans are shocked with the way the adulterous Grace Mugabe carries herself, as well as being used as a tool by the nonagenarian to silence those that are perceived as threats to his dictatorship and misrule.
Now let's go personal: Dambudzo, please tell me you are happy being in the...
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Dear Mr. Trump,
I have been closely following your campaign since you announced your intention to run for President of the United States. Like millions of Americans of all political stripes, I greatly appreciate your frankness, your honesty, and your candor. The criticisms you are leveling against the mainstream political and media establishment in America – the corrupt, superficial nature of electoral politics, the disastrous and poorly negotiated international trade deals our "leaders" have pushed on this country, the dishonest, malicious behavior of the "journalists" and "political pundits" covering politics today, etc. – are resonating very deeply across this once great nation for very obvious reasons.
Most Americans I know and deal with feel alienated from the political...
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Dear Donald Trump Supporters:
You’re fed up. This much I understand. You’re fed up with politicians who say one thing on the campaign trail, like that they’re going to stop illegal immigration, and then do another in Washington; you’re fed up with insiders who rig the system for their benefit at your expense; and you’re fed up with coastal media elites and their insular subculture.
On some level I sympathize. In the last presidential election, I couldn’t bring myself to vote for any of the candidates. I just left it blank. I wanted nothing to do with my awful options.
What I don’t understand is why you think a President Trump would treat us better. If you elect the billionaire, what makes you think that he will use whatever talents that he possesses to address your grievances...
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Ever since the Ferguson fiasco I have been both annoyed and disappointed, yet somewhat encouraged by the protests. You see, Thomas Jefferson (who finally admitted to being a Christian) once said "Dissent is both the right and the duty of every American citizen". But I am saddened by the fact that it takes murder and wrongful deaths to get people's attention - enough of it at least to cause outrage, no matter how fleeting and temporary.
We are supposed to be "The Christian Nation" yet we tolerate so many unChristian acts from our government it makes me wonder if we have become "CWCs" Christians Without Consciences for the sake of our own convenience, or have we just failed our children and become a classic case of boiling frogs? On a daily basis we are accepting the unacceptable as...
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Dear Damion
I write to you as a fellow Jamaican. I could show you my passport to prove my Jamaicanness, but I do not know if you would accept that as credential enough. Most people, however, accept me as a Jamaican writer and academic. My 9 books to date have consistently thought through the complicated question of what it means to be Jamaican.
It is by no means an easy question to answer. Most of my work tries to expand the dangerously limiting ideas that are out there. At the University of Glasgow where I taught until recently, my students were mostly white and from the UK. They sometimes came to my lectures on Caribbean Literature with very naive ideas about the region. Sometimes they thought that we all looked like you and me – dreadlocked men – and that we were always smiling...
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Dear Mr Trump:
You have entered the political arena in much the same fashion as a Brahma Bull would traverse a china shop. There certainly has been a great deal of noise and clamor. You certainly have a knack of expressing exactly what a very downtrodden, voting public seems to want to hear, and expressing it at the top of your lungs. There are those of us who never voted for the current administration, and have braced for, and received the worst of one of the greatest economic recessions in history. Hope and change have totally passed us over for underemployment and unaffordable health care because we can't afford both the insurance and the health care. Transparency in government is actually an exercise in diversion, smoke and mirrors. We are constantly being told what to concern...
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Dear Donald Trump,
I am a nobody. A single father who has delivered mediocre sex to a spectrum of women. Some you'd marry and some you'd (no doubt) call a fat pig or something close. Your words. Not mine. Ever.
Sorry to start with the perspective of my sex life. It's as gross and irrelevant as your opinions on immigration, but I'm doing it to make a bridge to your sex life, or at least, how you see women and America.
You've done some outstanding things in your life. A lot of them, actually. You work hard. You're smart, shrewd and ruthless. We can argue all day as to whether or not you're teed up to do better than others because of certain societal constructs, but I won't do that. Let's give credit, where credits due: You're good at what you do (at least partially) because you...
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Dear Governor Kasich and Ohio Legislators,
Test Stress
When I heard the news last week, my first instinct was to raise my fist in the air and yell "YESSSS!" You listened to the very public outcry from teachers and parents, and you got rid of the PARCC.
Then I began to think about the weeks of my life I spent training to prepare my students for the test. The summer days I missed being with my own daughter because I was in a workshop learning how the PARCC was structured. The days I missed teaching my students because I was taking the practice test myself with my colleagues, so we would know what we were preparing our kids to do. The time on my own that I spent revising my lesson plans and my assessments to mimic the PARCC style so that my students would be familiar with the format...
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