I woke up this morning to find my walk had gotten sillier…

I am an unabashed Anglophile… I love England, want to live there for the rest of my life and never ever leave, all of it. But sometimes it is an unbelievably wierd country.

Like today, when the Guardian Unlimited reported on a teacher’s union that wants to scrap the national academic curriculum in favor of a currirculum that focuses more on life skills like… walking?

The Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL) said children could learn a lot from walking because you need to adapt your technique according to your environment.

Speaking earlier this week, the acting deputy general secretary of the ATL, Martin Johnson, said: “There’s a lot to learn about how to walk. If you were going out for a Sunday afternoon stroll you might walk one way. If you’re trying to catch a train you might walk in another way and if you are doing a cliff walk you might walk in another way.

“If you are carrying a pack, there’s a technique in that. We need a nation of people who understand their bodies and can use their bodies effectively.”

Clearly, the ability to walk well on any kind of surface is far more important than Language Arts, History, Science or Math. And while I may not have attended school in England (apart from that summer semester, which was college), I’m pretty sure they have some sort of program that is equivalent to the hated American standard… Gym. That teaches you how to use your body, right?

Either way, the ATL is way behind the times. We’ve already got a Ministry concerned with walking…

–Sara Tenenbaum

Letters from Tehran

So we’re all on the up-and-up about the British soldiers captured in supposedly Iranian waters? There’s 15, remember, and the British government insisits they didn’t cross any lines (no harm, no foul), but they’re captured anyway. The Iranians were going to let to only female soldier go, but Britain apparently offended them somehow and now they’re keeping her. And apparently they’re also using her for some serious media manipulation. This letter — written in her hand — was released to the press today:

This reeks of a forced letter. It doesn’t sound like something a soldier — from any country, regardless of participation in any sort of conflict — would write. Soldiers know better than to outright question their government while actively enlisted; in fact, I’m sure there’s some sort of boot camp brainwashing that teaches you to keep your damn mouth shut until you can come home and start/join a national organization of veterans who oppose whatever conflict you just left. (And then you get to do exciting things like Larry King).

Iran has a history of taking hostages and then using them for political gains. I was living in London for three months, doing a summer semester and interning at a magazine, in 2005 when I had the opportunity to take a class (called “The Foreign Correspondant”) with a wonderful journalist (and terribly interesting man) named David McNeil (excuse the picture in this article; he is much older, now, and far more handsome). David was in Teharn briefly in the 1979, when the Iran hostage crisis was going on, and told us a short — but very enlightening — story about his experience outside of the American embassy where the hostages were being held. He said that when the television crews were taking their lunches and breaks, the protestors who had gathered outside to rally on behalf of the Islamic Iran were largely silent and casual; they would mingle, talk to people, hand out food and books and blankets and just generally hang out. But when the camera crews would get ready to shoot, they’d hoist their banners and don their scarves and the minute the cameras and lights snapped on, they were in full riotous protest mode.

The moral of that story? Iranians know what they’re doing. They can manipulate the media — especially the ever-predictable Western media — as well as any Republican in the White House. Which is why a letter like this angers me so much; the intention to manipulate is clear, the manipulation itself so transparent as to be almost ineffective. And yet it still monopolizes our attention.

According to the hostages, they’re being fed, clothed and bedded perfectly well. I hope that’s true, because with tactics this transparent and almost offensive (I mean, really, how dumb do you think we are?), it sounds like they may be there for a while — the British government isn’t about to back down.

Here is the text of all three letters by Turney which Iran has released. [c/o BBC]

–Sara Tenenbaum

Update: Iran is airing a second apology from another British soldier. Maybe it’s a cultural thing, but even these supposedly professional releases — from the Iranian military — feature those flowered cloth backgrounds that just make me think of the rash of post-Abu Grahib beheadings that happened back in ‘04.

Drop it like it’s hot, drop- drop it like it’s hot

Another Republican, another day I’m humiliated to be a white person…

–Sara Tenenbaum

Some solid proof of Global Warming

How’s this for irrefutable proof of global warming?:

TIME TRAVEL: A wristwatch buried by an adventurer in the ice at the North Pole three years ago was found by a boy more than 1,800 miles to the south after it came ashore near his home on the Danish Faeroe Islands, his mother said. The watch was still working. [From this morning's Washington Post Express]

–Sara Tenenbaum

Morning Tid-Bits

• To be completely honest, Bindi Irwin scares me.
• The Daily Show takes on the n-word
• Fidel Castro publishes an article attacking U.S. environmental policy. Environmental scientists counter they are busy trying to figure out if Castro is secretly part cockroach or not.
• A former Miss Bolivia is arrested after getting caught smuggling a helluva lot of cocaine. Even former beauty queens have to chip in, now and again.
• Straight from Fark.com: “Karl Rove to undergo surgery. X-Rays reveal U.S. Constitution, Hatch Act in rectum.”
• They’ve only just started casting the new season of Project Runway?! How much longer do I have to wait?!?!?!!!
• It seems like people didn’t like Gwen Stefani last night on American Idol. I didn’t watch, but that “Sweet Escape” song is like crack.
• However, I definitly watched this last night.

