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Four Corners Revisited: My People

I am cheating a little and using the Four Corners concept to quickly introduce to you people and ideas so that future articles on Portugal make a lot more sense.

Introducing Mr P — who does not really wish to be on the internet at all. Ironically, I met Mr P online playing a rather silly game called Tribal Wars. Mr P was born in Morocco of French parents and has been living in Portugal for most of his life. He has a degree in Biology from Pau University. He speaks French, Portuguese and English extremely well and has knowledge of Spanish, Italian and German as well. He has a strong sense of history and of culture. The mix of our cultures and our language brings a lot of humour to our lives. We love to travel — not just in the broadest sense — but in the everyday sense of exploration; not only of ourselves and our lives but in the beauty found all around us. We have adventures everywhere! This picture was taken at our handfasting where we took our vows in front of friends and family.

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Destroying the Sacred Dyad: Cameras in the Classroom as Shadows on the Cave Wall

I currently teach in an old Midtown building in the center of New York City that used to house a secretarial typing school.  Legend has it that because there were lots of nefarious “students” in and around the “school” in the past, video cameras were placed in every corridor and cranny to record any crimes for the police that might take place.

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Living 200 Years and Knowing the Date of Your Death

If you had the choice to live to age 200, would you take up that blind offer?  My beloved wife Janna would not.  She’s perfectly content with her life and, if she died today, she would feel satisfied with the accomplishments of her life.  I, on the other hand, would love to live to age 200 if, of course, there were no sort of Twilight Zone curse involved where I was confined to a bed in a coma for 125 years, or I became a pack mule in the Himalayas for a century, or if I had to live in an active sewer and never see the light of day for 110 years.

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On Not Giving an A++++++++++ Grade

Grade inflation is a major problem on college campuses, and it is the sworn duty of the faculty to carefully and cautiously grade all student work the same.  Students tend to expect an “A” grade just for showing up to class when, in structured reality, a “C” grade is what a student earns for merely meeting the minimum requirements for any course.  A “C” is a fine grade — but a lot of students seem to feel a “C” grade is the same as an “F” grade when it is not.  A “C” defines the middling ground for a course and that is the honest grade most students earn, even though faculty tend to inflate grading the middle just to keep the peace.

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The Dead and the Scared: How Sandy Hook Stood Up to a Gunman

I’m not sure if there’s much more left to to say in the wake of the Sandy Hook killings in Connecticut that hasn’t already been shot to death before — except that it was excellent how, together, teachers and students faced down death that day — while our politicians will never be similarly brave because they are more terrified of the long and ugly shadow of the NRA than they are of dead children.

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The Day I Learned I am Part Republican

When I was a child, according to a story that my mother has told me a few times, I apparently went into the voting booth with one of my grandmothers and pulled the lever to vote for Ronald Reagan. Not only this, but I repeated this four years later — and I wasn’t even ten years old yet! It was not until 1996 that I was able to legitimately vote for myself and my vote went for Ralph Nader, as I thought that it would be good to get the Green party officially recognized and taken more seriously in the following election — that did not work out so well.

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Be White About It

Last week, while standing in a long and winding line at a local Jersey City supermarket during the aftereffects of Hurricane Sandy, I was struck in the ear by a phrase I hadn’t heard in colloquial usage for over 30 years:  “Be White About It.”

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Preventing the Re-Ghettoization of the Uneducated and Untrained Deaf in America

Educating the Deaf in America is an expensive proposition — especially in a modern mainstream setting with Hearing students and interpreters are required.  Educating the college-capable Deaf is an even more daunting project because of the massive amount of money it takes to educate just a single Deaf student.

The Americans with Disabilities Act is now 22 years old, but that Act still doesn’t begin to really protect the rights of the disabled.  All the Act does is try to level the playing field of fair play by mandating equal access and opportunity but, in many cases, if you want full and verified ADA protection, you have to hire a lawyer and sue.  That’s an expensive proposition for any disabled person to conjure.

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American Express Member Since 89

Way back in ’89, I first became an American Express cardmember.  For as long as I can remember, I always wanted to be in that charge card financial club, and when I became a graduate student at Columbia University in the City of New York, that yearning was finally realized.  Sure, an American Express card has expensive membership fees, and it’s a sort of snotty status symbol — but I was thrilled to have that card in my hand.

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More Bad Apple iOS 6 3D Mapping

The horrible new 3D map App in Apple iOS 6 is still getting a lot of negative play weeks after the operating system update.  While my experience isn’t as horrible as some, I can still report some tremendous disparity in the disappointing mapping results.  For example, let’s take a look at a slice of my Jersey City neighborhood.

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