Quebec is in the throes of mass protests. A prolonged student strike over tuition hikes triggered a law placing broad restrictions on the freedom to protest, and giving the police the power to arbitrarily declare even "approved" protests to be illegal. Over 500 were arrested in a single Montreal protest, after a prolonged and totally unjustifiable kettling incident. Kate McDonnell of the Montreal City Weblog was on that march, and she's graciously written us a piece on the experience:
Downtown Montreal midday Tuesday, thousands upon thousands of people
poured into Place des Festivals and the surrounding areas to begin a
march. Montrealers march more readily than most Canadians, but this
was a special day – the 100th day of the student strike against the
tuition increase ordained by the Quebec government under Jean Charest.
Charest has been premier of Quebec since 2003. A Conservative at the
federal level, he jumped for the chance when the Quebec Liberal Party
needed a new leader. He has nudged the party steadily rightward ever
since. In recent years his government has been rocked by multiple
charges of corruption and collusion, but it was the party's planned
increase in university tuition fees that sparked the real furor in
Quebec.
Early 2011, Charest announced his intention to end a tuition freeze
with an increase of $325 per year until a university year (two terms)
ends up costing $3,793 in 2017. Sporadic protests were held, but the
demo of February 17, 2012 was the beginning of daily protests, mostly
in the evenings, most peaceful but with occasional outbreaks by
"casseurs" breaking windows, throwing rocks and bottles at police,
painting things red.
Concerns about access to education were foremost: yes, Quebec still
has some of the lowest tuition fees around, but Quebec taxes are very
high, a fact that's tolerated because Quebecers have nearly European
expectations for collective health care, education and other services.
Statistics show that fewer
Quebecers progress to higher education than other Canadians,
probably the legacy of a time when the Catholic Church dominated the
culture (a hegemony that only ended with the Quiet
Revolution of the 1960s). Pundits are in disagreement whether
rising tuition rates will lower university attendance.
The most recent ratcheting of tension was last week's passage of a new
law, Bill 78, the
loi spéciale which limits freedom of assembly, protest, or
picketing on or near university grounds, or anywhere in Quebec without
prior police approval. A more vaguely worded part of the bill would
criminalize the act of encouraging people to demonstrate.
Ted Kaczynski updated his own entry in the Harvard alumni directory, just in time for his class's 50th reunion:
While many of his classmates sent in lengthy updates on their lives for the 2 ½-inch-thick “red book,” the entry for “Theodore John Kaczynski” only contains nine lines.
The listing says his occupation is “Prisoner,” and his home address is “No. 04475-046, US Penitentiary—Max, P.O. Box 8500, Florence, CO 8126-8500.”
Under the awards section, the listing says, “Eight life sentences, issued by the United States District Court for the Eastern District of California, 1998.”
Mozilla's new Webmaker project is a global initiative to "move people from using the Web to making the Web." They're running a series of events, including an upcoming Summer Code Party with interactive and recorded sessions on making stuff (I'll be doing one of these). That's just one piece; Seth Rosenblatt has more on CNet:
Mozilla gains some heightened visibility from the campaign by encouraging people who participate to use authoring tools that it has created, such as Popcorn and Hackasaurus, to do everything from site template tweaks to full-on app building. While the initiative stands to raise the visibility and importance of coding among the general public from a well-known non-profit already established in the field, it also comes just as the company plans to begin unveiling massive challenges to nearly every major player on the Web today with its Boot to Gecko phones, Persona login system, and Mozilla Marketplace for Web apps.
Mozilla also announced today the winners of a contest it held called Firefox Flicks, a crowd-sourced filmmaking contest that asked participants to "tell the story of
Firefox." Six films were chosen as finalists and shown at Cannes this past weekend out of 400 submissions.
Conservative "Christian" groups are voicing opposition to anti-bullying legislation in Illinois because they say that it is part of a "homosexual agenda" and will infringe upon their right to deride gay and trans people. The groups include the Illinois Family Institute and Concerned Christians of America, who say that anti-bullying rules "promote unproven, non-factual beliefs about the nature and morality of homosexuality and 'transgenderism'." The anti-bullying rules do not mention homosexuality or transgenderism. Whatever that is.
