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Posts Tagged ‘USA’
Causes of Exhaustion: Grading Student Research Papers
January 19th, 2010 | Added to College & Fraternity Life | 2 Comments »
Ugh… I’m getting tired just thinking about this topic. As you can tell from the title of this one, I’m going to write one or two entries about things that absolutely exhaust me. In truth, these are issues that last month which absolutely ran me ragged – to the point where I just wanted to curl up in a ball and go to sleep through New Year’s Eve! You guys know that feeling – the feeling of saying, “Ah, fuck it. I don’t need this shit.”
The first and most exhausting issue (and the focus of this entry) that presented itself last month was grading my students’ research papers. Holy cow. What a mess some of these things were to read (if you can call trudging through these papers “reading”). I’ve been teaching a course at the local college for the last three years. This Thursday will be the beginning of my fourth year teaching at the college and each year the writing gets worse and worse. First, I thought it was bad when one of my students spelled “before” as “b4″ (yes, someone actually did that). Then, I thought it was bad when my students submitted works cited pages on opinion papers! But 2009 was a banner year for outstanding displays of ridiculousness.
I had students copy and paste directly from Wikipedia when they are submitting opinion papers. I will repeat that – and expand – for your delight. I assign a two page opinion paper to my students and ask for their feedback on certain issues. This paper is worth 5 points on their final grade. And some students used this as an opportunity to go to Wikipedia, copy and paste an entire entry on a topic, and submit that entry as their opinion. Are you serious?! Has the age of the internet and social media destroyed the minds of America’s youth to the point where they can’t form a fucking opinion?! Good grief!
But that was a two page opinion paper. What exhausted me last month was reviewing and grading an 8 to 10 page research paper where the quality of writing was generally less than high school level and the overall grammar, spelling, and flow of the papers was just as bad. Granted, of the papers that I read there were definitely two or three home runs and another three or four that were at least written at a college level. But the rest of them… to say that I was disappointed would not be doing justice to the life-sucking exhaustion that I felt reading through these papers. And the less-than-college-quality of the work spread across a variety of issues besides spelling, grammar, and flow. One student – in a research paper – wrote that members of a certain religion (of which I am a member) and white people are generally not offended or annoyed by the Nazi party.
Go back and read that last sentence again. Yes, that’s right. A college student suggested that one specific religion and people of a certain skin tone would actually condone the Nazi party. Absolutely outrageous.
Almost none of the students knew what it meant to properly cite their sources and even more had no idea what MLA or APA format meant. It was an exhausting exercise reading their papers – absolutely exhausting.
But I can’t say that these students haven’t made an impact on me. No, in fact they’ve pushed me to the point where I’m strongly considering reducing the amount of written pages that my students have to hand in each semester. Not to worry, though. I plan on replacing those written pages with presentations – another skill that students sorely lack these days.
Who said being an adjunct professor was easy?
Take Action: School Lunch Meat Gets an “F”
December 29th, 2009 | Added to Sustainable Living | No Comments »
School lunches are a weird thing – either you love them or you hate them. When I was in high school, they had really good cheeseburgers (which probably wasn’t the best thing to be eating in hindsight). But when I read about information like you’ll see below, it makes the taste of that cheeseburger turn really foul.
The message below is what popped up as something that I should share with my friends and family (and online readers) after I signed an online petition. I hope that you’ll take a minute and read through this information and, if you so choose, sign the online petition linked below.
Do you know what’s less safe for our children than fast-food? Their school lunch!
A recent investigation by USA Today found that the meat sold to U.S. school cafeterias faces less testing and lower safety standards than the meat that’s served in most fast-food restaurants — outlets that aren’t otherwise known for their health consciousness and are as cost-conscious as the most passionate deficit hawk.
That’s right: McDonalds, KFC, and Jack in the Box test the ground beef they buy five to 10 times more frequently than the USDA tests beef for U.S. school lunches! And these restaurants have for years refused to buy certain kinds of lower-quality meat and chicken which the USDA continues to accept.
