|::| Monday, July 01, 2002
- |::| PHP XML Classes 11:53:37 AM
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From Freshmeat:
PHP XML Classes 1.8 [freshmeat.net]
Description from home page on SourceForge:PHP XML Classes is a project grouping several PHP classes for XML processing. Authors are welcome to contribute their own code .... Classes are designed to add new functionality to PHP or to provide an abstraction layer for existing funcionality.
Cool! I've been looking for something like this...
- |::| "The bottom line is that ... what we adopt in Texas is what the rest of the country gets." 11:39:30 AM
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From MetaFilter:
Textbook Publishers Learn to Avoid Messing With Texas [reg requ'd]. "Out of Many," the work of four respected historians, is one of the biggest sellers among American history college textbooks in the United States, but it is not likely to be available to Texas high school students taking advanced placement history. Conservative groups in Texas objected to two paragraphs in the nearly 1,000-page text that explained that prostitution was rampant in cattle towns during the late 19th century, before the West was fully settled. [MeFi discussion]
The fuss is apparently over a characterization of the prevalence of prostitution (so often and so titilatingly referred to by educated bubbas as "the oldest profession") in the "old west" at a certain point in history.
"It makes it sound that every woman west of the Mississippi was a prostitute," said Grace Shore, the Republican chairwoman of the Texas State Board of Education. "The book says that there were 50,000 prostitutes west of the Mississippi. I doubt it, but even if there were, is that something that should be emphasized? Is that an important historical fact?"
Well, um: Yes. It is. It's an important historical fact precisely because it runs counter to the legend that Texicans in particular want to promulgate about their frontier past: One of virtuous political refugees from the corrupt, liberal east.Another county heard from:
"The bottom line is that Texas and California are the biggest buyers of textbooks in the country, and what we adopt in Texas is what the rest of the country gets," said Carol Jones, the field director of the Texas chapter of Citizens for a Sound Economy, part of the coalition monitoring books for errors, examples of political bias, omissions or information that it deems offensive and that it says gives the texts a liberal slant.
And they say there's no conspiracy on the right....
- |::| Is Truth Really That Much Stranger? 11:00:27 AM
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From MetaFilter:
"Babe Ruth and I were teammates on the Yankees—and lovers, too. It was no big deal back then. After Sunday games were over, lots of players and writers would come by our little flat in the Morrisania section of the Bronx for one of Babe's famous bean dinners. I also remember the evening when Babe, wearing his familiar pink housecoat, turned out a nice catfish stew for Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis. Everyone in baseball knew how it was with me and Babe. After the company had gone home and we'd done the dishes, he would lie in my arms and I'd whisper, 'You are my bambino.'" [MeFi discussion]
Kids, I don't make 'em up, I just report 'em. Though nobody on the thread seems to take it too seriously.... Side note: someone was good enough to post a link to the Amazon "preview" of a similar (but much, much funnier) David Sedaris piece that I'd forgotten about....
- |::| Indoctrinating Communication Skills 10:46:37 AM
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General Semantics isn't dead after all. Someone on a group I frequent recently posted a link to a tutorial on teaching General Semantics techniques to secondary school students.
"If the teacher applied general semantics principles to his own thinking, he was likely to avoid snap judgments, cynicism, arrogance, and easy generalizations," the authors remarked. "He was aware of differences, change, and multiple-causations. His freedom from the tensions caused by misevaluations proved the most important factor in freeing the pupils from tension."
