BREAKING NEWS RIGHT NOW
This Day in History
Today in England is Apple Day as North America celebrates fetishized commodities with International Nacho Day; in the Levantnine hundred twenty years prior to just this moment, Europe’s “People’s Army,” part of a People’s Crusade that primarily consisted of poor peasants who hoped for a ‘fresh start,’ fighting for Jesus, met the Turks and faced almost total elimination; exactly a year later, in 1097, soldiers from Europe’s first formal crusade invested the siege of Antioch on their way to Jerusalem, spending the better part of a year surrounding the city that lies on the current border of Turkey and Syria; five hundred four years back, famous dissident theologian Martin Luther joined the theological faculty of the University of Wittenberg; MORE HERE
A Thought for the Day
Whatever one’s ideology or belief system or world view may be, the conclusion remains inescapable that human power that is not merely random or accidental requires the capacity to think, from which insight flows the deduction that figuring out what components support cognitive capabilities must represent a centrally important aspect of human society, an adaptation of crucial import to the survival of our kind of critters; in that regard, no element of thought can take precedence over the development of the language instinct, the multifaceted ability to listen and speak, read and write, both to articulate reason and to recognize bullshit or duplicity—unfortunately, of course, the most powerful forces in established governance and rule now prioritize the promulgation of whatever combination of willful ignorance, nonsense, and insidious half-truth best serves to elicit behaviors—docility, aggression, scapegoating, and so on and so forth—that permit the plutocracy to continue its profiteering and plunder unimpeded by a population that is capable of rational assessment of arguments in its own interest.
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge Kubla Khan
SEARCH OF THE DAY
"critical thinking" OR "higher order reasoning" OR argumentation OR "intelligent evaluation" requisite OR "sine qua non" OR necessary organizing OR solidarity OR "democratic rights" OR "majority rule" diminution OR lack OR inadequate OR "missing link" OR obstacle planned OR purposeful OR domination OR "class war" OR manipulation propaganda = 335,000 Links.
In-Depth Look
http://forward.com/culture/350
TODAY’S HEART, SOUL, & AWARENESS VIDEO
DARK SKIN, POVERTY, & EVISCERATED EDUCATIONAL OPPORTUNITY
For any scrappy scribes and stalwart citizens who care about social justice or even social decency, let alone social equality, a mandatory viewing experience from the Hechinger Report about a rural Mississippi school system in which students lack books, teachers lack resources, and the physical plant is horrendous, in primary part because of discrimination against Black communities and the legacies of White supremacy, obstacles that heroic instructors and intrepid pupils are doing their damnedest to overcome, a context of bigotry and oppression that has extended far beyond the Deep South, however, to touch anywhere that the so-called ‘Third Way’ neoliberal project has touched down, as a briefing from an agency that works with European refugees shows with graphic clarity, and which, moreover, a founder of ‘Responsible Billionaires’ demonstrates is a critical component of an economy that continues to function for even the most privileged top one percent of the top one percent, at the same time that the loss of life and vitality is vaster my orders of magnitude for those young people whom fate has selected to live at the lower deciles of the political and social and economic morass that capital has created in the present pass.
EVENTS
The 15th Atlanta Writers Conference for fiction and nonfiction writers will be held from November 4 to November 5 at the Westin Atlanta Airport Hotel in Atlanta.
OPPS/SUBS/CONTESTS
Drake University
Emerging Writer Award
A prize of $1,000 is given annually for a first book published in the last three years. The prize is given in alternating years for a poetry collection, a short story collection, a novel, and a memoir; the 2016 award will be given for a short story collection. The winner also receives travel and lodging expenses to give a reading at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, in September 2017.
JOBS
Alt Creative is looking for a Blog Content Specialist- telecommute ok
Our mission is to provide quality design/development services and a long-term relationship through excellent customer service while benefiting our community. We are currently seeking a Website Content Specialist to add to our team.
Online Beauty, Health Products Company is looking for a Script Writer
We need someone who can write scripts for commercials that promote/sell our products. We are growing, and are looking for reliable individual to assist us with this project. Must have strong sales and marketing writing experience.
A B More Art guide to the sometimes onerous process of crafting an artists statement, which is an issue that most folks applying for any sort of grants, jobs, and whatnot in any creative way must do at some point: “If this is the case, then why do artists torture ourselves with writing them?
The bottom line is because we have to. If a visual artist wants to apply for any kind of juried show, grant money, or other professional opportunity, we are required to provide an artist statement. In these cases, the artist statements are not read all that often, but are used in a tie-breaker situation or used to prove that an artist can write a grammatically correct paragraph, proof of professionalism and/or education.” 
A Vice News SOP report on the ongoing chaos in Iraq, that outlines the battle to regain the city from ISIS: ” Early Monday morning, Iraqi and Kurdish troops backed by a U.S.-led coalition began an operation to retake the city of Mosul, which has been under the control of the Islamic State group for the past two years. Mosul is the last and largest stronghold in Iraq for the terrorist group, and the offensive is being seen as a crucial step in the ongoing U.S. effort to train Iraqi forces and debilitate IS.”