Recognizing Code Switching as Valid Communication

“I ain’t mad atcha” or “I am not angry with you.” Which should you say? Well, we’re teachers. Our quick response: “The latter.” Grammar and usage are typical components of speech rubrics— topics students need to think about as part of building a spoken presentation. But that doesn’t mean it’s always correct to choose “proper” grammatical constructions. The correct response to the question above is actually another question altogether: “Who is the audience?” [......

 Bush Administration Science Abuses

After President Bush's 2004 reelection, scientists noticed that the problem was becoming even worse. One example was Bush's appointment of George Deutsch, a twenty-four-year-old Texas A&M University dropout and Bush campaign intern, to a key position in NASA's public relations department. Deutsch set to work muzzling NASA's top climate scientist. James Hansen, once refusing to allow Hansen to interview with National Public Radio because it was "the most liberal" media outlet in the countr...

 Esther Dyson Describes the NIIAC

The NIIAC was a well-meaning attempt to collect a diversity of opinion to make sure the emerging "NII" was useful to all Americans, and it probably did more good than I suspected at the time ... The members included the usual suspects: a librarian; a grade school teacher; a communications workers' union official; the head of BMI, a copyright agency; several telecom executives; several "content" people, including a legal publisher and a music-company executive; and old lawyer fried of the Clin...