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<http://www.freenewmexican.com/news>News:
<http://www.freenewmexican.com/nationworld>Nation / World
A loss deeply felt

By PAULINE ARRILLAGA AND FELICIA FONSECA | Associated Press
September 12, 2007

A slaying involving two Navajo college students
strikes at the core of the Indian nation

WINDOW ROCK, Ariz. &#AD; That they had made it off
the reservation at all was no small feat in a
place where adversity runs as deep as tradition.
But they were success stories: Two Navajo girls
gone to the big-city university, planning to come home one day and give back.
Mia Henderson, the one they called ]Princess
Mia,^ captain of the softball team and a star
student who had a flair for science and yearned
to work in genetics or sports medicine.

Galareka Harrison, ]Reka^ to friends and family,
the track standout and rodeo girl who excelled in
roping and dreamed of becoming a pharmacist.

On this remote stretch of land where kids
sometimes have neither the means nor the desire
to reach for something more, Henderson and
Harrison stood out. They studied hard, played
sports and won scholarships &#AD; then set out to
make their mark at the University of Arizona in
Tucson, hundreds of miles and a world away from
the rolling hills and hogans of home.

They were just 18, the kind of young people
Navajo elders hope and pray will carry on for them.

Now one is dead. The other is charged with her
murder. And a community struggles to understand.

The loss is felt so deeply here because it goes
beyond one unfathomable act of violence. Among a
people who consider life sacred and their ritual
teachings the path to salvation, they wonder what
this tragedy says about the survival of a belief
system &#AD; and the next generation of Navajos.

Navajo hardships

]We pray for our young to get knowledge,^ says
medicine man Wilbur Begay. ]We pray for them so
they can help our Indian people. They are our future leaders.^
His face, etched with five decades of wisdom,
hints at the despair that has pervaded the Navajo
Nation since word spread of the Sept. 5 killing
and arrest. His words ring of doubt, the kind
that accompanies unanswered questions of why and how.

]Did we do something wrong?^ he asks. ]Didn\t we pray hard enough?^
Life for the young has never been easy on the
reservation that spans 27,000 square miles of
Utah, New Mexico and Arizona. Poverty levels,
dropout rates, teen pregnancies, suicides,
violent crimes &#AD; the many markers by which
non-Indians measure success or failure &#AD; have
long been higher here, along with substance abuse among both teens and adults.
In the face of these many challenges, Navajo
leaders have long grappled with how to keep their
heritage alive among future generations. They
fight to instill the traditional principle of k\e
&#AD; respect for yourself and others &#AD; as well as kinship, balance and harmony.
]We\re all family,^ says Navajo President Joe
Shirley Jr. ]We\re supposed to be getting along.
We\re supposed to be looking out for each other.
That\s supposed to be the philosophy, the belief, the way.

]In spite of us wanting to save the ways,^ he adds, ]we\re losing a lot of it.^
Education is meant to be part of the answer. Only
about 18 percent of the adult population on the
reservation has earned a four-year degree, below
the national average of 24 percent. So the tribe
has worked to provide scholarships and other
assistance to those wanting to pursue a college
degree. Some schools even go so far as to develop
promotional DVDs of their top students.

Mighty Mia

Henderson, in fact, won a prestigious Chief
Manuelito Scholarship, a $7,000-a-year, four-year
award for college-bound Navajos named for a
legendary chief who was dedicated to providing
quality education for his people.

Henderson grew up in Tuba City on the western
edge of the reservation, 85 miles north of
Flagstaff, Ariz., and east of the Grand Canyon.
Her father once worked as a principal and
administrator for the Tuba school district, while
her mother taught middle school.

Friends liked to call her ]Princess,^ though she
used ]Mighty Mia^ for her e-mail address and
MySpace page. At Tuba City High School, she
excelled as both an athlete and an academic, a
National Honor Society member who graduated in
May as one of the top 10 students in a class of 184.

Softball coach Flora Sombrero remembers her third
baseman and team captain as sweet and humble,
nurturing and analytical. Once, during a
difficult at-bat, Sombrero called time out and
instructed Henderson to step into the ball. The
girl returned to the plate and swung.

It was her first grand slam.

]She ran around the bases with this big ol\ grin
on her face,^ Sombrero says. ]She would listen
and take things to heart. She got it.^

The summer before her senior year, Henderson was
one of 25 Arizona students picked to spend seven
weeks working on biomedical research projects at
the University of Arizona. She worked eight hours
a day, five days a week in a lab studying albinism in American Indians.
At the end of the program, when each student
stood before an audience of professors and
researchers to show a slide presentation of their
work, Henderson spoke quietly but confidently for
12 minutes. She then thanked her parents,
]because they pushed me during school.^

Henderson was ]this incredible comet coming
across the sky,^ says program director Marlys Witte.

]There\s nothing she couldn\t have done,^ Witte
says. ]She loved the reservation. She loved her
culture. She loved her family. She loved her
grandmother. But she saw something outside the
reservation, as well, that she wanted to be a part of.

]Full of possibilities &#AD; wonderful possibilities
&#AD; that\s how I see her,^ Witte says.

Rodeo hand

Harrison, meanwhile, grew up 100 miles east of
Tuba in the reservation village of Chinle, a
wind-swept slice of land where cows and horses graze along the highway.
One of seven children, she, too, was an
accomplished athlete, a member of the track and
field team at Many Farms High School. But the
rodeo was her love, and she was especially good
at breakaway roping, where a contestant on
horseback attempts to rope a calf around the
neck. Two years ago, the All Indian Rodeo Cowboys
Association named her rookie of the year in the event.

Friends and relatives describe a good girl &#AD;
]cool,^ says 16-year-old Lavonne Yazzie, who
competed against Harrison in rodeo events. ]We
both just like to laugh. We just go out there and give it everything we got.^
Her mother, Janice, says Galareka was a good
student who won a full-ride to the Tucson
university. ]The way I taught my kids, that\s the
only way &#AD; to go to school,^ she says.

Things go wrong

The two girls &#AD; strangers until only a few weeks
ago &#AD; were brought together under the University
of Arizona\s First-Year Scholars Program,
intended to help American Indians make the
transition from home to campus, where just 812 of
nearly 37,000 students were Indian in the 2006-2007 school year.

Fifty native students, most of them Navajo, were
selected for this year\s program, which requires
participants to live together in a wing of
Graham-Greenlee dormitory called O\odham Ki &#AD; or The People\s House.
When school began Aug. 20, Harrison and Henderson were matched as roommates.
Clearly, things went very wrong, very quickly.
But the bare-bones police blotter account raises
more questions than it answers.

On Aug. 28, Henderson filed a police report
accusing Harrison of theft and forgery after she
saw her Social Security card and a campus debit
card sticking out of Harrison\s wallet, according to a court affidavit.
On Aug. 29, Harrison admitted in a police
interview that she had stolen the cards and
fraudulently bought a sweat shirt. She also
admitted stealing Henderson\s checkbook and
cashing a $500 check, and using another stolen
identification as her own, according to the
affidavit. University police declined to explain
why Harrison wasn\t immediately arrested, citing an ongoing investigation.
Harrison then went home for a Labor Day weekend
visit with family, returning to school Sept. 4.

At 5:45 a.m. the next morning, students called
university police to report hearing screams in
Graham-Greenlee hall. Police say Harrison bought
a knife on her return to campus, then wrote a
note pretending to be Henderson. She had falsely
accused her roommate, the note said, and she
mentioned ending her own life. Then, police say,
Harrison stabbed Henderson numerous times as she slept.

University police Sgt. Eugene Mejia says Harrison
had been accused by a second student of theft,
but there was no indication she presented a
physical threat to any of her classmates.
Harrison\s mother maintains her daughter had no
history of violence, and those who remember her
from high school were stunned by her arrest.

]Our whole staff was just numb when we heard the
news,^ says Dave Lepkojus, an assistant principal at Many Farms High.
]Those who did know her just couldn\t imagine
that she would be involved in anything like this.
She was a good student, an honor student, was
accepted to the university. She was just a really good kid.^

[Hard to accept\

A Navajo medicine man whose son is a freshman at
the University of Arizona has since performed a
cleansing ceremony inside Graham-Greenlee hall.
The university wanted to do something to help
their students start anew, says Kendal Washington
White, the school\s director of multicultural affairs.

At least one student in the Indian scholars
program has already withdrawn from the
university. Still, says White, ]it was important
to bring in the medicine man to provide a sense of spiritual relief.^
But healing may be a long ways off for many on the reservation.

A few days after Henderson\s death, Navajos
gathered in Window Rock for the 61st annual
Navajo Nation Fair. It is the tribe\s biggest
event of the year, but pride and exultation were
infused with concern as Navajos tried to make sense of what had happened.
]I think that people will start to wonder about
Navajo Nation people: Are we teaching our kids
the values of our elders?^ says Yvonne
Kee-Billison, a program supervisor for the Navajo
Office of Youth Development. ]It just saddens
everyone, that two of our young children are involved in something like this.^
]If there\s any lesson to be learned it would be:
How do we nurture and how do we support our
kinship among our children?^ says Tanya Gorman
Keith, a vice president at Din&#E9; College, the
first college established by Indians for Indians.
]They are of the same family and of the same
people U they have to care for each other.

]The question now is really &#AD; moms, dads,
grandparents, educators: How do you make sure this happens?^

Harrison was to have competed in the rodeo at the
fair along with her sister, Garveda. The family
instead watched only one of the girls perform,
sitting somberly in the grandstand. Harrison
remains jailed on a first-degree murder charge as
her family tries to raise the money for her $50,000 bond.

Henderson was laid to rest Monday. Navajo
tradition calls for four days of mourning, after
which those left behind must find a way to go on.
For Henderson\s loved ones, that time has come &#AD;
if they can somehow find a way to begin.

]In Navajo culture, we cherish life to the
fullest. To lose someone like this, this
tragically, it\s very hard to accept,^ says
Sombrero, the girl\s coach and friend. ]Look at
all the potential she had, what she could have
brought back to her people, what she would have
taught them, what she could have contributed. That\s all gone.
]A lot of people are saying: [Why?\ ^ she says. ]Why?^
AP National Writer Pauline Arrillaga reported
from Phoenix. Albuquerque-based reporter Felicia
Fonseca reported from the Navajo reservation.
http://www.freenewmexican.com/news/68409.html

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http://www.boingboing.net/2007/09/11/history-of-the-infam.html

    <http://www.boingboing.net/2007/09/11/histo...fam.html>History of the infamous "Daisy" H-bomb commercial
<http://www.conelrad.com>Ken says:
On the 43rd anniversary of its first broadcast on NBC's Monday Night at the Movies (1964) CONELRAD has published a complete history of the infamous and iconic Daisy Ad. Bill Geerhart spent the last year
researching the story and documenting its disputed authorship.

In addition to the collected video, audio, and historical documents, Bill interviewed the 'Daisy Girl' Birgitte Olsen. As a bonus we've posted video of 'Fighting Words' -- a 1951 military training film about propaganda starring James Gregory. Enjoy!

<http://www.conelrad.com/daisy/index.php>...ng/iBag?a=FTOVhR>;

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Wired How To's
Write a perfect email

Email, not the web, is the most-used Internet
application by transaction volume. It\s also the
most misused. Since it\s such an important and
often overlooked component of our online lives,
I\m going to step away from preaching about the
web for a moment and focus on simple steps to
make your email discussions more effective.

If you grew up like I did, you were taught how to
write a letter. You learned how to write business
and casual headings and salutations, state your
purpose, make a request, set expectations for a
response, and wrap it up with a Very Truly Yours.

But an email is not a letter, and you\re not
typing at a Selectric II typewriter. You may look
at the days of formal graces in written
communication with some sadness, but rest assured
that they are as dead as Dillinger. If your
purpose is to solicit information or action from
another person via email, you must make that
clear to them at the earliest possible point in the message.

I get hundreds of emails a day, not counting
spam. I know I\m not alone. Email overload is a
problem, and it will probably only get worse.

It\s tempting for geeks like me to propose some
kind of microformat as a solution: begin subjects
with these words, format the first line like
that. But email is too widely distributed to
corral into a any kind of structure now. All we
can do is focus on quick, concise, effective communication.

People differ in how they manage their inboxes,
but attention to a few details can help make your
messages more usable for everyone. These are the
factors I\ve identified that will help you get a quick and valid response:
Brevity
It\s the soul of wit, you know.

Short emails rule. When I get an email that\s
several pages long, I have to make some
decisions: do I have time to handle this now? Is
it important enough to come back to? Can I pass
it on to someone else? If I can\t say yes to any
of these, I will probably never get back to it.

You may have lots of information to share, but in
email you are in a long list of others competing
for your recipient\s attention. Keeping it brief
is a sign of respect, and it\s less likely to
cause added stress to your reader.

Supporting material or other important info can
be attached, but keep it separate from who you
are, what your issue is, and what you want from me.

If you\re passing a thread along, trim what isn\t
needed. Why make the email look longer than it really is?

Context
If I don\t know you by name, tell me how you came
to contact me. We talked about mixers at a
podcasting meetup. You saw a panel I was on last
year. You divorced me and married my best friend
from high school. Something I would remember. I
don\t need or want a resume, but I do need to know where you\re coming from.
Getting a lot of responses asking, ]What do you
mean?^ Context is your problem. When you\re
asking a question, anticipate any missing details
that could cause an extended back-and-forth. Each
time someone sends you a reply, you\ve gone to
the back of that person\s line. Do what you can
to make your emails count the first time.

And for god\s sake, have a subject line. One that
makes sense. Some of the most important emails
I\ve received didn\t have a subject, and they
almost fell through as a result. Don\t waste that
space with words like ]Important^ or ]Re: Re: Re:
Re: Re:^. If the topic changes, change the
subject line to match it. Remember that on
recipients\ screens, your subject competes with a
large number of others for their attention.

Old-school email users have a tendency to trim
everything out of the body of an email except
their replies. Don't do this. For example, if you
send me an invitation to speak at a conference
and I ask what the topic is, you might reply with
just the topic, snipping out all the details of
the conference. If I've forgotten about your
email by the time you reply, this means that I've
got to go back through an enormous email archive
to find your original message in order to figure
out what you're talking about. Even if I
remember, it means that I no longer have the
details to hand. Don't trim email. Let it run
long. It's the 21st century: an email with an
extra 10k of old text at the bottom of it isn't
going to swamp my mailer (the 20,000 daily spams
are doing that very nicely, thank you).

Something to act on
Make your requests clear.

You should set them apart from the rest of the
message by paring them down to one sentence, with
white space before and after. Make lists with
dashes, asterisks, or bullets if you use HTML
email. Closed-ended (yes or no, this or that)
questions are preferred; open-ended questions can
get long and involved, reducing their overall
relevancy and the likelihood that you\ll get the response you desire.
Don\t give people an excuse to misread you. If
you\ve written a request at the end of a long
paragraph, or been passive (]it\d be nice if
somebody couldU^), it\s likely to have been
missed on the receiver\s end. If you sent an
email, you have a point. Get to it.

Some examples:

Can I call you tomorrow morning at 10am PT?
Here is my contact info for your address book.
Would you send me any links you have where I can read more about x? Would you forward this to person y?
I need your travel itinerary by end of day.
Reasonable expectations
Given that most of us have several current
projects to keep up on, it\s not very likely that
we\re be able to spend more than 10 minutes at a
time helping someone who is emailing me out of
the blue. My ability to draft my famous
page-scrolling expositions of a given issue is
limited. If I\ve already written something that
covers it, I might just send you a link.
Otherwise, if you can frame the question such
that a lengthy answer isn\t required, you\re apt to get a quicker response.
A deadline
There comes a time when the response you seek is
no longer useful. If you know when that is, tell
your recipient. This can be a good way both to
prompt a speedy turnaround, and to let people off
the hook in the long term. When someone sees
that, for example, you need a proposal in a
timeframe they can\t make, they will probably bow
out, rather than leaving you hanging. Everybody
wins. Especially whoever it is you end up choosing in their place.
You can\t win them all. If you need to send a
single reminder, do so, but if that doesn\t do
the trick, pick up a phone. If it\s not important
enough to call the person directly, then let it go.

Daily reminders suggest to recipients that
they\re being bossed around, and that\s not the
best way to manage people, and certainly no way
to treat casual contacts. They may be too busy,
or away from the computer, or actually working on
your last request. If you\re forcing the issue,
you don\t improve your chances of success with that person in the long term.


Created by swr_10016@hidden on Sep 4 1:29pm.
Updated by accounts@hidden on Sep 8 9:08pm.

"
http://howto.wired.com/wiredhowtos/index.c...splay;category=Work

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Anyone over the age of 50 who was offered the
chance to take the SAT at age 13 was pretty
extraordinary. I think we got the PSAT
(preliminary SAT) in 9th grade, but no SAT until
junior year (it costs money. The PSAT did not).
Now, they should look at the Iowa tests, the
California tests to get a broader sample.

But am I confused? 13-year olds plus 25 years
later isn't greater than 50 years old, but let me
check with the kids next door.

[I notice that now they have a predictor, it will
lead to "opportunities for educators and
policymakers to develop programs to cultivate
these individuals". Maybe they shouldn't if the lack worked well.]
By the way, this is the 50th anniversary of Sputnik.

mpb

Source: Vanderbilt University
Date: September 7, 2007

Future Career Path Of Gifted Youth Can Be Predicted By Age 13 By SAT
Science Daily a The future career path and
creative direction of gifted youth can be
predicted well by their performance on the SAT at
age 13, a new study from Vanderbilt University finds.

The study offers insights into how best to
identify the nation's most talented youth, which
is a focus of the new $43 billion America
Competes Act recently passed by Congress to
enhance the United States' ability to compete globally.

"Our economy depends upon the creative
sector--science, technology, the arts, medicine,
law and entertainment," David Lubinski, study
co-author and professor of psychology at
Vanderbilt's Peabody College of education and
human development, said. "Our research finds that
differences in creative potential among highly
gifted youth can be identified at age 13,
offering opportunities for educators and
policymakers to develop programs to cultivate
these individuals based on their unique strengths and abilities."
The research was drawn from the Study of
Mathematically Precocious Youth or SMPY, which is
tracking 5,000 individuals over 50 years
identified at age 13 as being highly intelligent
by their SAT scores. Lubinski and Camilla Benbow,
Patricia and Rodes Hart Dean of Education and
Human Development at Peabody College, lead the
study. Their co-author on the new report,
published online by Psychological Science Sept.
7, was Gregory Park, a doctoral student in
Peabody's Department of Psychology and Human Development.

The current study looked at the educational and
professional accomplishments of 2,409 adults who
had been identified as being in the top 1 percent
of ability 25 years earlier, at age 13.

"We found significant differences in the creative
and career paths of individuals who showed
different ability patterns on the math and verbal
portions of the SAT at age 13," Benbow, a member
of the National Science Board and vice chair of
the National Mathematics Advisory Panel, said.
"Individuals showing more ability in math had
greater accomplishments in science, technology,
engineering and mathematics, while those showing
greatest ability on the verbal portion of the
test went on to excel in the humanities--art,
history, literature, languages, drama and related fields."

Overall, the creative potential of these
participants was extraordinary. They earned a
total of 817 patents and published 93 books. Of
the 18 participants who later earned tenure-track
positions in math/science fields at top-50 U.S.
universities, their average age 13 SAT-M score
was 697, and the lowest score among them was 580,
a score greater than over 60 percent of all students who take the SAT.
Benbow believes the latest findings from SMPY may
be relevant to the ongoing public discussion
about education and competitiveness.

"SMPY has already shown that highly achieving
adults can be identified at an early age. These
results now show us that we can also predict in
which areas they are most likely to excel," she
said. "The policy question becomes: how best can
we support individuals such as these, especially
during their formative years, to help promote their development and success""
The findings contradict recent reports that the SAT has no predictive value.
"The key factor in our study is that the SAT was
administered at a young age," Lubinski said.
"When students take the test in high school, the
most able students all score near the top, and
individual differences are harder to see. Using
the test with gifted students at a young age
allows us to easily identify differences in
strengths and abilities that could potentially be
used to help shape that person's education."

Note: This story has been adapted from a news
release issued by Vanderbilt University.
  "
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/09/070907092930.htm

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MSNBC.com

Virus becomes new suspect in bee die-off
Genetic tests find link between colony collapse and little-known microbe By Alan Boyle
Science editor
Updated: 12:22 p.m. AKT Sept 6, 2007

Scientists have found a new prime suspect in the
deaths of about a quarter of America's honeybees,
a mystery that could take a multibillion-dollar
toll on the nation's agricultural industry.

Months of genetic testing have fingered a virus
that was first reported in Israel just three
years ago and may have passed through Australia
on its way to the United States. The correlation
between Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus and the
mysterious bee disease a known as Colony Collapse
Disorder, or CCD a was reported Thursday on the journal Science's Web site.
Although the scientists behind the research
cautioned that they haven't yet cracked the case,
their study provides enough curious coincidences
to keep even the fictional detective (and beekeeper) Sherlock Holmes buzzing.
The economic effect of the bee disappearances
goes far beyond the lost honey: In fact, the bee
industry's primary impact is felt through the
crops that the insects pollinate a products that
are valued at $14 billion to $20 billion
annually. Since Colony Collapse Disorder first
came to light last year, the malady has affected
an estimated 23 percent of the nation\s
beekeeping operations, with losses of up to 90
percent. Other countries are reporting mysterious bee losses as well.
The disorder is characterized by the rapid
disappearance of a colony's bees, even if there
are adequate stores of food in the hive. The bees
just seem to fly off into oblivion a hinting that
the malady somehow affects the insects\ navigational sense or learning ability.
For months, researchers have been struggling to
figure out the causes of CCD. Some even proposed
that cell-phone radiation was disrupting bee
colonies. Penn State entomologist Diana
Cox-Foster, the lead author of the Science
report, said the cell-phone theory was on the
bottom of the list of suspects. But she said it's
likely that several factors are contributing to
the bee disappearances a including environmental
stresses, pesticides, viruses and parasitic
Varroa mites, which all weaken the bees' immune systems.

The latest research moves Israeli Acute Paralysis
Virus to the top of the list as a "significant
marker" for Colony Collapse Disorder, the
researchers reported. And they said the technique
they used could be applied to other disease
outbreaks as well, even those that afflict humans.

The genetic game\s afoot
The scientific sleuths began their investigation
early this year by sampling bees from four
colonies that suffered a collapse, and two
healthy colonies. They also took samples from
apparently healthy bees imported from Australia
and royal jelly from China. Royal jelly is a
special food secreted by bees that is also used in cosmetics.

Those samples were run through gene-sequencing
machines and meticulously analyzed. The
researchers subtracted out the honeybee genome
itself, then identified the genetic markers of
bacteria, fungi and viruses that were left over.
A similar technique was recently used to identify
182 species of bacteria living on human skin.

Penn State's Edward Holmes concentrated on an
in-depth analysis of viruses found in the bee
samples. "This is breaking new ground in trying
to look at how viruses work in this class of
animals," he told reporters Wednesday during a pre-publication teleconference.

"We found a remarkably high viral burden in bee
populations. ... We characterize in this paper
seven different viruses that circulate in bee
populations. Only one of them was consistently
associated with CCD and royal jelly," he said.

That was Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus, or IAPV a
a little-known bug that sets bees' wings
shivering and eventually causes paralysis.
IAPV-afflicted bees are typically found dead
outside their hives. IAPV was also detected in
the Australian bees as well as two of the four Chinese royal jelly samples.
These initial clues led the researchers to look
for IAPV and other suspected pathogens in more
bee samples. They checked the genetic sequences
for bees collected over the past three years from
30 colonies that suffered a collapse and 21
healthy colonies. The presence of IAPV was found
to be the best indicator for Colony Collapse
Disorder, with a 96.1 percent correlation.


Not so elementary
"I hope no one goes away with the idea that we've
actually solved the problem," Jeff Pettis of the
U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agricultural
Research Service told reporters. "We still have a
great deal of research to do to resolve why bees
are dying in the U.S. and elsewhere."

Among the questions yet to be answered:
Is IAPV really a cause, or will it turn out that
vulnerability to the virus is merely a consequence of the disease? How and when did IAPV get into the United States?
Why did the Australian bees (and even a few
American bees) seem healthy even though they were carriers of the virus? What roles are played by other bugs that were
found in the bee samples, such as the Kashmir bee virus and Nosema fungi? If the cause or causes can be definitively
identified, what can be done to stop the collapse?

The first task ahead is to confirm the linkage
with the virus and figure out the actual
mechanism behind Colony Collapse Disorder. Not
everyone is convinced IAPV will turn out to be
the culprit. Researchers from the U.S. Army and
Montana-based Bee Alert Technology have turned up
IAPV and other viruses in sick and healthy bees a
but have not found any pattern of correlation.

"For the good of the industry, we wish they had a
smoking gun and a quick answer, but we're not
convinced they're there," Bee Alert's Jerry
Bromenshenk told msnbc.com. He said he and his
colleagues have turned up more than a dozen
suspect viruses, including "a bunch we're still scratching our heads over."
Scientists suspect that some sort of organism
will turn out to be the leading cause of the bee
collapse, whether it's IAPV, a different virus or
a combination of bugs. That's because irradiating
beehives appears to make them safe for recolonization, Pettis said.
The Australian connection is another line of
investigation: The United States allowed the
import of packaged Australian bees in 2004, and
reports of bee disappearances began soon
afterward, Pettis noted. That may be how IAPV
came into the country, though Pettis said it's
also possible the virus was here before that time.

Colin Henderson, one of Bromenshenk's colleagues
at Bee Alert, said it was still premature to
assume that the virus was passed from Australia
to America. Pettis said tests of bee samples that
were taken in the United States and frozen before
2004 could shed light on whether there's a connection or not.

