Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

"Most people think that learning is something that happens at you: that one knowledgeable person talks, the class listens, and that's everything to learning. They think that when you can repeat back the words that you've heard, you have learned.

"That might describe memorizing, but it's not learning.

"Learning is the ability to use information. It comes through struggle: testing material, finding what's solid and what shatters. It comes through honest and real debate, seeing all sides of an issue, and knowing the strengths and weaknesses of all of them. If it doesn't stand up to criticism, then it's not learning."

-- chipuni, 2006-04-19

Posted this morning, too late for me to have put it into the queue for today's automatic QotD entry:

"Five years later, and what's changed? [...]

"We have cheapened the deaths of thousands of Americans by using them as bait and switch leverage for a war which has killed thousands more. We've whittled away at many of the principles that make this country worth fighting and dying for in the first place. We are no safer, no calmer, no more free than we were on 9/12/01; if it was the goal of the original group of psychotic mass-murdering fuckheads to interfere as much as possible with our way of life, they have certainly succeeded, and we have helped them along every step of the way."

[...]

-- kathrynt, 2006-09-11

This leads nicely into an esssay about terrorism that I've been meaning to write for a while, which I'll try to get to this evening.