as of right now i think cardona is a decent choice. he's what i would expect from biden, somebody competent who is going to use soft power and isn't going to be a firebrand for any one issue.

would i prefer someone a little less conciliatory to standardized testing and predatory charter organizations? sure. but he's also in favor of bilingual education and multicultural curriculum, which is good news. also, universal pre-k across the country would be huge if it's achieved.

JL

What do you think about Biden's choice for Secretary of Education. I know it wasn't who you had advocated for but maybe this is a good choice, too?

You're playing "catchup" on reading columns and taking in all the comments, and then BAM... Stucki chimes in and types what you're thinking, causing you to question your mental fitness and physical well being.

Should I take a drink or take my temperature? Both.

I see kitties are next... and none too soon. I'm the farthest behind, amn't I? :)

"As someone pointed out, would he have written that about Dr. Henry Kissinger? I seriously doubt it, personally..."

Someone else pointed out would he have said the same thing about Dr. Marin Luther King JR. also? I doubt that either.

I think he saw Dr. Biden as a target only as a woman.

Academic bottom feeder Paul Alexander was hired by by lobbyist Michael Caputo, as assistant secretary of public affairs in the Department of Health and Human Services.

Caputo moved to Russia in 1994 and was advisor to Boris Yeltsin. By the year 2000 Alexander was working for the firm Gazprom Media to polish the image of Vladimir Putin.

Does anybody else find this unsettling? Putin seems to have more clout in the USA than say, Puerto Rico. Enjoy it while it lasts Vlad.

it's okay to kill people, just not fetuses.

JL

here's a little help with that prior comment you made:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/dec/21/joe-biden-tom-vilsack-agriculture-secretary

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWYFHuqGUPg&list=PL4k1-gMOXgb76GqKxvzsjaJ_22SBpu4iV

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cg32P-huFA4

A lot of rock'n roll with some blues thrown in for good measure. Hey, let's make the theme for tonight Full Concerts! I'm kidding. I'll be happy enough if somebody shows up. Heh.

Anyways, enjoy!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xm5AgvAmWAI

Where I sit, we received $2000 per month when we were in lock down and out of work ...

i'd appreciate it if he addressed me as colonel or sir. i believe i've earned it.
~a few good men

I know Jill Biden rightfully earned her degree and that "doctor" means "teacher", but calling yourself "Dr." on the basis of a PhD has always struck me as a bit pompous and still does.

Well, this isn't really about what Jill calls herself, is it?

What it is about is how others refer to her as a simple gesture of respect and common decency.

It's kind of like why we wear a face covering these days when we can't be sure of keep our proper distance.

The guy from the WSJ who gets his shirt in a knot over referring to the future First Lady as Dr. Biden doesn't understand the first thing about common human decency or about showing respect for others. He probably doesn't wear a mask when appropriate during a deadly pandemic, either.

speaking as someone whose title "doctor" has many times been ignored or spoken derisively, this ultimately says a lot more about the person who addresses me than it does about my own qualifications.

Couldn't agree more. Would just be a little more specific in that it says more about the lack of character and integrity in the person addressing and how they don't hold a candle to the light of you and Dr. Biden and I could go on.

In any event, you and and the soon-to-be-First Lady are very good people and the contrast you make with the one who doesn't care to properly address couldn't be more stark. And, that will never change.

I'm very tired right now and so I am sorry if this doesn't sound the way I maan it to sound but I know you know what I mean ... :)

I voted for Ron Johnson for Turncoat of the Year. What was I thinking?

I recently ran across some stuff I thought you (and others) might enjoy. While reading the WaPo article What Money Can’t Buy: The Post’s Guide to Gifts That Don’t Exist but Should, I ran across a brief contribution, “A Measure of Good Faith,” written by Ken Liu. There, I found this intriguing bit about a gift idea for sussing out and avoiding online sea lions:

On the Internet, where any rando feels entitled to our full attention, where empathy is a weakness rather than a strength, the party that “wins” any argument is by default the one that cares the least. Out of self-preservation, we cease engaging with those who claim to want to converse but who are just as likely to be barking sea lions.

Naturally, as I was unfamiliar with online sea lions or the rhetorical strategy of sealioning, I followed Liu's link above to David Malki's cartoon, "The Terrible Sea Lion." Hey, you can even buy a T-shirt!

This piqued my interest further and I ended up at an interesting essay by Amy Johnson in a Harvard publication entitled "Perspectives on Harmful Speech Online: a collection of essays, August 2017." Her essay is entitled The Multiple Harms of Sea Lions, which this handy link will take you right to. I recommend this two-pager for everything you ever needed to know about sea lions and their impact on civil discourse and informal learning.

Selected snippets:

...Sealioning, [...], may feel familiar: it evokes
the toddler who incessantly asks why, the adolescent who has just discovered philosophy, the condescending family member who disapproves of your life choices. This familiarity is part of its power. These
interaction patterns summon a set of responses geared toward well-intentioned questioning. Sealioning
also fits into a larger set of rhetorical marginalization practices. Refusals to understand can be subtle
forms of erasure.

...In many ways, sealioning resembles the Gish gallop, a rhetorical strategy that creationists deployed
when debating evolutionists in the late twentieth century. The Gish gallop—named for Duane Gish, a
biochemist who became a famed creationist debater—careens through topics, rattling through half-truth
after half-truth. It aims both to overwhelm opponents’ ability to respond and to introduce doubt into the
minds of audiences...