If Australian bees are carrying the virus, why
aren't bee colonies collapsing Down Under? Pettis
noted that the Australian bees aren't afflicted
by Varroa mites, which have decimated America's
wild bee population in recent years. As a result,
the Australians may have weathered the stress of
IAPV better than their American cousins. "That
alone could account for the differences between the two countries," he said.
In the weeks ahead, the researchers behind the
Science study will try combining IAPV with other
stress factors to see if they can experimentally
create the conditions that tip a healthy bee colony into a collapse.
Is there a 100 percent solution?
Pettis said it's still too early to propose
putting new restrictions on bee imports. "We're
looking at the science behind it and what we feel
needs to be done, but no decisions have been made at this time," he said.
Just to be safe, beekeepers should refrain from
using imported royal jelly in their hives, he said.

Pettis said Colony Collapse Disorder was almost
certainly the result of a "combination of
things," and he didn't expect a magic antiviral
bullet to appear anytime soon. "We're really
right now going to have to rely on beekeepers to
continue just to manage nutrition, parasitic
mites, Nosema, things like that a and try to keep
bees as healthy as possible," Pettis told msnbc.com.

There's more hope on the horizon: Recent research
in Israel indicates that some bees have become
resistant to IAPV by incorporating the virus'
genetic code into their own genes. Creating
virus-resistant strains of bees, either through
genetic modification or old-fashioned breeding,
"is a very intriguing idea," Pettis said.

At the same time, the strategy used to track down
the genetic correlation between Colony Collapse
Disorder and the suspect virus provides a "road
map for rigorously and efficiently addressing
outbreaks of infectious disease," said W. Ian
Lipkin, a molecular biologist at Columbia
University's Mailman School of Public Health who
was the corresponding author for the Science study.

"I really do think that these new technologies
will revolutionize our approach to epidemiology
and the characterizing of outbreaks of infectious disease," he said.
If the strategy were available in 2003,
public-health experts might have been able to
track down the roots of severe acute respiratory
syndrome, or SARS, in much less time than the
months that were required back then, Lipkin said.

"We would be able to get similar sorts of answers
in as short as a week," he said.

In addition to Cox-Foster, Lipkin, Holmes and
Pettis, the researchers behind the Science study
included Sean Conlan, Gustavo Palacios,
Phenix-Lan Quan, Thomas Briese, Mady Hornig,
Andrew Drysdale, Jeffrey Hui and Junhui Zhai of
Columbia University; Jay Evans of the USDA-ARS
Bee Research Laboratory; Nancy Moran and Vince
Martinson of the University of Arizona; David
Geiser, Dennis vanEngelsdorp, Abby Kalkstein and
Liwang Cui of Penn State; and Stephen Hutchison,
Jan Fredrik Simons and Michael Egholm of 454 Life Sciences.

&#A9; 2007 MSNBC Interactive

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20612274/
MSN Privacy . Legal
&#A9; 2007 MSNBC.com

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The initial story or two has commentary from other students but not much from anyone official. In addition, most of the story is about only one person.

There is certainly not enough information

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20618540/

>Date: Thu, 06 Sep 2007 11:25:05 -0800
>To:
>From:
>Subject: Re: UofA tragedy
>
>
>Thanks. I would have missed that until much later.
>
>Story doesn't mention the tribal politics and clan backgrounds of
>the two (should have been variables in dorm placement)
>
>two-- one of the worst pressures anyone can put on a student,
>especially indigenous students, is to put the "whole fate of the
>race" on their shoulders. Usually it is suicide, an inverse
>homicide. obviously more to the story and it will be very disruptive
>to the other students.
>
>At 9/6/2007 11:40 AM -0700, you wrote:
>
>>Navajo tragedy in a dorm
>><http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20618538/>h...sn.com/id/20618538/

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This was on NPR radio Sunday AM but Millard
Fillmore's Bathtub may have more info specific to Mr Schempp.

I had never heard of this Sup Ct case before, but
an important one (and in 1956!!)
mpb

"Education
Discovering the Man Behind a Boy's Protest

Listen to this story...

Weekend Edition Sunday, September 2, 2007 &#B7; In
1956, 16-year-old Pennsylvania schoolboy Ellery
Schempp decided to protest his public school's
mandatory prayer and Bible-reading period by
reading silently from the Koran. He was ejected
from class and then sued the school district.

The case eventually went to the Supreme Court,
setting a precedent that banned school-sponsored
prayer, a decision that remains controversial to this day.

Host Liane Hansen speaks with Stephen Solomon,
author of the book Ellery's Protest a and to Ellery Schempp himself." http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=14124191

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"Barbara Jordan and Lyndon Johnson: An oral history"
http://timpanogos.wordpress.com/2007/09/02...on-an-oral-history/
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub. One of his features is to suggest how history can be implemented in the classroom. Excellent resources.

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Alaskan economy faces a fork in the river
http://www.latimes.com/news/la-na-mine1sep...l=la-tot-topstories Sides form over building one of the world's largest gold and copper mines at the risk of destroying its longtime fishing industry.
By Margot Roosevelt, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
September 1, 2007
NONDALTON, ALASKA -- Fly overhead in a bush plane -- there are no roads between native villages -- and marvel: Eight giant rivers braid across hundreds of miles of wetlands, carving cobalt ribbons through snow-coned mountains before emptying into Bristol Bay.

For more than a century, the wealth of this southwest Alaska
watershed has sprung from the astonishing volume of salmon nurtured by those wild rivers. Bank-to-bank, gill-to-gill, tens of millions of silver-hued fish thrash upstream to spawn each year, unrestrained by dams, untainted by pollution.

Interactive Feature
Bristol Bay on the Brink
(Flash)
Graphic
Fish vs. mining
  click to enlarge
It is the largest sockeye run in the world, accounting for more than a quarter of wild salmon harvested in the United States, feeding millions at a time when fisheries are dwindling across the globe.
But if fish have made the region's past and present fortune, the future sparkles with the promise of precious metal. Beneath the
rolling tundra, straddling the headwaters of two of the watershed's most productive rivers, a Canadian company has discovered North
America's biggest deposits of gold and copper, worth about $300
billion in today's soaring commodities markets.

The dilemma is whether Alaskans will have to choose between the two -- and whether the watershed, its fish and a host of other wildlife will be casualties of what could probably be one of the world's
biggest mines. The project would entail five earthen dams, of which two would be bigger than China's Three Gorges Dam.

Fueled by daily pro and con advertising on Alaska television, the debate is engaging state and federal politicians, commercial
fishermen, Eskimo and Indian villages, the international sportfishing community, environmental groups, major foundations and multinational conglomerates in a state that rarely turns down a major mine permit.
Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd. of Vancouver, Canada, and partly owned by London-based Rio Tinto, has already drilled hundreds of
exploratory holes, some more than a mile deep, on state-owned land in what's known as the Pebble claim. London-based Anglo American, one of the world's largest mining companies, announced this summer that it would spend $1.4 billion for a 50% partnership to mine the metal.
Opponents say a proposed Pebble mine would destroy one of the
planet's last sustainable fisheries, dry up spawning streams, and poison lakes and groundwater with acid runoff. Biologists have found that salmon's genetic radar, which enable the fish to return from the bay to the very streams where they were spawned, can be ruined by microscopic particles of copper dust.

And Bristol Bay's other wildlife -- including one of the world's largest brown bear populations, a 45,000-head Mulchatna caribou herd, moose, wolverines, beavers and eagles -- also depends on clean water.
Northern Dynasty officials scoff at what they call an alarmist
campaign. "We know Bristol Bay is a sensitive area," said Sean Magee, vice president for public affairs. "But there've been tremendous changes in the mining industry in the past 25 years. These projects can be done safely now: Mining and fishing can coexist."

What is clear is that the mine -- wedged between Lake Clark and
Katmai national parks -- would entail a staggering scale of industrialization.
If the full resource were developed, as much as 12 billion tons of earth would be excavated and milled to extract the tiny flecks of metal: about 82 million ounces of gold, 67 billion pounds of copper and 4 billion pounds of molybdenum.

Ten square miles of impoundments would fill two valleys, to store in perpetuity more than 2.5 billion tons of waste rock and toxic residue.
And to transport equipment and ore, a new 104-mile road would cut through undeveloped forest and wetlands, skirting Lake Iliamna,
Alaska's largest body of fresh water. The lake is host to rare
freshwater seals and is a primary spawning bed for sockeye, the
red-fleshed salmon that are among the world's most prized eating fish.
And Pebble may be just the beginning.

Northern Dynasty's exploration has sparked a surge of claim-staking, with eight other companies asserting rights over more than 700 square miles nearby.This month, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management will make a final decision on whether to allow hard-rock drilling on 3,300 square miles of federal land in the area.

"A massive mining district would carve the heart out of the
watershed," said Richard Jameson, president of the Renewable
Resources Coalition, a statewide anti-Pebble group, which is backing legislation and ballot measures to stop the mine.

Northern Dynasty's environmental studies won't be ready until 2009, and obtaining the 67 required state and federal permits could take three more years. But already, Magee said, "Debate is at fever pitch."
Opponents are waging an uphill struggle. Because Pebble is on state land, the key decisions will come from the Alaska Department of
Natural Resources whose commissioner, Tom Irwin, is a former mining executive and whose mission is to promote development.

"It's the fox guarding the chicken coop," said Norman Van Vactor, Bristol Bay manager for Peter Pan Seafoods, which operates the area's oldest cannery.

In the state capital this year, Northern Dynasty lobbyists beat back legislation that would have created a game refuge overlapping the mine site and would have barred polluting or diverting water from salmon streams. But the bills will be revived next year.

So far, Republican Gov. Sarah Palin has remained neutral. She has fished in Bristol Bay herself, and her husband fishes commercially. They named one of their daughters Bristol.

The outcome may hinge less on environmental values than on which economic resource Alaskans value most.

"You can't eat gold," says Robin Samuelsen, a commercial fisherman and chief of the Curyung Tribal Council in Dillingham, the region's principal town.

Bristol Bay's fishery, with $450 million in annual economic benefits, employs 10,000 people in seasonal jobs, including 6,800 fishermen. And it could grow in value: Because contaminants in farmed seafood have come to light, consumers are increasingly turning to wild salmon for health benefits and its superior taste.

This time of year, the rivers that feed Bristol Bay are bedecked with racks of drying salmon, ready to be stored for the winter. In an area where imported food is prohibitively expensive, several thousand Athabaskan Indians and Yupik Eskimos depend on fish, moose, caribou, wild greens and berries.

"I'd rather eat porcupine than hamburger," says Jack Hobson, tribal council president of Nondalton, the village closest to the proposed mine. An Athabaskan outpost of about 220 residents, with its homes of weathered clapboard and corrugated steel, scattered along a dirt road, is plastered with anti-Pebble signs.

Hobson has been a vocal opponent of the mine since the Renewable Resources Coalition flew him and other native leaders to see mines in Nevada. There, he said, they saw landscape that looked like it had been "bombed" -- huge pits, contaminated water and depleted aquifers that have forced a local Indian tribe to truck in drinking water.
Northern Dynasty's helicopters, he said, have scared away caribou for the last two years, depriving villagers of a diet staple. Once the mine is built, he added, "dust will blow all over the plants and the animals will eat this stuff, and -- oh boy!"

The region's 50 commercial lodges are also threatened. The
international sportfishing mecca attracts anglers who pay as much as $8,000 a week to fly in and cast for rainbow trout that measure up to 3 feet.
But mining would mean high-paying, steady jobs at a time when fish prices remain volatile and the North Slope oil that has buoyed the economy is dwindling.

Pebble would run for 50 to 80 years, said Bruce Jenkins, Northern Dynasty's chief operating officer, and "go a long way toward
eradicating poverty in southwest Alaska forever."

In the last two years, Northern Dynasty has mounted a massive public relations campaign, helicoptering in nearly 1,000 politicians,
business leaders, teachers and other influential Alaskans to the site.
The company has staged 800 presentations, in remote villages as well as in Anchorage, offering residents expense-paid trips. Tribal
leaders have been hired as "community outreach people," and more than 120 local residents are on Northern Dynasty's payroll as $17-an-hour drill assistants, bear guards and other mine-related jobs.

Opponents accuse the company of buying influence, but Magee replies: "We don't apologize for hiring local people."

And opponents also have deep-pocket patrons, including Anchorage investor Robert B. Gillam, head of McKinley Capital Management Inc., who has a private lodge 24 miles from the Pebble claim. The
foundation of another wealthy angler, Intel Corp. pioneer Gordon Moore, has awarded $5 million to local conservationists, including Earthworks, a Washington-based group organizing jewelers to boycott Pebble gold.

In Newhalen, a village of 120 on a windy promontory above Lake
Iliamna, Ray Wassillie, the local tribal chief, has a part-time job as a fish observer, and his three sons are also employed by Northern Dynasty.
"No one else is offering our kids the opportunity to work," said Wassillie. Fewer young people in the village "are going to jail when they're doing nothing. Drugs and alcohol become a big part of life," he said.
Home heating fuel costs Wassillie $6,000 yearly, and gas to run his four-wheelers for subsistence hunting runs more than $5 a gallon. The bay's six-week fishing season "doesn't generate enough income for my living standards," he said.

Beyond the local economy, Northern Dynasty says, the mine will bring benefits to the nation. While critics say that gold -- 75% of which is used in jewelry -- is an unnecessary luxury, the company says the copper to be produced by the mine is "a strategic metal." U.S. copper imports are growing as voracious economies in China and India compete for metal.

But environmentalists, citing the web of interconnected streams, ponds and groundwater, say the risk is unacceptable. Salmon is the region's keystone species, food for bears, eagles -- and people. And as the fish decompose after spawning, their carcasses fertilize
plants that nourish caribou and other wildlife.

Despite a rash of negative publicity, the company declines to rule out the use of cyanide, a toxin that helps extract metal from ore and has contaminated watersheds throughout the West.

The region is one of the most earthquake-prone areas on the globe, but Northern Dynasty counters that its dams would be engineered to withstand a 7.8-level quake.

"Most Americans will never get to Bristol Bay," said Brian Kraft, who owns a local fishing lodge and works for the conservation group Trout Unlimited. "But they see our bears playing in waterfalls on the
Discovery Channel. They can experience the taste of wild salmon.

"They know that we can destroy places like this, but we can't create them."
margot.roosevelt@latimes.com

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hard to believe this is true, but Mother Jones is reliable, I think.
http://www.boingboing.net/2007/08/30/torture-school-subje.html

    <http://www.boingboing.net/2007/08/30/tortu...bje.html>Torture school subjects children to lethal punishments
Mother Jones has a long, chilling feature on The Judge Rotenberg Education Center, a private radical behavior-modification school based in Canton, Mass. The school is run by a rogue behaviorist who uses discredited "punishment" techniques -- electroshock -- on
children as young as nine to change their personalities. Matthew Israel, the school's $400,000/year executive director, straps
homemade, overpowered shock apparatus to children (including severely autistic and retarded kids) and has his staff administer strong
shocks for even minor infractions. Some children have been shocked thousands of times a day, and several children have died at the school.
Eight states send troubled children to the school, where "high
functioning" kids are "educated" by being sat in front of computers all day, running through automated tutorial programs. Talking,
fidgeting, or acting out during this "school" time is punished with shocks. Some kids' shock apparatus misfires, shocking them without any provocation. The staff are instructed to activate the shock
apparatus out of sight of the children, so that they can't mentally or physically prepare for it.

The Rotenberg process lacks any kind of scientific basis, and the school uses a 20-year-old film of its "successes" to convince parents to send their children to the program -- however, some of the success stories in the film are still institutionalized at Rotenberg 20 years after their "cure," wheelchair bound and in terrible shape.

Then, in June of 2006, a report produced by the New York State
Education Department threatened to destroy the program's carefully cultivated image. A group of investigators, including three
psychologists, spent five days at the Rotenberg Center and compiled a 26-page document packed with damning findings.

* Staff shock kids for "nagging, swearing, and failing to maintain a neat appearance" and once threatened to shock a girl who sneezed and then asked for a tissue.
* Some students must "earn" meals by not displaying certain
behaviors. Otherwise they are "made to throw a predetermined caloric portion of their food into the garbage."
* When students enter and leave the school each day, "almost all" are wearing some type of restraints, such as handcuffs or leg shackles. * "Students may be restrained"--on a four-point restraint board or chair--"for extensive periods of time (e.g. hours or intermittently for days)."
* Some students are shocked while strapped to the restraint board. * A "majority" of employees "serving as classroom teachers" are "not certified teachers."
* Rotenberg's marketing reps bestow presents on prospective
families--"e.g. a gift bag for the family, basketball for the student." * Although the center has described its shock device as "approved" by the fda in its promotional materials, it "has not been approved." * The facility collects "comprehensive data" on behaviors it seeks to eliminate, but "there was no evidence of the collection of data on replacement or positive behaviors."
* The facility makes no assessment of the "possible collateral
effects of punishment such as depression, anxiety, and/or social withdrawal."
<http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/20...ng/iBag?a=5Wz2ZO>;

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>1. Skylight: The Science Centre for Learning and Teaching [pdf]
>http://www.skylight.science.ubc.ca/
>
>Established in 2001 at the University of British Columbia, the Science
>Centre for Learning and Teaching was created in order to create "an
>environment that supports reflective science teaching and learning
>practices." While Skylight's work is primarily focused on working on
>improving these efforts at the University of British Columbia, they have
>also created a number of online resources designed for science teachers
>everywhere. Perhaps one of the best resources on the entire site is the
>"Teaching Large Classes" area. Within this section, visitors can find
>highlights from the research literature on teaching, descriptions of
>practical strategies to enhance learning outcomes, video clip
>demonstrations, and a selection of links to other relevant resources. There
>are even other features worth perusing, such as the document "Why Calculus
>Workshops Really Work" and an interactive presentation on how to create a
>highly interactive classroom. [KMG]
>
>
>2. Math Science Center [pdf]
>http://www.swtc.edu:8082/mscenter/
>
>Developed by Peter C. Esser and John W. Pluemer of the Math and Science
>Center at Southwest Wisconsin Technical College, this site brings together a
>veritable cornucopia of resources related to learning about applied math,
>occupational math, elementary algebra, technical science, and the
>fundamentals of chemistry. First-time visitors will want to start by looking
>at the "Resources" section. Here they will find online tables and scientific
>calculators, sets of tips such as "Fractions: The Basics" and "Using the
>Place Value System", and some rather fine tutorials that cover health
>occupations and culinary mathematics. Moving on, the "Topics" area provides
>access to the various resources on the site organized into subtopics such as
>"Finance", "Geometry", and "Statistics". [KMG]
>
>
>3. Biological ESTEEM [Microsoft Excel]
>http://mathdl.maa.org/mathDL/3/?pa=content...Document&nodeId=623
>
>Introducing students to different software packages and applications for use
>in biology and math courses can be quite a challenge. With that in mind,
>teachers in these areas will definitely appreciate this rather helpful site
>from the people at the Mathematical Sciences Digital Library. These
>particular simulations and tools draw heavily on Microsoft Excel, so users
>will need to make sure that they also have this program installed. Visitors
>can click on the "Resources By Category" to access modules that deal with
>chemical equations in biochemistry, protein analysis, biodiversity, and
>island biogeography. It is worth noting that other subjects are covered
>here, including genetics, epidemiology, and ecology. [KMG]

7. X or Y-Does it Make A Difference? [pdf]
http://www.bioedonline.org/lessons/chromosomes.cfm

BioEd Online has providing helpful resources for biology teachers for years, and they have recently placed this "ready-to-go" lesson online for use by educators. The basic objective of this particular resource is to have students learn to describe the functional differences of X and Y- chromosomes. To make this possible, the lesson includes four articles, worksheets, and several discussion questions. Instructors can also download a complete lesson plan, along with extensive notes. Finally, the site also includes information about the National Science Standards covered within this unit, along with an estimate of how long this unit will take to complete. [KMG]


8. eHistory at OSU
http://ehistory.osu.edu/osu/

eHistory has been around in one form or another since 1995, when it was created by the budding historian Scott Laidig. These days, eHistory is operated and maintained by The Ohio State University's history department. Dedicated to all things historical, the site contains primary sources and documents, original book reviews, digitized books, maps, and multimedia features. These multimedia features are uniformly quite good, and they cover topics such as the internment of Japanese-Americans in the United States during World War II and responses to immigration over the past 125 years. Historians will want to look through the "Primary Sources" area at length, as it contains letters and diaries from the Civil War, along with the oft- cited "The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies" in all of its 128-volume glory. [KMG]

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>2) Association for Library Service to Children Offers Underserved
> Populations Outreach Grant
>
> Deadline: December 3, 2007
>
> The Association for Library Service to Children
> ( http://www.ala.org/alsc/ ), a division of the American Library
> Association ( http://www.ala.org/ ), and Candlewick Press
> ( http://www.candlewick.com/ ) have announced "Light the Way:
> Outreach to the Underserved," a one-time grant of $5,000 for a
> library conducting exemplary outreach to underserved populations.
>
> The ALSC Library Service to Special Population Children and Their
> Caregivers Committee will select the winner and may name up to
> three Honorable Mentions. Special-population children may include
> those who have learning or physical differences, speak English as
> a second language, are in a non-traditional school environment or
> a non-traditional family setting (such as teen parents, foster
> children, children in the juvenile justice system, and children
> in gay and lesbian families), and those who need accommodation
> service to meet their needs.
>
> Criteria and an application for the grant are available at the
> ALSC Web site.
>
> RFP Link:
> http://fconline.foundationcenter.org/pnd/10008656/candlewick
>
> For additional RFPs in Children and Youth, visit:
> http://foundationcenter.org/pnd/rfp/cat_children.jhtml

>4) Queer Youth Fund Accepting Letters of Intent
>
> Deadline: October 2, 2007 (Letters of Intent)
>
> The Queer Youth Fund is a donor-initiated grantmaking program
> housed at the Liberty Hill Foundation ( http://libertyhill.org/ ).
> A group of committed donors developed the fund to provide large
> multiyear grants to groups that address the multitude of issues
> queer youth face as they acknowledge and celebrate their sexual-
> ity and identity, and seek to become empowered leaders in their
> communities.
>
> The Queer Youth Fund makes multiyear grants to grassroots, local,
> state, and national nonprofit organizations working to improve
> the quality of life among gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender,
> queer, and questioning youth. The fund awards grants to inno-
> vative and effective leadership development programs or organ-
> izing projects that empower GLBTQQ youth to improve societal
> conditions affecting GLBTQQ youth and that make a long-term
> difference to their movement. For purposes of the program, youth
> are defined as 25 years old or younger.
>
> Up to four grants of up to $100,000 each, payable over three to
> five years, will be made to different 501(c)(3) organizations (or
> groups with fiscal sponsors) with specific work that matches the
> fund's guidelines. To be eligible, applicant organizations must
> have a total budget for their youth work of $750,000 or less.
>
> The Queer Youth Fund is now accepting Letters of Intent for its
> 2007-08 grant cycle. Guidelines and information on previous
> grantees are available at the Liberty Hill Foundation Web site.
>
> RFP Link:
> http://fconline.foundationcenter.org/pnd/10008658/libertyhill
>
> For additional RFPs in Children and Youth, visit:
> http://foundationcenter.org/pnd/rfp/cat_children.jhtml
>
> --------------------------<<>>----------------------------
>
> 5) Youth Service America Youth Venture Program to Support
> Community Service Programs
>
> Deadline: October 1, 2007
>
> The Youth Service America Youth Venture Program, a partnership
> between Youth Service America ( http://www.ysa.org/ ) and Youth
> Venture ( http://www.genv.net/ ), is designed to help build the
> movement of young social entrepreneurs by investing in and
> encouraging the ideas of young people.
>
> The YSA Youth Venture Program provides funding and support to
> young people (ages 12-20) in the United States who want to create
> new, sustainable, civic-minded organizations, clubs, or businesses
> (called "ventures").
>
> To be eligible for the program, ventures must be youth-led and
> designed to be a lasting asset to the community. In addition, YSA
> Youth venture teams are required to plan a Global Youth Service
> Day ( http://www.gysd.org/ ) project every year that their venture
> is operational.
>
> The YSA Youth Venture Program provides a variety of resources,
> including a national network of like-minded young people, media
> opportunities, technical support, helpful toolkits and workshops,
> as well as seed funding of up to $1,000 for start-up expenses.
>
> For application tools and more information about the YSA Youth
> Venture Partnership Program, visit the Youth Venture Web site.
>
> RFP Link:
> http://fconline.foundationcenter.org/pnd/10008659/ysa
>
> For additional RFPs in Children and Youth, visit:
> http://foundationcenter.org/pnd/rfp/cat_children.jhtml
>8) Applications Invited for National Wildlife Refuge System
> Preserve America Grant Program
>
> Deadline: November 1, 2007
>
> The Fish and Wildlife Service ( http://www.fws.gov/ ) and the
> National Fish and Wildlife Foundation ( http://www.nfwf.org/ )
> are requesting proposals to help foster interpretive, education,
> and visitor initiatives that incorporate history and historic
> sites into the National Wildlife Refuge System's
> ( http://www.fws.gov/refuges/ ) mission. The National Wildlife
> Refuge System Preserve America Grant program seeks to protect
> historic sites, integrate history into refuge interpretive and
> education programs, and build partnerships with communities and
> organizations interested in supporting refuge programs.
>
> The program provides competitive grants of $10,000 to $15,000
> each to help fund national wildlife refuge interpretive and
> education projects focused on history and historic sites and
> how they contribute to conservation and understanding of natural
> resources. Grant proposals must demonstrate national, state, or
> local partnerships to qualify.
>
> Eligible applicants must be nonprofit, tax-exempt, 501(c)(3)
> organizations or organizations that have applied for nonprofit
> status, including Refuge "Friends" organizations, cooperative
> and interpretive associations, local historical societies,
> academic institutions, or other citizen-support organizations
> interested in assisting a Refuge or group of Refuges and the
> Refuge System as a whole. State, county, and local government
> agencies are not eligible.
>
> For complete program information and application procedures,
> visit the NFWF Web site.
>
> RFP Link:
> http://fconline.foundationcenter.org/pnd/10008662/nfwf
>
> For additional RFPs in Environment, visit:
> http://foundationcenter.org/pnd/rfp/cat_environment.jhtml
>13) MacArthur Foundation Announces New Digital Media and Learning
> Competition
>
> Deadline: October 15, 2007
>
> The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
> ( http://www.macfound.org/ ) has announced a public competition
> that will award a total of $2 million in funding to emerging
> leaders, communicators, and innovators shaping the field of
> digital media and learning. The competition is part of the
> foundation's $50 million Digital Media and Learning initiative
> ( http://www.digitallearning.macfound.org/ ), which aims to help
> determine how digital technologies are changing the way young
> people learn, play, socialize, and participate in civic life.
>
> Awards will be given in two categories: 1) Innovation Awards of
> $250,000 or $100,000 each will support learning entrepreneurs
> and builders of new digital environments for informal learning;
> and 2) Knowledge Networking Awards of up to $75,000 will support
> communicators in connecting, mobilizing, circulating, or trans-
> lating new ideas around digital media and learning.
>
> As part of their prize, awardees will receive special consulta-
> tion support on everything from technology development to manage-
> ment training. Winners will be invited to showcase their work at
> a conference that will include venture capitalists, entrepreneurs,
> educators, and policy makers seeking the best ideas about digital
> learning.
>
> The open competition will be administered by HASTAC, the Humani-
> ties, Arts, Science, and Technology Advanced Collaboratory,
> ( http://www.hastac.org/ ), a consortium of humanists, artists,
> scientists, social scientists, and engineers committed to new
> forms of collaboration for thinking, teaching, and research
> across communities and disciplines fostered by creative uses of
> technology.
>
> Detailed information on the competition is available online at
> the program's Web site.
>
> RFP Link:
> http://fconline.foundationcenter.org/pnd/10008667/dmlcompetition
>
> For additional RFPs in Science/Technology, visit:
> http://foundationcenter.org/pnd/rfp/cat_science_technology.jhtml
>
> --------------------------<<>>----------------------------
>
> 14) National Endowment for the Humanities Invites Applications
> for Digital Humanities Start-Up Grants
>
> Deadline: October 16, 2007; and April 2, 2008
>
> The National Endowment for the Humanities ( http://www.neh.gov/ )
> and the Institute of Museum and Library Services ( http://imls.gov/ )
> invite applications to the Digital Humanities Start-Up Grants
> program. By awarding relatively low-dollar grants during the
> planning stages, the program, which is designed to encourage
> innovations in the digital humanities, hopes to identify pro-
> jects that are particularly innovative and have the potential
> to make a positive impact on the humanities.
>
> Proposals should be for the planning or initial stages of digi-
> tal initiatives in any area of the humanities. All applicants
> must propose an innovative approach, method, tool, or idea that
> has not been used before in the humanities. Digital Humanities
> Start-Up Grants should result in plans, prototypes, or proofs
> of concept for long-term digital humanities projects prior to
> implementation.
>
> Two levels of awards will be made. Level I awards ranging be-
> tween $5,000 and $25,000 each are designed to fund brainstorming
> sessions, workshops, early alpha-level prototypes, and initial
> planning. Larger ($25,001 to $50,000 each) Level II awards can
> be used for more fully-formed projects that are ready for the
> first stage of implementation or the creation of working proto-
> types.
>
> Any U.S.-based 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization or institution,
> state or local governmental agency or Native American tribal
> organization, or U.S. citizen or foreign national who has been
> living in the United States or its jurisdictions for at least
> the three years immediately prior to the application deadline
> is eligible to apply. Individuals affiliated with an eligible
> institution must apply through an institution (ordinarily their
> own).
>
> There will be two application deadlines: October 16, 2007, and
> April 2, 2008.
>
> Visit the NEH Web site for complete program information.
>
> RFP Link:
> http://fconline.foundationcenter.org/pnd/10008668/neh/gov
>
> For additional RFPs in Science/Technology, visit:
> http://foundationcenter.org/pnd/rfp/cat_science_technology.jhtml

