2,383 Matching Annotations
  1. Jun 2016
    1. so much information

    2. I loved the poem on the blog from yesterday

      This is just to say I Ioved the poem on your blog yesterday

      Forgive me I commented but it did not show up

    3. I loved the poem on the blog from yesterday. I had commented but my comment did not show up.

      This reminds me of the wm carlos wms poem

      This Is Just To Say

      I have eaten the plums that were in the icebox

      and which you were probably saving for breakfast

      Forgive me they were delicious so sweet and so cold

    1. The greatest nation on earth

      American exceptionalism might be how we got in this mess.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=em3T5KnLAX0

    2. And are military assault rifles really necessary in a civilized country?

    3. yet we are no safer now

    4. one type of gun.

      Squirt guns? Caulking guns?

    5. Even the most devout gun owners should be able to get behind keeping guns out of the hands of potential terrorists.

      Here is the oppo view, pretty ugly. Hard to climb up that point of view, ain't it? Why can't we get along? Because some of these fuckers are just wrong. Wrong like below.

    6. A Way Out of No Way

      For some reason I was reminded of the Talking Heads song.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWtCittJyr0

      Well we know where we're going But we don't know where we've been And we know what we're knowing But we can't say what we've seen And we're not little children And we know what we want And the future is certain Give us time to work it out

      Yeah

      We're on a road to nowhere Come on inside Taking that ride to nowhere We'll take that ride I'm feeling okay this morning And you know We're on the road to paradise Here we go, here we go

      We're on a ride to nowhere Come on inside Taking that ride to nowhere We'll take that ride Maybe you wonder where you are I don't care Here is where time is on our side Take you there, take you there

      We're on a road to nowhere We're on a road to nowhere We're on a road to nowhere

      There's a city in my mind Come along and take that ride And it's alright, baby, it's all right And it's very far away But it's growing day by day and it's all right Baby, it's all right Would you like to come along You can help me sing the song And it's all right, baby, it's all right They can tell you what to do But they'll make a fool of you And it's all right, baby, it's all right

      There's a city in my mind Come along and take that ride And it's alright, baby, it's all right And it's very far away But it's growing day by day and it's all right Baby, it's all right, yeah Would you like to come along You can help me sing the song And it's all right, baby, it's all right They can tell you what to do But they'll make a fool of you and it's all right Baby, it's all right

      We're on a road to nowhere We're on a road to nowhere We're on a road to nowhere

      We're on a road to nowhere

    1. Being of these hills, being one with the fox

      repetition is so that you can easily memorize the poem--that is my thesis. This is an experiment in orality. I think memorizing could be in for a comeback as we move out of the Gutenberg Pause.

    2. I cannot leave. I cannot go away.

      Nice 'turn' here from the octet. Repetition. Q: difference b/t not leaving and not going away?

    3. of Troublesome, of Trace Fork, Of Sand Lick

      repetition of the word "of" helps readers remember so that they can become "reciters".

    4. The lumbering ox drawing green beech logs to mill,

      Adore this line of present participles, logs-ox, and what reminds me of the zen series of ox pix.

    5. leave these

      Assonance of "leave these". Purpose? A lyric aid to memory. I think you will find an attention to detail in this sonnet of Still's that is all about helping the reader to memorize the poem. I used to have eighth graders memorize this poem in an 80 minute block. Not possible without the careful attention to lyric rhetoric here. The assonance, repetition, rhyme, alliteration, and all the other lyric tools reside in this eminently memorizable poem.

    1. So what do we deserve? We deserve to work really hard at what we love. That's a privilege. We deserve that.

      yes. we can suffer that lot.

    2. We are a wild, weird species, complex and quizzical, fierce and fragile. Honor that. Stop pressing your face to the glass of someone else's party. Enjoy the party unfolding around you.

      I certainly don't feel I am any of that.