Interesting essay. The author has no firm answer for best practices with sea lions, but she does touch on alternatives, including "Don’t feed the troll," outlining a debate structure strategy that helped defang the Gish gallop, and the suggestion that "[f]rom a
linguistic perspective, sealioning is noticeably patterned—perhaps platforms could automate discovery
of likely sealioning attempts and interrupt them."

There is always hope.

Health and happiness to all in this holiday season.

kittens were monday, december 7th. looks like we're already three quarters of the way there.

@rusty,

it would certainly be nice if we got a real educator as education secretary. is diane ravitch really too much to hope for?

JL

Gotta agree with you. CW you went for the lowest hanging fruit this time around.

600!

You'll have to forgive me... been busier than an elf at Christmas. I'm catching up on a shit-ton of things, and I'm actually just starting to read 46 Minutes Of Festivus Grievances ... after I pry my eyes open and get coffee, of course.

I don't see any kitties yet... but 600, you say?

Dang. That's a lot of zeroes. ;)

Here are some suggested topics that COULD HAVE been included as 'talking points':
* Despite the Democratically-controlled House TWICE passing COVID stimulation and critically-needed funding to address the myriad additional costs of the pandemic, the Republican-controlled Senate STILL hasn't passed anything. And the obstruction continues, and WILL continue in 2021 if, as expected, either Georgia Senator is Republican.
* Related to #1, the Senate is finding time to confirm appointees, but not to extend eviction moratorium, unemployment supplements, extra funding for food stamps, preventing disconnection of water and electricity during a pandemic, etc.
* Already there is a clamor to jump the line in vaccine priority. Who needs the vaccine more, an 'essential worker' in a meatpacking plant or Amazon warehouse -or- NBA player?
* Florida alone is facing a $5 billion shortfall, resulting in the loss of thousands of state-government jobs. Already thousands of cuts at the state and local level have been implemented in 2020.

in the case of colleagues and administrators, it's generally either ignorance or insecurity on their own part. it does sting a little, but i feel like going to the trouble of correcting someone calls more attention to their issues, whatever they may be, than the breach of protocol warrants.

JL

The article wasn't totally clear, but it kind of implied it was about verifying things like addresses before they actually got a search warrant, when the info came in from a CI. Seems like a pretty basic thing to do...

-CW

Ha! That's pretty funny. I kept thinking of "the Maestro" from Seinfeld, and "A Pimp Called Slickback" from the animated Boondocks (who absolutely demanded that the whole title be used each and every time...).

The key is, it is totally up to the person who earned it to decide.

-CW

Tell me about it...

ListenWhenYouHear -

Thanks for that, I don't follow Chicago politics that closely, but it certainly is interesting. Chicago police have had this problem approximately forever, from what I hear...

-CW

I think it mostly depends on the university. There are some where everyone DEMANDS it and woe to the lowly staffer who doesn't remember. Others are looser.

The main point, however, is that it is TOTALLY up to the person who earned it whether she uses it or not. That's the real rule of thumb, which is why the entire article was indeed "mansplaining." As someone pointed out, would he have written that about Dr. Henry Kissinger? I seriously doubt it, personally...

-CW

:-)

-CW

However, Chicago police have continued to ignore even the small search warrant policy changes Lightfoot made in February of this year, nearly two years after CBS2 began exposing botched Chicago police raids.

What policy changes have the police continued to ignore? They throw that out there without justifying the claim, so I was curious if you knew what they are talking about?

The only time it is necessary to address someone as “Doctor” is in a professional/formal/official setting when the person is being introduced or addressed.

When you are on personal terms with the person, most will not want to be addressed formally in day to day interactions. How your professors chose to be addressed was their choice. We called them what they told us to call them when we were in class.

But only when we were in class! As my friend Jeff Cole told a professor that he bumped into at a football game who corrected Jeff when he addressed him as “Mr.” instead of the “Dr.” he thought he deserved, “Your degree means nothing here. If you believe we are entitled to be addressed by our greatest accomplishment then you should refer to me as ‘A man with a 12 inch penis Jeff Cole’”.

Jeff wisely dropped the class the following week.

You're right, Chris, this is beyond disappointing.

She was out of there in just over 6 months. They hired her to bring about change...they just wanted her to do it without ACTUALLY changing anything!

Chicago has some real problems — from the top on down!

C. R. Stucki wrote:

"The question you raise with that seriously bad comparison is, would you still feel the same way (about the danger of falling off a tall building), if you had heard of tens of thousands of people who HAD fallen off a tall building, with absolutely no adverse effects?"

The short simple answer to that question is: YES

Because: Needless, preventable deaths, no matter how few, are still of major consequence in comparison to their number. Please do not belittle their importance. They are all still human beings, and in many cases someone's loved one, gone before their time. It does not matter if they would have eventually died anyway. Nor does it matter that most who contract covid either don't get sick at all, or don't die. Or even if covid never affects most of the people you know or in your community. We still do all we can to mitigate deaths from tornadoes, after all. How many do they actually affect? Why waste all that money??? Because, in short, we are our brothers keeeper after all!!!