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http://www.boingboing.net/2007/08/31/how-voters-are-susce.html

    <http://www.boingboing.net/2007/08/31/how-v...e-susce.html>How voters are susceptible to politicians who can manipulate their fear of death The New Republic has an article called "Death Grip: How Political Psychology Explains Bush's Ghastly Success." It reports on the
research of psychologists Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, and Tom Pyszczynsk, who believe "a fear of our own mortality guides many of our political choices without our ever realizing it."
Their first experiment was published in 1989. To test the hypothesis that recognition of mortality evokes "worldview defense" -- their term for the range of emotions, from intolerance to religi- osity to a preference for law and order, that they believe thoughts of death can trigger -- they assembled 22 Tucson municipal court judges. They told the judges they wanted to test the relationship between
personality traits and bail decisions, but, for one group, they
inserted in the middle of the personality questionnaire two exercises meant to evoke awareness of their mortality. One asked the judges to "briefly describe the emotions that the thought of your own death arouses in you"; the other required them to "jot down, as
specifically as you can, what you think will happen to you physically as you die and once you are physically dead." They then asked the judges to set bail in the hypothetical case of a prostitute whom the prosecutor claimed was a flight risk. The judges who did the
mortality exercises set an average bail of $455. The control group that did not do the exercises set it at an average of $50. The
psychologists knew they were onto something.

Over the next decade, the three performed similar experiments to illustrate how awareness of death could provoke worldview defense. They showed that what they now called "mortality salience" affected people's view of other races, religions, and nations. When they had students at a Christian college evaluate essays by what they were told were a Christian and a Jewish author, the group that did the mortality exercises expressed a far more negative view of the essay by the Jewish author than the control group did. (German
psychologists would find a similar reaction among German subjects toward Turks.) They also conducted numerous experiments to show that mortality exercises evoked patriotic responses. The subjects who did the exercises took a far more negative view of an essay critical of the United States than the control group did and also expressed
greater veneration for cultural icons like the flag. The three even devised an experiment to show that, after doing the mortality
exercises, conservatives took a much harsher view of liberals, and vice versa.
<http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20070827&s=...ng/iBag?a=GmwDca>;

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"Culture in northern Canadian dioceses threatened by melting ice cap By Sara Loftson
8/24/2007

The Catholic Register

TORONTO, Canada (The Catholic Register) ` An
ice-fisher from Sachs Harbour, Northwest
Territories, and a sugar-cane farmer from the
Fiji Islands have more in common than some may think.

Tropical islands in the south Pacific and the
polar regions are two areas that stand to face
the most immediate and dramatic effects of global
warming, said David Hik, a biology professor at
the University of Alberta in western Canada.

Island countries are particularly vulnerable to
rising sea levels, while melting ice poses its
own set of challenges to the Arctic, said Hik,
director of the Canadian chapter for the
International Polar Year, a two-year project
allowing researchers from 63 countries to
collaborate and gain insight into the Arctic and Antarctic.

](Global warming) is not isolated by geography,
the whole world is connected through the
hydrological system,^ said Hik. ]Changes in the
polar region of the Arctic have effects in other parts of the world.^
A consequence of global warming is that Arctic
sea ice cover is shrinking at the rate of 8.6
percent per decade. If this rate continues the
Arctic Ocean will be ice-free in summer by 2060
according to the United Nations Environment Program.

When sea ice in Hudson Bay melts two weeks
earlier it forces hungry polar bears to come
ashore. Lorraine Brandson, a 24-year veteran with
the Churchill-Hudson Bay Diocese, has witnessed
polar bears coming into town looking for food.

]We have had an increasing number of bears being
handled,^ said Brandson, curator for Churchill\s
Eskimo Museum, established by the Missionary
Oblates of Mary Immaculate in 1944.

]The Department of Conservation has a polar bear
alert (675-BEAR) with people available 24 hours
to scare bears out of the zone around the town.
Sometimes they have to put them in a [jail\ or further north.^
When the Inuit, who make up 85 percent of the
diocese\s population, see more bears come into
their communities they believe the bear
population has increased and want their hunting
quota raised; meanwhile, scientists think it\s
because the bears are nutritionally stressed due
to a two week shorter hunting season on the
melting sea ice, said Brandson, who also works as
the administrative assistant to Churchill-Hudson Bay Bishop Reynald Rouleau.
]There you see a conflict between scientific
knowledge and local knowledge. We may be seeing
more of this ... if people perceive things
differently,^ said Brandson. ]There\s always been
a real recognition of our diocese that research
and understanding of the Arctic is important.^

The diocese sits on the board for the Churchill
Northern Studies Centre, a research center for
Arctic studies co-founded by former
Churchill-Hudson Bay Bishop Omer Robidoux. The
center encourages aboriginal people to take
courses so there is some understanding between science and local knowledge.
Changing weather patterns not only affects polar
bears\ lifestyle, it also affects the local
people. For the Inuit, ]their hunting culture is
dependent on sea ice. What\s being documented in
the past is as that sea melts, their ability to
travel on the land is more difficult, unpredictable,^ said Hik.
While Mackenzie-Fort Smith Bishop Denis Croteau
said he has noticed changes in weather such as
shorter cold spells and delayed winters, he
doesn\t think climate change affects the local people that much.
]I don\t think (climate change) has been so
marked in the church here yet, because most of
our native people are not living the old
lifestyle of hunting, trapping and fur trading,^
said Croteau, who\s spent 43 years living in the
north. ]They\ve adapted to the modern way of life
and they have 9-5 jobs and very few will be on
the land ` and it\s more of a holiday. ... From
the church point of view it isn\t an issue.^

Brandson disagrees. ]Climate change has to be
something that\s considered. It will impact
people who\ve already seen a lot of modernization in their life.^
Even if these people can buy supplies from the
store hunting is important from a nutritional and
cultural point of view, she added.

]Every major event or activity is a community
feast that is all based on country food. It\s a
binding element. It tells them who they are.^

Another consequence of warmer temperatures is
melting permafrost, a permanently frozen layer of
soil. It is ]creating havoc for roads, bridges,
pipelines and most importantly for the 4 million
residents of the Arctic, 110,000 (of whom live) in Canada,^ said Hik.
]Things start to twist and sag and sink,^ said
Whitehorse Bishop Gary Gordon. ]If it starts
thawing out we will have problems; the foundation
starts to get wonky and the building starts
shifting around when the permafrost melts.

]The north likes to blame the south for all of
its problems. It\s sort of like if all those
people down south would stop making all this
pollution things would be better up north,^ said Bishop Gordon.
]I think the witness of Jesus and the gospel
simplifying our lifestyle is both for northern
people and for southern people and the church is
able to help people and witness to people that we
maybe need to downsize. If we lessen our
consumption in the West in order to assist the
consumption in the poorer nations it would create balance,^ he said.
]It really comes down to a deep profound respect
for the human person,^ said Bishop Gordon.

Hik said once the results of the International
Polar Year are revealed faith organizations could
play an important role in communicating them to
the communities in which they serve.

]What I fear is these changes could be so rapid,
the upheaval could be very disruptive for these
communities, but that requires being prepared,
having good information and sufficient time to
plan,^ Hik said, explaining the better integrated
faith communities are into the social, cultural
and spiritual life of the local communities, the
better they will be able to help.

]A strong community that can make good decisions
on how to prepare for change and adapt to change
will be able to maintain its culture,^ he added.

Brandson said people who contemplate working in
northern dioceses need to make a serious time
commitment and not just see it as work experience.

]The local people do know the difference between
someone who is coming up for a job and leaving
and someone who wants to be with them and loves them,^ she said.
]We have to promote that some new people would
want to take a vocation in the north and support
the local lay leaders who are quite admirable,^ Brandson said. "
http://www.catholic.org/printer_friendly.p...151§ion=Cathcom

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"latimes.com
http://www.latimes.com/
 From the Los Angeles Times
Bedbugs tuck into Southland
Calls to exterminators are rising. Eradication is neither quick nor cheap. By Leslie Earnest
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

August 13, 2007

Bed feeling a little crowded? Maybe you have company.

The Cimex lectularius, better known and despised as the common
bedbug, is snuggling into households across Southern California, giving people the heebie- jeebies. The blood-sucking, heat-seeking, pint-size parasites aren't believed by the experts to transmit
disease, but they do have a way of cranking up stress levels.

"It was just horrendous," said a West Hollywood middle-school
teacher, who, like others who have been horrified to have lived with the uninvited guests, asked that she not be identified. "Think of how you wouldn't sleep at night if you had roaches, and this is even worse," she said. "These roaches feed on you."

They used to be associated with cramped and dirty living quarters, grimy motels and high-rise living in places like New York. For much of the second part of the last century the liberal use of the
eventually banned pesticide DDT seemed to all but do away with them. Now bedbugs have moved into single-family homes with a vengeance and taken up lodging in schools, hospitals and college dormitories too. The wide-open spaces of the West are no defense.

"Bedbugs are just going ballistic everywhere," said Michael Potter, a professor of entomology at the University of Kentucky. "It is going to really rock this country. I'm not trying to sound sensationalist."
Bedbugs hitchhike on humans or in luggage and burrow into bedding, books, sofas and just about any cozy place, even picture frames. Once they establish squatter's rights, evicting them isn't easy. Or cheap. Casting them out of the average house in Southern California can cost thousands of dollars and require multiple visits.

"The last customer we dealt with compared it to having her home
destroyed by fire or flood," said Sean Murray, manager of
exterminator Orkin's branch in Pasadena.

Seven years ago, a pest control company may have received one or two bedbug calls a year, according to the National Pest Management Assn. Now there may be 50 or more calls a week.

Western Exterminator Co., which serves California, reported a 240% increase in bedbug work from 2000 to 2006. Isotech Pest Management Inc. in Pomona is conducting about 1,000 inspections a month -- 700% more than last year.

It's "a huge problem," said Isotech owner Mike Masterson, whose staff includes a pair of beagles professionally trained to sniff out bedbugs.
Neither the California Department of Public Health nor county
officials keep statistics on what the department recently called a bedbug "resurgence," and the state is surveying local public health agencies to get a handle on the size of the problem.

A number of reasons are cited for the infestations, among them the DDT ban and an increase in international travel. "It's not a case of being a lower socioeconomic thing," said William Brogdon, a research entomologist for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "These things can happen to anybody."

Like the West Hollywood teacher. She had just outfitted her apartment with a new bed, sofa and window treatments when a mysterious rash blanketed her body, sparing only her face, hands and feet. Her
students took note. "It was like, 'Miss, you're scratching again,' " she said. "It was just such a nightmare."

Doctors were stumped by her condition, which continued to worsen. When she noticed fluid settling in her ankles and at the back of her neck, she went to a hospital emergency room, where she got relief for her symptoms in the form of a cream that she slathered all over her body, including under her fingernails.

It took "divine intervention" -- actually, the Internet -- to
pinpoint the cause. She clicked on "bedbugs" and raced to inspect her bed, first finding black marks on the mattress, then the bugs
themselves. She tossed out her down pillow, sheets and every blanket.
When the Orkin man arrived, he served as part-pest controller,
part-therapist, calming her as one bug marched across her pillow and an adult one, about the size of a large apple seed, scaled her curtain.
He said, "Don't worry, we'll get rid of these." He did, but it took three visits.

Because the strange bedfellows are so tenacious, pest controllers have added heat and steam to their arsenals.

"A bedbug is really a wonderful survivor" that can persevere for as long as 18 months without nourishment, said entomologist Frank Meek, a technical director for Orkin. "They can hide and live a long time."
Which is why one former Glendale family now lives in Pasadena. The wife, a new mother, had "a meltdown" after discovering a plague in her box springs and spent weeks debugging her home. In the end, she decided to move.

There wasn't much to pack. She had thrown out beds, dressers,
clothes, shoes, an alarm clock, a television set and five boxes of books. Stuff that was too precious to dump went into storage to give bugs time to die.

"The losses are astronomical," the woman said. Worse yet was the psychological toll. "I didn't sleep for five weeks. I don't believe I'll ever be the same."

Now she's a bedbug expert, having given herself a crash course on insects she considers "biblical." It particularly creeps her out that they like to stay close to their hosts.

"Host is the word," she said, drawing it out. "They are parasites."
Bedbugs are established members of the global community.
Archaeologists in Europe have found bedbug fossils dating back 3,500 years, the University of Kentucky's Potter said, "and they go way back before that."

They arrived in the New World with the first colonists and were
plentiful until about the 1940s, when DDT seemed to do away with them.
Their comeback means public education is vital, Potter said. For example, it's foolhardy to retrieve a mattress or couch from a curb or a dumpster. "That," he said, "is going to have to stop."

Of course, retailers are aiming to cash in. Target and Macy's sell mattress and pillow covers meant to form a barrier between bugs and sleepers. Home Depot sells Sprayway "Good Night" for $6.48 with the familiar refrain "Don't let the bedbugs bite!" on the can.

Mattress and box spring encasements can be helpful, Potter said, but he generally advises against trying to get rid of the bugs yourself.
He's not optimistic about the future, given current restrictions on powerful chemicals and the bugs' knack for adapting to them. "Our arsenal is depleted of effective products," he said, and there's no "silver bullet in the wings."

leslie.earnest@latimes.com


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CHANNEL ISLAND
CBS puts kids in reality TV's tender care
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/...ment&track=ntottext 'Kid Nation' doesn't exactly sound like summer camp.
By Scott Collins, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
August 26, 2007
OTHER TV executives must be envious. In the midst of an August
notably devoid of buzz for new fall shows, CBS is already getting a huge burst of PR for one of its efforts.

Unfortunately for the rest of us, the show in question is "Kid
Nation," the reality series that dumped 40 children at a New Mexico ranch for six weeks without any contact with parents or tutors. And although CBS says an army of child psychologists and others was on hand to keep the peace, it's unclear how many of these
network-employed grown-ups were interested in the welfare of
something besides a TV show.

What's clear is that the kids were overseen by TV producers and film crews who egged on the little ones to act out a junior-varsity
version of "Survivor."

As a parent who's covered the television business exclusively for nearly a decade, I just think of the phrase "healthy environment for kids," and the first thing that pops into mind is the set of a reality-TV show.
"She feels like it was summer camp," Peggy, the mother of a
12-year-old "Kid Nation" resident, told my colleague Maria Elena Fernandez, who's been following the story. (CBS says it won't give out last names to protect the kids' privacy -- as if the kids will still have any once this thing airs on national TV.)

The show's executive producer, Tom Forman, also used the "summer camp" comparison.

Sure, it's a lot like camp, if by "camp" you mean a place where the organizers won't let you participate unless you sign a 22-page,
single-spaced, legally exhaustive contract allowing them to whisk your child to unspecified "remote" and "inherently dangerous"
locations. And wash their hands of any responsibility for the kid's life or safety (including any failure to conduct thorough background checks or to keep kids free from HIV or other sexually transmitted diseases: Who says our society won't give pedophiles an even break?). And, yes, stick a camera in the child's face anytime except for
bathroom breaks.

The kind of camp this brings to mind has nothing to do with canoes, hiking and s'mores. The nation in "Kid Nation" makes North Korea sound utopian.
"It's ghastly and a shame," Paul Petersen, a former child actor, told me, referring to "Kid Nation." Petersen runs A Minor Consideration, a nonprofit watchdog and advocacy group that monitors child labor in the entertainment industry. "I've never seen anything like this, in terms of wanton disregard for the lives of children."

Faced with questions, authorities in New Mexico have admitted that a crackdown on the producers is now probably "moot," given that
production wrapped in May. But last week, New Mexico's attorney
general announced an investigation into whether state laws had been broken, valiantly slamming the door on the now-empty barn.

CBS, meanwhile, is defending itself with statements that sound
drafted by the same lawyers who wrote that 22-page contract. The series was produced "within all applicable laws in the state of New Mexico at the time of the production," the network says, with
"procedures and safety structures that arguably rival or surpass any school or camp in the country."

Love that "arguably." Well, who's going to argue? Certainly not the parents, who signed away their rights to speak publicly about "Kid Nation" without CBS' permission and face a $5-million penalty if they disobey. (Once I made clear my feelings about the show, a CBS
spokesman declined on Friday to make any parents available for this column.)
You might say: Oh, what's the big deal? Kids act on TV shows all the time, don't they?

Sure they do; CBS owes part of its ratings success, in fact, to
13-year-old Angus T. Jones, the kid on the sitcom hit "Two and a Half Men."
But children's work on most shows, including those produced in
California, are governed by state laws designed to protect kids. That's why child actors like Jones have restricted working hours, specific educational requirements, access to accredited "studio
teachers" and the like. Whether those laws work well or even at all is open to debate -- the histories of Lindsay Lohan, Michael Jackson, Gary Coleman and many other former child stars make you wonder, don't they? -- but those are the laws.

But really, who wants to get buried under a bunch of boring old
statutes when there's a reality series at stake? CBS filmed in New Mexico, where child labor enforcement is perceived to be much more lax than in California. The network also says the "Kid Nation" kids weren't employees, although here's betting the network won't mind reaping profits from whatever it calls what the kids were doing on its behalf.
Federal child-labor laws may not apply, because Hollywood has enjoyed an exemption for kid actors since the 1930s. "Kid Nation" suggests it might be time to revisit that exemption now. Want television network executives to take this issue seriously? Threaten their supply of photogenic juveniles who can do "adorable" on cue.

Meanwhile, who will protect children from the ravenous eyes,
rapacious fingers and ratings-ravaged brains of TV executives? That should be a job for their parents, although the ones of the "Kid Nation" participants seem to have checked their brains and their judgment at the office door of Forman, the show's producer.

When asked whether she was concerned about her child's safety on the "Kid Nation" set, Shari, the mother of a 15-year-old boy from Nevada, told The Times' Fernandez: "You can't stop living and put yourself in a bubble because of safety. You lose out on some of life's
experiences that teach you the most." (Yeah, like the time Mom left you for six weeks in the desert with a reality-TV crew.)

Suzanne, the mother of a 10-year-old Florida boy, said she asked her son how he'd feel if the show ended up revealing an embarrassing personal secret on national TV. "And he said he was fine with it, and I have confidence in him," she said.

Really, the faith that these parents have in the responsibility and sensitivity of reality-TV producers they hardly know is nearly as touching as the speed with which they surrender to their minor
children the power to make and cope with life-altering, and possibly life-threatening, decisions.

Maybe the kids of "Kid Nation" weren't the only little children who needed protecting here.

Some skeptics on the Los Angeles Times' Internet message boards have dismissed the criticism of "Kid Nation" by saying everyone should hold fire until the show airs (CBS has sent out only a brief
highlight reel so far). But we already know all we need to about the circumstances under which "Kid Nation" was produced; the actual
content is beside the point. This isn't about the show's artistic merits.
This ultimately comes down not to parents or courts or TV execs, but to you and me. One doesn't get the sense CBS is ashamed of the
controversy. Quite the contrary: They're vowing to air "Kid Nation" and are even making plans for another installment. Bad PR? There ain't no such thing, not in the TV world.

If adults want to engage in the freak-show exhibitionism that passes for much of the reality-show genre, that's their prerogative. But this is about kids. Remember them? Kids, whom our society pays
endless lip service to protecting. Remember them before you tune in to "Kid Nation."

The Channel Island column runs every Monday in Calendar. Contact Scott Collins at scott.collins@latimes.com

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>Leaving art out of history
>By Richard Pells
>American academics' focus on social history ignores the
>contributions of music, art and literature. The loss is ours.
>http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/eBWR80Mm2NO0G2B0IsSc0EC



Leaving art out of history
American academics' focus on social history ignores the contributions of music, art and literature. The loss is ours.
By Richard Pells
August 26, 2007
How did George Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" reflect both the Jewish and African American experience in America? Why was Ernest
Hemingway's "The Sun Also Rises" so influential for modern fiction and journalism? What was Abstract Expressionism, and why did Jackson Pollock become a cultural hero for many Americans in the 1950s? How did Marlon Brando's performance as Stanley Kowalski in "A Streetcar Named Desire" transform American acting, first on stage and then in the movies?
If you are a college student taking a course in American history, you are unlikely to get the answers to any of these questions. The
questions won't even be posed. Nor will the names of American
painters, composers, novelists or filmmakers appear in the lectures or on reading lists. The vast majority of American historians no longer regard American culture as an essential area of study.
Instead, what they care about is social history -- the struggles and hard-won accomplishments of women, workers, African Americans,
Latinos, Asians and Native Americans in a country often inhospitable to the poor and the powerless.

This disinterest in American cultural and intellectual life is a recent development. From the 1940s until the 1960s, a generation of American historians wrote books and taught courses that emphasized the significance of American artists, writers, musicians and film directors. These historians had personally experienced, as soldiers or visiting professors abroad, the struggles against totalitarianism during World War II and the Cold War. So they were preoccupied with explaining what was distinctive and democratic about the American "mind" or the national "character." And culture was one of the most persuasive ways of identifying what distinguished the United States from its enemies, whether in Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union.

The next generation of American historians came of age during the Vietnam War, the civil rights and women's movements, and the
immigration from Latin America and Asia. The convulsions of the 1960s forced faculty and students to ask: Whose mind? Whose character? Whose novels or music? The earlier fascination with American art and literature now seemed elitist and oblivious to the historical
predicaments of ordinary people. Starting in the 1970s, it became unfashionable for historians to write or teach about America as a community of shared beliefs and values, defined by its artists and intellectuals. The new scholarship concentrated instead on the
divisive repercussions of race, class, gender and ethnicity.

We have learned a lot from these revisionist interpretations of
American history. We know more today about the inequities in the nation's past. Yet the fixation with social history has led to a severe case of tunnel vision among American historians, an almost exclusive preoccupation with the exploited and victimized, along with an oppressive orthodoxy about what kinds of courses should be taught and who should be hired at universities.

More important, social history is often too narrowly conceived, so that (especially in an age of globalization) it doesn't really
explore the cultural encounters between the United States and the rest of the world. One of the fields in social history currently in vogue is the "borderlands." Borderlands could mean an analysis of how American and foreign cultures collide with and alter one another. For most historians, however, borderlands has assumed a limited
geographical designation: a study of Latin American (mostly Mexican) immigration to Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California. This
migration has obviously had a significant effect on American politics and society. But such a restrictive focus on a particular region and ethnic group does not encourage a recognition of the broader
participation of the United States in the emergence of a global culture.
Of course, if students want to learn more about American culture, they can choose a class in art, film or American literature. But because most universities require courses in American history, the indifference to culture among historians has had devastating
consequences for the quality of American education.