— Cory
The U.S. Congress speaks at nearly a full grade level lower than it did seven years ago, according to a new Sunlight Foundation analysis. Using the CapitolWords.org website -- which features the most popular words and phrases in the Congressional Record since 1996 -- Sunlight reviewed the vocabulary and sentence structure of what members of Congress are saying.
Today's Congress speaks at about a 10.6 grade level, down from a high of 11.5 in 2005. By comparison, the U.S. Constitution is written at a 17.8 grade level, the Federalist Papers at a 17.1 grade level and the Declaration of Independence at a 15.1 grade level. The Flesch-Kincaid test was used to conduct the analysis, which equates higher-grade levels with longer words and longer sentences.
Top Five *
Rep. Daniel Lungren (R-CA) -- 16.01 *
Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-CA) -- 14.94 *
Rep. Jim Gerlach (R-PA) -- 14.19 *
Rep. Thomas Petri (R-WI) -- 14.19 *
Sen. Daniel Akaka (D-HI) -- 14.18
Bottom Five *
Rep. John Mulvaney (R-SC) -- 7.95 *
Rep. Rob Woodall (R-GA) -- 8.02 *
Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) -- 8.04 *
Rep. Sean Duffy (R-WI) -- 8.09 *
Rep. Tim Griffin (R-AR) -- 8.13
Here's Neil Gaiman's commencement address to Philadelphia's University of the Arts, who awarded him an honorary doctorate. It's a wonderful talk on being an artist and pursuing a career in the arts.
I'm getting an honorary doctorate in Computer Science from the Open University next month, and I've been boiling my brain to come up with my own speech -- this has really raised the bar.
This weekend, I took my daughter to the Kapow! comics fair in Islington, London, and happened on the Upside Comics booth. Upside is a charitable trust that promotes literacy using comics. They run comics-creation workshops for kids, produce pro-literacy comics, and bibliographies of great kids' comics. They're looking for donations of comics and graphic novels, as well as cash, time and expertise.
Upside Comics use comics and graphic novels to promote literacy for children and young people. We support reading, creative writing, design and illustration.
Upside Comics is a small charity with support from the Big Lottery. The organisation was started by people working in schools and youth charities who love comics. We believe that literacy is the key to childrens' future success and happiness.
Ken Macleod and the European stem cell research consortium OptiStem have produced a CC-licensed educational comic about genomics called "Hope Beyond Hype." It's available as a free download, or as a &gbp;1 hardcopy, with translations to follow in many languages.
'starts with the true life story of two badly burned boys being treated with stem cell generated skin grafts in 1983. We then follow the successes and setbacks of a group of researchers working together to use stem cells to cure blindness, whilst being introduced to knotty issues that are part of the process, including stem cell regulation and the controversial ethical issues surrounding the subject. Whilst some of the story lines sound like science fiction they are in fact all true, despite the fact the script was written by the well-known Scottish Science Fiction writer, Ken Macleod. Comic book artist Edward Ross illustrated the script with his clear, friendly and attractive artwork, whilst stem cell researchers from OptiStem provided the real-life examples of their research and experiences.'
Macleod is a hell of a science fiction writer, and he's awfully good at comics, too.
Josh Stearns, a reporter who has covered the Occupy movement extensively, asks, "Why is this children's book teaching my kid about SWAT vehicles and Riot Control practices?" From his blog post:
Visiting the local library yesterday my son picked out a book all about police. I was stunned when, after pages and pages of info about police cars and police offices, there were these two pages about Riot Control Trucks and SWAT Vans.
Even after months of tracking conflicts between police and the press I still have a profound respect for much of law enforcement and the jobs they do in our communities. However, the descriptions of water cannons being turned on protesters and the taunting opening on the SWAT page, “Someone’s causing a lot of trouble…,” all seemed out of place. Given the increasingly militarized response we have seen to citizen protests, seeing Riot and SWAT teams portrayed this way in a children’s book was troubling.
If you'd like to pick up a copy as a gag gift for your favorite police-beaten Occupier, the book is "Police Cars." Google Books has a few scanned pages here.
