This Monday, I had another opportunity to hear directly from Nebraska producers about this year’s Farm Bill. The Farm Bill is a pivotal package of legislation covering everything from federal agricultural policies to food assistance programs. It’s only passed once every five years.

Most philosophers of education or philosophically inclined scholars of education in the past century and a half would agree with the claim that, ideally, education should be the practice of freedom. That is, it ought to cultivate the ability to intelligently decide how we want to shape our lives. The aim of education should be to foster human autonomy.

Dear Annie: The reports of teens being bullied and committing suicide are distressing. Bullying is not a new problem, but it’s a different world these days because of social media, which I call “unsocial” media.

In 1985 photographer Rennie Ellis defined graffiti as “the result of someone’s urge to say something – to comment, inform, entertain, persuade, offend or simply to confirm his or her own existence here on earth”. Since the mid-1980s, graffiti has crossed from vandalism to an accepted form of art practice through large murals or “pieces” and stencil art aimed at informing, entertaining and persuading us.