Didactic Synapse
hip-hop, politics, education, movies, books, killer robots, and video games
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After an insanely long hiatus, we’re back! And we’ve got a special guest: Avner Vengosh! (Yes, the Avner Vengosh!)
DS #87: An Evening with Avner Vengosh
Top Links + Action
- NY Principal of the Year Carol Burris responds to Common Core Test Results
- Elizabeth Warren schools CNBC dorks
- Russian man turns tables on credit card contract
- Take Action:Â Indonesian government: Say sorry for 1965!
Current Events
- Israel uses white phosphorous, we don’t mind
- Tricia Rose on Tavis Smiley
- Chelsea Manning gets 35 years, comforts his lawyer
- The Murder of Christopher Lane
- Antoinette Tuff is totally awesome
- RIP Helen Thomas
- Cameroon gay rights activist found tortured and killed
- Dear Malala: This is Why We Shot You
- Burka Avenger
- Bone marrow ‘frees men of HIV drugs’
- EPA’s Abandoned Wyoming Fracking Study One Retreat of Many
- Fracking
- Teenager dies after being tasered in Miami
- Rand Paul on the Republican Party
- The Fifth Estate
Economics
- Detroit files for bankruptcy
- Stronger labor law in Bangladesh
- Ha Joon Chang: Corporations, complexity, and crime
- McDonalds tells workers to get a second job and turn off the heat
- BW: Debt-Ceiling brink has speed traders drooling
Education
- Who benefits from school closings?
- Jeb Bush’s education record becoming a liability
- Indiana won’t change school grades (previous superintendent fiddled with numbers)
- Slate: Parents left behind
Killer Robots, Etc
Hip-Hop
It’s only been, what? Four years since the last episode? I hope it was worth the wait!
DS #84: Pegatron and the Cult of Money
Top Links + Action
- Apartheid Regime Bomb Victim Father Michael Lapsley on Using Forgiveness to Heal From Tragedy
- Wal-Mart and The Gap refuse to sign worker protection agreement
- Simpsons food court at Universal Studios
- Take Action:Â Stop US government spying!
Current Events
- 200 killed in Bangladesh factory building collapse
- Different places have different safety rules and that’s okay
- Bangladesh collapsed factory owner arrested
- Blaze at locked Chinese poultry slaughterhouse kills 119
- Texas fertilizer company didn’t heed disclosure rules before blast
- Fracking drives potentially explosive demand for potentially explosive ammonia factories
- Q&A with Josh Fox: Gasland II
- Woman in Kuwait gets 11 years for “insulting†tweet
- News archive, 1994: MADD co-founder goes to work for liquor lobby
Economics
- How austerity kills
- “How austerity kills†co-author Stuckler on DemocracyNow
- Apple shifts production from Foxconn to Pegatron
- Pope: “cult of moneyâ€
- How many HFT firms actually use Twitter to trade?
- Twitter hack was the work of the Syrian Electronic Army
- How the robots lost: HFT’s rise and fall
- Are American taxpayers subsidizing Wal-Mart’s low wages?
- “The Low-Wage Drag on Our Economy: Wal-Mart’s low wages and their effect on taxpayers and economic growth†(pdf)
- Why ending extreme poverty is not enough
Education
- There are no D or F schools in Wisconsin
- “Pay for performance†pitfalls
- Common Core: Cutting edge or dull blade?
- Tea Party groups rallying against Common Core
- Be glad for our failure to catch China’s schools
- French teacher shows pupils horror movie “Sawâ€
- Why French kids don’t have ADHD
Killer Robots, Etc
- Summary of Obama speech on drones
- The Drone War: A comprehensive map of lethal US attacks
- Medea Benjamin on why she disrupted Obama’s speech
- UN report wants moratorium on killer robots
- Teaching robots to anticipate human actions
- Modelling scouts target anorexia patients
- The Tumblr bucket: Yahoo needs to make cash off it
- Reading literature makes us smarter and nicer
- “Urgent need†to remove space debris
Hip-Hop
Sir Mix-A-Lot:Â Swass
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkaJoMicA04
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NR7mRC85C3c
It’s been a long time, but hopefully the new show is worth the wait. Fecal transplants, Yahoo! profits, and lots of yelling. Enjoy!
Take Action: Free Leonard Peltier
Top 3 Links
- An amazing mea culpa from the IMF’s chief economist on austerity
- Canada kills pennies, issues glow in the dark dinosaur quarter
- Fecal transplants cure serious infections
Current Events
- Davey D on Christopher Dorner’s accusations of the LAPD
- John Brennan and the truth about drones
- Bill Moyers: Drones and Democracy
- Hydrofracking safe, says New York health dept. analysis
- DemocracyNow debate: Is Fracking Safe?
- Harvard School of Public Health: More Guns = More Homicide
- Georgia man guns down immigrant after GPS sends him to wrong driveway
Economics
- Jack Lew oversaw Citigroup unit that shorted housing market
- Ending corporate tax dodging would cut the deficit twice as much as hiking Medicare age
- Yahoo, Dell swell Netherlands tax haven
Education
Killer Robots, Etc
- North Dakota glows in the dark
- Wife of Chinese Premier hires body double?
- The world’s new second fastest robot is a tiny cardboard cockroach
- British soldiers flying nano helicopters in Afghanistan
- Sarah Palin’s FoxNews contract not renewed
Hip-Hop
- ICP is dumb
From his Rolling Stone blog:
Bigelow made it clear that she wasn’t making any half-assed Rumsfeldian claim that what went on after 9/11, in thousands of grimy rooms around the world with thousands if not tens of thousands of people, somehow wasn’t torture. […]
Here’s my question: if it would have been dishonest to leave torture out of the film entirely, how is it not dishonest to leave out how generally ineffective it was, how morally corrupting, how totally it enraged the entire Arab world, how often we used it on people we knew little to nothing about, how often it resulted in deaths, or a hundred other facts? Bigelow put it in, which was “honest,” but it seems an eerie coincidence that she was “honest” about torture in pretty much exactly the way a CIA interrogator would have told the story, without including much else. […]
Bigelow is such a great storyteller that she has to know, deep inside, that the “depiction is not endorsement” line doesn’t wash. You want audiences gripped to the screen, you’ve gotta give them something to root for, or against. This was definitely not a movie about two vicious and murderous groups of people killing and torturing each other in an endless cycle of increasingly brainless revenge. And this was not a movie about how America lost its values en route to a great strategic victory.
No, this was a straight-up “hero catches bad guys” movie, and the idea that audiences weren’t supposed to identify with Maya the torturer is ludicrous.
You asked for it, you got it. Here is my presentation on East Timor, from soup to nuts. It’s a story of bloodshed, atrocity, suffering, oppression, resistance, nonviolent struggle, peace, and hope. It’s how I met my wife and why I am who I am today.
As you listen, you are encouraged to watch the following slideshow and YouTube clip:
- East Timor Slideshow (The old SWF is broken, and this new PDF is different from the one I used in the audio recording, but it will have to do for now.)
- 1991 Santa Cruz Protest (Start at 4:08)
When you’re done, please visit these websites:
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