    3. I am drawn to the flame of Twitter
    4. But you can't construct your life around these equations.
    5. But look, the whole idea of "breaking through" is such a crock of shit. If you do nothing else, build a religion around this one fact.
    6. I have to do what I do, even if the world decides it's worthless.
    7. I'm saying shut out all the noise of Facebook and Twitter and Oprah and the best-seller lists and figure out what you really believe in and like to do every day.

      What do I really believe in and like to do every day in my writing?

    1. Follow up

      If the tools and their assumptions define practices that are anathema then can they co-exist with whatever status quo is out there? Depending upon your own personal power in your teaching setting, there are different answers to that question.

    2. once you articulate a critique of the tool it also becomes a critique of their teaching and learning practices

      Now here's the question I have: what is the fraud?

    3. teaching and learning in 2016 isn’t to some great degree informed by technologies we use.

      Is anybody seriously arguing this point. Straw man?

    1. ability to embed a single annotation

      Tried embedly to get single annotation. Very manual and clunky. You have your work cut out fot you, but I am looking forward to it. New kinds of digital rhetoric could arise out of this.

    2. Help me kick the tires

      Love your work here, but can you tell me why Hypothes.is can't have a simple "copy to clipboard" function? Not blaming you, just asking.

    3. publish the post

      I am sure this is a non-trivial problem, but none of my non-text media were published in the post, i.e. no pix/vids/gifs.

    4. you can use this plugin to make a public research notebook on your WordPress site.

      What is the limit on annotations per page? I had about twenty for the user tag page? I would need more than that with a large class.

    1. Adrienne Rich

      Why do poems have to do anything? If they are instruments then they are knives that can cut any number of ways. Poetry is a weapon?

    2. Arts of the Possible

      The ultimate realpolitik:

    3. Doubts rain down.

      O WESTERN wind, when wilt thou blow<br> That the small rain down can rain?<br> Christ, that my love were in my arms<br> And I in my bed again!

    1. These are areas where a consistent flow of talent, dollars and resources could have been building mentor-rich, non-school tutoring, mentoring and learning programs, borrowing from examples of effective programs already working in Chicago and other cities.

      We already know what works. We already know what works in Chicago. So...the problem is the solution?

    2. too few were coordinating their actions, and their funding, with others.

      All of these folks are attempting to leverage from their own spots, but no one knows whether the rock has moved nor whether we are leveraging against each other. Have we reach a level of complexity that is impossible to find a good place to wedge the bar? I certainly hope not. I do not despair as long as we keep trying.

    3. I'm going to send the link to this blog back to the Times.

      I have done this, too. The NYT article and the flood of comments is a classic example of what we need to do as teachers in this country. We need to curate constantly (summarize, analyze, critique) and show others how to do it as well. We are doomed to curation-by-bot if we don't

    1. Kevin

    2. (the wall’s crowded)

      Yet everything fits, yes?

    3. intrigued by bad design

      Interesting Googage here: https://goo.gl/9knDOY

      And here: http://goo.gl/Op1qu5

      And here: https://i.imgur.com/wReGFDI.jpg (NSFW)

    4. it is impossible to even look at.

      I am reminded of this telling James Scott photo that defines the difference between legible and illegible:

    5. a certain chaotic beauty to the wall

      Perhaps there is a Fibonacci sequence in your Padlet. You never know with an unknown unknown.

    6. What you get is a mess.

      OR A MAZE?

    1. Annie Sauter says: May 28, 2016 at 9:28 am

      Susan, did you read this comment. Kinda captured my own lostness but not quite. I get the feeling that I need to give up some of my...contextity? That's like saying "Hoist anchor" in a storm. And that really is a way of breaking smart if it saves your damned life. Our political life is exactly like this now. The contextity is killing us. Hoist the fucking anchor or be dragged down with it when the storm batters hell out of you. Here I am again trying to put down the meaning anchor. This is hard to do when you have spent your whole life trying to understand and do and drive uncertainty and ambiguity to ground. I think maybe the key for me to is to feel my way with a new set of antennae, nascent and emergent antennae.