Like all professors, historians regularly complain that their
students are culturally illiterate -- that they're familiar with Britney Spears and Paris Hilton, but not with Charlie Chaplin, Aaron Copland, Charlie Parker, Arthur Miller or even Marilyn Monroe. Yet this lack of knowledge is not the students' fault. How can students be expected to have heard of any preeminent American artists and actors if their history professors never mention them in class?
Universities are turning out students who can tell you about
midwives, sharecroppers and blue-collar workers but not about
architects, poets or symphony conductors.

But maybe the situation in our universities, if not in our history departments, is not quite so bleak. For one thing, non-academics (such as Neal Gabler and Richard Schickel) continue to write about the history of American culture. And "presidential" historians (such as Doris Kearns Goodwin and Michael Beschloss) write bestsellers about Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson.
Students read the books of these authors. And over the last 10 years, new fields, such as environmental and international history, have become increasingly important as students and the rest of us become more concerned with such problems as global warming and the specter of terrorism.

Meanwhile, students have greater access than any previous generation to the great works of American culture. They can buy, rent or
download Sidney Lumet's 1960 television production of "The Iceman Cometh," with Jason Robards and a very young Robert Redford. They can see Dustin Hoffman in 1985 as Willy Loman in "Death of a Salesman." They can learn something about Gershwin's blending of the minor
chords in the songs of Jewish cantors with the blues of African
American jazz by viewing the films of Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly, or about Parker's life and music by watching Clint Eastwood's "Bird." And they can grasp why Brando became a revolutionary actor as well as a cultural icon by watching "A Streetcar Named Desire" and "On the Waterfront."

Whether students take advantage of these opportunities is uncertain. But if some of them do, they may figure out for themselves why
American culture still matters not only to those of us who grew up admiring Pollock, Orson Welles and Saul Bellow but to people all over the world who are affected every day by American movies, music and literature.
Richard Pells is a professor of history at the University of Texas at Austin. His books include "Not Like Us: How Europeans Have Loved, Hated and Transformed American Culture Since World War II." A longer version of this article appeared in the Chronicle of Higher Education.

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>Take notes: websites for students
>By David Colker
>What did students ever do without the Web? Maybe
>learn less about topics their parents would
>prefer remain under wraps. &#B6; But undeniably, the
>Internet is a tremendous research and study
>tool. &#B6; In that spirit, here's our annual guide
>to free sites in a variety of topics that crop
>up from grade school through college. &#B6; The list
>begins with five super-sites that go to the head of the class.
>http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/eBWR80Mm2NO0G2B0IsSO0Eq
Take notes: websites for students
By David Colker, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
August 26, 2007
What did students ever do without the Web? Maybe
learn less about topics their parents would prefer remain under wraps.
But undeniably, the Internet is a tremendous research and study tool.
In that spirit, here's our annual guide to free
sites in a variety of topics that crop up from grade school through college.
The list begins with five super-sites that go to the head of the class.
ACADEMIC ALL-STARS

* www.crf-usa.org/links/research1.html: The Los
Angeles-based, nonprofit Constitutional Rights
Foundation, which sponsors youth programs to
promote civic responsibility, also offers on its
site hundreds of links to a variety of school subjects.

* www.ipl.org: Started as a class project at the
University of Michigan, the Internet Public
Library provides a clickable index of research
sites in numerous fields. It's now maintained by
a consortium of colleges and universities.

* vos.ucsb.edu: The Voice of the Shuttle (the
name refers to weaving on a loom) from UC Santa
Barbara has been compiling links to academic topics for more than a decade.
* www.doaj.org: More than 800 professional
journals concerning science, education, the arts
and other topics can be searched on this
Directory of Open Access Journals site.

ANATOMY

* www.bartleby.com/107: The 1918 version of Henry
Gray's "Anatomy of the Human Body" (not to be
confused with the TV show "Grey's Anatomy")
provides descriptions and vibrant illustrations.

* www.innerbody.com: An interactive guide to not
only the skeletal but also the digestive,
muscular, cardiovascular and other systems.

ARCHAEOLOGY

* archnet.asu.edu: Links to museums, digs and
academic papers, maintained by Arizona State
University. It's organized by topic and geography.

* www.cyberpursuits.com/archeo: In addition to
links, this site provides a guide to recent magazines and journal articles.
ART HISTORY

* witcombe.sbc.edu/ARTHLinks.html: Comprehensive
set of links to sites dealing with art periods, artists and museums.
* www.metmuseum.org/toah: The Metropolitan Museum
of Art's timeline of art history, from cave drawings to the present.
BIOLOGY

* www.biology-online.org: This site, maintained
by current and former students worldwide,
contains not only links but also tutorials and a
forum where questions can be posted.

* www.biology.arizona.edu: This University of
Arizona site features links organized by topic.

CHEMISTRY

* www.chemicalelements.com: There are lots of
websites dealing with the periodic table of
elements, but this one is particularly well
designed and easy to use. It was created in 1996
as an eighth-grader's science fair project.

* www.chemdex.org: The University of Sheffield in
England maintains this site, which has more than 7,000 links.

*
antoine.frostburg.edu/chem/senese/101/index.shtml:
Need practice? This Frostburg State University
site features quizzes, tutorials and animated demonstrations.

CONVERSION TOOLS

* www.sciencemadesimple.com/conversions.html:
Online metric conversions, and vice versa, of
distance, area, weight, speed, temperature and other measurements.
* www.minneapolisfed.org/research/data/us/calc:
Inflation calculator from the Federal Reserve
Bank of Minneapolis shows average changes in
prices between any two years, from 1913 to the present.

DEMOGRAPHICS

* factfinder.census.gov: This site was put
together by officials at the Census Bureau, so
it's not exactly user-friendly. But with a bit of
patience, you can unearth detailed U.S. population information.

LANGUAGES

* babelfish.altavista.com/tr: Translates words
and whole sites from English into 12 languages
and vice versa. But often inexactly.

* www.verbix.com/webverbix/index.asp: Conjugates verbs in 81 languages.
* www.ethnologue.com: Information on the world's 6,912 known living languages.
LITERATURE

* www.gutenberg.net: Even before the Web as we
know it was born, this wonderful literary service
began digitizing public-domain works. There are
now more than 20,000 downloadable books on the site.

* www.cliffsnotes.com: The famed Cliffs Notes
study guides to literary classics can be read on the website for free.
* www.sparknotes.com: Similar to Cliffs Notes,
but in some cases more comprehensive. There are
also message forums here, so you can discuss the books with others online.
MATH

* www.algebrahelp.com: Algebra practice problems
and other helpers, such as lists of prime numbers.

* www.mathplayground.com/flashcards.html:
Remember flashcards? Here's an online version of
them plus other math games, mostly on the grammar-school level.

* www.webmath.com: A review of problems and
formulas, from grade-school arithmetic level to high-school calculus.
MUSIC

* www.music.indiana.edu/music_resources: From
Indiana University comes this list of music
links, organized by genre, composer and
performer. It includes classical and popular music.

* www.carolinaclassical.com/links.html: Extensive
links, organized by musical eras from the Middle Ages to the present.
* www.essentialsofmusic.com: Brief biographies of
composers and descriptions of eras.

PHILOSOPHY

* plato.stanford.edu/contents.html: The online
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, founded in
1995, is a work in progress that at this point
provides 1,000 essays by professionals in the field.

* www.utm.edu/research/iep: The Internet
Encyclopedia of Philosophy is aimed at a more
general readership than the Stanford site.

* www.epistemelinks.com/index.aspx: This site
offers thousands of links to information on more than 450 philosophers.
POLITICAL SCIENCE

* thomas.loc.gov: The Library of Congress site
includes the daily Congressional Record and updates on pending legislation.
* www.psr.keele.ac.uk/official.htm: Links to the
websites of governments worldwide, including some governments in exile.
PSYCHOLOGY

* allpsych.com: A hodgepodge of links and
information, including a glossary of basic terms,
self-evaluation tests and career guides.

* www.psychology.org: Nearly 2,000 links to publications and resources.
WORLD FACTS

* www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook: Not
everything the CIA does is secret. Its handy
World Factbook provides data on numerous
counties. A listing includes a nation's
population, geography, government type,
industries, agriculture, languages and broadcast
stations. The site is updated about every two weeks.

david.colker@latimes.com

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>'Letters to a Young Teacher' by Jonathan Kozol and 'A Class Apart'
>by Alec Klein
>By Erin Aubry Kaplan
>The ideals of public education are still a long way off in this land
>of plenty.
>http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/eBWR80Mm2NO0G2B0IsSV0Ex
Letters to a Young Teacher' by Jonathan Kozol and 'A Class Apart' by Alec Klein The ideals of public education are still a long way off in this land of plenty. By Erin Aubry Kaplan
August 26, 2007
If only it could have been one book.

Such was my wishful thinking, infused with a certain anger, as I read "Letters to a Young Teacher" and "A Class Apart," two up-close
accounts of two radically different public school experiences written by, respectively, veteran educator Jonathan Kozol and Washington Post reporter Alec Klein. Of course, I figured just by the titles and authors that I was in for much more contrast than convergence. Kozol, 70, is the unsparing social critic and fierce public-school advocate whose last work, "The Shame of the Nation," detailed the almost
intractable nature of public-school inequality in America 50 years after Brown vs. Board of Education; Klein, 40, is a journalist who in his book appears less influenced by political ideology than by the tenets of modern feature writing, which include a conscious
neutrality on deeper education issues.

"Letters" uses the time-honored literary device of correspondence to steadily illuminate the long-standing concerns of the letter writer and those of Francesca, a novice first-grade teacher who toils in the tough, mostly black Roxbury area of Boston and who functions as
Kozol's younger alter ego; "Class" is much more diffuse, full of characters, situations and odd moments meant to feel like an almost random year-in-the-life look at exclusive, high-powered Stuyvesant High School in New York City -- Klein's alma mater, by the way.

A quick comparison of the two yields a predictable picture of one school beset by poverty and racial isolation and is nearly hostile to the needs of its pupils, and another that is a bright, open oasis of resources and creativity designed to exploit every bit of talent and brain power that its student body is assumed to have in abundance. That the Roxbury school is elementary and Stuyvesant (Stuy for short) is secondary doesn't blunt the point. Wishful thinking, indeed.

And yet, there is hope -- that is, there is some basis for comparison and, perhaps, fruitful commiseration between schools that are so unlike but that still share a singular responsibility for educating young people as thoroughly as possible. Both schools are part of similar systems -- dealing on a daily basis with bureaucratic and political headaches such as budget cuts, inadequate staffing and the installation of forbidding security devices imposed by a central office. Both are obsessively defined by numbers and test scores.

Most important, both writers are oriented by a persistent idealism born of their experience. True, Kozol's experience is much broader -- he views things through the lens of a teacher and activist, while Klein does so mostly as a former student at one of the country's most celebrated high schools. But faith in the potential of public schools to be great agents of change is what matters.

"Letters to a Young Teacher" could have collapsed under the weight of its own sincerity, but to Kozol's credit, it doesn't (although it's hard to imagine that he didn't prep these letters for publication, so measured are they and so witheringly analytical -- often in the same paragraph). Although it sounds contrived, the "Dear Francesca" that begins each chapter (this name, Kozol tells us, is used to disguise the teacher's identity) turns out to be an appropriately personal, old-fashioned way to hold forth on a gray topic like the endangered state of public education, especially given that Francesca's charges are about 6 or so. Also, the conceit of a conversation between a wise elder and his young acolyte is a welcome departure from an extended activist essay that, however impassioned, can quickly sound like an echo chamber.

Kozol clearly revels in being a kid again. He visits Francesca's class frequently and vicariously delights in the whole bumpy journey of first-time teaching (Kozol also spent his first teaching year in the Roxbury area in 1960). "Letters" allows Kozol to freely
reminisce, reflect, recall his own mistakes and to connect with a new generation of students. The basic revelation here is that Kozol, the perennial bearer of bad news about segregated and underfunded
schooling, is also an indefatigable idealist who is as inspired by inner-city kids as he is appalled by the conditions in which they are expected to learn. Making matters worse is the American
education-industrial complex, which traffics in jargon and stresses things such as high-stakes testing as primary "accountability tools" that in Kozol's mind are uncreative, punitive and rob black and
Latino students of their humanity and sense of self-worth.

In "The Uses of Diversity," a brief, devastating chapter, he explores our ongoing abuse of the concept of diversity -- calling schools with only black and brown faces "diverse," for instance, or teaching kids on Martin Luther King Day that non-diversity is a thing of the past -- and suggests that it is one of the worst intellectual crimes of the age. Yet none of this dampens Kozol's enthusiasm for the
education game. What "Letters" does best is chart the positive
tension between his lifelong indignation and the renewable joy of being in the classroom, something essential to all good teaching whether one is in Boston, Manhattan or Los Angeles.

Klein may not be the best person to tell the story of Stuyvesant, a school for the gifted and talented that is the most rarefied of
several New York public high schools that have entrance exams.
Admittedly, it's hard to generate sympathy for students geared from birth for a fabulous success that most of us will never experience. But Klein doesn't help by coming off at times as smug and
self-congratulatory, and by forcing drama in many story lines that are really observations.

"A Class Apart" is not without some intrigue. There's freakish math whiz Milo, who's only 10 but already on a high-school track; his teacher Mr. Siwanowicz, brilliant but chronically depressed and
living with his parents; slight, self-destructive Jane, who shoots heroin and pens some of the most incisive poetry her English teacher has ever read. But all this obscures the larger picture, which is that Stuy is a factory turning out super-students -- that is,
students who live and die by test scores, rankings, GPAs and the various rituals of college prep, preferably Ivy League. Klein's
students are likable, sweet but dull; they risk nothing. I expected more from genius.

The chapter "Open House," a quick profile of Stuy's demographics, bolsters Kozol's argument that diversity has become an elastic idea that means whatever people want it to mean. According to Klein, in a city where 70% of public school students are black and Latino, Stuy has 2% black enrollment and Asians account for 55% of the student body. To Klein, these are simply facts, not a paradox. Of the three black students he follows in the book, two are apolitical and, as it happens, biracial. (Klein's emphasis on this is bothersome -- is his point that being half-white makes these students better than black? More deserving?) Nor does Klein challenge a reverence among his
subjects for the American dream, a writ of individual
hyper-achievement that has supplanted an ambitious but short-lived American dream of integration. Klein uses problematic words such as "quotas" when he addresses criticisms of Stuy's lack of diversity. To Klein, having Asians, Russians and gays on campus is diversity. He is not wrong, but his vision is incomplete.

In his epilogue, Klein lauds Stuy for its solid Jeffersonian ideals. "The founding father," he says, "believed in the ideal of making education available to every citizen as a way to ward off tyranny, but he also believed in fostering an aristocracy of talent." Klein wants it both ways in public school, which is admirable, but what he doesn't or refuses to realize is that aristocracy beats availability hands down. "Aristocracy" is not simply about money: Plenty of Stuy parents are of modest means. But they are repeatedly characterized as hard-working, immigrant cabdrivers and deli owners who cherish
education; by implication, native blacks and poor Latinos living beyond Stuy's multimillion-dollar facade do not.

But back to commonality. Among Kozol's more uplifting chapters,
"Teachers as Witnesses," is an open letter to educators, reminding them that they are natural activists and agitators and that despite the education-industrial complex, they should never shy away from that role. He tells a story of how he once read Langston Hughes' poetry to his students, to great response, and subsequently got fired because Hughes' poetry was "out of compliance." Kozol says teachers must always question compliance, an attitude certainly shared by the unorthodox teachers at Stuy whom Klein so affectionately describes. That kind of intellectual activism is as much the job of a teacher at a vaunted school as it is for a teacher anywhere else: Compliance can be used to maintain an unsatisfactory status quo; it can allow low expectations to masquerade as high ones. Schools like Stuy
internalized this decades ago, but many others have not. Summing up the students' grueling year and the liberation of graduation, Klein remarks: "There is only what lies ahead." How different that sentence plays in Roxbury. U.S. education, alas, is far from being one story. Erin Aubry Kaplan is a contributing editor to The Times' Opinion page. *

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http://timpanogos.wordpress.com/2007/08/25/you-had-to-be-there/
    <http://timpanogos.wordpress.com/2007/08/25...to-be-there/>You had to be there
Jim Easter at Some Are Boojums wondered what it
would look like if we assumed in history what
creationists claim about biology, geology,
paleontology, archaeology and astronomy &#AD; ]No one
alive today was there, so no one can say what
happened.^ His detailing of the ]10 Questions to
Ask Your History Teacher^ is a parody of [...]



<http://www.someareboojums.org/blog/?p=21>Ten
Questions to Ask Your History Teacher

One of my objectives in self-improvement is to
stop correcting people who misuse the phrase ]begs the question.^ As has been said about teaching a pig to sing, it
wastes your time and annoys the pig.
But even if we feel awkward telling people
]that\s not what [begging the question\ means^, we still need an example of what it does mean.

Luckily, the Discovery Institute has supplied a
valuable teaching tool in the form of a
<http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/05/03/...92524.shtml>list of ten questions, each one more question-begging
than the last, for students to ask their biology teachers.

Now, some people would recommend that anyone who
starts a sentence with ]Why don\t textbooks
discuss the [Cambrian explosion\,^ be smacked
with a rolled-up newspaper until he stops peeing on people\s brains.
But not me!

I think what we need is a lot more
question-begging, willfully ignorant, smug,
supercilious hooey posing as innocent requests for fairness and balance!
I feel so strongly about this that I\ve even
generated a starter kit for those who want to
bring this noble crusade to the rest of the academic disciplines.
So &#AD; kids, the next time your history teacher
starts trying to force-feed you Revolutionary
]theory^ as if it were ]fact^, you know what to do!
Ten Questions to Ask Your History Teacher

Q: ORIGIN OF GOVERNMENTS: Why do history
textbooks claim that the modern British monarchy
originated with the ]Norman conquest^, in ]1066 ,
when nobody has ever seen a calendar for that
year, and there has never been an English king named ]Norman^?
Q: WASHINGTON\S BRANCHES OF GOVERNMENT: Why don\t
textbooks discuss the ]Civil War,^ or the fact
that all US governmental bodies appear together
at that time, instead of branching from a
Constitution &#AD; thus contradicting revolutionary theory?

Q: THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE: Why do
history textbooks claim that the ]Revolutionary
War^ started with a ]Declaration of Independence^
and quote its words, then claim that a
suspiciously old-looking document in Washington
D.C is the same document because it contains the
same words, &#AD; a circular argument masquerading as historical evidence?
Q: GEORGE WASHINGTON. It is well known that the
infamous ]cherry tree^ story was faked, and that
]George Washington^ never said ]I cannot tell a
lie^ &#AD; that is, if he ever existed. Why do
textbooks use drawings or ]artist\s conceptions^
of ]George Washington^ as evidence that he
existed? Why does no single history textbook
anywhere point out that there are no photographs
- zero! - of ]George Washington^ in existence?

Q: ALEXANDER HAMILTON. Why do some history
textbooks give Alexander Hamilton\s year of birth
as 1755, and others as 1757? Why do historians
refuse to discuss, or even acknowledge, the
controversy? Why do many textbooks even claim
that this (probably imaginary) figure was killed
in a duel with ]Aaron Burr^? Take out a $10 bill
and see whose picture is on it. Do you think this
duel actually occurred, and that the US then
decided to put the loser\s picture on its currency?

Q: WASHINGTON CROSSING THE DELAWARE. Why do
history textbooks all use the same picture of
]Washington Crossing the Delaware^ &#AD; when
historians have been aware for years that the
picture was staged? Any idiot knows that you
can\t get ten guys in a canoe without capsizing,
and ]Washington^ is standing up? Get real.

Q: SILLY HATS. Why do textbooks claim that
Revolutionary Fashion can explain the use of
Tricorner Hats by the colonists &#AD; even though
these hats were not used in the French
Revolution, and there are no such silly hats anywhere else in history?
Q: REVOLUTIONARY WAR. Why do textbooks represent
the Revolutionary War as having been won through
a series of ]small victories^ when, every time
you look at an actual battle the colonists fought
against the British, as likely as not they got
their asses handed to them? Do you think a nation
as magnificently complex as the United States
could come about through a random, undirected
sequence of military engagements?

Q: GOVERNMENTAL ORIGINS. Why are artists\
drawings of a bunch of middle-aged guys in poofy
wigs used to justify Revolutionary claims that we
are all descended from a parcel of ninnies who
didn\t have the sense to be at the beach in July
&#AD; when historians cannot even agree on who they
were or what their actual hair looked like?

Q: THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION A FACT? Why are we
told that the American Revolution is an
historical fact &#AD; even though many Revolutionary
claims are based on misrepresentations of the facts?

And remember &#AD; when some liberal revolutionist
starts spouting off about imaginary events
supposed to have taken place in 1776, all you
have to do is look him in the eye and ask ]Were you there?^

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>16. What To Expect Your First Year Teaching [pdf]
>http://www.teachersfirst.com/whatexpect.pdf
>
>The Teachers First website has been offering up high-quality lessons,
>teaching units, and web resources for teachers for almost ten years. Along
>with these resources, they have also created a number of papers and
>presentations that are designed to support the careers of teachers who are
>just entering the profession. One such resource is the helpful 48-page
>manual by Amy DePaul titled "What To Expect Your First Year of Teaching".
>The document was prepared under the auspices of the U.S. Department of
>Education's Office of Educational Research and Improvement and it contains a
>cornucopia of insights and observations from both veteran and first-year
>teachers. Visitors can skip around the report at their leisure and they may
>also wish to forward it along to other fellow educators. [KMG]

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http://www.boingboing.net/2007/08/23/hula_renaissance.html

    <http://www.boingboing.net/2007/08/23/hula_...ssance.html>Hula renaissance
David Pescovitz: Smithsonian magazine looks at
the history and tradition of hula and its
reemergence from the 1950s and 60s Hawaiiana boom
that threatened to turn the beautiful dance into
a kitschy coconut bra-wearing simulacra of
itself. Apparently, there's quite a renaissance
of serious hula happening today, in Hawaii and beyond. From Smithsonian: Kumu hulas (hula masters) generally teach their
students both hula kahiko (traditional hula)
which involves chanting accompanied by percussion
instruments, and hula 'auana (modern hula) which
features songs, mainly sung in Hawaiian, and
instruments such as the ukulele and guitar. Early
hula kahiko costumes for women featured skirts
made of kapa, or bark cloth. Men wore the skirts,
too, or just a loincloth, called a malo. A lei
for the head and its counterpart for the ankles
and wrists -&#AD; called kupe'e -&#AD; were made of
plants or materials such as shells and feathers.
Hula 'auana emerged in the late 1800s, when
international visitors introduced stringed
instruments to the culture. It was at this time
that the ubiquitous grass skirts came on the
scene as well, though costumes for hula 'auana
are often more Western in appearance&#AD;fabric tops,
skirts and dresses for women, and shorts and
pants for men, but with lei and kupe'e as
adornments. These accessories, however, depend
upon which type of dance is being performed. "In
hula kahiko," says Noenoelani Zuttermeister, a
kumu hula who teaches at the University of Hawaii
at Manoa, "a circular lei would be worn on top of
the head, whereas in hula 'auana, the dancer may
affix flowers to one side of the head."

But while hula historically has involved a
merging of different cultural forms, kumu hulas
of today want blending stopped. Rather than
integrate Japanese or, say, Mexican dance
traditions with Hawaiian hula in Tokyo or Mexico
City, (kumu hula Rae) Fonseca says hula must be
kept pure, wherever it is performed. "It's up to
us teachers to stress that where we come from is
important," he says. Zuttermeister strongly
agrees: "If the link is not maintained as it
should, then we're not passing on something that
is hula and we're not being true to our culture."

<http://www.smithsonianmagazine.com/issues/...ng/iBag?a=zld1R3>;

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http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/21/arts/television/21pov.html

    <http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/21/arts/tel...1pov.html>Review: Learning the simple life with Stanley of the North
(Daniel M. Gold/New York Times, 21 August
2007)<http://www.rssmix.com//agraham/stories/storyReader$4831>;** -- Arctic Son, the documentary to be shown
tonight on the PBS series P.O.V., follows Stanley
Njootli Jr., a 20-something would-be artist, from
his aimless existence in Seattle to the Yukon
Territory of Canada, a trip taken at his fathers
invitation. ... Stan Sr. is trying to help his
son, but is also recruiting him. Its a good life,
the father says, a simple life. And speaking of
his son, Its a better life for him, to live here.
This documentary does not address a potent
subtext: Old Crow and other Gwichin settlements
are near or within the Arctic National Wildlife
Refuge in Alaska. Thus the life that Stan Sr.
hopes to pass on is itself threatened by the
continuing debate about whether to allow oil
drilling in the refuge, which draws the caribou
the Gwichin need to hunt as part of their
heritage and their survival. The story [director]
Mr. [Andrew] Walton tells this is his first
documentary primarily concerns a generational
divide and a clash of cultures, and he may have
thought it best not to blur that focus. But a
strong benefit of Arctic Son is a chance to see
something of the country and the lives that remain at the mercy of others. Today 01:56 PM | Label This |
<http://localhost/#GreatNewsTag_EmailItem_217406>Email
This | <http://localhost/#GreatNewsTag_BlogThis_217406>Blog This

Television Review | 'Arctic Son'


Learning the Simple Life With Stanley of the North

Jonathan Furmanski

Stanley Njootli Jr., left, and Sr. in the Yukon Territory of Canada. * E-Mail
    *
<http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/21/arts/tel...s&pagewanted=all>;
    *
<http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/21/arts/tel...l?ref=arts#>Save
By DANIEL M. GOLD
Published: August 21, 2007

]Arctic Son,^ the documentary to be shown tonight
on the
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/ti...line=nyt-org>PBS series ]P.O.V.,^ follows Stanley Njootli Jr., a
20-something would-be artist, from his aimless
existence in Seattle to the Yukon Territory of
Canada, a trip taken at his father\s invitation.

