Discuss.

Now that we’ve had a few years to think it over…

Wasn’t the whole “Freedom Fries” episode just a little silly?

I had wanted to post this clip from the Republican debate earlier, but didn’t want to ruin this week’s Headline Game. Giuliani was asked to respond to a harsh quote from a Catholic bishop about his stand on abortion. As he tried to answer, lightning began to play havoc with the sound system. The audience laughed as the candidates on either side of him, Romney and McCain, began to back away, and Guiliani made a joke about it.

Politics aside, it’s pretty funny. Check it out:

If you watch the rest of the clip, you can see Mike Huckabee’s defense of his earlier stance against evolution. He spins it hard, but then he ends with a quote that leaves little doubt about his position on the matter:

If anybody wants to believe that they are the descendants of a primate, they are certainly welcome to do it.

McCain and Giuliani seemed amused by that. We’ll see how it plays with the Republican base.

Just a few items I’ve been meaning to link to for a while now, but never could find the right context:

• Priests to Purify Site After Bush’s Visit – President Bush has apparently lost the Mayan vote.
• Germany GenWeb Project Map List – Here’s another collection of cool historical maps.
• ABC Plans Show Based on GEICO Caveman – It was entertaining for thirty seconds. Let’s try it for a season or two.
• D-E-F-I-N-I-T-E-L-Y.com – Just in case you were wondering how to spell it.

I don’t know. Let’s ask Fox News.

Seriously, I don’t know why I bother with Fox News. Every time I think I can walk away, I just keep getting sucked right back in. Maybe it’s because I’m concerned that so many people watch it uncritically that it’s actually doing great damage to our country.

The best we can do is to teach information literacy skills to our students. Are we doing that well?

In a Venn Diagram puzzle, there are three overlapping circles, marked A, B, and C. Each circle has a different rule about who or what can go inside. The challenge is to guess the rule for each circle. You can find a more detailed explanation of Venn Diagram puzzles, along with an example, here.

Since The Tudors wasn’t on this week, I offer you this Tudor-related puzzle to hold you over until Sunday. Each of the eight people below was a member of the court of King Henry VIII.

Have you figured out one of the rules? Two? All three? Feel free to post whatever you’ve got in the comments below. Just tell us which circle you’re solving, and what the rule is.

Enjoy!

UPDATE: Circles A and B solved by Annalisa. See comments for all answers.

Al Gore has written a new book. Go buy it.

What do you mean, “What’s it about”? Go buy it.

Okay, if you insist. He describes it himself on his blog:

When George Bush launched his preemptive war in Iraq, more than 70% of Americans believed Saddam Hussein was linked to the terrorists who caused 9-11. After the 2004 election, when asked what stuck in their minds about the campaign, voters in Ohio named two ads playing to the fears of terrorism paid for by the Bush Campaign. One pattern that has held true since 2001 is that this White House is less interested in openness and truth than any previous administration.

We are facing so many long-term challenges, from the climate crisis and the war in Iraq to health care and social welfare. To solve these problems and move forward we need to reverse the damage done to our democracy. We have little time to waste.

My goal in The Assault on Reason is to explore why our public forum now welcomes the enemies of reason. More importantly, the book focuses on what we can do together, individually and collectively, to restore the rule of reason to our democracy.

Is that enough? Okay, now go buy it.

By the way, how cool is it that Al Gore has a blog? From all appearances, it’s really his blog, and not written by staff members.

While we’re here, I’m going to throw in a prediction: Al Gore will eventually throw his hat in the ring for President in the 2008 election. I still think he’d have a good chance of winning, and he’d almost certainly have the endorsement of ShakespeareTeacher.com. I think he’ll do it.

If he really wants to fight for the causes that are so important to him, how can he possibly walk away from a chance at the position where he’d have the most power to enact the changes he wants to see in the world?

Is Paul Wolfowitz real life or parody? Sometimes, I can’t tell the difference anymore. That’s when it’s time for the Headline Game.

Two of the headlines below are from the Washington Post, and are about why Paul Wolfowitz should resign. The other two are from the Guardian Unlimited, and are about why Paul Wolfowitz should resign. Can you spot which are the American headlines about why Paul Wolfowitz should resign, and which are the British?

