Because of my upbringing, I spent my formative years in conservative Christian culture, and I consider myself well-versed in conservative Christian arguments.
One subject that the Christian Left frequently uses to attack the Christian Right is the Christian duty to care for the poor and helpless. The Christian Left will frequently say, "You guys are being unchristian, because Christians are supposed to care for the poor, and you guys want to dismantle government programs that help the poor."
In response to this, the Christian Right will say, "Exactly. It is not the duty of Christians to care for the poor, not the government. We as individual Christians, or as Christian charities should care for the poor, but not the government." Some of them even go further, and argue that when the government provides for the poor, the government is in effect depriving Christians of their opportunity to care for the poor, and since the Christian duty to care for the poor is a sacred thing, the government is actually depriving them of their religious practice.
If you grew up in the church, you've probably heard this all before yourself. If not, take my word for it, it's an argument frequently used by conservative Christians to justify why they want to end government assistance to the poor. If someone were to do the work, and go through conservative Christian publications from the last 40 years, I'm pretty you'd be able to find this argument articulated in print numerous times.
Anyway, you can probably tell where I'm going with all this. With the shutdown of USAID, it's been widely predicted that this will result in a lot of deaths. From the Guardian:
Analysis confirms that several thousand women and girls are likely to die from complications during pregnancy and childbirth as a direct result of Trump’s order to freeze aid to the agency for 90 days.
...
The initial repercussions include the abandonment in warehouses of supplies of crucial drugs in Sudan, the site of what is currently the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, as well as in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), where recent fighting in the east has further destabilised the fragile region.
Across Africa, hundreds of thousands of children who rely on school meals have been left without sustenance after food was left to rot in the wake of Musk’s declaration that he wanted the US aid agency to “die”.
...
In Bangladesh, the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, which coordinates pioneering research into one of the most prolific killers of children, has laid off some of the world’s most respected scientists working on malaria programmes.
...
Elsewhere, the director of a major international aid organisation in Colombia – who also requested anonymity – feared the impact on those who most needed help. “The people who this is going to affect the most are those already without a safety net. Precisely those who are least able to find another source of food, shelter or income,” they said.
...etc. Go read the whole article for all the impending humanitarian disasters.
Okay, Christians, now is your chance! Time to put your money where your mouth is. This is your opportunity to step in and fill the gap that is left by the withdraw of Government aid to the poor. This is what you've been waiting for. Now dig into your pocketbooks, and do your Christian duty.
The world’s richest man has decided that the world’s richest country shouldn't help some of the world’s poorest people.
This is blatantly illegal. An unelected billionaire cannot simply shut down federal agencies authorized by Congress at will. pic.twitter.com/uzExo2xc1z
Here are two of my co-workers talking about life in Vietnam during the Covid times. Although some of their experiences are obviously unique to them, much of what they say when they describe the situation in Vietnam generally was also true for me:
Mark Mulder, who is an old friend of this blog (I've mentioned him before in old posts like this one. I also occasionally interact with him on Twitter, like here), is featured in a New York Times article:
Jeremy was my old team mate on the high school swim team. He's since gone on to be very active in issues, and I've linked to his stuff numerous times before (see HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, etc)
As you can see, he's obviously put a lot of work into this video, but it doesn't yet have the views it deserves. So give it a watch. Give it a like. Share it with some friends. Subscribe to his channel. All the usual Youtube stuff.
Found this video linked from Facebook. The woman here is a girlfriend of one of my friends and co-workers from Cambodia. I've met her only a couple of times. (They started dating after I had already left Cambodia), but I have met her. It looks like she's got her own Youtube channel.
(Looks like a really nice place they're celebrating at, huh? I don't think I've been to this particular place, but one of the nice things about Phnom Penh is that because of the very low-cost of living, a lot of really posh-looking restaurants are actually pretty affordable. At least that was the case when I was living there 6 years ago.)
I've been following Hugh Dellar on Twitter for a while now.
You won't know Hugh Dellar if you're not in ELT, but within ELT circles, he's relatively well-known. Mostly for being a proponent of the Lexical Approach.
So imagine my surprise when I saw that Hugh Dellar was talking about a former co-worker of mine on Twitter!
One recurrent theme that comes up in discussions with those who are angered by posts about native speakerism is that the desire to see non-native speaker teachers treated equally is some of 'Commie' or 'Socialist' plot . . . pic.twitter.com/aBQCRS6oDa
Today in: Hey! I know that Guy!
A friend and former co-worker of mine has set up his own English Listening Youtube channel. I'm impressed (and a little jealous), by how professional it's done.
This guy is a fellow Krashenite. Back when we used to work together, we used to have a lot of discussions at work about Krashen and his theories of comprehensible input (and sometimes after work over beers.) So I'm not entirely surprised he's made the move to creating comprehensible input videos, but I'm impressed at the quality.
My own attempts at creating comprehensible input videos are here: https://sites.google.com/view/reading-and-listening-practice/home
I don't know Adam well. I met him one or two times during the summer of 2006 (when I was back in Grand Rapids). But during the one or two times we talked, I found him a kindred spirit with many similar interests, so we've stayed in vague touch on social media since then.
He was a mutual friend of Phil Christman, which is how I made his acquaintance. (And also, coincidentally, how I found out about this article).
As for my thoughts on Avatar: The Last Airbender....
I have numerous friends my own age who have recommended this series to me as being worthwhile despite being made for children. So I attempted to watch it.
I attempted to binge Avatar: The Last Airbender back during the time I was binging a lot of DVD sets in 2012. (Looking back at my massive write up on all the DVD sets I binged, it looks like I neglected to mention Avatar. But that was an oversight.)
I regret to say I couldn't get into it. Don't get me wrong, it did strike me as very sophisticated for children's entertainment. I was reminded of how fascinated I was as a child by the ongoing storyline in The Mysterious Cities of Gold. And Avatar: The Last Airbender was way more sophisticated in its storyline than that, so I can only imagine the impression it makes on people who encounter it as children.
But... I didn't find it remotely suitable for adults--the pacing, humor, plotlines, et ceter were all for children. Especially in this day and age of the so-called golden age of content, when there is so much other choices available, I couldn't understand why adults would choose to spend their time watching this.
But, if really smart guy like Adam can give it such a positive write-up, perhaps I should give it a re-evaluation?
I've been linking a lot to my old high school teammate Jeremy Konyndyk lately: Here, here, here and here. (We were on the swim team and the forensics team together back in high school.) And in fact, he's been in the news a lot lately, even more than I've been linking to. (Many more appearances on TV and in the papers that I haven't even had time to link to.) But I thought this video was particularly powerful. I think I would want to share it even if I didn't know who Jeremy is.
"The high standards at ILA constantly make me want to teach better. Because of the constant expectations of high quality, I have developed a lot in my career. Only in ILA, I have learned specific courses on cultural differences and how to teach Vietnamese children. We are really proud of this ecosystem. At this challenging time, ILA still provides the best conditions to focus our expertise on students and parents," said Joel Swagman, one of the ILA's oldest and most experienced teachers.
Thursday, March 12, 2020
More: Hey! I know that guy!
My high school swim team teammate Jeremy Konyndyk, who I just linked to recently, is famous again after a twitter thread of his went viral, and was retweeted by Chris Hayes and Rachel Maddow
Here is the speech that the country *needed* to hear from the President tonight:
"My fellow Americans, the next few months are going to be hard. For many of us, harder than anything we've faced in our lifetimes.
— Jeremy FLATTEN THE CURVE Konyndyk (@JeremyKonyndyk) March 12, 2020