Father and son are strangers. Stan Sr. moved back
to Old Crow, a village of some 250 members of the
Gwich\in tribe, shortly after his son\s birth,
and Stan Jr. admits to being ]angry at him not
being there^ while Stan Jr. was growing up. When
the Air North plane lands, shakily, at the Old
Crow airport, and they meet, Stan Sr. asks, ]I
don\t get a handshake or a hug?^ No, he doesn\t.

Going to Old Crow is truly going to extremes:
there are no roads into the village, which is
roughly 40 miles east of the Alaskan border and
80 miles north of the Arctic Circle. For long
journeys, the primary mode of conveyance seems to
be Ski-Doos. The physical isolation of the
region\s raw, immense expanses is literally
awesome, but indifferent and humbling as well.

Meanwhile, these aren\t the most expressive of
individuals. The director, Andrew Walton, chooses
not to use narration, and neither man is very
talkative. There are long pauses between
statements, little extended dialogue and a tension that never really fades.
Almost reluctantly, Stan Jr. begins to enjoy
learning at least some lessons in the old ways:
how to harness a team of sled dogs, set a snare
for a rabbit and unfurl a net under the ice when
fishing in winter. When he catches a rabbit, he is clearly proud.
Stan Sr. is trying to help his son, but is also
recruiting him. ]It\s a good life,^ the father
says, ]a simple life.^ And speaking of his son,
]It\s a better life for him, to live here.^

Stan Jr. returns to Seattle, though the
wilderness and its creed of self-reliance have
bitten him and his old life of drinking and
partying holds a shade less appeal. It\s not
clear what his decision will be, but he does make
his way north again by the end of the film.

This documentary does not address a potent
subtext: Old Crow and other Gwich\in settlements
are near or within the Arctic National Wildlife
Refuge in Alaska. Thus the life that Stan Sr.
hopes to pass on is itself threatened by the
continuing debate about whether to allow oil
drilling in the refuge, which draws the caribou
the Gwich\in need to hunt as part of their heritage and their survival.
The story Mr. Walton tells &#AD; this is his first
documentary &#AD; primarily concerns a generational
divide and a clash of cultures, and he may have
thought it best not to blur that focus. But a
strong benefit of ]Arctic Son^ is a chance to see
something of the country and the lives that remain at the mercy of others.

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http://library.med.utah.edu/blogs/BHIC/arc..._grants.html#002482

Heinemann-Raintree Publishers Announce Book Grants
Deadline: October 1, 2007
Educational publisher Heinemann-Raintree (
<http://www.heinemannraintree.com>http:/...inemannraintree.com ) has announced the launch of a new grant program for educators, the "Making the Nonfiction Connection" Grant. This grant offers schools the opportunity to apply for Heinemann- Raintree nonfiction books valued up to $5,000. The purpose of the grant is to recognize and reward extraordinary educational programs that promote the use of series nonfiction and enhance nonfiction literacy. Two grants will be awarded, one for libraries and one for classroom use.
<http://fconline.foundationcenter.org/pnd/1.../10008511/heinemann
Anna Lalor Burdick Program Supports Human Reproduction Education Projects Deadline: November 15 and May 15, annually
An initiative of the Lalor Foundation (
<http://lalorfound.org/>http://lalorfound.org/ ), the Anna Lalor Burdick Program seeks to educate young women about human reproduction in order to broaden and enhance their options in life. The program focuses particularly on young women who have inadequate access to information regarding reproductive health, including the subjects of contraception and pregnancy termination, and as such may be
particularly lacking options in their lives.
<http://fconline.foundationcenter.org/pnd/1...10008512/lalorfound

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It's a hard way to learn your employer isn't always aware of their and your best interest (hasn't a clue).
mpb

Jared Ilovar's statement
Text of his e-mail to 'The Dispatch'
Wednesday, July 25, 2007 10:48 AM

I would like to respond to the recent articles in various newspapers regarding the data tape theft, data breach, and the decision to
terminate my employment as an intern.

I am the intern who was made the scapegoat in the situation
surrounding the theft of a data tape. First I would like to clarify any misconception of whether or not my car was locked. My car was locked and it is always locked. My car was broken into and the State Police discovered scratches on the car window indicating that the car had indeed been broken in to. It is my understanding that 5 or more cars were broken in to the same night as my car was broken in to in the parking lot of my Hilliard apartment complex. Once I realized my car had been broken in to and that the tape was missing I did what I thought was best. I went straight to my employer, OAKS, and told them about the theft of the data tape. I was instructed by OAKS to not tell the Hilliard police department there was sensitive data on the tape. I followed OAKS' instructions, as I always had done in the past. I then contacted the Hilliard Police Department about the
break-in and theft.

Interesting enough following my employer's instructions has caused me quite a bit of anguish. Because of my following their instruction about not telling the police department about the sensitive data on the tape I was looked upon as if I was the criminal. I was put
through a grueling three hour polygraph test, numerous interviews with various investigators, and countless phone calls. For the
record I was never involved in the theft of the tape and the
investigators came to the same conclusion. I was a victim of a
random car theft and now I am the scapegoat for the State of Ohio.
On the subject of instructions, I was NEVER instructed by my employer on how to properly secure, store or watch over the data tapes at night. About two months into my internship a fellow intern
instructed me on how to change the daily back-up tapes by putting in a new tapes and taking out the previous night's tapes. The extent of my instructions on what to do after I removed the tapes from the tape drive and took the tapes out of the building was, "bring these back tomorrow." I was the newest person in the door so I inherited the job of taking the data tapes out of the building. That was the extent of my instructions. When I left the OAKS building I was off the clock, remember I was not a salaried network administrator. I was an intern. According to the news media there was a project policy that was last updated in April 2002. I was unaware of this policy until after the fact. It is my understanding that the policy called for the network administrator to take the backup tape to his
residence. This theft could have occurred at any time. It is
unreasonable to assume that I would never make any stops along the route at night with the back-up tapes in my possession. Should I have left the tapes in my car that night, obviously the answer is no.
The article stated that I had remembered to take the tapes out of the car 85% of the time. Based on this statement Governor Strickland was quoted as saying, "It was not just a one-time mistake." Not just a one-time mistake? I wasn't aware that I was making any
mistakes. Given the fact that I took the tapes out of the building every night and brought them back everyday, how was that making a mistake? Remember my instructions from a fellow intern were "bring these (tapes) back tomorrow". Until my car was broken in to I was doing what I was instructed to do. Only AFTER the theft of the tape was I made aware that there was some type of policy regarding these back-up tapes. I have yet to actually read the policy. I have only heard that there was a policy. As an intern, I do not create
policy, I do not interpret policy, and I do not question policy. I do what I am instructed to do. Take the tapes out of the building and return them the next day.

For weeks, Governor Ted Strickland vowed not to make me the
scapegoat. Indeed, I am the scapegoat.

On Friday, July 20, 2007, I was called in to an office and handed a letter of resignation and told, "sign this letter of resignation or you are fired." This came as quite a shock to me. They put me on the spot. I was allowed to call my parents to ask for their
advice. My parents, who were also shocked by this development,
instructed me not to sign the resignation at that very moment and to ask my employer for one hour's time so that I could make the decision after discussing my options with my parents. I got off of the phone with my parents and I was denied an hour to make this important
decision. After they denied me an hour I asked for 20 minutes. After I was denied 20 minutes I asked for 10 minutes. Again, they refused to give me 10 minutes. Within a few minutes I was strong armed in to signing the letter of resignation. I'd like to mention that the people at the table forcing this letter of resignation on me were two of my superiors, employed by the State of Ohio, and an attorney for the State of Ohio. There I was the college intern under duress being forced to sign away what I felt was an opportunity of a lifetime. Please note that at this point and time I had not totally "refused" to sign the letter of resignation I had simply asked for one hours' time to make the decision. Within 10 minutes or less my parents had called me back instructing me to NOT sign the letter of
resignation. I explained to my parents that the State had forced me to sign the letter of resignation on the spot without regard to our request for one hour of time. My parents then instructed me to go reiterate the fact that I had only asked for one hours' time and that they, two adult supervisors and their attorney, had forced me to sign this letter of resignation. After some discussion and conferring between themselves my supervisors and their attorney did allow me to rescind the letter of resignation in writing. So yes, in the end, I refused to resign and my employment was terminated.

As a college student at DeVry University this internship with the State of Ohio was a great opportunity for me. While working at OAKS I was given the opportunity to get hands on experience working in computer networking. After my internship I had hoped to have the opportunity to interview for long-term employment with the State of Ohio. I have learned some valuable lessons throughout this entire experience.
Failure and responsibility starts at the top.

I will always ask for written instructions and/or policy
instructions. I will no longer assume I am following the rules and/or policy if I haven't actually been instructed of such rules and/or policy by a supervisor and/or administrator.

I would like to thank OAKS for the opportunity they gave me several months ago and I wish the outcome of all of this was much different than it is.
Governor Strickland said that he had been trying to protect me, the intern, and that he allowed me to remain employed while the
investigation continued. For this I want to say "Thank you." Having said thank you, I would like to ask Governor Strickland and/or his administration for an internship. I would ask at the beginning of this internship for any and all rules and policies with regard to job description. I would like to move forward. I have several months before I graduate in March, 2008, and I know I would be an asset to any office. Maybe Governor Strickland's office will give me the opportunity. " http://www.dispatch.com/dispatch/content/l...5/ilovar_email.html

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http://www.boingboing.net/2007/08/20/digital_community_jo.html

   <http://www.boingboing.net/2007/08/20/digit..._jo.html>Digital community journalism contest
David Pescovitz: Marc Fest of the John S. and James L. Knight
Foundation writes:
It's time to enter this year's Knight News Challenge, which awards big money for innovative ideas using digital experiments to transform community news.

The contest is run by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. Last year's winners won awards ranging from $15K to $5 million.

Winning projects included:

* Open-source software that will let citizens find public information about their neighborhoods.

* Young journalists covering the 2008 presidential election on cell phones, for cell phones.

* Online games to inform and engage players about key issues
confronting New York City.

* Digital newscasts for Philadelphia's immigrant community
distributed through a new citywide wireless platform.

Anyone worldwide can apply at www.newschallenge.org.
<http://www.newschallenge.org>Link

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http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/08/17/1939200

    <http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/...from=rss>Putting Anti-Evolution Candidates On the Spot
hmccabe writes "YouTube is currently taking submissions for their next debate, in which the Republican candidates will answer
questions. This seems like a good opportunity to challenge those candidates who say they do not believe in evolution. But since I am not an expert in the subject, I would be interested in how you all feel the question should be presented. For my own part, I think it is important to present the overwhelming body of evidence on the subject as incontrovertible fact, much the same way DNA evidence is presented during a criminal trial, and ask why the candidate feels they can pick and choose what facts they believe in. Moreover, I am wary of coming across like Christopher Hitchins, so vitriolic the candidate will defend themselves rather than answer the question. Perhaps the most important aspect of posing the question is to inform the viewers who watch the debate that this is really not a matter of opinion, but of science. So my question is: 'Hey geneticists, have you considered addressing evolution in the YouTube debates? Can you do it in 30 seconds?'"
<http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/...00&from=rss>Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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>Date: Thu, 16 Aug 2007 06:00:00 -0800
>To: "ArcticInfo" <arcticinfo@list.arcus.org>
>From: ArcticInfo <arcticinfo@list.arcus.org>
>
>Session Announcement and Call for Papers
>Teacher Professional Development Programs Promoting Authentic Scientific
>Research in the Classroom
>American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Meeting
>10-14 December 2007
>San Francisco, California
>
>Abstract Submission Deadline: 6 September 2007
>
>For further information, please go to:
>http://www.agu.org/meetings/fm07/?content=...w=detail&sessid=546
>
>--------------------
>Papers are invited for Session ED13: "Teacher Professional Development
>Programs Promoting Authentic Scientific Research in the Classroom" being
>convened at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Meeting on 10-14
>December 2007 in San Francisco, California.
>
>Session Description:
>This session will focus on scientists, educators, education researchers,
>evaluators, and funding agency program officers providing K-12 teachers
>with authentic research experiences in science and engineering.
>Presentations should highlight best practices for the Teacher Research
>Experience (TRE) model. Presentations by those who design, facilitate,
>evaluate, and fund TRE programs, as well as presentations by teachers
>and scientists who have participated in such programs, are especially
>encouraged.
>
>Suggested areas for presentations may include but are not limited to:
>- the enhanced transfer of knowledge from teacher/researcher to students
>through implementing a research program within the classroom;
>- how teacher professional development programs play an essential role
>in science education reform and teacher retention and renewal;
>- examples of effective programs and techniques for assessing TRE
>programs;
>- the transformation of the educational environment into an authentic
>research center;
>- how best to prepare teachers to become part of scientific research
>teams;
>- the use of online learning in teacher professional development,
>support systems for teacher researchers, research community
>collaboration, and program assessment and evaluation;
>- examples of the value to the scientific community of involving
>teachers in research;
>- recommendations for designing and implementing research experiences
>that align with national, state, and/or local reform efforts in science
>education; and
>- the framework for conceptual learning in terms of the curricula and
>embedded research activities.
>
>Presentations on new or ongoing successful models for long- and
>short-term teacher research experiences are invited from the fields of
>space science, environmental science, atmospheric science, Earth
>science, oceanography, etc. Scientist-teacher research teams are
>particularly encouraged to submit abstracts for the session. Printed and
>CD-based materials may be brought by participants to the session to be
>distributed to attendees.
>
>Conveners:
>Constance E. Walker
>National Optical Astronomy Observatory
>E-mail: cwalker@noao.edu
>
>Steven K. Croft
>National Optical Astronomy Observatory
>E-mail: scroft@noao.edu
>
>Gail Scowcroft
>University of Rhode Island
>E-mail: gailscow@gso.uri.edu
>
>Further information and abstract submission procedures are available at:
>http://www.agu.org/meetings/fm07/
>
>Information on oral and poster education sessions from the 2005 and 2006
>AGU Fall Meetings is available at:
>http://www.noao.edu/education/agu/
>
>
>--------------------------------------------------------- ----------
>ArcticInfo is administered by the Arctic Research Consortium of the
>United States (ARCUS). Please visit us on the World Wide Web at:
><http://www.arcus.org/>;

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http://timpanogos.wordpress.com/2007/08/08...ards/#comment-33298
    <http://timpanogos.wordpress.com/2007/08/08...nt-33298>Comment on A religious bias against good education? by Ed Darrell

On another blog, a fellow complained that his
education in a Catholic school wasn\t close to
brainwashing. I gather he thinks I\m being unfair.

Here is what I said (with typos and phrasing corrected):

Catholic schools have a strong commitment to
strong academics. Especially in the U.S., they
come out of a tradition that says the best
defense of religious freedom, the best way to
have a good life and live it, is to learn as much
as possible. Academics are front and center in
Catholic schools &#AD; because, most Catholics
believe, such striving for excellence is a way to honor God.

Consequently, the calculus class descriptions in
Catholic schools talk seriously about calculus.
They are not fluff documents designed to make a
surface appearance that they are godly &#AD; they are
loaded with respect for the subject, for education.

The class descriptions for the school in San
Antonio show little awareness for the class
subject material. They are dilettante documents.

Here\s the description for calculus at Pope
John-Paul II High School in Tennessee:

Calculus: (1 credit)

Calculus AB and Calculus BC are primarily
concerned with developing the students\
understanding of the concepts of calculus and
providing experiences with its methods and
applications. These courses emphasize a
multi-representational approach to calculus, with
concepts, results, and problems being expressed
graphically, numerically, analytically, and
verbally. The connections between these
representations are vital to the successful
understanding of calculus. Calculus BC is an
extension of Calculus AB rather than an
enhancement. Common topics require similar depth
of understanding and both courses are intended to
be challenging and demanding. Through the use of
unifying themes of derivative, integral, limits,
and approximation, and applications and modeling,
both courses become a cohesive whole rather than
a collection of unrelated topics.

Go to the website and look at the math program at
Pope J-P II, how it\s integrated from start to
finish. Notice the AP classes &#AD; not offered at
Castle Hills FB School in San Antonio. Notice
that, while no rational person would assume that
Pope John-Paul II High School administrators,
teachers, or educational experiences are without
God, there is a strong focus on the actual subject matter.
<http://www.jp2hs.org/page.cfm?p=38>http...s.org/page.cfm?p=38
The social studies curriculum, at Castle Hills FB
school, strongly hints that they ignore the facts
of history to propagandize. The biology
curriculum statement announces boldly that they depart from science.
That\s not the road to good academics, nor to
good citizens from the students enrolled.

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from the August 09, 2007 edition -
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0809/p13s01-legn.html

Money test results mixed for US students


Eight out of 10 high school seniors understand
economics basics, but less than half are deemed
proficient in a first-ever test.

By Stacy Teicher Khadaroo | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
Fresh out of high school, how many American
students understand the basic economic forces at
work in their own wallets or their country's trade policies?

For the first time, national test scores have
revealed what 12th-graders know about economics
and personal finance. The results aren't likely
to set off the same kind of alarm bells triggered
by national tests on reading and math, but
observers also see plenty of room for improvement.

Seventy-nine percent of a nationally
representative sample scored at or above a basic
level ` meaning they could understand and apply a
limited set of economic concepts relating to
microeconomics, the national economy, and, to a
lesser extent, the international economy.
Forty-two percent scored "proficient" or above,
because they could analyze a wider range of
economic issues; 3 percent were "advanced."

"The Nation's Report Card: Economics 2006" was
released Aug. 8 by the US Department of
Education's National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP).

The proportion of students at each performance
level are as good or better than other subjects
tested by NAEP, "so I would say that's
encouraging," says Darvin Winick, chair of the
National Assessment Governing Board, which sets NAEP policy.

"Obviously we'd like to see them better," he says
of the scores, but he's also heartened that "the
number of students that report having some kind
of exposure to economics or finance is quite
high" ` about 8 out of 10 seniors. This test is
the first in what will be a series that can show
if there's progress over time. Timing for the
next economics test depends on federal funding, but it is scheduled for 2012.
Advocates of economics education see a less rosy picture.

"If you have less than 90 percent [at the basic
level] it's a warning," says Robert Duvall,
president of the National Council on Economic
Education (NCEE), an advocacy organization in New
York that has coordinated training and curriculum
resources for teachers since 1949. (He spoke with
the Monitor before he had access to the results,
which were officially released at press time.)

"Our goal is that 100 percent of our students
would have a basic understanding ... and that at
least half the students would [be] advanced....
Otherwise, they are at a disadvantage as workers
and consumers and voting citizens," adds Mr.
Duvall, whose group produced voluntary economics
standards in the 1990s and had a say in the content of the new NAEP test.
For some policymakers, the score gaps between
different groups (similar to gaps in other
subjects), are yet another sign of social and educational inequities at play.
While 87 percent of white 12th-graders scored
basic or above in economics, only 57 percent of
African-Americans and 64 percent of Hispanics
did. In addition, 44 percent of Asian/Pacific
Islander students scored proficient or above,
compared with 26 percent of American
Indian/Alaska natives, 21 percent of Hispanics,
and 16 percent of African-Americans.

Another notable gap: Of students whose parents
did not finish high school, 59 percent scored
basic or above, compared with 87 percent of those
with at least one parent who had graduated from college.

The gaps indicate that "high school students `
low income students and students of color in
particular ` are not getting the preparation they
need to meet the demands of college and the
workforce," says Daria Hall, assistant director
for K-12 policy at the Education Trust in
Washington, a group focused on closing achievement gaps.

The portion of students taking an economics class
has been on the rise ` from 49 percent in 1982 to
66 percent in 2005, according to a study of high
school transcripts cited in the NAEP report. In
another measure, a survey of the 11,500 students
taking the NAEP test (in both public and
nonpublic schools), 55 percent reported taking a
general or advanced economics course; an
additional 23 percent had had business, personal
finance, or economics lessons in other courses.

"Students are doing what we're asking of them:
They are signing up for these more rigorous
courses, they're getting better grades, and yet
... [in some courses] the content and the quality
of instruction do not actually support the
knowledge and skills students need," Ms. Hall says.

The test looked at several areas. In a section on
the market economy, or microeconomics, 72 percent
of students were able to name and describe one
benefit and one risk of someone leaving a
full-time job to further his education. But less
than half (46 percent) could interpret a
supply-and-demand graph to determine the effect
of establishing a price control. In a section on
the national economy, 60 percent could identify
factors that lead to an increase in the national
debt, but only 11 percent could analyze how a
change in the unemployment rate affects income, spending, and production.
For Bruce Damasio, a high-school economics
teacher in Towson, Md., and president of the
Global Association of Teachers of Economics, "the
good news is that economics has now been brought
up to the big-league status." Because it's being
tested like other subjects such as math and
history, educators have a chance to see what
needs to be done to bring more students up to proficiency.

One basic task, he says, is to help teens
overcome their notion that studying economics is
like having to eat broccoli. "They're afraid of
it, but they do it all the time," Mr. Damasio
says. "They don't realize they're using economic
logic when they make decisions," whether it's
using a debit card or judging the opportunity costs in choosing a college.
"Once it's put in practical terms, they get it."

Test your econ skills

The first national sample of US 12th-graders'
knowledge of economics found that 79 percent
scored at the basic level or higher, and 42
percent scored at the proficient level or higher.
Here's a brief sample of multiple-choice
questions (the test also included open-ended questions):

What happens to most of the money deposited in
checking accounts at a commercial bank?

(A) It is used to pay the bank's expenses; (B) It
is loaned to other bank customers; (C) It is kept
in the bank's vault until depositors withdraw the
funds; (D) It is paid to owners of the bank as return on their investment.
52 percent answered correctly: B

In the United States, which of the following
forms of taxation currently represents the
largest source of tax revenue for the federal government?

(A) Property tax; (B) Sales tax; (C) Corporate
income tax; (D) Personal income tax.

36 percent answered correctly: D

If there were a decrease in the worldwide
production of oil, which of the following would most likely occur?
(A) Global consumption of oil would increase; (B)
Economic growth in oil-importing countries would
decrease; (C) International spending on research
into alternative energy sources would decrease;
(D) Global exploration for new oil reserves would decrease.

63 percent answered correctly: B

Source: The Nation's Report Card: Economics 2006

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http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-07/uow-wow073007.php
    <http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/200...73007.php>Waters off Washington state only second place in world where glass sponge reefs found University of Washington scientists have discovered large colonies of glass sponges thriving on the seafloor 30 miles off the coast of Washington. The species of glass sponges capable of building reefs were thought extinct for 100 million years until they were found in recent years in protected Canadian waters, the only place in the world they have been observed until now. The discovery in Washington waters extends the range of reef-building glass sponges into open ocean.

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> 5) My Hometown Helper Grants to Improve Communities Across United
> States
>
> Deadline: September 30, 2007
>
> Hamburger Helper, a General Mills brand, has announced its 2007
> "My Hometown Helper" grant program, a nationwide initiative that
> helps local groups make a difference in their own community.
> People looking to improve their hometown -- whether by building
> a new playground, funding new band uniforms, or expanding town
> sidewalks -- can apply for a one-time grant to help fund their
> project.
>
> Applicants are invited to submit an essay of 250 words or less
> describing how the grant would help their community project.
> Award amounts will range from $500 to $15,000 each and all
> requests for funding must be sponsored by a municipal or civic
> organization or a public school. Funds will be awarded based on
> the merit of the project, including its impact on, and support
> within, the community.
>
> Last year, "My Hometown Helper" gave away more than $100,000 in
> total grants and helped communities install lights for a football
> field, clean up a local river, and purchase ambulance equipment,
> among other great projects.
>
> For more information on the "My Hometown Helper" grant program
> and a complete set of rules, visit the program's Web site.
>
> RFP Link:
> http://fconline.foundationcenter.org/pnd/1...00/myHometownHelper
>
> For additional RFPs in Community Improvement/Development, visit:
> http://foundationcenter.org/pnd/rfp/cat_co...y_development.jhtml

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Read the comments before using as is.
mpb

 From The Times
August 4, 2007
Walking to the shops [damages planet more than going by car\ Dominic Kennedy

Walking does more than driving to cause global
warming, a leading environmentalist has calculated.

Food production is now so energy-intensive that
more carbon is emitted providing a person with
enough calories to walk to the shops than a car
would emit over the same distance. The climate
could benefit if people avoided exercise, ate
less and became couch potatoes. Provided, of
course, they remembered to switch off the TV rather than leaving it on standby.
The sums were done by Chris Goodall, campaigning
author of How to Live a Low-Carbon Life, based on
the greenhouse gases created by intensive beef
production. ]Driving a typical UK car for 3 miles
[4.8km] adds about 0.9 kg [2lb] of CO2 to the
atmosphere,^ he said, a calculation based on the
Government\s official fuel emission figures. ]If
you walked instead, it would use about 180
calories. You\d need about 100g of beef to
replace those calories, resulting in 3.6kg of
emissions, or four times as much as driving.

]The troubling fact is that taking a lot of
exercise and then eating a bit more food is not
good for the global atmosphere. Eating less and
driving to save energy would be better.^

Mr Goodall, Green Party parliamentary candidate
for Oxford West & Abingdon, is the latest serious
thinker to turn popular myths about the environment on their head.
Catching a diesel train is now twice as polluting
as travelling by car for an average family, the
Rail Safety and Standards Board admitted
recently. Paper bags are worse for the
environment than plastic because of the extra
energy needed to manufacture and transport them, the Government says.
Fresh research published in New Scientistlast
month suggested that 1kg of meat cost the Earth
36kg in global warming gases. The figure was
based on Japanese methods of industrial beef
production but Mr Goodall says that farming
techniques are similar throughout the West.

What if, instead of beef, the walker drank a
glass of milk? The average person would need to
drink 420ml ` three quarters of a pint ` to
recover the calories used in the walk. Modern
dairy farming emits the equivalent of 1.2kg of
CO2 to produce the milk, still more pollution than the car journey.
Cattle farming is notorious for its perceived
damage to the environment, based on what
scientists politely call ]methane production^
from cows. The gas, released during the digestive
process, is 21 times more harmful than CO2 .
Organic beef is the most damaging because organic cattle emit more methane.
Michael O\Leary, boss of the budget airline
Ryanair, has been widely derided after he was
reported to have said that global warming could
be solved by massacring the world\s cattle. ]The
way he is running around telling people they
should shoot cows,^ Lawrence Hunt, head of
Silverjet, another budget airline, told the
Commons Environmental Audit Committee. ]I do not
think you can really have debates with somebody with that mentality.^
But according to Mr Goodall, Mr O\Leary may have
a point. ]Food is more important [to Britain\s
greenhouse emissions] than aircraft but there is
no publicity,^ he said. ]Associated British Foods
isn\t being questioned by MPs about energy.