1. Angry Wolfowitz in four-letter tirade
2. Bank may vote no confidence in Wolfowitz
3. Bank rebukes Wolfowitz on ethics
4. Europe calls for Wolfowitz to quit

Note: Capitalization on the Post headlines changed to match the style of the Guardian.

Answers: Story 1, Story 2, Story 3, Story 4

How did you do?

At the recent Republican debate, the candidates were asked to raise their hands if they did not believe in evolution. Sam Brownback, Mike Huckabee, and Tom Tancredo all raised their hands.

And this is America, where people are free to believe anything they like. But these are people who are running to be the president of the most powerful nation on earth. The next president must be able to lead the world in dealing with the crisis of global climate change. The next president will probably have to revisit stem cell research. The next president will possibly have to deal with another epidemic. All of these things are difficult to do when you don’t believe in science. Just ask President Bush.

But these three guys raise their hands, and it’s buried in the middle of the story, after we finish talking about the legacy of Ronald Reagan. Why is this not the top story? If they had said they were athiests, it would be the top story. If they had said they were atheists, that would be the end of their careers in American politics. If they had said they were agnostic, that would be the end of their careers in American politics.

So many of our most celebrated figures are openly athiest, from scientists to artists, from business leaders to Karl Rove. But not one of the candidates running for president.

Why is disbelief in evolution more acceptable in American politics today than disbelief in God?

I gave a workshop today on incorporating Web 2.0 technologies into literacy instruction to improve student writing in the one-to-one classroom. A one-to-one classroom is one in which every student has a laptop with Internet access. That means that each learner has the ability to interact personally with a dynamic network of learners, both within the classroom and in the larger community.

This workshop was done in the shadow of a short-sighted article in the New York Times that dealt only with the problems of the one-to-one classroom, and none of the potential.

What these educators seem to be missing is that this is the world our students are living in right now. Case in point: FanFiction.net. This is a website where people can go and post original fan fiction. Thousands of our students are there right now, posting original stories, getting feedback from peers, and revising their work to make it more effective. Nobody’s asking them to do this; but there they are, using 21rst century tools to hone their writing skills. And if these are the skills we want students to learn in school, how can we not take advantage of every opportunity to bring the same tools into the classroom?

Anyway, I usually enjoy these workshops, but I was sick all day, so I was eager to come home, take some cold medicine, and go to sleep.

In my sleep, I had a dream that I was in France, around the turn of the nineteenth century. It was just after the Revolution, but before Napoleon was installed as Emperor. My guide was showing me around, and – in typical dream-like anachronistic fashion – he wanted me to see his radio. There was an earpiece and a microphone, both in the style of the period (if you can imagine what that would look like).

I put on the earpiece and heard a radio host talking about John Locke. I repeated the last line of what he said to indicate to my guide that I could hear what was being played, and suddenly the voice said “Is someone there?” I froze for a moment, unsure if he was talking to me, and the voice said “I think someone’s there. What’s your name?” “My name is Bill,” I said, into what I now realized was a microphone. The voice responded, “Welcome, Bill.”

My guide said that there were similar radios in homes all over the country and anyone could participate. I was impressed, but a little nervous about being put on the spot. “This is my first time doing this,” I stammered, and the voice said “Well, I’m glad you’re here. We no longer depend on the government and its puppets to provide our radio content. This is the radio of the people, and we can say anything we want.”

And that’s when I realized that this guy wasn’t the host of the radio show. He was another guy like me with a microphone. And if more people joined up, we could have an extended conversation, and that would be the show. This would truly be a new paradigm.

I woke up, still woozy from the cold medication, but I rushed to the computer to record my dream. My subconscious mind had conflated the changes in Europe during the Enlightenment with the current evolution of Internet technologies. During the Enlightenment, people started to perceive government less as an absolutist top-down sovereign who rules by divine right, and more as a function of citizens who can actually take part in shaping their own polity. Right now, a similar transformation is taking place in the way we think about the Internet – less as a one-way, top-down source of information, and more as an interactive community of which we all can be a part. Nice analysis, subconscious mind!

As we think about these new technologies, and how they might reshape education, if not society as a whole, we should remember that they are more than just fun new toys. They are a revolution.