PZ Myers: This is why I hate college football programs

Posted on by
Reply

I know, students enjoy them, and a weekend of sports can be a fun event, and yes, they do have a strong effect on college enrollments (which always seemed bizarre to me—students actually select their academic institution based on the performance of the athletic team? But the correlations in the enrollment/season wins data all bear it out). But they also turn into hyper-inflated domains of privilege, where the coaches are paid more than faculty, students and alumni vividly demonstrate the etymological source of the term “fan”, and the athletes too often turn into swaggering assholes. Can we just have small athletic programs where it’s all for fun, and no one makes the games more important than the academics?
Read more . . .

Gov. Scott Walker Gets Checked, Mic Checked!

Posted on by
Reply


The beauty of this is the witnessing of the involuntary transfer of authority by the right-wing reactionaries, and the priceless look on their faces upon realization that their authority had just been stripped from them. That was pure poetry in motion!

Jesse Ventura Berates Facist America Over Court Ruling 2011

Posted on by
Reply


Ventura made his comments outside the federal courthouse in St. Paul, where in January he sued to challenge the Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA) airport security procedures. The suit was thrown out because Congress set up the law so that all such challenges must be brought directly in Circuit Courts of Appeals, wrote U.S. District Judge Susan Richard Nelson.

Occupy Wall Street — “We Are What Democracy Looks Like!”

Posted on by
2

It’s called Occupy Wall Street for a reason: it’s about the MONEY, stupid! The money that has put profits before people and left human values to be measured by price alone. The money that (with the complicity of the Supreme Court) has replaced votes (one for each of us) with dollars (one for the 99 and 99 for the one!) turning democracy into plutocracy. . . Look at the process, which is a bold attempt to embody a “horizontal” paradigm of participatory engagement as an alternative to “vertical” big league moneyball democracy.
Read more . . .