Strangely, my salary has not been following the same trajectory

Minnesota tuition rates have also been skyrocketing. My salary has been creeping upward at single digit percentage rates — low single digits, and we also had a freeze for a few years — and also, we haven’t been hiring swarms of new faculty, but only replacing retiring faculty (which, by the way, immediately reduces salary expenses). Why is this happening?

The answer is easy: state governments have been jettisoning their responsibilities and not paying for the educational institutions earlier, wiser generations invested in. Thank you, Republicans, the party of irresponsible spendthrifts, for coasting on the infrastructure built up 50 years ago, and letting it decay now.

(Also on Sb)

A completely justified howl of moral outrage

You may recall that comic book artist Frank Miller posted an appalling rant against the Occupy movement, revealing that he really is a nasty right-wing conservative fascist deep down…as if we hadn’t noticed in his work. Now another legendary icon of the comics world speaks out: Alan Moore says what he thinks about Miller.

Well, Frank Miller is someone whose work I’ve barely looked at for the past twenty years. I thought the Sin City stuff was unreconstructed misogyny, 300 appeared to be wildly ahistoric, homophobic and just completely misguided. I think that there has probably been a rather unpleasant sensibility apparent in Frank Miller’s work for quite a long time.

…

As far as I can see, the Occupy movement is just ordinary people reclaiming rights which should always have been theirs. I can’t think of any reason why as a population we should be expected to stand by and see a gross reduction in the living standards of ourselves and our kids, possibly for generations, when the people who have got us into this have been rewarded for it; they’ve certainly not been punished in any way because they’re too big to fail. I think that the Occupy movement is, in one sense, the public saying that they should be the ones to decide who’s too big to fail. It’s a completely justified howl of moral outrage and it seems to be handled in a very intelligent, non-violent way, which is probably another reason why Frank Miller would be less than pleased with it. I’m sure if it had been a bunch of young, sociopathic vigilantes with Batman make-up on their faces, he’d be more in favour of it. We would definitely have to agree to differ on that one.

I’ve never met Miller, but I have met Moore a couple of times, and have heard him speak a few times, too. He’s weird but interestingly so, and I can also say that he seems to be a genuinely good person — a nice demonstration that you can be opinionated without being an asshole.

Cain is out

Finally, Herman Cain has suspended his presidential campaign under a cloud of accusations of sexual harassment and adultery, clearing the field for…Newt Gingrich? Philanderer and sleazebag? This is not a step up in ethics.

At last, I understand something, though. Gingrich has been an odious creature throughout his entire political career; a venal, pretentious moral monster. What it’s done, though, is given him an armor of repulsiveness. Just wait — there’ll be a revelation that he drinks the blood of Christian babies and wears a fake toothbrush mustache while at home, and everyone will just say, “Oh, that’s just Newtie…” and it will make no difference to his campaign at all.

Whose side is God on?

On the side of the investment bankers and plutocrats, of course!

That’s a sign that’s gone up in Minneapolis. You want healthcare? You’re going to hell, you covetous sinner. You don’t think the obscenely rich ought to keep every penny they’ve got? You’re going to hell for that, too, Communist.

I guess it should be no surprise. Since the Bible says only 144,000 will go to heaven, he’s always been on the side of the 0.002%.

Arkansas is promoting sexual ignorance

Arkansas schools are promoting abstinence-only sex education, through a program called “The Real Deal”. Like all abstinence-only programs, it’s foundation is in morality (their byline is “abstinence builds character”, which isn’t true, unless you mistake sanctimonious prudery for character) and lies — they announce statistics on their main page that claim that their abstinence programs reduce sexual activity by 30-40%, although they don’t bother to give us a source for those numbers, and all the other evidence available says that abstinence-only fails in comparison to comprehensive sex education.

On their site, they do cite a general source, WebMD. Let’s see what what WebMD has to say about abstinence-only sex ed, shall we?

Students who took part in sexual abstinence programs were just as likely to have intercourse as those who did not. And, those who attended the classes reported having similar numbers of sexual partners to those who did not attend the classes. Mathematica also found out that the average age of having the first intercourse was the same for both groups – just a little less than 15 years old.

Four different abstinence-only programs were examined from around the USA. Students were about eleven when they participated in these programs in 1999. They were surveyed again in late 2005 and early 2006 when they were about 16.

They found that about half of the abstinence-only students had experienced intercourse and about half of the control group (having no program) had also. The 2,057 students were from Miami, Milwaukee, Powhatan, VA and Clarksdale, MS – with both urban and rural settings represented.

The site also touts True Love Waits, a page created by LifeWay Christian Resources, providing “Biblical solutions for life”, which is owned by the Southern Baptist Convention…which reveals the real motivation behind this organization. Has anyone ever seen a genuinely secular abstinence-only program? They all seem to be driven by a conservative social agenda that wants to police children’s thoughts and behaviors, and force them to conform to a failed and obsolete biblical model of culture. At best, they strain to strip the program of any appearance of faith-based thinking (does that remind anyone else of Intelligent Design creationism?), but they can’t hide the fundamentalist/absolutist foundation of their ideas.