Hedge funds in America have backed several dental practices, and Medicaid and parents allege that this has led to a rash of "dental abuse" of poor children, who are seen by dentists at school, without parental consent, for invasive and painful (and expensive) procedures performed by dentists. Critics say the dentists have to meet quotas in order to attain the valuations set by the private equity funds who call the shots. A North Carolina bill aimed at fighting this practice is being fought by three funds (Leonard Green, Court Square Capital Partners, and Levine Leichtman Capital Partners) who've raised $1.1 million to kill it.
Sydney P. Freedberg writes in Bloomberg:
Isaac Gagnon stepped off the school bus sobbing last October and opened his mouth to show his mother where it hurt.
She saw steel crowns on two of the 4-year-old’s back teeth. A dentist’s statement in his backpack showed he had received two pulpotomies, or baby root canals, along with the crowns and 10 X-rays -- all while he was at school. Isaac, who suffers from seizures from a brain injury in infancy, didn’t need the work, according to his mother, Stacey Gagnon...
In August 2010, Green’s lawyer appeared before the Arizona dental board to answer a complaint that ReachOut did unnecessary drilling on a Phoenix student’s teeth -- even after the student’s mother told the company she was seeing a family dentist and didn’t need any work...
There were two children with the same name at the school, and the work was done on the wrong Sabrina Martinez, Green’s lawyer, Jeff Tonner, told the dental board. Although the board agreed that work was done on the wrong child, it dismissed the case, noting Davila had complained about “the business entity,” not a dentist...
In San Diego, Tina Richardson’s third grader, Alexander Henry, came home in March with four baby teeth missing after a school session with a ReachOut-affiliated dentist that was so painful he “waved his arms frantically,” “pushed everyone off him” and “bled so badly that they had to send him to the nurse’s office,” according to her complaint with the state dental board. Among other things, Richardson said the consent process wasn’t valid.
Richardson said Alexander had seen a dentist nine days earlier who didn’t recommend any teeth pulling. Although she signed a consent form in September covering many procedures including extractions, she said she didn’t sign another one that came in November seeking permission to take out three teeth. No one from ReachOut called to discuss the proposed procedures, she said.
Razen Cain sez, "David Hunter is a public school teacher who is trying to raise cash on Kickstarter to create a Standards Based curriculum that uses a zombie apocalypse to get kids invested in learning geography. It's a genius idea and David comes across so passionate in the video that it's impossible to say no to him."
What we’re doing here, is teaching how to be a geographer by learning skills needed to survive a zombie apocalypse. Imagine being in a classroom where instead of reading about maps, you’re designing them to show the spread of a zombie outbreak. Instead of reading about the distribution of resources on Earth in a textbook, you are researching available resources to plan your post-outbreak settlement. I’m not just talking about learning where places are or memorizing capitals of states or countries, I’m talking about learning the deeper concepts of geography that geographers actually use. And all in an exciting scenario.
American universities -- whose grads often owe six-figure debts that can't be discharged in bankruptcy, and that can even be charged against their Social Security checks -- are increasingly engaging in the (legal) tactic of refusing to provide transcripts to grad schools or employers as a means of extorting payment out of students who get behind. A good summary of what this means comes from NYU's Andrew Ross, a prof who helped start Occupy Student Debt: "It's worse than indentured servitude. With indentured servitude, you had to pay in order to work, but then at least you got to work. When universities withhold these transcripts, students who have been indentured by loans are being denied even the ability to work or to finish their education so they can repay their indenture." Dave Lindorff writes in the LA Times:
It's no accident that colleges are using the withholding of official transcripts to punish students behind in their loan payments. It turns out the federal government encourages the practice. Schools are not required by law to withhold transcripts, but a spokeswoman at the Department of Education confirmed that the department "encourages" them to use the draconian tactic, saying that the policy "has resulted in numerous loan repayments."
It is a strange position for colleges to take, however, since the schools themselves are not owed any money. Student loan funds come from private banks or the federal government. For federal Perkins loans, schools get a pool of federal money to apply to students' financial aid, and if students don't pay, that pool gets smaller. But the creditor is still the government, not the college. And in the case of so-called Stafford loans, schools are not on the hook in any way; they are simply acting as collection agencies, and in fact may get paid for their efforts at collection.
