all the news that print will fit.
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| notes from underground - societal whispers all the news that print will fit. |
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Thursday, February 19, 2004 np: the band of blacky ranchette - still lookin' good to me i adore when i luck upon overlooked nuggets in the qfs office. if i wasn't an alt-country (whatever that is) fiend, i certainly wouldn't have really looked twice at this cd either. but as it is, i'm aware of its existence as a side project of howe gelb and john covertino (of giant sand) and a rotating cast of their famous friends: neko case, richard buckner, m. ward, kurt wagner (lambchop) and members of grandaddy. it's not a masterpiece by any means. but it is howe gelb, who is wonderful at seamlessly producing beautiful, atmospheric country music. i also found our (misplaced?) copy of the pernice brothers' yours, mine & ours. i had toyed with purchasing this album for some time. and it's a wonderful slice of pop; pop in the grandest sense. pop like the minus 5; pop like the cash brothers. -- i very rarely go out of my way to post purely personal items on this thing anymore. but i wanted to share an important accomplishment with you. i recently received my scores from my praxis II exams. the praxis exams are, more or less, national teacher certification exams. the praxis I deals with basic skills in reading/writing and mathematics. the praxis III deals with pedagogy knowledge, educational psychology. the praxis II deals with pedagogy and content knowledge within your specific field; in my case, english literature and composition. there are two praxis II tests you must take for licensure in north carolina: english language literature and composition - content knowledge and english language literature and composition - pedagogy. the pedagogy test i received an adequate score. the test is highly subjective. not to mention having a very restrictive time limit that left me rushed in the latter half. needless to say, i scored much better on the half i took my time on. a brief tangent - i've always had a knack for doing well on standardized tests. knowledge of pure fact has always appealed to me, thus why i was also on the quiz bowl team in high school. and why i read things like the straight dope on a fairly regular basis. so, on tests like the content knowledge half of the praxis II, i feel somewhat bound a determined to prove my knowledge base for my work. my resulting score on the test was a 194 out of possible 200. and i've also received a citation from the ETS for having an exceptionally high score and falling within the top 15% percentile of all test takers. so, okay, i am now quite guilty of having used this blog to brag. but i was very chuffed. believe me. -- president bush's constant catch-phrase of "activist judges" is beginning to wear thin. as was pointed out on some other blogs (and what seems to be blatantly obvious to anyone with a background in judicial precedence), marbury vs. madison already gave the judicial branch the right to review the laws of the land to deem them constitutional or not. so these "activist" judges are really just doing their job. examining the law as it stands and making rulings based on their interpretation of how it fits with the consitution. this is not a new idea. the warren court did it with brown vs. topeka board of education. i recall my practical law class in high school. one of the seven goals of democratic law was "protect the minority from the majority." sometimes, what's popular isn't what's right. and the natural rights of the minority must be protected. no matter what the majority thinks of that fact. besides... these scenes made me far too happy for far too many people. posted by J. Neas | 2/19/2004 08:19:00 PM
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