    2. I am wary of praxtitioners. I suspect them of being in a hurry to disintertwingle things I’m not done with yet.

      disintertwingle--sounds like a quantum state being done some amount of violence. Break bad by not disintertwingling too soon.

    3. In the familiar language of everyday decision-making, ambiguity means being unsure where to go, while uncertainty means being unsure how to get there.

      Maybe we need to rethink the rhetorical notions of audience (the who) and be more concerned with being more sure as readers and writers about where we want to go with a text and how we want to go there.

    4. When you are missing information, that’s uncertainty, and an epistemological matter. When you are lacking an interpretation, that’s ambiguity, and an ontological matter.

      Feeling quite lost here, but in an interested way.

    1. there is no concept of waste in true play

      Channeling James Carse here? Infinite play has no waste because that would require one to have a set of criteria before starting. True play has an infinitude of rules that be more like guidelines, arrrrrrrr, mateys.

    2. 29/ But big picture, the range of possible futures for humanity depends on our individual and collective ambiguity tolerance. 30/ Ours is an age of low ambiguity tolerance and a hunger for one determinate future for all. Resist! Increase your ambiguity tolerance. Help keep the future indeterminate!

      How to break smart--increase your ambiguity tolerance.

    3. seeing something where there is nothing

      mistaken insight into the pattern.

    4. being wrong

      the problem of faulty analysis

    5. Here's an interesting article about the distinction. 

      Here is a wormhole for more annoting: https://via.hypothes.is/http://www.wired.co.uk/article/eureka-moment-cognitive-psychology-john-kounios

      Are you an "analyst" or an "insightist"?

    6. analytical skills
    7. The 2x2 above

    8. You feel like you're engaged in enjoyable play when your thinking has the right level of ambiguity and uncertainty FOR YOU

      Play is haptic. It has a feel. And that feel is very idiosyncratic (and not customizable).

    9. Ambiguity resolution is an act of imagination.

      Aphorist heaven

    10. Your ambiguity tolerance is a function of the amount of (clean, complete) pre-meaning information you can stare at, and how long you can tolerate not knowing what's important about it.

      Tension. I think that is what we are feeling here. How much tension (this v that, spy v spy) are we willing to accept at any one time before resolution. Objective correlative anyone?

    11. To resolve ambiguity is to add meaning and interpretation to information.

      I wonder how, in its use here, ambiguity is akin to curation. Noun v verb? Is v am?

    12. Ambiguity

      The question that ambiguity evokes: what am I looking at? The question that uncertainty evokes: what do I do with what I am looking at?

      Does the first question precede the second as we move through the world?

    13. there is an aspect to information processing that is not a "doing" skill but a "seeing" skill: this is ambiguity wrangling.

      What Rao sez,

      We live in a world with gradually increasing levels of uncertainty and ambiguity. Over the last few decades we've become much more comfortable with uncertainty, but still suck at dealing with ambiguity. Ambiguity is not knowing what you are looking at, as in those trick drawings that look like a rabbit one way, a duck another way. Uncertainty is not knowing what to do with what you're looking at. Unlike uncertainty, which is about missing or noisy information, ambiguity can exist even with complete, clean information. It is about interpretation and meaning, and is as such a truly creative act of seeing.

    1. Chief Happiness Officer

      Sorry, I can't think of a corporate hierarchy chart and think "happiness". Just can't...with a little smirky lift of my lips. My bias. How can a corporation be happy? Aggregate of all the happy workers? I aint never seen no corporation smile.

    1. framingchoicesmatter.

      In other words acknowledging that the solution to the problem might live in how you set the uncertainty and ambiguity levels when you frame the question/problem.

  2. May 2016
    1. Weproposethattheefficiencyoftheproblem-solvingprocessandtheoutcomeofthisprocessdependsonthefitbetweentheuncertaintyandambiguitylevelschosen,theresourcesavailable,andtheorganizationalcontext.