–Sara Tenenbaum

Please ignore the rash: Insurance and Twentysomethings

The New York Magazine has a good piece on how most twentysomethings don’t have insurance. If you do get hurt, you can basically bankrupt your parents. But health providers can’t skew the system to offer more affordable coverage to younger, healthier clients because then, by default, they’re being unfair to older ones. Even a program like Tonik, geared towards the young, is only available in 8 states.

In lieu of a solution here are some horrible stories that might be enough to scare you into purchasing health insurance, and hopefully to beginning to work on a solution.

–Zoe Pollock

First no bread, now no green!

In a fairly unnecessary edict, the Green Leaf Party in Israel has confirmed that smoking pot during Passover is a no-no:

In bad news for its religious Jewish supporters, an Israeli pro-marijuana party announced Tuesday that pot is forbidden on Passover.

Cannabis is among the substances Jews are forbidden to consume during the week-long festival, which begins Monday, said Michelle Levine, a spokeswoman for the Green Leaf party

…

“You shouldn’t smoke marijuana on the holiday, and if you have it in your house you should get rid of it,” Levine said. The edict was first reported in The Jerusalem Post.

But not everyone needs to give up their habit for the duration of the festival. The rabbinic injunctions banning hemp were never adopted by Sephardic Jews, who come from countries in the Middle East and North Africa. That means there is no reason they can’t keep smoking marijuana, Levine said, except that it remains illegal, despite her party’s best efforts.

First of all, I like how this was announced in a fairly normal way; like, they’re assuming Jews are smoking pot on Passover no matter what. I also love that the spokesperson acknowledged that Sephardic Jews have no reason to not smoke pot… oh, except that it’s illegal. HA! I wish attitudes over here were like that. Illegality as an afterthought.

We Jews, we are a fun and funny people.

–Sara Tenenbaum

Lethem’s letters

 

The March issue of Harper’s had a fascinating examination of plagiarism, The Ecstasy of Influence, by Jonathan Lethem (author of Motherless Brooklyn, Fortress of Solitude and most recently You Don’t Love Me Yet). By doing that which he propones, he shows the merit and necessity of borrowing words and ideas in the realm of creativity. What seemed fluid and original, one discovers at the end of his essay, is actually a masterful collage which he dutifully annotates at the end, in a grand reveal.

In the April issue, Lawrence Lessig writes in the Letters section, slapping Lethem’s wrist in the vein of a father proudly and lovingly reprimanding his son. He confesses his respect but that he was troubled, especially “when I found buried in the text the only sentence I have ever written that I truly like.” Such an honest complaint, stirring up the very heart of the matter in plagiarism, which, Lessig acknowledges, has been blown out of proportion. We sometimes have a very personal and possessive relationship to our creations- be they words, apprentices, or progeny. It’s our pride that’s at stake. Lessig does not tell us the sentence, and he points out that the panacea is as simple as a pair of quotation marks.

And yet this is exactly what Lethem argues against, while admitting that Lessig is his “personal hero, among public advocates.” Quotes rightfully have a place in “academic, scientific, or journalistic discourses” but not so in art, the inspiration for his piece. “In assembling it, I was aware of my own impulses to beguile, cajole, evoke sensation, and even to manipulate…Artists are, among other things, mischievous, and we should try to remember that we wish them to be.”

I am struck by how basic an issue they have stumbled upon is here, without really getting to discuss it. Must we choose whether we write history, science, journalism or ART? In the realm of internet writing (which I sometimes think is belittled by calling them all under the rubric of Blogs) where must we draw the line? If one reads a largely political blog, can we not expect art to sneak in, or does that cause the whole tower of accountability into question, and potentially demand its demise? For so long blogs didn’t get their due because there was no institutional requirement to cite sources, and yet, trends today largely show that the most respected and legitimate blogs link to our most respected and legitimate news sources.

-Zoe

Jack White is the new Elvis Presley

This is a story from NME about the new Judd Apatow parody of Walk The Line. The movie follows a character who is essentially a Roy Orbison/Johnny Cash hybrid, and who comes into contact with several real-life musicians in the course of his fictional life — including Elvis Presley, who will be played by Jack White! Sweet.

So, let’s compare and contrast, shall we?

Jack White

Elvis Presley

OK, so I don’t really see it, but I’m excited anyway.

–Sara Tenenbaum

Thank You, Come Again!

“How much is your penny candy?” “Surprisingly expensive!”

I love the Simpsons as much — if not a little more — as anybody, but I have to admit I’m torn over the news (straight from the Richmond Times Dispatch) that the beloved, albeit fictional, Kwik-E-Mart may becoming to a roadside near, well, me:

If all goes as planned, the convenience store chain plans to refit 11 stores across the U.S. — Richmond is an unlikely choice — to resemble the front of the Kwik-E-Mart, the convenience store that Homer and other characters frequent in the classic cartoon TV series.

Customers also will be able to buy products inspired by the nearly two-decades-old show, including KrustyO’s cereal, Buzz Cola and iced Squishees (the cup says Squishee, but the contents will be Slurpee).

Bizarre, right? For all the late-night-stoned-and-drunk moments this will garner (man, am I glad I have no plans to run for office… ever), I just don’t think it will be right without Apu.

–Sara Tenenbaum