Women’s Studies
Scipio has been nursing a cold for a week and I have been sitting by myself at Mathilde’s. I tried to persuade him to come out today and have some tea, but he says the tea they serve in the shop is actually produced by slave labour in Burma and every-time you drink it you dig another grave. I don’t want that on my conscience, so I stick to espresso.
3 o’clock just isn’t the same without him. The new barista, Erin, is the third in four months and Scipio hasn’t met her. She’s a Women’s Studies and Postmodern Culture major at the college, with a minor in Independent Studies.
We were talking about that this afternoon.
“How do you minor in independent studies,” I asked cautiously. But she felt the challenge.
“What do you mean by that,” she said, turning that into Th-a-t.
“I mean…
View original post 778 more words
The New Oxonian 
Six words that change our common fates for the better: Complete Separation of School and State.
A Complete Separation of School and State, no government involvement in education on 1st Amendment Grounds of No Establishment of Religion [it’s always been mainstream Protestant in the Yankee schoolhouse and still is] and Free Speech grounds as well. We’ll never do anything but argue unto death if we don’t separate a State that encompasses our existence but seeks to ban religion. We must either agree to leave each other alone in the public sphere and allow expression regardless – the previous arrangement – or begin to Firewall conflict points from each other. For atheism has become a faith that tolerates no others. We must have some space from each other or it will mean war, people don’t surrender their gods without a bloodbath.
If you state this proposal: Don’t expect civility in response for you are now directly threatening the actual religion and their power, income in one breath.