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Disgusting

I was browsing my stats and noticed an incoming link to my theme. Always curious as to what kind of sites used my theme I checked it out. I won’t provide the link here because the site I found was disgusting. The site is supposed to be an alternative “news” site but really was nothing more than a racist and bigoted site that talks about “niggers”, “kikes”, “evil Methodists”, and “fags.” Reading the titles of these posts made me want to throw up, and the actual posts and comments were worse. I guess the drawback to releasing a theme is you have no say in what kind of site decides to use it. I, for one, am disgusted by it’s use on this hate speech site.

EDIT: Just an update, I contacted the site’s host, DreamHost and they said they support free speech. This is understandable. I, however, doubt it has anything to do with free speech and more to do with them making money from a client. That’s just how DH operates. Even if the hate speech can incite hate crimes (which, if you look at the wikipedia entry posted in the comments by Mike, actually has happened). This lead me to post some terms in which I explain I have no affiliation with the content on sites using my theme. Kind of an obvious thing, but I just want to cover my bases.

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My Feed List

I was bored so I thought I’d share with you the websites that are in my feed reader (which is Google Reader). They are:

Anna’s Blog
Caleb Was Here
Give Away of the Day (hat tip Mark)
Homeland Stupidity
All in the Cards
Photomatt
Qn5 Blog
Ryan.Connect
Simply Complex
Sporadic Nonsense
What Makes You Happy?
StL Today Cardinals
Yahoo Sports- Cardinals

I also have on my Google Homepage Wired Top Stories, Slashdot, BBC, and New York Times. All good reads. What’s in your feed reader?

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Senator Talent Gets an F

From the NEA:

Is Senator Talent working for public education? ‘F’ on report card says no

It is report card time for lawmakers of all stripes and U.S. Senator Jim Talent has some explaining to do. He got an F on the National Education Association’s 109th Legislative Report Card for the 2005-06 session of the U.S. Congress, released in Washington, D.C.

Talent’s score was 29 out of 100. The F grade is based on votes on key NEA supported legislation and criteria measuring a lawmaker’s commitment to public education via co-sponsorship of bills, behind the scenes work, accessibility and advocacy.

Talent, whose recent state campaign ads highlight his work, falls short of the mark when it comes to sharing the responsibility of helping make public education work for every child.

Among the votes counted in 2005, Senator Talent voted against the restoration of $4.8 billion for 48 education programs slated for elimination, including those addressing Career and Technical Education, Safe and Drug-Free Schools, and education technology grants. He also voted against increasing Head Start funding and for massive cuts to entitlement programs in the budget reconciliation measure in late December of that year.

In 2006, Senator Talent voted against an amendment that restored funding for college prep programs, raising the maximum Pell Grant to $4,500, and providing up to $23,000 in student loan forgiveness to new teachers in high need schools.

On other lawmaking tasks of interest to Missouri public school workers, Senator Talent voted repeatedly against raising the minimum wage. He also refused to join the majority of his Congressional colleagues in co-sponsoring a bill to restore Social Security benefits that Missouri’s teachers and education support staff and their spouses have earned.

Senator Talent’s report card is available for NEA member’s inspection at http://www.nea.org/lac/senate.html.

Make sure you don’t vote for Talent this November and instead vote for Claire McCaskill.

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The Other Civil Rights Movement

I watched a movie tonight on HBO. What originally interested me in this movie was the fact that Michael Pena starred in it. Since his excellent role in Crash, I knew he would be an actor to look out for in more starring roles in the future. The movie I watched tonight was called Walkout. It is the story of a teacher (Pena) mentoring Chicano high school students protesting injustices in the East L.A. public schools in 1968 which led to a series of walkouts. To say the least, the movie was excellent. The first 5 minutes of the film brought up some great points about history.

The 1968 classroom headed by Sal Castro (Pena) questioned where Chicano history was in the textbooks. Almost 40 years later, one must still wonder where it is. Rarely do you read about the Chicano civil rights movement in history texts, the same movement that spread across the country and help raise Chicano college enrollment from 2% to 25% over the few years following the High School walkouts and also helped stop the injustices and help make Chicano schools more equal. Edward James Olmos did this story great justice with his direction and production of this movie allowing millions to see and experience a Civil Rights movement that many never knew existed. I implore anyone who is interested in history, civil rights, and more importantly, human rights, to watch this movie.

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The Blueberry Story

This story is a bit old. I first heard it while student teaching in Troy as told to my Contemporary Issues class by my cooperating teacher. It is an excellent story about trying to run the education system as a business. Why post it now? Well, #wordpress was in one of it’s several hour long political discussions and many things came up. This time I didn’t participate, probably because politics bores me right now. I did offer this story though. It’s a good read.

“If I ran my business the way you people operate your schools, I wouldn’t be in business very long!”

I stood before an auditorium filled with outraged teachers who were becoming angrier by the minute. My speech had entirely consumed their precious 90 minutes of inservice. Their initial icy glares had turned to restless agitation. You could cut the hostility with a knife. Read more