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Speak Your Mind

There are two reasons why you should speak your mind: (1) If you think you’re wrong, you might be right; (2) If you think you’re right, you might be wrong.

An Unusual Bangalee Evening

“Culture is the widening of the mind and of the spirit.” Jawaharlal Nehru Wifey and I like to take a little stroll around the walled-in grounds of LAMB’s compound where we live and work. Although we don’t eat as late as many Bangladeshis do (often eating around 10 pm or later) the kids have reached the stage where homework, music practice and their own personal projects mean they need to keep going until later before eating. Wifey and I both tend to do our Masters work in that evening time too. The result is we eat around 8ish as a family and then pack Thing II off to bed and Thing I to her room to carry on writing/drawing/dancing/internet socializing. Those meal times are special to us as a family. Without a TV we rely on DVDs of TV series like Friends, MASH, Downton Abbey or Dr Who to keep us from going crazy and we enjoy them together as our family time. Once a week we watch a movie together too. It is something we do regularly that I’m not looking forw

FACTS

Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (Photo credit: Wikipedia) Academic institutions are expected to undergo rigorous assessment as part of their accreditation process. Roughly put, this process is supposed to show that the institution is doing what an academic institution is supposed to do. Having served on numerous committees relating to SACS (Southern Association of Colleges and Schools), I can attest that the process is rather extensive and generates massive amounts of paper.  However, there have been proposals to change this process. Here in Florida,  the Florida Accredited Courses and Tests Initiative, was proposed. If it, or something like it, were to become a reality, the accreditation process would radically change.  One main change would be that rather than having accreditation at the institutional level, individual courses would be accredited. Within this broad change is also a more specific change: “any individual, institution, entity or organization” could cr

Midweek Staff Meeting – What Should You Do?

Kant’s guide to sex. How can you hate your own father? Michigan modern. In modern Greece, what is a poet to do?

Pathwalking 73

We are all creators.  We live in the world we make. This is so very easy to disbelieve.  Circumstances put us in places we never wanted to be, and we don’t always live in the world we would make.  But the statement is still true. “If you will it, it is no dream.”  – Theodore Herzl I Pathwalk because I do not want to be a victim of circumstance, and I want to make my own world.  I want to make my own choices, so that I might live the life I most desire.  I want to live my life my own way. Author David Eddings created a mode of sorcery in his Belgariad and Malloreon series of fantasy books.  It is in many ways the ultimate statement of the concept of The Secret or the Law of Attraction and the notion that consciousness creates reality: sorcery in his world is created using The Will and The Word.  You have to focus your willpower on what it is you desire to achieve, then speak a word to bring it about. This is not so far from the truth as you might think.  We are capable of creating

The cleansing of the soul

People have many ways of cleansing their soul and almost always they are completely different from everyone else’s chosen technique.  Most recently I have discovered just how cleansing writing your feelings down can be.  I have always spoken to friends about the things I was concerned about or questioning in my life but never realised that actually thinking about things before you put them out there gives you a greater chance to fully understand what you actually think or feel.  My blog has done me a lot of good and I have recently found that if I have to go a few days without getting to write about something then the tension starts to build up inside.  Being secretive about my blog with my husband is important as I talk about the things that he would see as a huge threat to him when I’m on here.  I often think about having another blog somewhere else and just choosing the posts that would be safe for him to read on there so that I had the freedom to blog with his knowledge

Slut

You know, the idea that women are sexually frigid and enjoy sex less than men is a relatively new one. Through much of history, women were considering weaker than men in every way, including morally. It was understood that, being morally weak, women were more prone to sins of the flesh, were seducers of men. Lillith, the first first woman, was cast out of the garden because she wanted to be on top. For many generations, it was understood by many that in order to conceive a child, both man and woman had to reach “completion” during sexual intercourse. You could have probably asked any woman within a stones throw and she could have told you this was incorrect, and while I’m sure many a woman’s marital bed was well-attended during this era, it was also a handy fact used to get out of those pesky rape charges. Well it couldn’t have been rape, if you produced a child, that meant you enjoyed it. It wasn’t until the rise of Victorian Austerity and the Cult

Teach Me a Story: A Theory of Education

Good teaching is good storytelling. Good stories make us care about the subject, require us to think in order to understand it, and infuse us with wonder and curiosity along the way. How is the learning process any different? Consider the storyline of Christopher Nolan’s Inception (2010): if we were just to read a summary of the film, it would neither grasp us or remain with us; but piecing it together as we watch it — sometimes painstakingly so — we slowly understand the big picture: a man overcomes his guilt regarding his wife’s death. If we’ve been paying attention and doing our work all along, the moment of the man’s catharsis overwhelms us and remains with us. The same is true of good teaching: an effective lesson does not simply lay information before students but requires them to work for it. It’s like I tell my students about SparkNotes: it’s a terrific resource, but only if it’s used as a resource. If you read a difficult t

A peak inside my parenting philosophy

My last two entries were… heavy. I’m not sure how many of you actually had the time to answer any of the questions… or if it even seemed like a good exercise to do. My hope is that I may have stirred something in your consciousness, in your self-awareness. So today I want to share my parenting philosophy with you… at least what my philosophy looks like today . In actuality, sharing my complete philosophy would take up an ‘infinite’ number of pages so I’ll narrow it down to a select few beliefs, concepts and attitudes. Having a child is a gift that should be equally regarded as an honor and a responsibility. Becoming a parent does not mean I have to change my life, it means my life is changing. I fully accept this and try to embrace the changes it brings. English: A young girl kisses a baby on the cheek. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) I am creating a family so I ask myself what I want my family to look like, feel like and sound like. We should look like we are moving indivi

The Last Dance

Suddenly, one day it changes. You’ve awakened. No again, like you have at so many junctures in the past. But you’ve awakened to the fact that you never got to be the person that you thought you were for all your waking life. You’re someone else. Someone not so special, not so popular, not someone who is different but is the same as everyone else. All the anonymous faces that you never cared about on your ride up are now more important than you. And you’re just there like a piece of furniture from another era, waiting to be taken out to the trash. But then you realize, it’s not about you. It never has been about you! And perhaps that’s been the problem all along. Unable to register silence enough to hear your own footsteps. The consummate egoist. Wearing a mask that was the living legacy of your father. Unable to tear it off until he was no longer there to untie it. Then having it drop off unceremoniously to reveal only cranial hollowness. The cotton

Droplets of truth trickle down from the acid rain cloud in my brain, to lave away my fears, and replace them with fatality. Eternally tempted by Understanding by the gallant confidence she dangles, I live always and at least one step from her Arcadia, in the land of false yet pregnant fears, tenacious of temporal defiance, and confident solely of the destitution and death knell of her certainty.