In Southern California, USC's website makes it clear that unmet loan obligations can prevent students from getting transcripts. As for the University of California, Kate Jeffery, director of student financial support for the system, says transcripts are withheld in the case of delinquent Perkins loans. She concedes it's a difficult issue but says that "it's the only tool we have to make them pay."
Upcoming Appearances • April 2 at Skeptics in the Pub, Boston, Mass.— 7:00 pm at Tommy Doyle's in Harvard Square. Please RSVP. •April 4 at MIT: "Shedding Light, Online", a discussion about how blogging and a dynamic audience helped shape my book, Before the Lights Go Out—4:00 pm in Maseeh Hall. Please RSVP. • April 6 at Carnegie Mellon University: More details to come
• April 9-13 at University of Colorado, Boulder: 64th Annual Conference on World Affairs • April 10 at Colorado State University, Fort Collins: "Putting the Fun Back in Infrastructure"—3:30 pm in the Rocky Mountain Innosphere. • April 19 at The Bakken Museum in Minneapolis: Book Launch Party! Come enjoy snacks, a presentation by me, and some fun with the Bakken's Leyden jar.
• April 21 at Science Museum of Minnesota, St. Paul: Earth Day Tweetup event with Will Steger and Sean Otto—events run 10:00 am to 2:00 pm.
• May 2 at University of California, Berkeley: "Putting the Fun Back in Infrastructure"—6:00 pm, location TBA.
• May 3 at the American Institute of Architects, San Francisco Chapter—Lunchtime lecture, time and location TBA.
• May 3 at Barnes and Noble, El Cerrito, Cali.—7:00 pm.
• May 30 in New York City—Panel on local and DIY energy with the New America Foundation
• June 22-25 in Aspen, Colorado: Aspen Environment Forum • July 5-8 at CONvergence in Minneapolis, Minn.—exact times and dates TBA
Watch this video and you'll better understand both some of the basics of Newtonian physics and how to ride a unicycle successfully.
It's part of a new series of videos made by MIT and Khan Academy. The videos are meant to be for K-12 students, but let's be honest. After a few years, most of us adults have forgotten this stuff and need to re-learn it, too.
Upcoming Appearances • April 2 at Skeptics in the Pub, Boston, Mass.— 7:00 pm at Tommy Doyle's in Harvard Square. Please RSVP. •April 4 at MIT: "Shedding Light, Online", a discussion about how blogging and a dynamic audience helped shape my book, Before the Lights Go Out—4:00 pm in Maseeh Hall. Please RSVP. • April 6 at Carnegie Mellon University: More details to come
• April 9-13 at University of Colorado, Boulder: 64th Annual Conference on World Affairs • April 10 at Colorado State University, Fort Collins: "Putting the Fun Back in Infrastructure"—3:30 pm in the Rocky Mountain Innosphere. • April 19 at The Bakken Museum in Minneapolis: Book Launch Party! Come enjoy snacks, a presentation by me, and some fun with the Bakken's Leyden jar.
• April 21 at Science Museum of Minnesota, St. Paul: Earth Day Tweetup event with Will Steger and Sean Otto—events run 10:00 am to 2:00 pm.
• May 2 at University of California, Berkeley: "Putting the Fun Back in Infrastructure"—6:00 pm, location TBA.
• May 3 at the American Institute of Architects, San Francisco Chapter—Lunchtime lecture, time and location TBA.
• May 3 at Barnes and Noble, El Cerrito, Cali.—7:00 pm.
• May 30 in New York City—Panel on local and DIY energy with the New America Foundation
• June 22-25 in Aspen, Colorado: Aspen Environment Forum • July 5-8 at CONvergence in Minneapolis, Minn.—exact times and dates TBA
Science blogger Lee Falin has a potentially useful analogy for putting radiation dose and risk into perspective—treat it like currency. Part of the problem with explaining radiation is that there are multiple units of measurement in play and they're all unfamiliar to the average Joe and Jane. The numbers get confusing quickly and when numbers get confusing, most people just tune them out. "Blah blah blah blah radiation blah blah" is both an unhelpful message, and an often terrifying one.