They’re also ludicrously stupid. Look at what some Arkansas parents discovered that “The Real Deal” had their kids signing: a card promising to conform. My favorite part is the expiration date.

My wedding night was 31 years ago. Woo hoo! Alcohol, illegal drugs, pornography, and sex outside of marriage, here I come!

The only real deal for sex ed is comprehensive sex education, which also encourages restraint and good sense, but gives accurate information about how to prevent pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. Anything less is encouraging ignorance, and we’ve got the example of a few thousand years of Christianity to show what a mess that makes of people’s lives.

Sam Brownback: #heblowsalot.

Youth today. Sometimes they do great things.

A teenage girl in a high school group called Youth in Government uses her fancy new tweeting phone to exercise her constitutionally-protected right to call a governor a butthead. (Or, to be more specific, to say that he “sucked” and to create the hashtag #heblowsalot.) Her perceptive abilities proved accurate, when said Gov. Sam Brownback reveals that he uses taxpayer dollars to gather evidence that teenagers are making fun of him on Twitter, and to use that evidence to get them in trouble at school. Because the butthead quotient in this story wasn’t high enough already, the school responded to Brownback’s sniveling about adolescents with political opinions by attempting to force the teenage girl in question to write a letter of apology to Gov. Brownback. The teenager in question, Emma Sullivan, 18, responded by demonstrating her superior understanding of the basic principles of democracy by refusing, and instead causing the easily perturbed governor even more consternation by asking for a sit-down meeting to ask direct questions of the governor, furthering demonstrating no doubt to him that everything started to go wrong with this country when they let women have the vote.

Although, really, this kind of blows my mind. Here’s what oily, stupid Republicans do with their state resources.

Brownback’s office, which monitors social media for postings containing the governor’s name, saw Sullivan’s post and contacted the Youth in Government program.

Sullivan received a scolding at school and was ordered to send Brownback an apology letter. She said Prinicipal Karl R. Krawitz even suggested talking points for the letter she was supposed to turn in Monday.

While we’re all laughing at Governor Crybaby, you might also take a moment to write (politely!) to Principal Krawitz and let him know that his craven obedience to a ridiculous, anti-democratic order from Brownback makes him a lapdog and toady. Praise your students when they show initiative, and demonstrate that they understand free speech far better than you do!

Brownback has blinked. That’ll teach him a lesson: never play chicken with a teenager. Those youngsters think they’re immortal.

Art and freedom

My day is done. I’ve read the one quote that makes me happy, so now I can buckle down to grading. It’s from Ai Weiwei, the artist and dissenter the Chinese government would love to silence.

My definition of art has always been the same. It is about freedom of expression, a new way of communication. It is never about exhibiting in museums or about hanging it on the wall. Art should live in the heart of the people. Ordinary people should have the same ability to understand art as anybody else. I don’t think art is elite or mysterious. I don’t think anybody can separate art from politics. The intention to separate art from politics is itself a very political intention. I definitely know people who are shameless enough to give up basic values. I see this kind of art, and when I see it I feel ashamed. In China they treat art as some form of decoration, a self-indulgence. It is pretending to be art. It looks like art. It sells like art. But it is really a piece of shit.

There’s more about his politics: China keeps trying to control the free expression of the people on the internet by shutting it down. They argue that they’re better than they were in the days of the Cultural Revolution — which is setting the bar rather low, I think — but it’s still a restrictive police state.

I’d argue that the US is better than China, but still, especially considering the record of the last few weeks, is likewise a police state.

The United Kingdom must be awash with cash

Isn’t it wonderful that they’re so flush that they can start spending buckets of money on frivolities and casual whims for the school system? No shortage of teachers, the teachers all well-paid and satisfied, the schools all well-supplied, and such a surplus that the government can publish and send out a special little present to every school.

The Times Educational Supplement is reporting this morning that the Prime Minister is planning to send a King James Bible to every school in the country, complete with a foreword by Michael Gove, the Education Minister.

Mr Gove is quoted as saying that the King James Bible was the most important book written in the English language. “It‘s a thing of beauty, and it‘s also an incredibly important historical artefact. It has helped shape and define the English language and is one of the keystones of our shared culture. And it is a work that has had international significance.”

Man, I wish the American educational system was so well-funded that we could start dumping random books on school libraries like that.

Although…aren’t there plenty of other books of historical and literary significance that could benefit the schools a little more? I suspect that the Christian schoolchildren already have access to copies of the Bible, and the non-Christian ones aren’t going to be very interested.

Oh, hey, what am I saying? I’m sure the government has already provided all the schools with all the science books and history books and literature and art and other such wonderfully useful works, so I shouldn’t cavil at them generously adding one more text to the bounty, right?