      You can choose ambiguity and uncertainty levels? I thought they just came to you as part of the problem. Exogenous.

    1. Knowledge, the state of having collapsed ambiguity around an X, but not necessarily uncertainty, is always an instrumental state. You don’t know what X means, but you have figured out some things you can do with or to X, and what else you need by way of data and Y’s and Z’s in order to do it.

      Startling a fox in the woods! What an idea--ideas like black holes, always collapsing and constraining, trapping the reader in a monad.

    2. Being a Lost Reader I define being lost in reading as not knowing how to read whatever it is you are trying to read. How you read — with trust or skepticism, unironically, or unironically, respectfully or disdainfully — determines what you will get out of the experience. So to know how to read something is to have already judged what you can get out of the experience. This means operating with either prejudice or received authority. When you read without knowing how to read, you may not find out for years, or ever, whether what you read was true, false, or bullshit (suitably generalized for aesthetic truths). Or indeed, even what you just read. Do a twitter search for the phrase “what did I just read?” to get a sense of this state if you haven’t experienced it. It is the textual equivalent of “what exactly am I looking at here?” or “who is this for?” There are both epistemological and ontological components to being lost.

      Susan. Maybe I spoke too quickly when I said the response to Deleuze was gibberish. That has too much negative tone to it. It is gibberish to me. I get lost in it and ask myself, "WTF is this?" and "Where the hell am I?" This post in ribbonfarm blog makes me feel the same way, but happier.

    1. A broken guitar…don’t break the music in your soul.
    2. albeit we took a few years off

      I wonder if this learning world has changed even over a two year period?

    3. Something else that I don’t quite see right now.

      Could it be....

    4. facilitating a course

      Perhaps the whole idea of a "course" needs reconsideration, subversion, or even outright rejection?

    5. Something else that I don’t quite see right now.

    6. Teachers are just not really ready to dive into the core principles of Connected Learning because it remains an unknown idea.

      Maybe they make unconscious connections CommonCore/ConnectedLearning?

    7. It feels like a failed attempt to push us forward. I feel as if I failed to push us forward.
    8. what Connected Learning is all about

    9. I’m having a hard time writing this post

    10. Call Me Disappointed

      Partying in the margins?<br>

    1. What space would these words take up? How might they move? What would be their destination? How could they shape reflection?

      Soiunds like an inquiry machine.

    2. Act 2.

      Is this your way of hinting that "There are no second acts in American lives."? Cuz I don't see no nothing here between Act 2 and Footnotes.

    1. upon a time

      Be sure to check the comments below.

    2. John O. McGinnis

      Check him out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_McGinnis

      What a tiny echo chamber this dude lives in! He could probably touch all four walls without moving.

    1. Learning is mystery

      I would like learning to be more like magic and bar tricks than like TED talks and badges.

      https://youtu.be/zgMnlptZt7I

    2. What if we took this Venn

    1. Coming up strawberries.

      I accidentally ran the tiller through my strawberry bed this spring. Who knew? Strawberries are antifragile.

    2. "Teaching like strawberries"

      “The irony of the process of thought control: the more energy you put into trying to control your ideas and what you think about, the more your ideas end up controlling you.” ― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder

    3. "Memory is never a precise duplicate of the original...it is a continuing act of creation." 

      Different types of cells in the body are being replaced at different rates. Brain cells are the oldest in the body. I wonder if that has to do with memory?

    4. Be attentive to gifts of love.

      Be responsive to gifts of love by your own best lights.

    5. Maux des Mots

      Words are a garbage dump, random, not a landfill where the shit is organized.

    6. Scratching around...

      This is a feldgang, but with a twist. I see you taking on different identities, passing on to the next one some "baton" and then carrying on the conversation within that new set of bones. Or maybe it is a strawberry runner putting down roots and making a rhizomatic mat and carrying on, passing on hyphae and rooting ever on. All I know for sure is that I want to draw a random walking line down your post's page. I don't know why, but that is what I see in my crystal self.

