What else I think I know about writing...

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FYW Curriculum Idea 1: Federal Program Impacts

 A motivating question: How can we get writers to move beyond ideology to explore, understand, and make decisions based on evidence? EXIGENCIES/ASSUMPTIONS Immediately (Spring 2025), DOGE is massively cutting federal funding for a variety of agencies and programs that have existed for decades or more.  Broadly speaking, citizens (of all ages) are getting "further from the facts," in terms of forming attitudes about civic behavior. There is a deepening of inductive (top-down) thinking about the role of government, where sweeping political ideologies over-drive people's orientation to specific events. (The alternate I prefer in this CI is deductive exploration of information, a kind of "working up" from evidence, ideally to encourage subtle interrogation of top-down ideologies they may have already acquired.) GENERAL SKETCH A note: I think this CI is probably "unit scale" rather than "semester scale"--it would probably need to be combined with...
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Letter from Birmingham Jail

 Just parking this here: The question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice?
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What's in a name

This blog isn't about the European weatherfish , or about Japanese torpedos at Pearl Harbor , or about mythical creatures in How to Train your Dragon , or about a hovering autonomous submarine , or about a shipwreck tour based in Mystic, CT , or about a series of Australian crime novels , or a swim club in Naugatuck . Apparently other people also think that thunderfish  makes for a pretty cool name. Through a book club I belong to, I earned the moniker "Dr. Dick" while I was completing my PhD. Some of the guys in the club worried that the degree would go to my head and turn me into a elitist jerk, or even more of one. Fairly quickly "Thunder" was added to that name (because "thunder" is always a hilarious intensifier), and somehow it's stuck. To that group and nobody else, I am Dr. Thunder Dick. I like the name--or, at least, I like having a nickname. I was a serious kid, not the kind to want a nickname like Dr. Thunder Dick. Too crude, too flippan...
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