I just signed a petition to ask Agriculture Secretary Vilsack to set better standards for school lunches. I hope you will, too. Please have a look and take action.
http://act.credoaction.com/campaign/school_lunch_fdn/?r_by=-2078083-S9YA0qx&rc=confemail1
Again, I hope that you are moved to some action on this information. All it takes is a few minutes to sign an online petition, if that. I believe that one of the reasons why we are experiencing an epidemic of obesity in this country is because of the foods we are eating. Yes, food quantities are a problem (we eat too much food), but a worse problem is the quality of the food that we are putting into our bodies. When I think about feeding horrible food to our children in school lunchrooms, it makes me pretty angry. Please take a minute to sign that online petition – we have to fight back against industrial agriculture at some point and the school lunchroom might be the perfect place for action.
Of Course… THESE Guys Get the Money!
December 4th, 2009 | Added to Random Entries | No Comments »
While I was browsing around USAToday.com earlier, I came across this news update, which made me shake my head and say, “Of course! These guys get the big bucks while the rest of us slave away trying to make ends meet. Good grief!” Take a read…
Two homeless Hungarian brothers who have been living in a cave and selling discarded junk for a living are in line to inherit almost $7 billion from a long-lost German grandmother’s fortune, Britain’s Telegraph reports.
Their sister, who lives in America, will also share in the inheritance.
The fortune comes from the estate of a maternal grandmother who died recently in Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany, the Telegraph says.
“We knew our mother came from a wealthy family but she was a difficult person and severed ties with them, and then later abandoned us and we lost touch with her and our father until she eventually died,” 43-year-old Geza Peladi told Hungary’s ATV television.
The name of the deceased is being kept secret to prevent scam artists from coming forward, the paper says.
Geza and his brother, Zsolt, who live in a cave outside Budapest, got the news from a charity worker who was contacted by lawyers for the estate. Under German law, direct descendants are automatically entitled to a share of any estate.
“If this all works out it will certainly make up for the life we have had until now — all we really had was each other — no women would look at us living in a cave,” said Geza. “But with money, maybe we can find a partner and finally have a normal life.”
The brothers are currently getting copies of their mother’s death certificate and proof of their identity before going to Germany to claim the fortune.
Unbelievable, huh?
Tell Obama to Remove “Big Agriculture” from the USDA
November 8th, 2009 | Added to Sustainable Living | No Comments »
Hey, I know that I hoot and holler a lot about our country getting a better, more sustainable food supply. For those of you that are bothered by this, I’m sorry but it’s one of the things that I feel strongly about these days. I really believe that our countrymen have been put in a bad way because of a lousy food supply that is based more on corn than on natural elements. Seriously, take a read of any of Michael Pollan’s books and you’ll understand how incredible this change has been and how it has effected us as a people.
That’s why I joined the Food Democracy mailing list – so I could use whatever voice I have in this world to advocate on behalf of bringing our food system back to basics. Part of that change – and make no mistake about it, this is the change that I voted for – is removing from the government those organizations that have an interest in mass producing quick, low-cost sources of food. With that in mind, this is the latest e-mail that I received from Food Democracy:
Dear Friends,
Speak up to stop Big Ag.
President Obama has found himself with some strange bedfellows lately.
While on the campaign trail in Iowa, Barack Obama boasted, “We’ll tell ConAgra that it’s not the Department of Agribusiness. We’re going to put the people’s interests ahead of the special interests.”1 Despite that promise, it seems that ConAgra’s friends at Monsanto and CropLife are still finding their way into the USDA.
Last month, President Obama nominated two “Big Ag” power brokers–Roger Beachy and Islam Siddiqui–to key agency positions, putting agribusiness executives in charge of our country’s agricultural research and trade policy. Please join us in telling the President that this isn’t the change we voted for. We don’t want Big Ag running the show any more.