    1. It’s been a little more than three years since Margaret Mary Vojtko, an adjunct professor of French at Duquesne University, died in abject poverty at age 83. Despite having taught at Duquesne for 25 years, she had so little money that she was sleeping in her office after being unable to heat her home due to medical bills incurred as she fought ovarian cancer. Vojtko received $3,500 a course, and earned an average annual salary of less than $10,000. Like most adjuncts, she received no benefits, no health care, and no retirement plan from the university, forcing her to work well past the age of the average American pensioner.

      The Age of Indifference

    1. curriculum of wide-awakeness

      First blush: do these words belong together? Curriculum and wide-awakeness? When I think of curriculum, I think of a track that I am running in, that the rules do not allow variance, that is pre-set and pre-determined. Wide-awakeness seems to be opposed. Perhaps as the terms are defined my thoughts will change.

  3. Apr 2016
    1. A corpse is a corpse is a corpse.

      "Exquisite Corpse was a perfect parlor game, involving elements of unpredictability, chance, unseen elements, and group collaboration—all in service of disrupting the waking mind’s penchant for order."

    2. I wept.

      And the small rayne down can rayne...

    3. Heinz tomato soup

    4. Heinz tomato soup

    1. one weekend of Coachella, people tweeted 3.8 million times
    2. Users upload more than 400 hours of video to YouTube every minute
    1. My direction.

      Sometimes it is this far and not one step further. Sometimes the gravity of the time, the zeitgeist tsunami sweeps us all away. Sometimes I wear seven league boots and eat up the time and space beneath me like some meth-fueled hillbilly.

    2. the directionality that is constitutive

      loves me some directionalitus constitutificationobus. Especially soaked in the brine of orphans' tears and cooked sous vide with brimstone. Yummy.

    1. became city planners, planning a new city,-Capacity

      I am interested in the idea of cities that grow organically from the needs of its residents as opposed to the desires of those who think they control. Christopher Alexander comes to mind:

    2. became interesting not when it grew but when it shrank.

      Or as Linus Torvalds wrote, Interested not in how it got big but how it got small. In other words--the roots of community and community building.

    3. bitter Puritanism

      Love is the only sword that will slice through the chains of bitter Puritanism.

    4. All you need is love?

      <script async="" crossorigin="" src="//&lt;a href=" http:="" <a="" href="http://genius.com" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">genius.com="" annotations="" load_standalone_embeds.js"="" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">genius.com/annotations/load_standalone_embeds.js"></script>All You Need Is Love<br>― The Beatles – All You Need Is Love

    5. he Beatles
    1. immediate hiring freeze
    2. likely eliminate all travel funding for staff,
    3. the alternative is layoffs, which detract equally, if not more, from the image and mission of the university.
    4. There is so much uncertainty

      conclusion

    5. Additionally, how will the budget cut impact MLS programs in general

      transitions to effects on library programs generally.

    6. This is a big blow to the campus communities in Wisconsin, and it will have a dire, long-term effect for the faculty, staff, and especially the students.

      a transition from asserting that the cuts are disastrous to describing what those disastrous consequences are.

    7. In short, it’s a disaster.

      First paragraph describes the dire conditions in U of Wisconsin system because of budget cuts.

    8. quality of instruction
    9. Scylla and Charybdis.

      Sums up the paragraph above.

    10. a hard time conceptualizing
    1. Is it learning that is innate or is it curiosity

      Curiosity is inate. Learning is the result. But learning can be other lesser results as well.

    2. As always

      Scene: Two poker players, green felt table, chips in the middle. Smoke. Drinks with little water rings on cardboard coasters. Well past civil hours.

      You: I am a dustballfilled ramble through inate obscurity where curiosity is the center. I am on tap a decent beer to drink with a meal. So what are you?

      Me: I might be your friend with tough questions and no solutions or a librarian contrarian or a dust bunny with no center except the curiosity that opens up in a little corners of the world, ones we didn’t quite know were there.

      You: Deal.

