News – Page 146 – Quixotic Pedagogue

Segregated Media in America

Farai Chideya, writing in The Nation, argues that American media is dangerously white and elite:

When I was a kid, my family loved watching science fiction films and television shows. Some of them, from Star Trek to Soylent Green, featured a multiracial band of humans, plus various sentient life forms. But in other features—let’s say the awesomely campy Logan’s Run—everyone (or nearly) in the future was white. My family suspended disbelief for the duration of the movie. Then, depending on our mood, we either laughed at or lamented the idea that anyone thought the future would be monochrome, except for the pantsuits.

Today I feel like I’m watching that movie all over again. This time, it’s called The Future of Journalism, and we can’t afford to suspend our disbelief….

A report by the Radio Television Digital News Association, meanwhile, found that in 2011, when 35.4 percent of Americans were considered “minorities,” only 20.5 percent of those employed in television were people of color; and, shockingly, only 7.1 percent of radio employees—in that medium, a sharp drop since 1990.

May 20, 2013/by dpogreba

Google Maps Reunion & Salman Rushdie

Student Blogs

Google Maps to the rescue, as a Chinese man made his way home after being kidnapped 23 years earlier:

A Chinese man has used Google maps to locate his family, 23 years after he was abducted. Luo Gang, who was kidnapped when he was just five years old, used the online tool to locate two bridges – the only landmarks he remembered from his hometown.

Luo, 28, was snatched in a small town in Sichuan province while on his way to kindergarten. He was then taken hundreds of miles east, to Fujian province, where he was adopted by a family in the city of Sanming.

“Our lives disconnect and reconnect, we move on, and later we may again touch one another, again bounce away. This is the felt shape of a human life, neither simply linear nor wholly disjunctive nor endlessly bifurcating, but rather this bouncey-castle sequence of bumpings-into and tumblings-apart.” –Salman Rushdie

May 19, 2013/by dpogreba

Debate Exam: Economic Philosophy

Debate Class

The Debate test over economic philosophy is tomorrow, Friday, May 17. It will cover the following philosophers:

Karl Marx (Alienation, False Consciousness, Dialectical Materialism, Dictatorship of the Proletariat, Post-Communist State)
Vladimir Lenin (Vanguard Party, War Communism, Democratic Centralism, Imperialism)
Mao Zedong (Mass Mobilization, Constant Revolution, Peasant Revolt, Three Worlds)
Adam Smith (Invisible Hand, Division of Labor, Natural Liberty, Role of Currency)
Friederich Hayek (Tyranny and the Strong Man, Moral Hazard, Liberty, Serfdom)
John Maynard Keynes (Aggregate Demand, Government Intervention into Economy, Stimulus, Deficit Spending, Public Works)

You should be able write intelligently about the concepts listed for each.

Don’t forget that your Personal Philosophy paper and presentation are due Monday.

May 16, 2013/by dpogreba

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