Steve Ersinghaus

From Reuters
Students in England could be banned from wearing full-face Muslim veils for security or educational reasons under government guidelines to be published on Tuesday, officials said.
The guidance paper from the Department for Education and Skills (DFES) would leave it up to individual head teachers to decide what pupils should and should not be allowed [...]

Matthew Polly’s American Shaolin is thus far filled with wonderful conversation. Polly has spoken with a Beijing cabdriver and a Zheng Zhou key girl named Moon. The talk is very similar which, in many ways, diversifies and develops the narrative. The dialogue is planted with irony.
“What country are you from?”
“America.”
“America is a great country. Very [...]

Katharine Nowakowski has a weblog up where she will examine Shakespeare and other literature round the clock.
Follow the link here or in the sidebar.
In addition, and present tensely, I’m watching a little television and see a fairly inane commercial for community service. The music is deep and aptly profound and the enjoining famous people appear [...]

The lastest on weblogging from Colin McEnro in the Hartford Courant makes this often made case
. . . the blogosphere does not merely resemble the American frontier. It is the frontier. The blogosphere is Deadwood, where you earn your rep by what you can do, not by your class and family connections that mattered so [...]

Why the Department of Homeland Security is a bad idea. Do we want reason or not?

Chats
Had a nice chat with Spazeboy about weblogging, the recent elections in CT, and new media and look forward to his participation in the Perspectives course in the spring. He’s a nice guy and will add interesting perspective to the business of things. Tonight we discussed the future of new media, which is a major [...]

Soon I will be “in the market” for a car. This is what I want. Something small, light, and with excellent turning radius. I don’t want it to run on gas, but on solar power. The paint should be mixed with some sort of photovoltaic resin. Mucho sun power will be required for this [...]

I’m sure Ford saw the writing on the wall a few years ago. And I’m not just talking about hybrids. As the atavistic administration continues to come unhinged, the question has to come: What did they think was going to happen?
At the moment I’m watching a show on genius that’s not at all displaying any [...]

Until someone in charge figures out that it’s not the schools that are the problem, test scores and school-based solutions will be meaningless.
Rick Green is right to emphasize wasted time and human potential, especially in terms of our region, but the question or premise flooring No Child Left Behind types of policy misses the wider [...]

What is it with psychology, especially as it relates to team sport. On Friday, Mexico goes 0/0 against Angola. In the first 15 second of the match Mexico nearly scores. From then on, for the next ninety minutes, the match is as flat as the bottom of a tire. My favorite match of the [...]

Yi-Fu Tuan on loss
These incidents lead me to think how two human beings ought to treat each other. One way is the giving of self–giving another person something you possess. The other way is to welcome someone into your home, world, and self. Both can result in a feeling of loss. Obviously, if you [...]

I am a great fan of William Sloan Coffin, whose death is written about here. As to the piece in the Hartford Courant itself, here are some interesting interpage connections.
“You know the axis of evil is not Iraq, Iran and North Korea,” he told an audience at Yale in 2002. “It is environmental [...]

So, after many years of things “not functioning properly,” S brought home a Dyson. We’ve gone through about two vacuum cleaners in the last six or so years, which is pretty silly. We realized pretty quick, however, that this thing isn’t for the casual user and gives new meaning to the word suction and complex [...]

From the CSM
In reaching its determination, the high court said former Attorney General John Ashcroft overstepped his authority in November 2001 when he rewrote regulations under the federal Controlled Substances Act (CSA) making it illegal for Oregon doctors to prescribe drugs to help a patient die.
“The authority claimed by the attorney general is both beyond [...]

Looking forward to an evening of our new scifi favorite Battlestar.