  4. impedagogy.com impedagogy.com
    1. Courses are a fraud.

      So sayeth he.

    2. fraud

      Listen to the first part of this podcast and note how grades are a fraud and that they defraud. The farther grades take us away from feedback, the more fraudulent they are.

    3. fraud
    1. Eventually, the way I taught at the end of the year became the way I taught year-round.

      Love the sentiment and the practice here. Also I want teachers to add an "idler" element into their practice and into their students lives. I wouldn't even mind a bit of the ol' slacker either. Abe Lincoln oft-quoted about taking the time to sharpen the axe.

    1. "We have professional college teachers who have master's degrees in their field who have very little income, are on food stamps, or things like that,

      Is this happening here?

    1. •Integration of current developments in the scholarship of teaching or in the instructor’s field of expertise into the classroom

      What would this mean?

    2. •Direct supervision of student work of special merit

      emw intern supervision?

    3. •Student engagement activities relevant to student learning

      Remind? Alt communication channels like Twitter?

    4. •Leadership of and participation in pedagogical seminars or workshops

      What does this mean?

    5. the Department will relyonevaluations of teachingby colleagues in the Department, student feedback, anddata submitted by the candidate

      colleague recommendations? other data besides SITES

    6. We also recognize that new technologies have created opportunities inside and outside the classroomto improve student learning. The department values innovative and successful teaching in both traditional and technologically enhanced classes.

      describe an exemplary lesson? describe an exemplary course? Describe an exemplary service moment?

    7. fall under the heading of teaching expand beyond the traditional classroom

      how much can this informal part be a part of the process.

    8. Candidates must provide documentation that illustrates their achievements in teaching, research, and service, including SITE evaluations.

      what documentation will we expect?

    9. eaching, research/creative activity, and service

      teaching and service--service to university, faculty, students?

    Annotators

    1. Dave Cormier

    2. "In search of a new resilience for learning."

    3. a few words that I am hearing at the moment

      One of my favs is "college and career readiness"

    4. I try to think back a few years...
    5. Rationalisation.

    6. Resilience or Resistance?

      “The general principle of antifragility, it is much better to do things you cannot explain than explain things you cannot do.” – Nassim Taleb

    7. Resilience.

    1. I hope you'll share this story through your own networks

      I learned about:

    2. Probably, because they are "too busy" with the work of connecting youth and volunteers, and collecting information to convince donors to continue supporting them.

    3. or to help new programs grow in other places.

      OK, we need you to take six months away from your busy schedule to write this book: "Rules for Radical Digital Community Organizers" written by a kinder, gentler Alinsky-like leader--Daniel.

    4. On the Mapping for Justice blog I've been posting articles pointing to other data portals. I also created a concept map, showing some of the portals I have found.

      Daniel has been modeling this digital community organizer role for as long as there has been a graphical environment. I know that he has paired with some folks at Indiana University to help with his work and would love to hear how that is turning out.

    5.  I recognized several years ago that adding layers of information showing arts/tech would enable users to know where such programs were located, and where more are needed, but I've never found the resources/partners to build this level of understanding.

      I think this is a profound question you have raised: building levels of understanding, how to do it. The understanding comes from the connectivity, connectivism at work, right? Now I see why you valued your time at CLMOOC with folks who know that knowledge, learning and ultimately wisdom are the result of interaction, relating, sharing, playing and being in a shared space. In areas of poverty, that is the richest resource--each other and what we can make together. You can substitute a lot of capital with human caring and sharing. A lot. We need digital community organizers. We need them badly! Stand aside, Obama, and make room for the Digital Community Concierge

    6. the Chicago Tutor/Mentor Program Locator, created by my organization in 2008,

      Everything appeared to work for me. I assume that you need volunteers to update information. Ideally, you need API's that help you do that automatically. This represents a real opportunity for someone to help you automate your system. Or...scary thought...rebuild it. The problem is always how do we keep up with the data. Since this "keeping up" represents a huge investment in time (hence, dollars) I can appreciate your difficulty.

