… again, and again, and again.

The Apocalytic Historian has posted History Carnival No 17, and the central theme is appropriately the many rides those dreadful horsemen have made, or threatened to make, throughout history.

Then a small bit of, hopefully unrelated, personal history. Unlike some people, who seem to be able to wax lyrical about their early years, I have very few memories dating back before the age of 10 or so, and quite a few of those are so cringe-inducing I wish I didn’t. (I was a self-consciously superior prig of a child.)

But Audrey (thanks), who was my mum’s best friend, emailed me today a copy of a picture I haven’t seen in a decade or more, of my second year of school. I have absolutely no recollection of the teacher, or classmates, but I did manage to pick myself out, eventually. I put it up here for no reason except a curious sort of, not nostalgia exactly, since I can’t remember it, rather more perhaps just of personal record.

Such a good idea to encourage private enterprise to get involve in sponsoring educational efforts don’t you think? Don’t you?

In Britain, McDonald’s is sponsoring a conference of head teachers – they’re the ones who are supposed to be getting their pupils to eat more healthily, while religious nutter creationsists are being given hundreds of children to play with for their very own in so-called City Academies. (They only need to put in a couple of million pounds and they have control of an entire school, presumably forever – generation after generation. No wonder some parents are fighting against it.)

In the US, the right-wing, particularly the extreme right-wing, is trying to buy the campus mind, as one story has it. Not only are drug, agricultural and chemical companies funding research into products out of which they want to make a great deal of money (something of which I have experience in my early days when an animal feed company had hoped to make me and a friend their free student labour for a laborious trial), but they are trying to take over the humanities by funding projects of their own choosing. I wonder if Wal-Mart is funding research into the minimum wage, or into how to get even more state benefits for their pitifully paid employees?

Isn’t it a good thing that we know kids will always rebel against things being shoved down their throats – well, we hope they will.

A correspondent complained my last quiz reference was a bit dumb, so here’s the post-modern, big-word version:

You are a Gender Nazi. Your boundary-crossing
lifestyle inspires awe in your friends and
colleagues. Or maybe they’re just scared you
will kick their asses for using gender-specific
language. Either way, the wife-beater helps.

What kind of postmodernist are you!?
brought to you by Quizilla

But you can safely assume that I don’t look like that – never gone in for tats.