Monday, December 05, 2005

A Fried Green al-Qaedas Exclusive   A President, a Secretary of State, a former presidential candidate, and a member of the Cure are guests on Hannity & Colmes.  What do you think the topic is? Find out here.   (Hint: it involves "Jingle Bells" done by barking dogs.)    5:08:33 AM     comment [] trackback []   Jennifer is Looking Out for You!   Remember Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse, the Townhall columnist who informed us that one can't logically claim that abortion should be legal because it's nonsense to believe that you should be able to enjoy "the cause" of sex "without ever experiencing the effect, namely, a live baby"?  Anyway, she's back with an exciting challenge for college students: Here is what you do.  Make an appointment with your professor. Mention that you are aware that there are other points of view besides the one being covered in class. Then modestly suggest that he or she assign a certain book. You, of course, have already chosen your book carefully. You want an academically credible book that challenges not only the professor’s conclusions, but also the assumptions that underlie his arguments. Yeah, that should win you points with the prof! For instance, students in Women’s Studies classes could modestly suggest that their professors include Taking Sex Differences Seriously, by Professor Steven Rhoads of the University of Virginia. Ah, yes, the book about the biological differences between men and women, written by a professor of public policy. Or students in thinly veiled pornography classes could suggest my own “Smart Sex: Finding Life-long Love in a Hook-up World.”  Ah, yes, the book about sex and relationships, written by an economist.  These tomes will certainly impress my professors, what with all their academic credibility and all. But yeah, if I am ever in a thinly veiled pornography class (or even in a fully-clothed one), I will certainly suggest that the professor have the entire class purchase and read Dr. Jennifer's book.  After all, Dr. Jennifer is only thinking of our best interests, right? In this book, I take on the claims of the sexual revolution. I show that casual sex (which I call consumer sex) is really anti-social. I show that recreational sex is really not as much fun as it is cracked up to be. I'll leave it to your imaginations as to how Dr. Jennifer might show that recreational sex isn't all that fun (and remember, Smart Sex is a book, not a video). Both of these books have stellar academic credentials, even though they are not published by university presses. Dr. Rhoads is a full professor of Government at the University of Virginia. I have a doctorate in economics. Plus, as Dr. Jennifer's Townhall bio states, she is "the founder and chief visionary of Your Coach for the Culture Wars."  Being a "chief visionary" and a culture war coach are pretty heavy titles in academic circles -- therefore, I'm sure her credentials will wow (and possibly even intimidate) my Pornography prof. But if my professor still isn't convinced of the merits of Dr. Jennifer's book, I will show her this Amazon customer review by noted radio host/columnist/hotel pastor Doug Giles: jenny has done a great job explaining why many marriages suck worse than an airplane toilet. ... in addition, morse takes no prisoners slam dancing the nuevo sexual revolutionaries of the 21st centuries. ...also, this is a great read for the righteous rebels who want heavy verbal artillery to answer the licentious naysayers in the high school and college classrooms. Yes, with a review like that (and from such a distinguished scholar), my professor will certainly recognize that Jenny's book is an important academic work that all serious students of thinly-veiled pornography should study. But back to Dr. Jennifer, who has even more reasons why I should ask my professor to make Smart Sex part of our assigned reading. More to the point, both books, Taking Sex Differences Seriously and Smart Sex: Finding Life-long Love in a Hook-up World, have ample footnotes to the scholarly literature. Just like Ann Coulter's Slander, which had HUNDREDS of footnotes (or end notes, or whatever), and "probably thousands of facts and quotes," thus proving that it was well-researched, scholarly, and all true. These are not books that can be easily dismissed for lack of credentials. Sure they can.  It's easy! Either of these books would provide ample opportunity to challenge your professors. The best case scenario is that they actually adopt one of the books for the next semester’s course. It’s not too late to order these books for spring semester, by the way. Thanks for the public service announcement, Jennifer. 4:45:04 AM     comment [] trackback []   Winning Hearts and Minds   From the U.K. Telegraph: Pakistan censors poetic salute to Bush A poem in a school textbook has been removed by embarrassed education officials in Pakistan after it was found that the first letters of each line spelt out "President George W Bush." [...] An education ministry spokesman said it had no idea who wrote the poem nor how it found its way into A Textbook of English for 16-year-olds last year. The acrostic is highly embarrassing for President Pervez Musharraf, who is already under fire at home for being allegedly pro-American and supporting the US war against terrorism. America has even donated money to transform Pakistan's national curriculum into something closer to western ideals. The result is a much-lampooned US-friendly philosophy called "enlightened moderation" which America has agreed to pay to disseminate in schools. "We have decided to delete the poem from the book, published by the National Book Foundation and prescribed for federal board students," the spokesman told the Pakistani newspaper The News. "It will be stretching the matter too far to assert that the poem was inserted in the book deliberately to enumerate the qualities of the American president," he added. The official said the ministry was investigating how a series of committees employed to monitor and censor the contents of all textbooks failed to notice the acrostic. Here's the copy of the poem which the Telegraph provided: Okay, to be fair to the Pakistani committees, I'm pretty sure that in the actual textbook the first letters of each line weren't bolded, nor was the background a photo of George Bush. But the question still remains: how did this poem find its way into a Pakistani English book? Let's do some Googling and see what we can learn. 1.  A site called RHL School - Free Learning Resources offers a copy of this poem as an English reading comprehension exercise (questions include "Is the author referring to a specific person in this poem? If you think so, do you agree that he is a true leader?").  The teacher's note advises "The name President George W. Bush is spelled vertically down the left side of the poem."  The page is dated March 5, 2003, and is copyrighted by HHL. "RHL School" advertises itself as "Your place to get free ready to use quality worksheets for teaching, reinforcement, and review."  Interestingly, the first link on its home page is The White House.  Its News and Public Affairs links definitely skew toward the wingnut side of the net.  However, I can't find any info about who sponsors the site. 2.  A cached page titled Compreensão de Textos offers the poem as a reading comprehension exam -- this copy is formatted so that lines spelling out each word are grouped together.  (I'm guessing that the site was for Portuguese speakers.) 3.  Abraham, a blogger in Sabah, Malaysia, copied the poem to his blog in May 2004 as a tribute to those who serve his country -- he indicated that he found it in a magazine. I can only find a couple of other places on the entire Internet where this poem is cited (on a Pakistani "MODEL PAPER IN THE SUBJECT OF ENGLISH EFFECTIVE" and copied from RHL School to a "Teacher's Educational Institute" page apparently originating in Orange County, Florida -- it doesn't include the teacher's note about the acrostic. So, while we still don't know how the poem got in the Pakistani textbook, I'm going to speculate that it originated at RHL school (which encourages teachers and educators to make free use of their materials), and was innocently included in Pakistani English curriculum by lazy textbook writers who copied material from the Internet.   However, it's also possible that the U.S. Dept of State hired a contractor like The Lincoln Group to plant pro-George Bush poems in the foreign media (which would explain how the Malaysian blogger saw it in a magazine), and in school books in the Arab world. Now, we just need to know who is behind RHL School, and what ties, if any, they have with the White House . . . 1:48:01 AM     comment [] trackback []

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