    7. Virtual Corporate Office presentation

      William Gibson's aphorism--the future is here, just not evenly distributed--applies here. I appreciate how Daniel sees Little Black Pearl's work and attaches his own to it--as in "Let a 1000 little black pearls grow." What he likens learning (the tutor/mentor connection) to is company distribution system. Corporations could be that learning distribution system. Any organization could be part of that distribution system. It is a profound piece of a new way of looking at learning as apart from schooling. Let's get to evenly distributing Daniel's ideas. They deserve a much wider listening circle.

      .png)

    8. videos like this,

      This comment taken from the YouTube comments section: "We did this 8 years ago! Cabrini Connections has a great place in my heart. If it was not for them I probably would have been in the gang. Now I graduated from Moody Bible Institute and plan to live overseas."

    9. Below is a video shown

      What he says.

    1. “It’s the unending, gratuitous, punitive increase in prices that is driving all of this,”

      Not finding the source for this quote. Only people referencing this article

    2. New America Foundation.

      WTF! My bs radar just exploded

      https://youtu.be/NtLycerCLYU

      Check out this [ultra right online mag](http://www.frontpagemag.com/point/211813/obama-and-soros-funded-liberal-think-tank-promotes-daniel-greenfield#) about this fouindation. Ugly writing.
      
    3. average student now leaves school owing
    4. mortgage crash
    5. Forty years later, in 2010, it accounted for 11 percent

      Here is a graph I found. Actually it is worse in some states than others.

    6. Between 1950 and 1970

      Paragraph about "facts". As a critical reader we need to investigate the facts and how they are interpreted. As above with the facts about profits being made my government so too here about percentages of family income and percentage increases of the CPI. Anybody up for looking instead of just taking him at his word. A good critique needs to explore facts and their fair use.

    7. Why was college so expensive?

      Again, uses question as transition. Try it sometimes. It works. Helpful to reader and writer.

    8. the sticker price

      Collinge agrees with Taibbi--it ain't the car loan interest, it's the cost of the car.

    9. Collinge – who founded the website StudentLoanJustice.org

      See link above or here.

    10. first in the history of drunken bullshitting

      You funny, Taibbi.

    11. Collinge

      What Collinge did

    12. His whole life was now about his student debt.

      Brilliant way of summing up what was said above.

    13. Collinge’s creditor,

      the particulars of the horror story

    14. a thirtysomething scientist named Alan Collinge

      First story. had a dream and invested in himself found a job lost his job couldn't find as good a job couldn't repay student loans.

    15. Why is this happening?

      Taibbi uses the same trick as before to transition to the "why" question, why is America acting like a vampire? This 'vampire' metaphor reflects another article Taibbi has written about Wall Street in which they are described as vampire squids.

    16. the government actually stands to make an enormous profit on the president’s new federal student-loan system, an estimated $184 billion over 10 years,

      The other major bad actor according to Taibbi is the Department of Education and its predatory lending wing. If you look at one of the background pieces above (http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/356551/what-profits-rolling-stones-matt-taibbi-misunderstands-student-loans-jason-richwine) you will see a different view about this number (even though the article agrees with much of what Taibbi writes).

    17. these little regional economic empires, the federal student-loan system is essentially a massive and ongoing government subsidy

      Student loans fuel everything. And if the legislature cuts university funding, then the university just makes it up with increased tuition. Students (aka taxpayers) go further into debt in what amounts to a tax increase on "users".

      Where's the money, Lebowski?

      The students have it (or they can borrow it). The conclusion that we can draw from Taibbi's analysis here is that public higher education is no longer seen as a public good paid for with public money. Western Kentucky University gets less than 20% of its budget from the state.

    18. First

      Note how simple and effective this kind of transition is. He says in the paragraph above that there are two major actors to blame. Then he takes the next to paragraphs to point the finger of blame where the real responsibility lay.

