Last Sunday’s episode of The Sopranos was the worst in recent memory because it was uncharacteristically static and boring.
There is nothing worse to watch in any sort of drama than a person talking on and on — especially talking to someone who does not respond — because that kind of monologue drains all the energy and tension from the show.
When did so many young women — especially those from the middle and upper middle-classes — begin to find pleasure in being called “Bitches and Hoes” instead of slapping the person referring to them in that degrading manner?
Was it the growing popularity of the Hip-Hop movement that numbed young minds of both genders to the debased and insulting intent of “Bitches and Hoes?”
Was it the incomprehensible and insidious rise of non-melodic Gangsta Rap — with its graphic spoken lyric telling tales of treacherous living in the urban core — that somehow made “Bitches and Hoes” acceptable to most high school and many college age males and females?
The only purpose of “Bitches and Hoes” is to make females sub-human so they can be treated less well.
The fact that awful phrase persists in current modern culture is disgusting and its intra-gender propagation as a term of endearment makes the sane wonder how it is possible “Bitches and Hoes” can be perceived by some as both a compliment and a condemnation in the same thought.
What was the worst Valentine’s Day you were forced to experience? I’ll go first: THE WORST I was in Fifth Grade and the class project for February was to create a “Valentine’s Day Train” where we each would create our own “coal car” out of colored construction paper so everyone in the class could put valentines in our hopper.
I understand the romantic notion of clutching a book to breast — some clutch their laptops with the same passion but one can also embrace electronic revisions of writing in the same way. Scholars need to be vigilant in protecting their process of creation and thought and that means saving revisions and first versions so future generations can track the mind process of those who marked paths first. Imagine our scholar’s website that not only catalogues a C.V. and Bibliography, but also every nuance of every correction made in each published article or book.
Publishing on the web generates an enormous wealth of goodwill because our scholar’s verifiable thought patterns become accessible to anyone with the impetus to make the discovery and the thinking process is no longer limited to those who live within human reach of the scholar’s in-class voice. Learning how to use a computer begs the same curve of learning for those who moved from horse to car: Change or get left behind and it is the job of everyone to make sure equal access to information is a right and not a privilege.
Technology encourages revision and rewriting more than ever and the preservation of the process needs to be honored. I’m sure someone can always print out hardcopy of the early revisions of our scholar’s work for those who prefer breast-clutching.
Continue reading → Technology Bends Time and Compresses Spaces
In the February 1, 2005 edition of Law Enforcement Technology, writer Liz Martinez investigates Gangs in Indian Country and offers the following insight:
Native Americans have some of the highest poverty and addiction rates in the United States and a rapidly increasing population, along with some of the highest rates of infant mortality and lowest educational levels. Because the reservations are in remote areas, the opportunities for jobs and industry are virtually non-existent.
Coupled with the fact that many young people have lost touch with or never known their native languages, customs or religious traditions and are exposed to the relentless commercialism of mainstream America–yet are without the wherewithal to achieve most of the commercial ideals–and the white-hot anger erupting among American Indian youth and manifesting itself in an explosion of gang involvement should surprise no one.
Gangs create bonds of belonging for those who feel outcast, lost and disconnected.
Helping to find ways to retie the disconnected to the positive moral core of society must become a paramount human mission reaching from suburban corral to urban core to rustic reservation.
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