April 2012
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A student blows up at a teacher, drops the F-bomb. The usual approach at Lincoln – and, safe to say, at most high schools in this country – is automatic suspension. Instead, Sporleder sits the kid down and says quietly: “Wow. Are you OK? This doesn’t sound like you. What’s going on?”
He gets even more specific: “You really looked stressed. On a scale of 1-10, where are you with your anger?” The kid was ready. Ready, man! For an anger blast to his face….”How could you do that?” “What’s wrong with you?”…and for the big boot out of school. But he was NOT ready for kindness.
The armor-plated defenses melt like ice under a blowtorch and the words pour out: “My dad’s an alcoholic. He’s promised me things my whole life and never keeps those promises.” The waterfall of words that go deep into his home life, which is no piece of breeze, end with this sentence: “I shouldn’t have blown up at the teacher.” Whoa.
” —Lincoln High School in Walla Walla, WA, tries new approach to school discipline — suspensions drop 85% (via mchotdog)
what a radical idea yo
(via matthewdgold)
Bam. Kids “misbehave” for actual, real, valid reasons. And have feelings.
(via amydentata)
For fuck’s sake, it takes the people in charge so long to figure shit like this out! Good for Lincoln High!
(via psychetimelapse)
As a parent, I can only say, PLEASE let this catch on.
(via chattyjeliza)
Perry Chen, on how it all began. →
8east4west.tumblr.com
the idea is one thing, and kickstarter is another. kickstarter is the manifestation of the idea in one way, by one set of people. but the idea will outlive kickstarter. people will be funding and building community around their projects, on the web, in this general way, for a long long time. (and we plan for kickstarter to be around for generations).
War Rocket Ajax » Episode 110 – I Wrote Poems, Shut Up f/Kelly Sue DeConnick →
warrocketajax.com
On this week’s show we power through technical difficulties to bring you our interview with Kelly Sue DeConnick, writer of the upcoming Captain Marvel series and Ghost from Dark Horse! She tells us about how a note to Neil Gaiman kicked off her career, why you can’t really get a literal translation of manga, her transition from manga adaptations to superhero comics, exactly how she feels about continuity and a ton more! Plus, we answer not one but two questions from the War Rocket Ajax Mail Rocket!
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“I think the most important thing I learned from Stephen King I learned as a teenager, reading King’s book of essays on horror and on writing, Danse Macabre. In there he points out that if you just write a page a day, just 300 words, at the end of a year you’d have a novel. It was immensely reassuring - suddenly something huge and impossible became strangely easy. As an adult, it’s how I’ve written books I haven’t had the time to write, like my children’s novel Coraline.”
—
from Neil Gaiman’s interview with Stephen King.
One of my journalism professors from St. Bonaventure once gave me this page-a-day advice, and ever since then, it’s something I’ve stuck to. It is by far the best piece of writing advice I’ve ever heard, and it is something I share every time anyone asks.
(via davepress)
Olympics 2012: A Bruce Schneier Moment
If one of those things is ever fired, either in anger or by accident, it’ll shower white-hot supersonic shrapnel across the extremely crowded residential heart of a city.
Hmm. It’s a good thing I’m a novelist who dabbles in technothrillers, not a terrorist. If I was a terrorist I’d be licking my lips, trying to work out how to trigger a missile launch. Using a motor-powered model aircraft, free flight design (no radio controls to jam) aimed vaguely towards the Olympic stadium, with a nice radio beacon or some sort of infra-red source (a flare, perhaps) on its tail to make it easy to track? These missiles will be the close-in option, because we know the RAF will already be flying combat air patrols over London; they won’t have much time to evaluate threats or respond intelligently. So launch from the back of a panel van, like the IRA mortar attacks on places like Heathrow or 10 Downing Street. The twist in the scheme would be to aim past the missile launchers along a vector that would attract a hail of hypervelocity missile launches in the direction of, say, a DLR station at rush hour.
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Tactical Fashion: In The Grim Darkness of the Far Fu... err... Today →
fuckyeahmilspec.tumblr.com
“Protect the Person Behind You”
Masked shield corps protester at Occupy Oakland on January 28th with homemade shield and sign. A group of these people protected unarmed and legally-assembled civilian marchers during the Oakland Police Department attack on…
“Cussing doesn’t come from a lack of vocabulary – I know all the other words. None of them speak the same language that my fucking heart does.”
—Anis Mojgani (via wecrythestars)