Falin tries to get around that problem by putting radiation doses into a number system that everybody knows and uses every day—money. He starts by deciding arbitrarily that 1 sievert of exposure is worth $1000. Once you've got that established, it's easier to understand relative doses. In this system, getting $4000 all at once is a deadly dose. Most of us get $2.00-$3.00 a year in background radiation exposure. A mammogram is worth .40.
This is not a perfect method. In particular, it seems to work best for acute exposure. Falin still hasn't totally solved the problem of explaining the accumulation of radiation over time. But I think that this idea—thinking of radiation doses in terms of money—could go a long way to helping some people understand this stuff a little better. I really liked how he explained cancer risks, for instance:
What about the long term risk of cancer caused by radiation exposure? According to the EPA, an average of 2,000 out of every 10,000 adults will die from some form of cancer. If you expose everyone in that group to an extra $10.00 of radiation in one year, the number will jump to about 2,005 people.
Joel sez, "'Wainwright for the People' is a young adult book for ages 10 and up that teaches basic civics, with a focus on our judicial system, in the form of a legal thriller, accompanied by Student and Teacher Guides, made available as a free download under a Creative Commons license. Co-written by a former Assistant District Attorney and a former high school English Teacher, Wainwright for the People builds on the tradition of using literature to educate. Ten years after No Child Left Behind left civics instruction behind, 'Wainwright for the People' will offer schools a way to use an exciting story to teach students about our fundamental rights and system of justice."
Gideon Wainwright is suspended from school when he takes the fall for pulling a fire alarm while breaking up a bully attack. Forced to intern for his Assistant District Attorney mother while under suspension, Gideon is thrust into the middle of an investigation that seems just a little too close to his troubles at school. Gideon’s adventure propels him through the justice system as he, and readers, learn the fundamental concepts behind the Bill of Rights and our legal system.
Co-written by a former Assistant District Attorney (Joel) and a former high school English Teacher (Stacey), Wainwright for the People builds on the tradition of using literature to educate, in the same way To Kill a Mockingbird forced us to confront racism. Joel regular speaks to middle schools on Law Day and Constitution Day about the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and our system of justice. In need of a story to engage kids and provide a context in which learning can flourish, Joel sketched out the ideas for Wainwright based on his real life experiences as an A.D.A. in the Bronx...
American Bar Association Publishing has agreed to publish the story of Wainwright for the People upon completion. The manuscript is due in October of 2012. By the end of this year the curriculum will be developed. Publication is expected in March of 2013.
Consistent with ABA Publishing’s practices, no advance has been offered. In addition, because Wainwright for the People is way outside the ABA’s normal catalog of law books, marketing will largely be our responsibility. ABA has encouraged our Kickstarter campaign and generously donated the ePub edition of Wainwright for a reward, but it will be through our own efforts that Wainwright will get into the hot little hands of student readers.
The U.S. Congress speaks at nearly a full grade level lower than it did seven years ago, according to a new Sunlight Foundation analysis. Using the CapitolWords.org website -- which features the most popular words and phrases in the Congressional Record since 1996 -- Sunlight reviewed the vocabulary and sentence structure of what members of Congress are saying.
Upside Comics use comics and graphic novels to promote literacy for children and young people. We support reading, creative writing, design and illustration.
'starts with the true life story of two badly burned boys being treated with stem cell generated skin grafts in 1983. We then follow the successes and setbacks of a group of researchers working together to use stem cells to cure blindness, whilst being introduced to knotty issues that are part of the process, including stem cell regulation and the controversial ethical issues surrounding the subject. Whilst some of the story lines sound like science fiction they are in fact all true, despite the fact the script was written by the well-known Scottish Science Fiction writer, Ken Macleod. Comic book artist Edward Ross illustrated the script with his clear, friendly and attractive artwork, whilst stem cell researchers from OptiStem provided the real-life examples of their research and experiences.'
It's no accident that colleges are using the withholding of official transcripts to punish students behind in their loan payments. It turns out the federal government encourages the practice. Schools are not required by law to withhold transcripts, but a spokeswoman at the Department of Education confirmed that the department "encourages" them to use the draconian tactic, saying that the policy "has resulted in numerous loan repayments."
, my book about the future of energy in the United States, will be published April 10th.