]We need to become accustomed to the idea that
our food production systems are equally damaging.
As the man from Ryanair says, cows generate more
emissions than aircraft. Unfortunately, perhaps,
he is right. Of course, this doesn\t mean we
should always choose to use air or car travel
instead of walking. It means we need urgently to
work out how to reduce the greenhouse gas intensity of our foodstuffs.^
Simply cutting out beef, or even meat, however,
would be too modest a change. The food industry
is estimated to be responsible for a sixth of an
individual\s carbon emissions, and Britain may be the worst culprit.
]This is not just about flying your beans from
Kenya in the winter,^ Mr Goodall said. ]The whole
system is stuffed with energy and nitrous oxide
emissions. The UK is probably the worst country in the world for this.
]We have industrialised our food production. We
use an enormous amount of processed food, like
ready meals, compared to most countries. Three
quarters of supermarkets\ energy is to
refrigerate and freeze food prepared elsewhere.

A chilled ready meal is a perfect example of
where the energy is wasted. You make the meal,
then use an enormous amount of energy to chill it
and keep it chilled through warehousing and storage.^

The ideal diet would consist of cereals and
pulses. ]This is a route which virtually nobody,
apart from a vegan, is going to follow,^ Mr
Goodall said. But there are other ways to reduce
the carbon footprint. ]Don\t buy anything from
the supermarket,^ Mr Goodall said, ]or anything
that\s travelled too far.^ dkennedy@thetimes.co.uk

Shattering the great green myths

a Traditional nappies are as bad as disposables,
a study by the Environment Agency found. While
throwaway nappies make up 0.1 per cent of
landfill waste, the cloth variety are a waste of
energy, clean water and detergent

a Paper bags cause more global warming than
plastic. They need much more space to store so
require extra energy to transport them from manufacturers to shops
a Diesel trains in rural Britain are more
polluting than 4x4 vehicles. Douglas Alexander,
when Transport Secretary, said: ]If ten or fewer
people travel in a Sprinter [train], it would be
less environmentally damaging to give them each a
Land Rover Freelander and tell them to drive^

a Burning wood for fuel is better for the
environment than recycling it, the Department for
Environment, Food and Rural Affairs discovered

a Organic dairy cows are worse for the climate.
They produce less milk so their methane emissions per litre are higher
a Someone who installs a ]green^ lightbulb undoes
a year\s worth of energy-saving by buying two
bags of imported veg, as so much carbon is wasted flying the food to Britain
a Trees, regarded as shields against global
warming because they absorb carbon, were found by
German scientists to be major producers of
methane, a much more harmful greenhouse gas

Sources: Defra; How to Live a Low-Carbon Life, by
Chris Goodall; Absorbent Hygiene Products
Manufacturers Association; The Times; BBC"
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/s.../article2195538.ece

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>Date: Thu, 9 Aug 2007 12:14:43 -0400
>From: MMWR Questions <mmwrq@CDC.GOV>
>Subject: MMWR Recommendations and Reports
>To: MMWR-TOC@LISTSERV.CDC.GOV
>
>List-Subscribe: <mailto:MMWR-TOC-subscribe-request@LISTSERV.CDC.GOV>;
>
>If you have trouble reading this e-mail, please click
><http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/mmwr_rr.html?s_cid...id=mmwr_wklogo_e>;
>
>
>Recommendations and Reports
>Volume 56, No. RR-7
>August 10, 2007
>
><http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/PDF/rr/rr5607.pdf>PDF of this issue
>
><http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/?s_cid=mmwr_online_e>MMWR Online
>
><http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/order.html?s_cid=m..._e>Subscriptions
>
><mailto:mmwrq@cdc.gov>Contact MMWR
>
><http://www.cdc.gov/?s_cid=mmwr_home_e>CDC Homepage
>
>MMWR RSS Feed
><http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/rss/rss.html?s_cid=mmwr_rss_e>How to Add
>MMWR<http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/rss/rss.html?s_cid=mmwr_rss_e>; RSS feeds
><http://www.firstgov.gov/Topics/Reference_S...rary.shtml>Learn
>More About RSS
>The Effectiveness of Universal
>School-Based Programs
>for the Prevention of Violent
>and Aggressive Behavior
>A Report on Recommendations of the Task Force
>on Community Preventive Services
>During 2004--2006, the Task Force on Community Preventive Services
>(Task Force) reviewed published scientific evidence on the
>effectiveness of universal school-based programs to reduce or
>prevent violent behavior. This evidence proves that these programs
>decrease rates of violence and aggressive behavior among school-aged
>children. All grade levels demonstrated program effects, and an
>independent meta-analysis confirmed and supplemented these findings.
>Consequently, the Task Force recommends using universal school-based
>programs to prevent
>or reduce violent behavior.
><http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/r...=rr5607a1_e>full
>text
>
>Department of Health and Human Services
>Centers for Disease Control and Prevention<http://www.hhs.gov/>;

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http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/08/08/1245237

    <http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/08/0...&from=rss>School Boards Rule, Internet No Longer Dangerous
destinyland writes "Good news. The National
School Boards Association, which represents
95,000 school board members, just released a
report declaring fears of the internet are
overblown. In fact, after surveying 1,277
students, "the researchers found exactly one
student who reported they'd actually met a
stranger from the internet without their parents'
permission. (They described this as "0.08 percent
of all students.") The report reminds educators
that schools initially banned internet use before
they'd realized how educational it was. Now
instead they're urging schools to include social
networks in their curriculum!"

<http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/08/0...37&from=rss>Read more of this story at Slashdot.


http://www.boingboing.net/2007/08/08/school_boards_the_in.html

    <http://www.boingboing.net/2007/08/08/schoo...e_in.html>School boards: The Internet is safe and we should use it more
Cory Doctorow: National School Boards Association
(a nonprofit that represents 95,000 US
school-board members) did a comprehensive study
of students' experiences with the Internet,
especially with social networking sites. They
determined that the much-touted risk of online
stalkers and predators was basically nonexistant
(0.08 percent of students surveyed had ever gone
to meet a stranger without parental permission).
The best part is their recommendation to schools:
stop fearing the Internet and embrace it as an
incredible tool for instruction.
In light of these findings, they're recommending
that school districts may want to "explore ways
in which they could use social networking for
educational purposes" &#AD; and reconsider some of
their fears. It won't be the first time educators
have feared a new technology, the study warns.
"Many schools initially banned or restricted
Internet use, only to ease up when the
educational value of the Internet became clear.
The same is likely to be the case with social networking.

"Safety policies remain important, as does
teaching students about online safety and
responsible online expression &#AD; but student may
learn these lesson better while they're actually
using social networking tools."

Social networking may be advantageous to students
&#AD; and there could already be a double standard at
work? 37% of districts say at least 90% of their
staff are participating in online communities of
their own &#AD; related to education &#AD; and 59% of
districts said that at least half were
participating. "These findings indicate that
educators find value in social networking," the
study notes, "and suggest that many already are
comfortable and knowledgeable enough to use
social networking for educational purposes with their students."

<http://tech.blorge.com/Structure:%20/2007/...-to-school/>Link (via <http://slashdot.org>/.)

Just as people must share seal meat and oil to
maintain physical and social well-being, so, too,
must they share knowledge--so that their minds will not rot.
For Your Information, Teachers, et al.
http://www.quicktopic.com/26/H/7sSUC5pTZDRNV
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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http://timpanogos.wordpress.com/2007/08/08...ducation-standards/
    <http://timpanogos.wordpress.com/2007/08/08...ion-standards/>A religious bias against good education?
One might be too stunned to shake one's head; this is a description for a high school calculus course: CALCULUS Students will examine the nature of God as they progress in their understanding of mathematics. Students will understand the absolute consistency of mathematical principles and know that God was the inventor of that consistency. [...]

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The President of No Child thought this was such a
great idea he featured the program at the inaugural.


>'Baby Einstein': A Bright Idea?
>
>from the Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)
>
>Parents hoping to raise baby Einsteins by using infant educational videos
>are actually creating baby Homer Simpsons, according to a new study
>released [yesterday].
>
>For every hour a day that babies 8 to 16 months old were shown such popular
>series as "Brainy Baby" or "Baby Einstein," they knew six to eight fewer
>words than other children, the study found.
>
>Parents aiming to put their babies on the fast track, even if they are
>still working on walking, each year buy hundreds of millions of dollars'
>worth of the videos. Unfortunately it's all money down the tubes, according
>to Dr. Dimitri Christakis, a professor of pediatrics at the University of
>Washington in Seattle.
>
>To read more: http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-
>babyeinstein7aug07,1,789068.story
>
>Or: http://tinyurl.com/2shbft

Baby Einstein': a bright idea?

Infants shown such educational series end up with
poorer vocabularies, study finds. Researcher says 'American Idol' is better. By Amber Dance, Times Staff Writer
August 7, 2007

Parents hoping to raise baby Einsteins by using
infant educational videos are actually creating
baby Homer Simpsons, according to a new study released today.

For every hour a day that babies 8 to 16 months
old were shown such popular series as "Brainy
Baby" or "Baby Einstein," they knew six to eight
fewer words than other children, the study found.

Parents aiming to put their babies on the fast
track, even if they are still working on walking,
each year buy hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of the videos.
Unfortunately it's all money down the tubes,
according to Dr. Dimitri Christakis, a professor
of pediatrics at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Christakis and his colleagues surveyed 1,000
parents in Washington and Minnesota and
determined their babies' vocabularies using a set
of 90 common baby words, including mommy, nose and choo-choo.

The researchers found that 32% of the babies were
shown the videos, and 17% of those were shown
them for more than an hour a day, according to
the study in the Journal of Pediatrics.

The videos, which are designed to engage a baby's
attention, hop from scene to scene with minimal
dialogue and include mesmerizing images, like a lava lamp.

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends no
television for children under 24 months.

The Brainy Baby Co. and Walt Disney Co., which
markets the "Baby Einstein" videos, did not
return calls from the Los Angeles Times.

Christakis said children whose parents read to
them or told them stories had larger vocabularies.

"I would rather babies watch 'American Idol' than
these videos," Christakis said, explaining that
there is at least a chance their parents would
watch with them &#AD; which does have developmental benefits.


----------
amber.dance@latimes.com

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http://www.boingboing.net/2007/08/07/howto_make_escherlik.html

    <http://www.boingboing.net/2007/08/07/howto...erlik.html>HOWTO make Escher-like Droste photos
David Pescovitz: The Droste effect is the modern name of a recursive visual effect most famously used by the artist MC Escher. There are hundreds of fantastic Droste effect photos in the Flickr pool
"Escher's Droste Print Gallery." You can create your own by following Flickr user <http://www.flickr.com/photos/joshsommers/>Pisco
Bandito's tutorial. (Seen here, Bandito's "I've Opened Myself To You.") From the Wikipedia
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droste_effect>entry on the Droste effect: The 'Droste effect' is a Dutch term for a specific kind of recursive picture, one that in heraldry is termed mise en abyme. An image
exhibiting the Droste effect depicts a smaller version of itself in a place where a similar picture would realistically be expected to appear. This smaller version then depicts an even smaller version of itself in the same place, and so on. Only in theory could this go on forever, but practically it continues only as long as the resolution of the picture allows, which is relatively short, since each
iteration exponentially reduces the picture's size.

The term was coined by the poet and columnist Nico Scheepmaker at the end of the 1970s. It is named after Droste, a Dutch brand of cocoa, whose box has a picture of a nurse carrying a serving tray with a cup of hot chocolate and a box of the same brand of cocoa.

Link to
<http://www.flickr.com/groups/escherdroste/...106391/>Escher's Droste Print Gallery on Flickr,
<http://www.flickr.com/photos/joshsommers/s...ng/iBag?a=68JP1R>; to Droste Effect Tutorial

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Refuge battles family violence

By HEATHER McCRACKEN - Central Leader | Wednesday, 8 August 2007

"Young Pacific Island women are shaking off old attitudes towards family violence.

New Zealand-born victims are taking faster action to protect
themselves and ask for help, Pacific Island Women's Refuge
coordinator Ani James says.

"I see them as strong women because they don't tolerate the abuse," Mrs James says.

"They make their own phone calls, ringing the services they need."
But older women, particularly those brought up in the islands, are still reluctant to come forward.

"A lot of those women blame themselves," Mrs James says.

"They say they married their husbands and they?re in it for better or worse."
Child advocate Tania Petelo started helping at the Onehunga-based regional service 12 years ago, as a 16-year-old.

She was angry some of her school friends were being beaten up at home.
"They would say 'it's all right', but I didn't think it was," she says.
"I wanted to be educated and I wanted to teach others, especially young girls, that it's not acceptable."

The mother of three says attitudes have changed.

"People are getting out there, going to the Citizen's Advice Bureau, looking in the phone book," she says.

Preventing Violence in the Home client services manager Jill
Proudfoot says publicity about family violence has helped change attitudes.
"It's become less difficult to talk about because there's more public awareness," she says.

"People know there's lots of other people experiencing it so they're not so ashamed.

"There is a very big difference between New Zealand-born Pacific families and traditional Pacific families in their willingness to speak about it outside the family."

Ms Proudfoot says other positive changes include churches taking a more proactive role to stamp out violence.

"I think there?s certainly been some progress, and we'd like to see that shift even further," she says.

The Reverend Mua Strickson-Pua from the Pacific Island Presbyterian Church says the change has been led by youths, social workers and the women's refuge.

"The churches have been able to take a leadership role in terms of raising it through their sermons, and through women's and men's groups."
He says more could be done by advocating on social issues as well as providing grassroots support for families. Churches could also
encourage more women to take up leadership roles, he says.

The refuge was set up in 1989 because existing services didn't offer specialist advice for Pacific women.

It relies on volunteers to staff its 24-hour crisis line and pick up women after hours.

Volunteers are vetted by police and given full training and support. Duties and hours are flexible."
http://www.stuff.co.nz/4156189a6016.html

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A summer reading list for next school year
shouldn't be the same as the summer library programs reading list.
[Maybe Scarlet Letter should be retained for
historical information-- once upon a time
adultery was not looked upon with favor.]


>High school reading lists get a modern makeover
>Find out what recent bestsellers are taking
>their place next to classics at schools across the U.S. By Amy Brittain
>http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0808/p13s01-legn.html?s=hns

from the August 08, 2007 edition -
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0808/p13s01-legn.html


High school reading lists get a modern makeover




Find out what recent bestsellers are taking their
place next to classics at schools across the US.

By Amy Brittain | Contributor to The Christian Science Monitor

"It was the best of times; it was the worst of
times." Charles Dickens's famous line in "A Tale
of Two Cities" could be used to describe what is
probably hitting home about now for millions of
American high school students: Lazy summer days
cut short by the frantic rush to finish required
reading lists before school starts.

"Most teens spend the summer doing whatever, and
then cram the reading in during the last two
weeks," says 2007 high school graduate Henry Qin of Boston.

Precious summer minutes spent poring over
Shakespeare or Nathaniel Hawthorne may seem less
than appealing to teens, but some experts say
there is a slowly growing trend to infuse more
modern literature into summer reading. As a
result, the revered literary cannon, which
includes such classics as "Hamlet," "The Grapes
of Wrath," and "The Scarlet Letter," may be due
for a shake-up. Glance at high school summer
reading lists across the United States and you
are likely to find more recent authors such as
Alice Sebold, Walter Dean Myers, and even Tour de
France champion Lance Armstrong alongside Dickens and the Bront&#EB; sisters.
"The natural evolution of these lists is that
they expand and include voices that are
underrepresented," says American Library
Association (ALA) president Loriene Roy. "If you
don't include authors like Amy Tan or Virginia
Woolfe, what does that mean? A lot of discussions
have come up over the last 20 years over what one
needs to know. [The question is], 'Who do you bump off?' "

Summer reading lists vary widely. Some high
schools require books and even give essay
assignments to be completed by the first day of
school. Mr. Qin of Boston still remembers his
frenzied rush to finish Victor Hugo's "Les
Mis&#E9;rables" before his high school freshman year.

"I didn't understand why we were reading it,"
says Qin, who will be a freshman at Duke this
fall. "Summer reading is a good thing if and only
if there's a context for it. I don't like the
idea of just handing us a list. If you say, 'Read these books,' tell us why."
Other schools choose a more flexible model and
present students a list with choices often
recommended by local librarians. But what is
clear: Cementing one's status on a required
reading list is no easy feat, as librarians or
summer reading committee members must argue to
bump a classic for a book with undetermined longevity.

Practical concerns such as budget and time cause
administrators to resist including recent young
adult literature, or literature geared toward 12-
to 18-year-olds, on required lists, says Beth
Yoke, executive director of Young Adult Library
Services Association, which is the fastest
growing division of the ALA. But Ms. Yoke says
she sees a trend to include more diverse
literature in required reading. "Kids want books
that they can identify with," she says. They want
to see an African-American character, or a Muslim
character, or a strong female character."

Yoke says that it often takes at least a
generation for a new young adult book to make required lists.

"If you're doing required reading in schools,
you've got to buy a bazillion copies of these
books and you have to have developed the lesson
plans of all that supplementary material," she
says by telephone. "Teachers have been teaching
'To Kill a Mockingbird' forever and a day, and
they don't want to have to develop all new materials."

In addition, educators feel that classics still
have important lessons to teach, even if they are
from different time periods. Betsy Ginsburg, a
librarian who edits a recommended reading list
from the Houston Area Independent Schools Library
Network, says a variety of summer reading is
crucial for intellectual breadth. Schools, she
says, should keep classics on lists since they
frequently relate to students' curriculum and
capture a time and place in history.

For the most part, reading lists are still heavy
on classics. But consider the differences between
reading lists from the 1960s and those in the
1980s. Of the nine most commonly taught books in
public high schools in 1963, only one (the 1938
play "Our Town") was written in the 20th century.
By 1988, the 10 most commonly taught novels in
public schools included four books from the 20th
century: "The Great Gatsby" (1925), "Of Mice and
Men" (1937), "Lord of the Flies" (1954), and "To Kill a Mockingbird" (1960).
But not all novels take a generation to catapult
to required summer reading lists. Some new
staples in summer reading lists: "Life of Pi" by
Yann Martel, "The Kite Runner" by Khaled
Hosseini, "Curious Incident of the Dog in the
Night-time," by Mark Haddon, "Monster" by Walter
Dean Myer, and "The Lovely Bones" by Alice Sebold.

"Ten years ago, these reading lists didn't have
new books like that," says Alleen Nilsen, Arizona
State University English professor and co-author
of the textbook Literature for Today's Young
Adult. "These are really popular new books."

So what catapults "Life of Pi" and "The Lovely
Bones" to the elusive reading list club? Both are
bildungsromans, or stories of young people coming
of age. Ms. Nilsen says this theme is crucial for
reading list inclusion, as youth need to feel a connection to the literature.
J.D. Salinger's "The Catcher in the Rye" is an
example of a long-lasting bildungsroman. The 1951
book was widely panned for its controversial
subject matter, but it soon won the hearts of American teens.

"That was a book done for adults, but kids loved
that book," Nilsen says by telephone. "Every year
there are like 10 books that get compared, and
it's like, 'Oh, this is the new "Catcher in the
Rye." ' Of course, none of them ever are. But
they're in that style ` the flip, honest kid that's critical."
Nilsen says she understands why teens are
frustrated with heavy assigned summer reading but
says she's encouraged by the modernization trend.
Her own granddaughter has chosen to read the
young adult award-winner "Monster" rather than a difficult classic.
"It used to be, no matter where you were in high
school, you got this list of classics that the
value was to talk about them with other people,
not to read them yourself," she says. "We're
taking this lesson from the [physical education]
teachers. Rather than making kids do these things
they hate, they're letting them choose what they
want to do, so that when they're adults, they'll
keep exercising. Summer reading is the perfect
time if we want to get kids to read the rest of
their lives without us sitting over their heads
and telling them what to read. Let them ... just
lose themselves in a good book."

What students are reading

High schools are updating their summer reading
lists to include books focused on modern themes.
Here's a sample pulled from high school websites across the nation.
University Heights, Ohio:

"Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America" by Barbara Ehrenreich
"A Hand to Guide Me" by Denzel Washington

"Bad Boy: A Memoir" by Walter Dean Myers

"Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass" by Frederick Douglass
Lexington, Ky.:

"The Pearl" by John Steinbeck

"I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" by Maya Angelou

"The House on Mango Street" by Sandra Cisneros

Torrance, Calif.:

"Jane Eyre" by Charlotte Bront&#EB;

"Night" by Elie Wiesel

"To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee

Buffalo, N.Y.:

"Speak" by Laurie Halse Anderson

"Breathing Underwater" by Alex Flinn

"Bless Me Ultima" by Rudolfo Anaya

"The Old Man and the Sea" by Ernest Hemingway

"Tuesdays With Morrie" by Mitch Albom

"Life of Pi" by Yann Martel

Dallas:

"Catcher in the Rye" by J.D. Salinger

"The Bean Trees" by Barbara Kingsolver

"Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time" by Mark Haddon

"Lord of the Flies" by William Golding

"The Audacity of Hope" by Barack Obama

"Freakonomics" by Steven Levitt

Atlanta:

"The Heart is a Lonely Hunter" by Carson McCullers

"Native Son" by Richard Wright

"A Bend in the River" by V.S. Naipaul

"The Kite Runner" by Khaled Hosseini

Old Bridge, N.J.

"Angels and Demons" by Dan Brown

"The Bell Jar" by Sylvia Plath

"It's Not About the Bike" by Lance Armstrong

"The Lovely Bones" by Alice Sebold

"The Hobbit" by J.R.R. Tolkien

"A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" by Douglas Adams


www.csmonitor.com | Copyright &#A9; 2007 The
Christian Science Monitor. All rights reserved.

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http://timpanogos.wordpress.com/2007/08/05...residents-thoughts/

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http://www.boingboing.net/2007/08/04/students_produce_the.html

    <http://www.boingboing.net/2007/08/04/stude...he.html>Students produce the future of newsgathering
Cory Doctorow:
Citizen journalism evangelist Dan Gillmor writes in with word of the student projects from the <http://newsinitiative.org/>News21
Initiative jointly held at at Berkeley, Northwestern, Columbia and USC. He says, "This year it's called 'Faces of Faith in America,' and includes all kinds of neat Web stuff in addition to traditional media production."

There are some pretty amazing interactive, Web-native multimedia presentations among the student work, including:

*
<http://newsinitiative.org/story/2007/07/20...ities>Minorities Representing Majorities: a Google Maps mashup showing the 40
electoral districts where politicians who practice "minority faiths" (like Islam, Hinduism and Sikhism) serve as governmental
representatives. The presentation includes video profiles of seven of these leaders.

*
<http://newsinitiative.org/story/2007/07/24...ery_tour>Magical Mystery Tour: A guided tour to the centers of "spiritual seekers" in California -- drag the lens over different sites, from Mount Shasta to Salvation Mountain and see videos of the seekers who come to them.
<http://newsinitiative.org/story/2007/07/30...d_trip_home>Data Road Trip: A national map of the statistical hotspots for crises and upwellings of faith and religion, including the Bronx, with the
highest abortion rate in the nation; Arkansas, where the divorce rate is highest; and LA County, with the largest number of Hindu temples. Click on each for a smart mini-video documentary.

These student presentations are better than anything I've seen from "real" news agencies and could serve as a model for the future of interactive/online journalism.


==================

Just as people must share seal meat and oil to maintain physical and social well-being, so, too, must they share knowledge--so that their minds will not rot.
For Your Information, Teachers, et al.
http://www.quicktopic.com/26/H/7sSUC5pTZDRNV
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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http://www.boingboing.net/2007/08/04/mule_library.html

    <http://www.boingboing.net/2007/08/04/mule_library.html>Mule library David Pescovitz: Bibliomulas are mules toting mini-libraries to
remote communities in Venezuela in an effort to encourage reading. Sometimes, the mules also carry projectors and laptop computers. A BBC News reporter recently took a trip with the Bibliomulas through the foothills of the Andes. From the BBC News:
Anyone who was not out working the fields - tending the celery that is the main crop here - was waiting for our arrival. The 23 children at the little school were very excited.

"Bibilomu-u-u-u-las," they shouted as the bags of books were
unstrapped. They dived in eagerly, keen to grab the best titles and within minutes were being read to by Christina and Juana, two of the project leaders.

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>In Alaska, school equality elusive
>The state must improve education in rural areas
>before requiring students to pass the state exit
>exam, a judge recently ruled. By Yereth Rosen
>http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0803/p03s03-ussc.html?s=hns

from the August 03, 2007 edition -
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0803/p03s03-ussc.html


In Alaska, school equality elusive




The state must improve education in rural areas
before requiring students to pass the state exit exam, a judge recently ruled.
By Yereth Rosen | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

ANCHORAGE, Alaska

When Bill Bjork and Debby Drong-Bjork taught
school for six years in Arctic Village, Alaska,
their tasks extended far beyond the classroom.

They had to chop ice on the Chandalar River and
pump drinking water for students in the isolated
Gwich'in Indian village. They coped with
temperatures so cold that, every winter, their
mattress froze to the wall of their teacher
housing. And, because no grocery store was
nearby, they had to learn from the school cook
how to take meals from the caribou that migrated
through that part of the Brooks Range foothills.

"She helped my wife and me learn to hunt, which
was not a pretty sight at first," says Mr. Bjork.
The transplanted Minnesotans embarked on their
Arctic Village teaching adventure after a 1977
summer canoe trip on the Yukon River.

Teaching in rural Alaska has always been fraught
with unusual challenges. Now, in the face of
federal mandates, standards tailored for
mainstream suburban culture, and costs that are
rising at uneven rates across Alaska's expanses, there are new tests.
Educators, parents, and state officials are
trying to comply with a recent court decision
that found state funding for rural schools to be
adequate but some of the schooling to be deficient.