Siddiqui’s confirmation hearing is set for next week. Please help us reach our goal of 50,000 signatures to make a real impact.
http://fdn.actionkit.com/go/65?akid=35.18844.xoo-6g&t=1
Obama’s first agribusiness selection is Roger Beachy, to be head of the USDA’s newly created National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA). Beachy is the founding president of the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center in St. Louis, MO. It may sound innocuous, but the Danforth Center is essentially the non-profit arm of GMO seed giant Monsanto; Monsanto’s CEO sits on its board, and the company provides considerable funding for the Center’s operations.2
As the head of the USDA’s new research arm, formerly known as the Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service (CREES), Beachy is responsible for deciding how U.S. research dollars will be spent in agriculture.3 Translation: more research on biotech, less research on how to scale sustainable and organic agriculture.
Unfortunately, Beachy has already started work at the USDA, but the next nominee—Islam Siddiqui—still must be confirmed by the U.S.Senate. Siddiqui, the Vice President of Science and Regulatory Affairs at CropLife America, was recently nominated to be the Chief Agricultural Negotiator at the Office of the US Trade Representative.4 Amazingly, when Michele Obama planted her “organic” garden on the White House lawn, Siddiqui’s CropLife MidAmerica sent the First Lady a letter saying that it made them “shudder”.5
During his career, Siddiqui spent over 3 years as a pesticide lobbyist, an Undersecretary at the USDA and a VP at CropLife. In defending Siddiqui, the White House has stated that he played a key role in helping establish the country’s first organic standards.6 What they neglect to mention, though, is that those original organic standards would have allowed irradiation, sewage sludge and GMOs to undermine organic integrity! The standards were so watered down that 230,000 people signed a petition for them to be changed, which they eventually were.7
Fortunately, the organic community stopped Siddiqui and his cronies then, and we need your help now to do it again. If Siddiqui’s nomination is allowed to go through, then agribusiness will continue to control the seeds, the science, and the distribution of global food and agriculture.
Please join Food Democracy Now! and a broad coalition of other groups, in calling on President Obama to keep his campaign promise of closing the revolving door between agribusiness and his administration.
Please click here to add your voice.
http://fdn.actionkit.com/go/65?akid=35.18844.xoo-6g&t=1
Thanks for standing with us and our coalition partners from across the country, including: The Pesticide Action Network (PAN), National Family Farm Coalition, Food & Water Watch, Farmworker’s Association of Florida, Institute of Agriculture & Trade Policy, Greenpeace and the Center for Food Safety in calling for President Obama to live up to his promises to put people’s interests ahead of special interests
As I’ve said in previous entries on this topic, it takes less than a minute to send a brief message to the White House. Please take some time and, if this issue interests you, send a message to the White House. I’m realistic. I know that changes today won’t effect the food supply tomorrow, but I do think that changes in the food supply will help future generations of my family and our country eat more natural foods and thus be healthier people.
Some Thoughts On The 2009 New Jersey Gubernatorial Race
October 26th, 2009 | Added to The State of New Jersey, United States Politics | No Comments »
As the New Jersey gubernatorial race begins to head towards the finish line, those of us who are voters in New Jersey also see a light at the end of this horrid tunnel that we endure every few years. That horrid tunnel, more commonly known as the gubernatorial election, is marred with dirty politics, constant attack ads, and (at least this time around) a striking lack of specifics for both the Republican and Democrat candidates.
Both Governor Jon Corzine and Chris Christie’s remarkable inability to give specific information on the details of their supposed plans to lower property taxes have left a filthy taste in the mouth of many New Jersey voters. All one needs to do is listen to any of the debates that these candidates have had over the last several weeks and you’ll be sick to your stomach.
Since I’m a glutton for punishment, I decided to listen to WBGO’s podcast of the last gubernatorial debate of this season, which occurred at their studios last Thursday. Hold on to your hats for this shocking revelation… it was more of the same! In fact, you can read a review of the debate from the mainstream media’s point of view at the New York Times website by clicking here.
The last few weeks of this year’s election cycle have been interesting as the Independent candidate Chris Daggett is gaining in the polls to the greater detriment of Christie, but now also to the detriment of Corzine. Much like what is going on in New York’s 23rd Congressional district, it appears that a third party candidate is going to spoil the New Jersey Governor’s race. Frankly, I’m glad that Daggett has decided to stay in the race and fight. New Jersey, and the entire nation, needs an alternative to the Republicans and the Democrats.
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