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Loneliness and Our Connection to Others
A personal reflection on loneliness and balancing solitude and relationships. Continue reading →
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Smoothing Out the Kinks
I’ve sustained an injury that has prevented me from running most of this summer, and in some ways, the story of that injury serves as an adept allegory for larger issues ongoing in my life. First, for...
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The Secret Life of Garbage
H/T Bethenny Schaffer and the design team at www.businessdegree.net Filed under: Education, Sustainability
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It’s Been Awhile
It’s been so long since I’ve written anything other than IEPs or lesson plans I don’t know if I can even write anymore, but I figure it’s worth dusting off the old fingerjoints to give it a shot for...
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Doubt
To be reflective is to be filled with unending self-doubt. There is a moment every day during which I consider whether teaching is the correct profession for me, whether I am too unyielding, too...
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In a Sense
Today we forced ourselves to take the train northwards, out of the gridlock reach of the city, to visit an acquaintance and a museum in a small town with one main street called Main St. As we wandered...
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2012 in review
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog. Here’s an excerpt: 4,329 films were submitted to the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. This blog had 23,000 views in 2012....
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In Memory of Claudia
My little bird, Claudia, passed away today. She was a spunky, beautiful, loving parakeet filled with song and vivacity. When let out of her cage, she would swoop and dive bomb about our apartment, a...
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Some Flowers Will Evolve to be Truthful
[Flowers] that carpet a field and require multiple visits from pollinators will evolve to be truthful, because they cannot afford to deceive their pollinators. –Ed Yong, Bees Can Sense the Electric...
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Omens
That’s why Bostrom hopes the Curiosity rover fails. ‘Any discovery of life that didn’t originate on Earth makes it less likely the great filter is in our past, and more likely it’s in our future,’ he...
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No Apologies
I’ve decided I will no longer apologize–neither to myself nor to my anonymous audience here–for failing to write on this blog. Part of getting older entails sacrifices and necessary shifts from...
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This Skein of Brittle Self-Awareness
It’s one of those nights in NYC when it’s too hot to sleep. It’s hard to even breathe. So in the night, I sit down here at my kitchen table to write. The way I used to, when my horizon … Continue...
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The Federalist Papers: A Review and an Introduction
In December, I began reading The Federalist Papers. I read them because in the course of researching and designing a unit of curriculum for my 7th-8th grade students, on what I ended up calling “The...
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The Federalist Papers: The Role of Faction
The first quotation in The Federalist Papers that stood out to me was Madison’s explicit acknowledgment of the reality and role of faction in a more democratic society in paper #10: There are two...
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The Federalist Papers: A Democracy vs. A Republic
Building on the subject of faction in federalist #10, James Madison then moves into a discussion of the differences between a pure democracy and a republic: From this view of the subject it may be...
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Direct Democracy and the Rule of the Mob
I haven’t been able to get back to my review of The Federalist Papers due to work that I need to catch up on, caused by a wonderful trip to Maine, during which I abstained from doing anything other...
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Government and Human Nature
We’ve explored James Madison’s exposition on a democratic republic and the regulation of faction through the mechanism of representation in Federalist #10. I’d like to now move on to some interesting...
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Hamilton and Taxation
Continuing with my review of The Federalist Papers, I’m going to move to a couple of short excerpts from #21 from Alexander Hamilton (did you know his political career was nearly capsized by a sex...
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Majority vs. Minority Rule, B.S. vs. Passion
Let’s move on to Federalist #22, again by Alexander Hamilton. While I sometimes find Hamilton tedious, as I mentioned earlier, he can also display a ferocious command of logic, political acuity,...
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What Modern Writers Mean When They Say, “Keep It Simple,” Dude
Speaking of bullshit and Alexander Hamilton. . . When I commenced exploring the Federalist Papers, I noted that the language can be at times dense and opaque. In #23, Hamilton must have shifted back...
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