Word: ideas
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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What's the best messaging strategy for advocates looking to wean Americans off oil? There's this idea that energy industries or traditional fossil-fuel industries are the villains and the eco-crusaders or these new clean-energy innovators are the heroes. In fact, when we take a look at the extraordinary achievements of the supposedly villainous industries, we find that they are the source of so many of our freedoms, so much of our power. And many of those industries are now becoming the source of a lot of the alternatives that will replace them. This shrill, preachy...
...almost seven years later, smoking in bars and restaurants seems insane. It went from dictator Bloomberg's horrible idea to something you wouldn't think of doing anywhere, including Paris, Berlin, Hong Kong and Istanbul. Not only do I go to far more bars now, but I even bring my baby. Which is something Bloomberg should probably also make illegal...
Meanwhile, mid-career gay activists who run the day-to-day gay movement from the East Coast - men and women in their late 30s to early 50s who slogged away at gay causes during the Bush interregnum - were rather dumbstruck at the idea that young gays wanted to march on Washington. "Pointless," one seasoned gay activist told me. "If Cleve and David Mixner have really inspired so many kids to work on our behalf - finally, by the way, because I think these kids spent the early part of this decade playing Nintendo or something - why don't they tell them...
...things in France can provoke heated debate faster than moves to tinker with the country's vaunted public-education system, which embodies republican values that date back to the French Revolution. It's especially true when the changes involve an idea as capitalistic and nonegalitarian as paying certain students - the ones most apt to fail and drop out - to attend classes and get good grades...
...Naturally, though, such a controversial idea is bound to spark opposition, especially in France. Organizations representing parents, teachers and students from the right and left alike have denounced the measure as sending an unacceptable message to students about what education is about. "We strongly oppose the idea of remunerating students for having fulfilled the basic requirement of attending school," says Philippe Vrand, president of the Parents of Public School Students group. "We should spend this money making sure vocational students who wanted to learn cooking can get into those programs rather than being shunted into car repair because there...