The decision, issued June 21 by Alaska Superior
Court Judge Sharon Gleason, found that while
funding levels for far-flung districts met
constitutional requirements, education quality
was so poor in certain areas that students there
should not be required to pass exit exams to get diplomas.

"It is fundamentally unfair for the State to hold
students accountable for failing this exam when
some students in this state have not been
accorded a meaningful opportunity to learn the
material on the exam ` an opportunity that the
State is constitutionally obligated to provide
them," Judge Gleason said in her ruling. The
state must do more to improve education in
troubled districts, located in generally
impoverished areas of rural Alaska, before
reinstating the exit-exam requirement, Gleason
said. It must report back on its progress in a year, she said.

The ruling came in response to a lawsuit filed in
2004 by an assortment of parents, teachers, and
school district officials who believe state
funding decisions shortchange their students. The
plaintiffs say they found Gleason's conclusion
puzzling. How can there be better service to
rural Alaska, they ask, without more money?

"There seems to be a pattern of judges who are
unwilling, as they look upon it, to intrude upon
the domain of the legislature," says Bjork, who
is now president of the Alaska chapter of the
National Education Association, one of the plaintiffs in the litigation.
State officials see the decision as a defense of
Alaska's overall funding approach, as well as a
call to employ some more creative educational
styles. But they still struggle to ensure that
children in remote areas get an education that
conforms to state and federal standards.

Educators have cited several reasons for rural
schools' woes: poor language skills among
students, a dearth of early education
opportunities, alcohol abuse and other social
problems in the communities, and a difficulty in
attracting and retaining teachers. The last is
probably the biggest challenge, said Eric Fry,
spokesman for the Alaska Department of Education
and Early Development. "If you don't retain
teachers, you get, by definition, inexperienced people," he says.
The state is making progress on retention through
a Department of Education mentoring program now
in its fourth year, Mr. Fry says. The program,
pairing about 400 new teachers and 80 new
principals with experienced educators, is
starting to result in better longevity, he says.
"That should be reflected in student performance," he says.

The legislature, meanwhile, has formed a task
force to review and possibly rewrite the state
school-funding system to help address rural
education. Recommendations from the task force,
which was established before Gleason issued her ruling, are due Sept. 1.
Unlike other states, where schools are funded
locally, Alaska considers school funding to be a
state responsibility. It uses a per-student
formula, adjusted by a cost-of-living multiplier.

While the overall idea is accepted, many see the
formula as outdated and simplistic. A 2004
cost-differential study by the University of
Alaska Anchorage's Institute of Social and
Economic Research (ISER) concluded that it is
wildly inaccurate. Spiking fuel prices have made
energy and transportation costs highly volatile,
affecting rural districts more dramatically.

Some of the most persistent complaints come from
the Kenai Peninsula Borough, the local government
for the mountainous, forested coastal district
south of Anchorage. The borough has economized as
much as can be expected, closing some schools,
reducing programs, slashing bus routes, and
filling gaps with hikes to local taxes, says
superintendent Donna Peterson. If the formula
were adjusted to the ISER report's
recommendations, "it would fix it," she says.

Meanwhile, other state efforts, too recent to
have been in the evidence that Gleason
considered, have started to bear fruit, Fry says.
The state won some flexibility in the No Child
Left Behind Act mandates and launched
initiatives, including an Alaska-specific reading program.

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http://library.med.utah.edu/blogs/BHIC/arc...ebsites.html#002454
    <http://library.med.utah.edu/blogs/BHIC/arc...454>Turbo-Charge Your Google Search

Searching Google is easy and fun, but some queries can yield
thousands of results, none of them quite what you're looking for. We'll show you 23 tricks to help you refine your search and find the information you need.
<http://ga0.org/ct/W1AE0m61YEia/>http://...rg/ct/W1AE0m61YEia/ Copyright (c) 2007, CompuMentor/TechSoup. [posted on TechSoup By the Cup - July 31, 2007 - subscribe at
<http://ga0.org/ct/gpAE0m61YE8T/>http://...rg/ct/gpAE0m61YE8T/] Today 12:08 PM | Label This |
<http://localhost/#GreatNewsTag_EmailItem_204136>Email This |
<http://localhost/#GreatNewsTag_BlogThis_204136>Blog This

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http://www.boingboing.net/2007/08/01/science_of_speed_rea.html

    <http://www.boingboing.net/2007/08/01/scien...rea.html>Science of speed reading
David Pescovitz: New research from New York University suggests that a combination of three different mental processes our brains use to decode words determine how fast we read. One of the processes,
phonics (the familiar method of sounding out a word), accounts for 62 percent of a person's reading rate. "Each reading process always contributes the same number of words per minute, regardless of
whether the other processes are operating," the researchers write in their PLoS One scientific paper. According to co-author Denis Pelli, professor of psychology and neuroscience, understanding the role of these processes could lead to better ways of helping remedial
readers. The way they conducted the study is fascinating. From
Scientific American:
The three processes: phonics (a letter by letter sounding out of words); contextual clues (earlier parts of sentences that help
readers anticipate upcoming words); and holistic word recognition, or the physical shape of words...

Using passages from author Mary Higgins Clark's murder mystery Loves Music, Loves to Dance, Pelli and study co-author, undergraduate
Katharine Tillman, manipulated passages to block readers from using each of the word-deciphering processes.

To muffle context clues, they shuffled words in a sentence
("contribute others. The of Reading measured"); discrimination via word shape was covered up by inserting random capital letters ("ThIS tExT AlTeRnAtEs iN CaSe."); and to eliminate letter by letter
decoding, they substituted similar-looking letters into a word,
thereby retaining the ability to use word shape and context, once a reader figured out a previous word ("Tbis sartcrec bes lctfan suhsfitufas").
<http://sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=22B...hanID=sa003>Link to Scientific American,
<http://www.plosone.org/article/fetchArticl...ng/iBag?a=PhhsGf>; to PLoS One paper


Just as people must share seal meat and oil to maintain physical and social well-being, so, too, must they share knowledge--so that their minds will not rot.
For Your Information, Teachers, et al.
http://www.quicktopic.com/26/H/7sSUC5pTZDRNV
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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"Whalebone mask may rewrite Aleut history

By ALEX deMARBAN
ademarban@adn.com

Published: July 28, 2007
Last Modified: July 28, 2007 at 04:08 AM

Archaeologists unearthing an ancient village from an Unalaska
hillside believe they've found the remains of the oldest-known Aleut whalebone mask.

Much of the mask is missing -- it's mostly intact above where the cheekbones would sit -- but archaeologists are pretty sure it's about 3,000 years old, said Mike Yarborough, lead archaeologist at the dig.
Stained brown by soil, cracked in two at the left temple, the
discovery made early this month by a member of Yarborough's team is about 2,000 years older than any known Aleut mask, he said.

It was created around the time Mayan civilization began, around the time Homer was producing the Iliad and Odyssey.

The Earth had suddenly cooled then, and ice surrounded the Aleutian Islands nearly year-round, said Rick Knecht, an archaeologist and University of Alaska Fairbanks professor.

People at the ancient site -- a sprawling village marked by
unprecedented stone houses and delicate ivory carvings -- ate polar bears, ice seals that no longer visit the island, and a whale that's never been documented in North American waters, said Knecht. He led a dig at the village in 2003 but wasn't part of the mask discovery.
Perhaps six inches wide once, the mask could have been worn and
broken at a funeral, Yarborough said. Cultural anthropologist Lydia Black, who died earlier this year, wrote that members of ancient Aleut burial parties wore and shattered tiny masks during funerals.
"It's speculation to say what happened 3,000 years ago, but it was broken when we found it," Yarborough said. "It very well could have been (a funeral mask)."

People occupied the village sometime between 2,400 and 3,400 years ago, but materials found near the mask indicate it's 3,000 years old, he said.
It's generally similar in appearance to its next oldest cousin, a 1,000-year-old mask found at Izembek Lagoon on the Alaska Peninsula, he said. That one, also a half mask, is on display at the Anchorage Museum at Rasmuson Center.

Denise Rankin, vice president of the tribal government in Unalaska and an employee with the Native corporation, said features such as the round head, almond-shaped eyes and slender nose remind her of people she sees today.

"They look just like an Aleut face," she said.

Knecht, e-mailed a picture of the mask, said the giant eyebrows evoke ancient images of faces pecked into granite boulders at Cape Alitak on Kodiak Island. The petroglyphs, made with hammer stones more than 500 miles east of Unalaska, were created more than 2,000 years ago, he said. "It's a great find," he said of the mask.

The ancient village where the mask came from has yielded several important discoveries, including the remains of dozens of homes, Knecht said. They had stone walls and sub-floor heating ducts to spread heat through the homes, he said.

Archaeologists have also found well-preserved human remains from ceremonial burials and elaborate jewelry such as an ivory hair pin with decorative faces carved on both sides.

The state has spent about $1.65 million on the excavation so it could replace a wobbly, wood-surfaced bridge built in 1979. A $28 million, 700-foot concrete bridge is scheduled to rise alongside it within two years, said Michael Hall, design project manager.

The state has budgeted $950,000 for the dig Yarborough started last year, Hall said. His effort touched off a controversy because he agreed to excavate with backhoes and truck the dirt to a fenced area, where Hall said it would later be sifted.

The heavy machinery was meant to speed the excavation so the bridge could be built more quickly, Hall said. The dig was originally
supposed to take only a month last spring and cost $250,000, but the village has turned out to be much larger than anyone expected. The state extended the deadline to Aug. 15, Hall said.

Opponents, including some Aleut residents, grumbled that the
excavator would smash clues to the past and shatter ancestors' bones as it punched through earth.

The tribal government, which called the old bridge unsafe and voted to support the quick excavation along with the local Native
corporation, hailed the mask as one sign that archaeologists are working carefully.

They seem to be doing detail work with shovels and hand tools a lot more than they're using heavy equipment, said Rankin, with the tribal government.

"They're doing an excellent job," she said.

Archaeologists have trucked about 2,700 cubic yards of dirt to the fenced area and seeded it so grass will grow, Yarborough said. Some people have talked about letting students sift through the dirt as part of a class, he said. Discovered artifacts have gone to a lab for storage and later will be sent to the local museum. But the mask went directly to the museum to be placed in a climate-controlled area and watched by a curator.

The heavy equipment didn't break the mask -- there are no lighter colors indicating fresh cracks, he said.

"It was broken sometime in antiquity," he said.

Knecht, who opposed the backhoe excavation, said a more traditional dig with archaeologists sifting dirt through screens might have found the rest of the mask. Those pieces are likely buried in the big pile behind the fence, he said.

"I shudder to think what's been damaged or lost," he said. "I know they're being as careful as they can given the limitations of digging with heavy equipment. But inevitably there's a price to be paid in history and culture by taking that shortcut."

Find Alex deMarban online at adn.com/contact/ademarban or call 257-4310.

http://www.adn.com/news/alaska/story/9169966p-9086365c.html

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I think ecology should be first or some field course. First find a reason for learning the basics. (but 6th graders should already have set theory)

>Survey: Math Courses Aid Science Studies
>
>from the San Francisco Examiner
>
>WASHINGTON (Map, News) - Students who had more math courses in high
>school did better in all types of science once they got to college,
>researchers say. On the other hand, while high school courses in
>biology, chemistry or physics improved college performance in each of
>the individual sciences, taking a high school course in one science
>didn't result in better college performance in the others.
>
>Philip M. Sadler of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and
>Robert H. Tai of the University of Virginia surveyed 8,474 students
>taking introductory science courses at 63 U.S. colleges and
>universities. Their findings are reported in Friday's edition of the
>journal Science.
>
>Science educators debate the effect of the order in which students take
>science courses. Since the 1890s biology has tended to come first,
>followed by chemistry and then physics. Some educators argue that
>physics should be taught earlier because it will help students
>understand the other two science areas; others say having chemistry
>first will help in learning biology.
>
>To read more:
>http://www.examiner.com/a-848377~Survey__M..._Aid_Science_Studie
>s.html
>
>Or: http://tinyurl.com/2aj2x5

Survey: Math Courses Aid Science Studies

By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID, The Associated Press
2007-07-26 19:33:43.0
Current rank: # 153 of 4,203
WASHINGTON -

Students who had more math courses in high school did better in all types of science once they got to college, researchers say.

On the other hand, while high school courses in biology, chemistry or physics improved college performance in each of the individual
sciences, taking a high school course in one science didn't result in better college performance in the others.

Philip M. Sadler of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and Robert H. Tai of the University of Virginia surveyed 8,474
students taking introductory science courses at 63 U.S. colleges and universities. Their findings are reported in Friday's edition of the journal Science.

Science educators debate the effect of the order in which students take science courses. Since the 1890s biology has tended to come first, followed by chemistry and then physics. Some educators argue that physics should be taught earlier because it will help students understand the other two science areas; others say having chemistry first will help in learning biology.

But, in this study, neither was the case.

Using a scale of 0-to-100 points, Sadler and Tai found that every year of high school math a student took added 1.86 points to their grade in college chemistry. Taking chemistry in high school added 1.72 points to the college grade, but taking biology or physics in high school had no significant impact on the college chemistry grade.
Likewise, students taking college biology got a 1.84 point boost for each year of high school math. Taking high school biology got them an extra 1.35 points, but high school chemistry and physics had no
significant effect.

And for physics, each year of high school math added 1.28 points, high school physics gave a 1.32 point boost, while high school
biology and chemistry had no impact.

"I was surprised," Sadler said in a telephone interview. "I had a very open mind about whether this kind of early preparation would pay off."
"The most important thing for high school science teachers is to make sure there is lots of math in whatever science course they teach," Sadler said. "Math is so important in college science."

The paper does note that other variables not measured in their study may also have an impact, such as a student's interest in a particular subject and their parents' occupations.

Gerry Wheeler, executive director of the National Science Teachers Association, welcomed the paper as a source of new data for making decisions on science teaching.

"The correlation with math makes sense," he said.

But Wheeler, who was not part of the research group, cautioned that a correlation isn't necessarily the same as cause and effect.

The research was supported by the National Science Foundation.

---

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http://www.boingboing.net/2007/07/26/girl_guides_want_bad.html

    <http://www.boingboing.net/2007/07/26/girl_...nt_bad.html>Girl Guides want badges for "safe sex" and "flat pack"
Mark Frauenfelder: Girlguiding UK surveyed 1000 girls and women in its organization to find out what skills they wanted to learn.
Popular answers included "surf the Web safely," "stand up to boys," "master Microsoft Word," "practice safe sex," and "assemble flat-pack furniture."
The demands emerged in a survey of more than 1,000 Guides by
Girlguiding UK, which is striving to keep itself relevant to the lives of young women. A spokeswoman said that the movement would act on the findings and make sure that the appeal for more information on sex and money was met.

In the poll, senior Guides, who are aged over 16, said that managing money was the most important skill to master as they contemplated leaving the family home. "Practising safe sex" was placed fourth, with "assembling flat-pack furniture" eighth. Younger Guides, aged from 10 to 15, valued more traditional skills. Top of their list was "cooking a healthy meal" and "pitching a tent", although "standing up to boys" came fourth.

The youngest Guides, aged under 10, said that they wanted to know how to surf the web safely and how to cross the road.

<http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/a...2134549.ece>Link (Via <http://arbroath.blogspot.com>Nothing To Do With
Arbroath)<http://feeds.feedburner.com/~a/boingboing/iBag?a=S2OOMC>;

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"100 years of hanging ten
One hundred years ago, surfer George Freeth
helped invent California's beach culture.
By Michael Scott Moore, MICHAEL SCOTT MOORE is a
Fulbright journalist in Berlin and author of a novel, "Too Much of Nothing." July 21, 2007

The george freeth memorial in Redondo Beach is a
salt-bitten bust of a lifeguard in an
old-fashioned swimming vest, gazing with the
stoicism we expect from early surf heroes into
the deep mystery of a concrete parking garage.
His back is to the Redondo Pier. Locals jog or
skate past this memorial without noticing the
plaque, which reads, "First Surfer in the United
States," and then relates the story of how Freeth
was paid by Los Angeles real estate and streetcar
magnate Henry Huntington in 1907 to lure people
to Redondo Beach to watch a new kind of athlete
trim the waves. "George Freeth was advertised as
'The Man Who Can Walk on Water,' " according to
the plaque. "Thousands of people came here U to
watch this astounding feat. George would mount
his big 8-foot-long, solid wood, 200-pound
surfboard far out in the surf. He would wait for
a suitable wave, catch it, and to the amazement
of all, ride onto the beach while standing upright."

The memorial is outdated: Freeth was only the
first celebrity surfer in America. The first men
on record to surf North America are now
considered to be three Hawaiian princes who
noticed that waves at the mouth of the San
Lorenzo River in Santa Cruz were up to snuff.
Jonah Kalaniana'ole and David and Edward
Kawananakoa shaped boards from local redwoods and
hauled them out to the beach one day in 1885.
"The young Hawaiian princes were in the water," a
local paper wrote, "enjoying it hugely and giving
interesting exhibitions of surfboard swimming as
practiced in their native islands."

But Freeth, a haole with one Hawaiian
grandparent, helped rescue stand-up surfing from
the Christianized sickness of 19th century
Hawaiian culture, and he brought it to Redondo
Beach. He had won fame on the islands as a
talented young swimmer but was ambitious to see
the world. After he taught an avid Jack London to
surf in front of a hotel at Waikiki a and after
London wrote up the exotic art of "surf-bathing"
for a magazine in 1907, describing Freeth in
syrupy prose as a "handsome brown Mercury" a the
young man asked for a letter of introduction.
London obliged, and by July 1907, Freeth was bound for North America.
Redondo Beach in 1907 was declining as an
industrial harbor, and most of California's
coastline consisted of wind-swept dunes. But
wealthy men like Huntington wanted to develop.
The Hotel Redondo had gone up in 1890, and a new
arm of Huntington's light-rail line, the Pacific
Electric, already stopped at Redondo Beach.

"When I studied the place, and saw its
attractions, the beautiful topography it
possessed, those terraces rising in harmonious
degrees from the sea, I determined," Huntington
wrote, with a real estate man's instinct for
anticlimax, "that it presented such features as
should make it the great resort of this region."

Huntington had competition. In 1904, a cigarette
mogul named Abbott Kinney had announced plans to
build the "Venice of America," a gimmicky village
with a network of canals and bridges and a flock
of gondoliers who would pole tourists around in
front of kitschy mock-European storefronts. It
would come with a saltwater public pool under an
arched glass ceiling and a Coney Island-style pier loaded with rides.
Huntington countered this vision of Oz in 1905
with a three-story pavilion in Redondo Beach,
decked out with Moorish arches and flag-topped
golden domes. But he noticed that people were
wary of the ocean. Most L.A. residents in those
days preferred to ride out to the San Fernando
Valley on weekends and shoot jackrabbits from the
streetcars. Not that the coast was unpopular;
people just had no concept of swimming in the
waves. What we think of as "beach culture" was still alien to Americans.
But Huntington had been to Waikiki. He knew that
a man who could "walk on water" in the shore
break, who looked half-exotic and bronzed in his
swimming costume, who had lifesaving skills to
match his surfing talent a why, a man like that
could lure people to an otherwise empty stretch of sand.

Within days of his arrival in California, Freeth
went surfing off Venice Beach. A local paper ran
an article on July 22 a "Surf Riders Have Drawn
Attention." This may have startled Huntington,
and by the end of the year, Freeth was on the
Pacific Electric payroll, surfing twice a day
near a section of Redondo known as Moonstone
Beach, where semiprecious stones lay in a natural mound along the waterline.
So Jack London's handsome "brown Mercury" walked
up and down a heavy plank in sloppy Redondo
whitewash while tourists in Edwardian suits
browsed a mound of colorful surf cobble for
"excellent specimens" to offer to their
sweethearts. Clanking streetcars and an
improbable Moorish pavilion gave the
once-industrial coastline a carny atmosphere that
must have seemed as ridiculous in 1907 as it does
a century on, wherever old boardwalks or pleasure
piers compete with the roar of the sea. But
surfing a professional or paid surfing a had
arrived in America, and George Freeth would be
more than just a sideshow freak."
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-...nion&track=ntottext

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http://www.boingboing.net/2007/07/20/miniature_anatomical.html
   Miniature anatomical toys from Japan
Mark Frauenfelder: Bob Knetzger, an amazing toy designer and MAKE magazine contributer, recently went to Japan and discovered tiny anatomical toys there. (Click on thumbnails for enlargement)

He says:
<http://www.boingboing.net/japantoyorgans7.jpg>Dunno if two things make a trend but "anatomical toys" seemed to be all around. This isn't new, of course, we all remember the "Visible Man" model by Revell, but in true Japanese mode, the idea has been miniaturized and taken to a whole new level of detail and collectability.

This one was a really cool line of tiny anatomical models of human anatomy. Sold as a blind assortment in a closed box you don't know which one you'll get: surprise!--it's a pop-open stomach! Or you might get a skeleton, or a see-thru uterus with a removable fetus, or one of 15 different organs. Thanks, Mom!

They are so unbelievably cool and well done, they are to the Revell Visible Man model as the Nozomi Bullet train is to Amtrak. They come completely finished and assembled. I count 10 different colors of paint in dozens of paint operations in fantastically perfect tiny detail. It's like one of those doctor's office models, only tiny. <http://www.boingboing.net/japantoyorgans1.jpg>;



And they all come with one cello-wrapped piece of chewing gum. Cuz it's always more fun to chew while you learn about the pancreas.

Collect them all.

And speaking of collecting, I found another line of anatomical toys, this time in the gashapon machines: Visible Animals! These aren't quite as deluxe, but they're also very cool and take the Visible Horse model concept even further. I was so hoping for a Visible
Puffer Fish ...but I got the Visible Chicken out of the machine.





These kind of remind more of butcher's models, showing various cuts of meat, hmm, ....let's see, there's beef, pork, chicken, tuna, fugu, "long pork"...

I see that my favorite on-line source for fun Japanese stuff, J-List, has some of these. They were about $4.30 US in Tokyo, so J-List's price isn't really too bad.

<http://www.boingboing.net/ http://www.jbox.com/SEARCH/human/1/>Link
Reader comment:

Ryan says: Regarding your post on the Japanese anatomical you can buy these at the Giant Robot store in Los Angeles, or from their online store, the link is
<http://secure.giantrobot.com/products.php?...&catid=T010>here and
<http://secure.giantrobot.com/products.php?...ng/iBag?a=5EsLce>;.

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http://ykalaska.wordpress.com/2007/07/17/dr-comstock/

"Public health researcher dies

SMITHSBURG - George Wills Comstock, an
epidemiologist whose research helped shape the
U.S. response to tuberculosis in the 1940s and
'50s, died Sunday of prostate cancer, according
to the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. He was 92.
Dr. Comstock, of Smithsburg, was a physician who
worked in the U.S. Public Health Service for 20
years and taught at Johns Hopkins University for more than 40.

 From 1947 to 1951, he ran the first trials of a
vaccine called the BCG vaccine for tuberculosis
in Georgia and Alabama. The studies found that
the vaccine was largely ineffective against TB,
which led federal public health officials to
decide against vaccinating U.S. children with it.

In 1957, Dr. Comstock conducted research in
Bethel, Alaska, where TB was rampant, and
demonstrated the effectiveness of the drug isoniazid in preventing TB.
In 1962, Dr. Comstock founded the Johns Hopkins
Training Center for Public Health Research and
Prevention in Hagerstown. For the next 30 years,
he oversaw community-based research studies on
diseases including cancer, heart disease and eye disease."
http://www.hometownannapolis.com/cgi-bin/read/2007/07_17-45/TOP
==========================
"George W. Comstock, 92, Dies; Leader in Fight Against TB

By LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN
Published: July 18, 2007

Dr. George W. Comstock, an epidemiologist who
made major contributions to the treatment and
prevention of tuberculosis and was regarded by
many peers as the world\s foremost expert on the
disease, died Sunday at his home in Smithsburg,
Md. He was 92 and had worked until last week.
Skip to next paragraph
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

Dr. George W. Comstock

The cause was cancer of the prostate, said the
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
in Baltimore, where Dr. Comstock taught for more than 40 years.

Two sets of studies by Dr. Comstock in the 1940s
and \50s had a critical impact on the federal
government\s response to tuberculosis. One set
led public health officials to reject the
tuberculosis vaccine known as BCG, which had been
under consideration for routine use among American children.

The second series of studies led the health
profession to adopt the use of the drug isoniazid
(INH) as a mainstay in treating tuberculosis,
which mainly affects the lungs and remains a leading killer in the world today.
Many BCG vaccines are used throughout the world.
By the late 1940s, one such vaccine had been
found effective in two trials in the United
States. But the government wanted further
research and dispatched a team led by Dr.
Comstock to conduct studies among schoolchildren
in Georgia and Alabama from 1947 to 1950. The
studies found that the vaccine was largely
ineffective. Public health officials then decided
against routinely vaccinating children in the United States with BCG.
On receiving an award from the National
Foundation for Infectious Diseases for his work,
Dr. Comstock said he suspected he was the first
person to be so honored for persuading people not to use a vaccine.
Dr. Comstock attributed the discrepancies among
the trials to variations in different strains of
the BCG vaccine and a lack of standard
manufacturing techniques. Later, genetics studies
documented that there was no uniformity among BCG
vaccines, said Dr. Richard E. Chaisson, a
tuberculosis researcher at Johns Hopkins.

In 1957, the United States Public Health Service
sought a doctor to study tuberculosis patterns in
Alaska, where one of every 30 natives was in a
tuberculosis hospital. Dr. Comstock volunteered,
saying he saw an opportunity to study preventive treatment.

He conducted a controlled trial in 29 villages
near Bethel, Alaska, where tuberculosis was
rampant. Members of each household were given the
drug INH or a placebo for a year, Dr. Chaisson said.

The study showed the effectiveness of INH in
preventing tuberculosis: after a year, INH
produced a 70 percent decline in cases of the
disease; a follow-up study five years later
showed the drug\s benefit had been sustained.