    19. They all take responsibility for their own mistakes

      Very powerful psychological analysis of the feelings of those with student loans. Take responsibility-->realize these are not irresponsible folk-->they are angry--> shift here to Taibbi's opinion, they should be-->they are not the cause of the miseries caused by this debt-->universities are as well as one other actor (hint: our hero in chief and all the others in the great game of politics)

    20. For this story

      Chekov reportedly said that if a gun appears in the first act it has to go off before the play ends. Taibbi shows the 'gun' here--the interviews of the people who have been shamefully and oppressively outraged.

    21. shameful and oppressive outrage

      Very strong words.

    22. How is this happening?

      Taibbi anticipates the good reader's question here and uses it as a way to transition. I think this is a perfect transition--helpful, anticipatory, and opening up the paragraph to follow. It is that natural flow of reader curiosity that a good writer has to assume the reader has.

    23. The thing is, none of it – not last month’s deal, not Obama’s 2010 reforms – mattered that much.

      This paragraph is bit of genius. Simple and to the point. It acknowledges the short-term good that was done either actually or theoretically, but dashes these to the ground by arguing that "it's not the interest rate, it's the principle." This is especially important because it acknowledges Taibbi's assumption that this is a financial crime perpetrated on students much like sub-prime loans and derivative speculations were perpetrated on Wall Street. "Eerily reminescent" speaks volumes. With legislatures increasingly getting out of the business of higher education after 2008, we can see that higher tuition is just a way of shifting taxes from the state to vulnerable, powerless students. Despicable.

    24. Obama had

      Earlier Obama-as-champion-of-students narrative

    25. that the student-loan controversy is now entirely about interest rates and/or access to school loans.

      Taibbi carries on the Obama story and how he strategically changed the student loan game by making debt about rising interest and making access to debt the real issues as opposed to the runaway cost of an education in general.

    26. a typically autoerotic assessment

      Example of over the top-ness? Fair. Puts off readers. Audience considered here by Taibbi?

    27. undergraduate loans under the new plan

      Rates now.<br>

    28. Flash-forward through a few months of brinkmanship and name-calling,

      So...this is a long story about how Obama outplayed everybody and made it a win-win situation for himself and the Congress. And at first glance for students as well.

    29. In a Karl Rove-ian masterstroke, he simply pretended they weren’t there and changed the subject.

      Brings up big political problems and then compares him to Karl Rove, Republican strategist--ignore the problem.

      Critique: is this the best way to introduce the student loan scandal?

    30. Victor Juhasz

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Juhasz

      Really interesting background for the artist who does the original artwork for this piece.

    31. BY MATT TAIBBI
    32. Scandal

      oed

      Etymology: Early Middle English scandle , scha(u)ndle , < Old Northern French escandle, Central Old French eschandle , semi-popular < ecclesiastical Latin scandalum cause of offence or stumbling, < Greek σκάνδαλον , recorded only in Hellenistic literature, in the fig. sense ‘snare for an enemy, cause of moral stumbling’, but certainly an old word meaning ‘trap’ (compare the derivative σκανδάληθρον spring of a trap), believed to be < the Indogermanic *skand- to spring, leap: compare Latin scandĕre to climb, to scan v.

    33. Ripping Off

      Sets tone for article, hints of 'rough" talk to come? Likely he did not write headline, that's the editor's job.

    1. Who will name me? Who will love? Who will listen? Who will forgive?
    2. “ if I do not love the world if I do not love life if I do not love people I cannot enter into dialogue.”  ― Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed

    3. Nobody cares

    4. Nobody knows.
    5. ended in feelings of hurt and hard words. 

    6. We are wronged.

  5. Mar 2016
    1. leaching lead into the drinking water ever since.

    2. his office received a rebuke

    3. emergency manager law.

      Heckuva job Snydie!!!

    4. "It was a mixture of ignorance, incompetence and arrogance by many decision makers that created a toxic and tragic situation that produced the Flint water crisis."

    5. Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder says he has a plan.