You're preaching to the choir on that one, but maybe we should tell the commenters on RollingStone.com, HuffPo, etc? They seem confused (I like to read their stupid in an MST3K styled riff off; you can be TomServo, dibs on Crooow though).
"It's just a bunch of commercials. Bah" /
"This is totally lame and does no justice to a great song" /
"I grew up in the 60's and this is not the Dylan I know" /
"I found the word VAGINAS in the video" /
"This is a vapid mess. It's sacrilegious to give such lyrics this treatment!"
I was beyond skeptical when I saw this link earlier, but this is outstanding.
The commenters on RollingStone and other sites, seem to have wanted some magical rose-colored nostalgia trip to 1965, but the whole point of contemporary Dylan is that you can't have 1965 back (and even if you could, you don't want to).
The lyrics to this song are like the anthem of Holden Caufield... a wry, disillusioned, antisocial, anticonsumption, post-war love song. Anyone who ever thought otherwise, is a turd who only loved this song because it was Top 40 and reminiscent of some lost High School dance, despite the fact that the song itself is completely anti-pop.
There are so many little easter egg mashups you can find as you click through: the CNBC styled wall-street guy ("threw the bums a dime, in your prime, didn't you?"), the QVC home-shopping girl's deadpan delivery ("take your diamond ring, you'd better pawn it babe"), reality TV girls desperate for attention ("how does it feel / how does it feel/ to be without a home/ like a complete unknown").
I think this is really the only video this song could ever have :)
”[The] USSR as bad as it was took responsibility for the Chernobyl catastrophe. There was Army and Government involvement on all levels to clear it up from day 0.”
Just so HN readers know… this ^ quote is total bullshit.
--[TL;DR Response]--
The USSR did not take responsibility or implement good clean up from day 0; at all. They lied/covered up as much as they could, for as long as they could, endangering their own land, people, and economy. Chernobyl is historically regarded as a propaganda clusterfuck and a major economic, civic, and political failure of modern history.
--[Full Response]--
I could argue a number of this guy’s points, but the specific claim that the USSR excelled at “taking responsibility” and implementing an institutional clean up/response “from day 0”, is the polar opposite of all existing historical and scientific fact.
The historical fact here is that the USSR’s response to Chernobyl was horribly botched, heavily manipulated by propaganda, and that the public was extremely uninformed of the context, causes, and consequences (both immediate and future), of the disaster.
The response was swift, yes, but dangerous, uninformed, and unorganized. Even the military/emergency crews and government employees/engineers first sent in to respond to the disaster, were lied to about the specifics and risks of the incident. For civilians in the USSR, there was a total information black out for the first 2 days. Most citizens gleaned only limited facts/information, days and weeks later, largely via rumor or from international media. Effective institutional response (from inside the USSR) and more accurate reporting only arrived after much international pressure and media attention. The major civilian backlash at the falsehoods and failures of Chernobyl, and the extreme financial expense of the disaster, was one of the final blows in exposing and crippling the Gorbachev regime.
[Source: I'm an environmental historian and science teacher]
The most recent polls show 68-77% of the public are against yet another union strike. In terms of general public opinion, there are, of course, contingents of uber-liberal/uber-conservitive outliers on either end; but the majority of the public are simply fed up with what is perceived as an increasingly petty and entrenched stalemate with little transparency as to what is actually being negotiated.
BART employees and their unions say salaries are too low for the (high) cost of living in the area, and should be increased by 23% to correct that. However, BART (and increasingly, the public) argue that BART jobs require no technical skills or education (beyond a HS diploma) and are benefitted and secure jobs already paying far above the average wage for jobs of similar (low) skill levels; and in light of the context (economic and otherwise), only a 4% raise should be granted. The percentage raise rates have gone back and forth on both ends, but that's the general gist.
The stalemate between teachers vs. administrators vs. students vs. tools/funds is nearly impossible to beat. The lack of tech-literacy (at the most basic level) among teachers is astounding, and the only thing more astounding is the real entrenched/entitled reticence to learn anything new (or that new = bothersome/bad). The overwhelming majority of MS and HS students are far more tech-literate than their teachers, and use that knowledge to learn/research/communicate/create more efficiently and pragmatically than the systems advocated by schools. Worst of all, most teachers don't seem to be bothered by the glaring lack of their own tech literacy/learning/implementation, at all?
When your teachers can't use email, upload content, or use grading software/excel, there's a problem. When teachers can't figure out how to use iPads, get youtube videos to work, or explain a single practical application of math, science, or engineering at the most basic level, in 2013... there's a real crisis.
This is one of the major reasons I just left my job, after 8 years in public education. Upon telling my principal I was leaving to pursue programming, she laughed at the impossibility ("That is for like... computer people? There's no way you could learn that!? What are you even going to do with that anyway?").
I start an engineering fellowship in the spring, and already can work in Python and HTML/CSS. It wasn't that hard to learn, I did it in 3 months. I could've taught it to MS students, easily. I also could've used a program like Chalktips in the classroom or as homework, to encourage graphic design aesthetics while students gained fluency with new/unfamiliar software and [web]searches (I think this is a critical skill), and still accomplish my overall teaching goal for that unit. However, my principal would've been unhappy with the results, purely because they were computer generated (and that's not "real" work). So Chalktips, in that way, would've been doomed from the start.
I don't really know what to say to education startups... the ideas may be fantastic, but the implementation is almost impossible.
FWIW, it looked like a solid platform. If I was still in education, I'd have advocated for it (even if only to be shot down by my superiors and peanut-gallery parents).
^ It's easily the most accurate, holistic, and honest piece on the Tenderloin I've ever come across.