In the trial, Dr. Comstock and his family took
INH themselves to convince the participants of
his belief in the therapy\s safety, Dr. Chaisson
said. After the trial, Dr. Comstock returned and
gave INH to those who had received the placebo.

The federal Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention\s latest guidelines on INH therapy use
Dr. Comstock\s data to this day.

George Wills Comstock was born in Niagara Falls,
N.Y., on Jan. 7, 1915, the son of George
Frederick Comstock, a metallurgical engineer, and
Ella Gardner Wills Comstock. He entered Antioch
College planning to become a metallurgist.

While working eventually on the vitamin
deficiency disease pellagra, for the
pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly, he developed an
interest in nutritional diseases. He went on to
earn a medical degree from Harvard Medical School
in 1941 and a master\s degree and a doctorate in
public health from the University of Michigan and Johns Hopkins, respectively.
In medical school, Dr. Comstock, a thin,
considerate man who stood about 6 feet 6 inches,
rejected his parents\ wish that he study piano
and instead bought a recorder, using money he had
made by selling his blood for transfusions, a
customary means of income for medical students in
those days. Later, he took up the bassoon and played in symphony orchestras.
He interned with the Public Health Service and
later became chief of its tuberculosis
epidemiologic studies. After he retired from the
agency in 1962, he moved to Johns Hopkins. He was
editor of the American Journal of Epidemiology from 1979 to 1988.
Dr. Comstock founded the Johns Hopkins Training
Center for Public Health Research and Prevention
in Hagerstown, Md., where for 30 years he oversaw
community-based research studies on cancer, heart
disease and an eye disease known as
histoplasmosis. The center was renamed for Dr. Comstock in 2005.

He was a lifelong advocate of public health
efforts and expressed disappointment in later
years that more doctors were not devoting their
services to it. In an interview in 2003, Dr.
Comstock said that members of medical school
faculties had little contact with public health departments.

Dr. Comstock was preceded in death by his first
wife, of 60 years, Margaret Karr Comstock, and
his sister, Ruth Comstock Dunlap. He is survived
by his wife, the former Emma Lou Davis; two sons,
Dr. Gordon Frederick Comstock of Arcade, N.Y.,
and Dr. Lloyd Karr Comstock of Chapel Hill, N.C.;
a daughter, Martha Wills Comstock Williams of
Marietta, Ga.; five grandchildren; one
great-granddaughter; two stepchildren, Jonathan
Davis and Anna Davis; and two step-grandchildren."
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/18/health/1...ml?_r=1&oref=slogin ======================
"George W. Comstock, 92; epidemiologist was
influential in the treatment of tuberculosis
By Thomas H. Maugh II, Times Staff Writer
July 18, 2007

Dr. George W. Comstock, a pioneering
epidemiologist who almost single-handedly blocked
the use of the flawed BCG tuberculosis vaccine in
the United States and who played a key role in
the development of other prevention strategies
against the disease, died Sunday at his home in
Smithsburg, Md. He was 92 and had battled prostate cancer for several years.
Comstock was a young commissioned officer in the
U.S. Public Health Service after World War II
when federal officials were considering a mass
vaccination campaign against tuberculosis using
the relatively new Bacille Calmette-Gu&#E9;rin
vaccine, which is made from an attenuated strain
of mycobacterium that produces TB in cows.

He organized a trial of the BCG vaccine in
Georgia and Alabama that stretched from 1947 to
1951 and concluded that the vaccine had an
efficacy of only 14% in preventing the disease.
He argued forcefully that the efficacy was too
low to produce widespread benefit and that
vaccination would render the Mantoux skin test
for detecting TB infections useless by making
vaccine recipients permanently positive.

In a country like the United States, with a
relatively low incidence of TB, he argued, it was
more important to be able to identify those
exposed to the mycobacterium and treat them.
Federal authorities agreed, and the vaccine was never widely used here.
"He always saw this as one of his most important
contributions," said Dr. Jonathan Samet, chairman
of the department of epidemiology at the Johns
Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, where
Comstock taught for more than 40 years.

In the 1950s, after the development of the TB
drug isoniazid, Comstock learned that Alaska had
one of the highest TB rates in the world.

He moved his family to Bethel, Alaska, and began
administering the drug to everyone who had been
exposed to the mycobacterium a as well as to himself and his family.
He showed that the drug could prevent infections
from progressing to full-blown TB, and that the
optimum treatment time with the drug was nine
months. The protocol he developed for therapy a
still in use a was a major contributor in
bringing the outbreak in Alaska under control.

After 21 years in the Public Health Service,
Comstock retired and joined Hopkins, where he
founded the university's Training Center for
Public Health Research and Prevention in
Hagerstown, Md. a a unit that was renamed after him in 2004.

He pioneered work in community-based health
studies looking for the causes of cancer, heart
disease, eye disease and other ailments.

He was among the first to collect blood and other
biological samples that were frozen and stored
for future analysis. By looking at samples from
patients who developed cancer, for example, the
researchers could determine whether there were
any substances in the blood that might have predicted the onset of the disease.
There was great interest at the time in whether
consuming supplements containing vitamin A and
beta-carotene might reduce the risk of lung
cancer among smokers. His studies showed that, at
best, there was only a small association between
higher levels of the supplements and a reduced risk.

George Wills Comstock was born Jan. 7, 1915, in
Niagara Falls, N.Y. While pursuing his
undergraduate studies at Antioch College in Ohio,
he obtained a part-time job at Eli Lilly's pharmaceutical laboratory.
He worked in a lab that studied pellagra.

Although his job "mostly involved washing
glassware and cleaning dog cages," he later said,
his boss persuaded him to switch from
biochemistry to medicine and to attend Harvard Medical School.

Upon graduation from Harvard, he joined the
Public Health Service because it paid more than a conventional internship.
He subsequently received a master's degree in
public health from the University of Michigan and
a doctorate from Johns Hopkins.

Outside of medicine, Comstock's passion was
music. He was a woodwind player in various
symphony orchestras and for many summers took
part in recorder camps. "Early music" was
frequently heard in his household; he taught the
entire family to play the recorder.

Comstock frequently quoted Horace Mann's 1859
commencement address at Antioch College: "Be
ashamed to die before you have won some victory
for humanity." Comstock expanded on that theme,
noting that "most of us aren't going to win any
big victories, but we can win little ones every day, and they mount up."
Comstock's wife of 60 years, Margaret Karr
Comstock, died in 1999. In 2001, he married the former Emma Lou Davis.
In addition to his wife, Comstock is survived by
two sons, Dr. Gordon Frederick Comstock of
Arcade, N.Y., and Dr. Lloyd Karr Comstock of
Chapel Hill, N.C.; a daughter, Martha Wills
Comstock Williams of Marietta, Ga.; five
grandchildren; one great-granddaughter; two
stepchildren; and two step-grandchildren.

thomas.maugh@latimes.com

"
http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-me-...278.story?track=rss

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Small Town Is a Big City for Taxis
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...07071701086_pf.html By RACHEL D'ORO
The Associated Press
Tuesday, July 17, 2007; 3:12 PM

BETHEL, Alaska -- You won't find a luxury hotel
or concert hall in Bethel, and you probably can't
even get a decent bagel here. But this remote
Alaska town has at least one advantage over New
York City: It may be the nation's taxicab capital.

Situated on the tundra about 400 miles west of
Anchorage, Bethel has 70 taxis for a population
of just 5,900. That's one cab for every 84 people.

That's better even than New York, the ultimate
cab city, where there is one hired vehicle _ such
as a taxi, commuter van or livery car _ for every 149 people.

"It's most likely by far the highest ratio of
taxis per residents in the United States," said
Alfred LaGasse with the Taxicab, Limousine & Paratransit Association.
The main reason for the big fleet of taxis:
Bethel, which is surrounded by thousands of ponds
in a delta plain, is inaccessible by road. People
must fly cars in or bring them in by barge on the
Kuskokwim River _ and that is way too expensive for Bethel's many poor.
"I bought a small Ford Focus and it cost $2,000
to fly it in," said Mark Springer, chairman of
the local transportation commission. "Then of
course, there's the cost of gas, almost $5 a
gallon here. Cabs in Bethel are very, very convenient."

Fewer than half the adults have their own car or
truck. Some families own snowmobiles, but those are good only in winter.
As a result, taxi drivers _ many of them
non-Alaskans, mostly notably Koreans and
Albanians _ have flocked here to fill the gap.
Cabs are seemingly everywhere, squeezing in
passengers who pay $4 to go anywhere in the main
part of town, and $6 to the airport three miles away.

The high number of vehicles for hire was a big
surprise when Wally Baird moved here from
Nebraska two years ago to take a job as city manager.

"In every place I've ever lived and worked you're
lucky to see even one cab," he said.

Gim Jong-ihn, 72, was visiting his hometown in
South Korea when he saw a TV story about the
scores of cabbies working in Bethel. He came here
two years ago to drive a taxi after retiring from
asbestos-removal work in New York.

He may not have realized exactly what he was
getting into: When he arrived in Anchorage, he
naively asked where he could get a Greyhound bus for Bethel.

Bethel is largely a collection of utilitarian
buildings on stilts, simple homes and shacks,
with water and sewer pipes built above ground
because the permafrost below the surface is rock-hard.

But the town serves as a commercial hub for the
vast region, with visitors from 56 largely Eskimo
villages coming here to shop, see their doctor or
do other errands. Visitors arrive by plane
year-round, by snowmobile in winter and by boat in summer.

Bethel also has a sizable number of teachers,
police, medical workers and other professionals
who stay only a few years before moving on. Many don't bother bringing a car.
Often, taxi passengers do not get a cab all to
themselves. As novices soon discover, drivers
make constant stops and passengers pile in.

On a recent shift, driver Jay Saliu delivered
passengers to the hospital, the school and stores.

"OK, Princess, there you go," Saliu, 46, told a
silent young woman as she got out of the cab.
("Her real name is Lucy, but she gets very upset
if you call her that," he told other passengers.
"She wants to be called Princess.")

Among his other fares was 19-year-old Vendella
Evan, a pregnant woman from the village of
Akiachak heading to the hospital for a checkup.
Kwethluk resident John Fisher, 24, got a
30-second ride after buying diapers at a grocery
store. Kevin and Esther Smart of Napakiak were
picking up their daughter's school records.

Because cabs are shared, regulars like Bethel
resident Joanna Simeon know to leave plenty of time for travel.

"Newcomers think they'll just hop in a cab and go
right to work, then it stops 20 times," she said.
"They get to see a lot of Bethel."

Despite the flurry of business, cab drivers say
the constantly rising price of gasoline is
cutting into their earnings. There are other
minuses, steep insurance and dispatcher fees as
well as the high cost of living. Earlier this
year, cab drivers launched an unsuccessful attempt to raise rates by a dollar.
Then there is the unsolved slaying of a cab
driver. In December 41-year-old Joung Ju-young
was shot in the face in what police believe was a
robbery attempt. The nighttime slaying stunned
the town and prompted many cabbies to work only in daylight.

"When you work nights you don't know what kind of
person jumps in," said Saliu, an Albanian from Kicevo, Macedonia.
Overall, though, Bethel suits many, including Gim, just fine.

"I have a job, there is fresh air and not too
many people like in New York," he said.

___

On the Net:

<http://www.cityofbethel.org>http://www.cityofbethel.org

http://www.tlpa.org
&#A9; 2007 The Associated Press

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"Getting acclimated

By Robinson Duffy
rduffy@newsminer.com
Published July 18, 2007

School teachers from across Alaska are in Fairbanks this month
learning about climate change and how to more effectively teach it to their students back home.

A total of 60 teachers are scheduled to participate in this year's Science Teacher Education Program hosted by the Geophysical Institute at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. During the program's two-week sessions, teachers learn from scientists and develop lesson plans together.
"The plan is to have teachers better prepared to teach science," Mary Martin, the program's coordinator said. "This year it's about
scientists teaching about global climate change."

The first session of the program started last week and runs through Friday with 30 teachers participating. Another batch of teachers is scheduled to arrive on campus next week.

Each day during the two-week program, the teachers spend several hours in the morning talking with UAF scientists about the latest research on sea ice, coastal erosion, glaciers, permafrost and
hydrology. On Tuesday, researcher Hajo Eicken was showing the
teachers how to access high-resolution satellite images and aerial photography mosaics of the Arctic.

"This opens the door to a vast amount of data," Eicken told the
teachers as he taught them how to use computer software to view and manipulate the images.

Ken Stenek, who teaches science in Shishmaref, was excited about using the technology with his classes in the small 185-student
school. Stenek said he planned on using the software to help his students compare 40-year-old topographic maps of their Chukchi Sea island home with more recent satellite images. That way, he said, the students can see how much the coast has eroded.

"We can pick a point (on the topographic map) and then flip to a satellite image, which is going to show where the land is now," he said. "We'll measure the distance of the change."

Lesson ideas, like Stenek's, abounded during the conference. During lunch on Tuesday, small groups of teachers huddled together in the conference room of the university's Akasofu Building swapping ideas and lesson plans. One group was discussing how to use global position system data and computer programs such as Google Earth with
traditional paper maps to help third-graders understand latitude and longitude.
Stenek, who teaches older students, said he's been picking up tips from elementary school teachers so he can share them with his
colleagues back home who weren't able to attend.

"I'll be taking back stuff for them that they can use so we can
strengthen the science program in our school," he said.

Bringing teachers together for those types of discussions is one of the reasons the program was created, Martin said.

"There's all kinds of positives when you get people together from different backgrounds," she said. "That's what's the really exciting thing to me."

Besides Shishmaref, there are teachers from Dillingham, Nulato,
Beaver, Anchorage and Fairbanks participating. Stenek said he likes that diversity.

"I think it makes a big difference to get the perspective of
different villages and even from Fairbanks, too," he said.

With the help of curriculum experts from the Alaska Science
Consortium, the teachers have been working on lesson plans of their own based on what they've learned from the UAF researchers. Those lessons will be compiled and made available for download on the
Internet at www.gi.alaska.edu/STEP.

"Eventually there will be hundreds of lessons on the Web site," Martin said.
This is the second year of the STEP program, which is funded by the Alaska Department of Education and Early Development. The current funding will allow the program to continue for one more year. Last year, the focus was on the Earth sciences. The organizers chose to focus on climate change this year to coincide with the International Polar Year, a worldwide effort to conduct intense research on Earth's polar regions.

Contact staff writer Robinson Duffy at 459-7523."
http://newsminer.com/2007/07/18/7970

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http://www.farnorthscience.com/2007/07/18/...-real-climate-wiki/
    <http://www.farnorthscience.com/2007/07/18/...-climate-wiki/>A [Real Climate\ Wiki
Source: National Climate Data Center Want to
frustrate your local climate change deniers and
their pseudo-scientific blather with hard facts
and clever rejoinders? The folks at Real Climate
&#AD; a plain language web site about published by
actual climate scientists &#AD; have launched a wiki
with keyword searches and quick links to
critiques, responses, explanations and [...]

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>Nipping bias in the bud
>By Carla Rivera
>Some preschools are using a special program to teach their students,
>before prejudices take hold, to respect cultural, racial and
>religious diversity.
>http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/eBTez0Mm2NO0G2B0IlBL0El

"Nipping bias in the bud
Some preschools are using a special program to teach their students, before prejudices take hold, to respect cultural, racial and
religious diversity.
By Carla Rivera, Times Staff Writer
July 16, 2007

As soon as Violet Feldman laid eyes on her cousin's short haircut, she wanted one too. The 5-year-old begged her parents to trim her dark-brown locks just like his and once at the salon, she wanted to go shorter and shorter.

She loved her hairdo until the morning she walked into her preschool class at Temple Israel of Hollywood. "You look like a boy!" a few of the children blurted out. Violet was devastated. She couldn't wait for her hair to grow, and made sure to wear a pink headband every day.
It was the kind of painful lesson that many young children endure day in and day out, be it for having darker skin than other classmates, an accent that sounds different or a disability that provokes
taunting. But in Violet's case, teachers confronted the incident head on, speaking with students about understanding and respecting
differences and pointing out that some girls in the class have short hair and some boys have long hair.

Similar lessons on cultural, racial and religious diversity have been incorporated into Temple Israel's curriculum on an ongoing basis as part of the A World of Difference Institute, a program recently
adopted by the school.

Sponsored by the Anti-Defamation League's Miller Early Childhood Initiative, it is one of the few anti-bias programs specifically for preschoolers, drawing on research showing that children begin to perceive differences and attach negative or positive values to them as early as age 3.

Now operating in 14 cities, the program trains teachers in strategies to confront prejudice and uses specially designed materials developed with the characters from "Sesame Street." The goal is to teach
tolerance, respect and inclusion in a way that is geared to young minds.
"We really wanted to focus on building the right foundations," said Lindsay Friedman of A World of Difference Institute. "We know that biases and stereotyping are seeping in even at this age, but this is meant to be a preventive approach, not as much countering negative messages as building positive ones."

The program already has had an effect at Temple Israel, said nursery school principal Sherry Fredman.



"We used to devote the entire month of January to Martin Luther King, but this program has expanded our focus," she said. "We've broadened our curriculum and now it's an everyday part of life."

After Violet's classmates realized that they had hurt her feelings, several apologized to her, and a parent of one of the students who had made a remark wrote her a note.

On another occasion, a parent recalled being mortified when her
daughter pointed to a Latina shopper while at the supermarket and said, "Look, Mom, a nanny," which prompted another classroom
discussion, said Beth Weisman, assistant principal of the nursery school.
The children are developing a growing consciousness of how their behavior can affect others, said teacher Esther Posin. A recent
morning's lesson about the rain forest and nocturnal creatures led to a discussion on what vision loss means.

The children were challenged to use their tactile sense instead of eyesight to guess what fruits were in a covered box, and Posin
demonstrated how a walking stick could be used as an aid.

"Sometimes out in the schoolyard I'll hear, 'teacher Esther said we're not supposed to do this,' " Posin said. "Society is very 'me' centered, and my hope with this program is that they'll start
focusing less on 'me' and more on 'us.' "

The program gives educators the resources to combat prejudice in all forms, but at the fairly homogenous Temple Israel, many of the issues that crop up normally involve gender roles, Weisman said. One boy left a jewelry-making class that he enjoyed because all his other classmates were girls. After getting reassurances from teachers, the boy eventually returned to the class and made a present for his mother.
In the Santa Ana Unified School District, where the program is
operating in 11 schools and community centers as part of the Kinder Readiness Program, 4-year-olds learn about their own heritage and to appreciate others, said readiness coordinator Marjorie Cardenas. Roughly 97% of the students are Latino, with smaller numbers of
Cambodians, whites and blacks.

The center at the Warwick Square Apartments used the arrival of a teacher from Sri Lanka for real-life lessons in intercultural
exchange. Teachers had noticed that the children avoided dolls with Asian or black features. They decided to introduce the dolls to the children as a group and talked about how, although they were
different, they wanted to be loved like the others.

"One of the girls later told me, 'teacher, I'm going to play with her because it looks like she really needs me,' " said Irene Carpio.

"Hopefully, if these kids go to the park with parents and they see an Asian child or an African American child, they're not going to be afraid to approach them," she said.

One of the strongest aspects of the program, Carpio said, is the outreach to parents, who also are encouraged to attend workshops and use the curriculum at home.

Studies have shown that children learn social cues at an early age from their environment, the media, and especially from the behavior and words of caregivers and family members.

About 85% of the brain develops during ages 3 to 5, and impressions formed after age 2 are lasting, said Linda A. Santora of the
Anti-Defamation League. One study found that 50% of children formed racial biases by age 6, she said.

Temple Israel educators said they have become more comfortable
dealing with potentially thorny issues, including a 4-year-old girl who said she wanted to be a boy and told her parents, "I think I made the wrong decision in your tummy," and the father who became
infuriated when his son wanted to put on a princess dress during a play period.
For Cara Gelfand, the Temple Israel program is teaching invaluable lessons to her 4-year-old daughter, Esme.

"Even though our kids are in a somewhat sheltered community, we live in a vibrant city that behooves us to take advantage of that and respect all the differences that make up Los Angeles and the world."
carla.rivera@latimes.com"
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Something new on the horizon

R. BRETT STIRLING
AROUND ALASKA

Published: July 8, 2007
Last Modified: July 8, 2007 at 06:05 AM

TUNUNAK -- As I plodded down the steep trail, Lapland longspurs and snow buntings hopscotched their way from rock to rock before me. Below, my new village stretched out along the narrow spit, sandwiched between the Bering Sea and twisting turn of the river.

It was nearly 9 o'clock in the evening, and the wind had died. The sun had begun its descent toward the horizon. Out amid the shallow waters of our little bay, I spied a strange sight. A shape floated toward shore. It glinted in the sunlight like so much metal.

I trained my binoculars on the shape and found myself even more
confused. It was a boat of some sort, though like nothing I had ever seen. It appeared to have a short, white sail rising from an orange body. I was positive that there wasn't a single boat in the village painted this ostentatious color. As I tried to improve the focus on my binoculars, for a moment I thought I saw someone sitting out in front of the boat paddling.

I packed away the binoculars and quickened my pace down the trail. The boat was making slow progress toward the beach below my house. As I reached my house, the dogs hopped on their houses and let out
hungry yelps. I put off feeding them a bit longer to stand on the sharp bluff near my house and watch the boat reach the shore and the crowd of children and men on four wheels circle the bright orange catamaran.
The next day, while I worked on my shed, the dogs perked up and
started whining. Then the crazy pup, Blue, started barking. When her mother, Ayla, started barking too, I knew someone was walking up the trail beside my house. A pair of men came into view from behind the corner of the house and paused before the dogs.

"You must be the sailors," I hollered.

"Oui," one of the men said as I approached.

As I spoke to these two gentlemen it became clear that nothing about their expedition was ordinary. Sebastien Roubinet, the captain,
designer and builder of the vessel, and Eric Andre are from France, and their trip is intended to take them to the coast of Greenland.
They set sail from Anchorage on May 18. The expedition's goal is to complete the Northwest Passage and arrive on the Greenland coast sometime in October. Sebastien explained, through Eric's
interpretation, that about 25 boats have completed the Northwest Passage in recent years. However, Sebastien designed his boat, the Babouche, without an engine. According to the duo, all previous
completions of the Northwest Passage were done with boats equipped with engines.

The Babouche is designed to ride up onto and, if necessary, sail over large stretches of ice. The pontoons act as sled runners, and the retractable rudders are tipped with skis that allow for steering on ice and snow.

Unfortunately, not everything has gone according to plan. Last week, Sebastien landed the boat in Toksook Bay, my former village. There, his girlfriend, Anne-Lise Vacher-Morazzani, left the boat and Eric began his leg of the journey. They were riding some strong southerly winds Sunday as they rounded Cape Vancouver. There they ran headfirst into choppy waters and pounding waves. The competing forces stressed the ship from both ends and snapped the mast in half, folding it like a straw. When I saw them hobbling their way into the bay, they were rowing and working a makeshift sail.

Thursday, their repairs were complete and the mast ready to be raised anew, thanks in part to the generosity of villagers who provided them a place to work and fast-acting cargo companies that flew in materials.
In the evening, they hauled the boat out of our river and refit the mast as the mud flats quickly grew with the tide. I asked Sebastien why he had decided to make this journey. Eric translated Sebastien's response: "He said this was a way to show people the beauty of the Arctic but also to show how fragile it is." He continued, "Fifty years ago a journey like this wouldn't have been possible."

The implication in his comment was that recent warming trends had opened this route to boats and that soon it could be open to large ships.
The impact of a regular shipping route through the Northwest Passage is one that is just recently being considered. As Babouche sails north, it will pass numerous villages and communities similar to mine: Yup'ik and Inuit communities that still rely heavily on the sea for the wealth of fish and seals and whales it provides. No doubt it is these communities that will feel the effects of these changes first and most seriously.

The breeze shifted as Eric pushed the boat into the outgoing current. Many of the local boats were charging in on powerful outboards,
trying to beat the tide. Eric hopped into the boat, and Sebastien raised the sail. The canvas billowed and filled and the boat cut quickly across the bay. I walked the beach for over an hour, watching the narrow sail recede from view for no other reason than the thought that it would be a long time indeed before I see a lone sail on the horizon.
R. Brett Stirling lives and writes in the village of Tununak on
Nelson Island, about 115 miles west of Bethel.

MORE ON THE BABOUCHE: Follow the expedition via its Web site, which is regularly updated by team members using a satellite phone.

www.babouche-expe.eu

MORE FROM STIRLING: You can read more about R. Brett Stirling's life in Tununak at

alaskatheviewfromuphere. blogspot.com"
http://www.adn.com/life/story/9116093p-9032356c.html

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35 Perspectives on Online Social Networking


Thursday, July 5, 2007; Posted: 5:12 AM - by Malene Charlotte Larsen

There are many different perspectives to put on online social
networking and it is important to know where one is coming from when talking about social networking and youth. The perspective(s) one has will be very different whether one is a parent with a teenage
daughter on MySpace, a marketing executive interested in the target group "14 to 20," a journalist looking for the next big news story on young people and new media, a youngster using a social networking site as part of everyday life or a researcher investigating how young people are using social networking sites.

In this article I try to list the different perspectives I can think of. Mostly, the list is based on my own experiences with Danish
social networking sites for youngsters between the age of 12 and 18.
The following 35 perspectives on online social networking sites can be sorted into different overall categories (or different actors or discourses). As a researcher I certainly do not agree with all of the mentioned perspectives, but some of them do represent the opinions (or prejudices) I hear when I am out giving lectures on social
networking to adults. After my list, I propose six overarching categories.
But first, here are thirty-five perspectives on online social networking:
    1. The consumer perspective
       Social networking sites are money-making machines creating a need for added value among young people causing them to spend all their pocket money on extra features such as VIP profiles, widgets, gifts for friends and so on.
    2. The youth perspective
       Social networking sites are places that help young people be young and let them "practice" youth. Therefore, the sites are mainly a reflection of youth culture.
    3. The friendship perspective
       Social networking sites are places where young people can maintain and nurse their existing (offline) friendships and create new (online) friendships.
    4. The identity perspective
       Social networking sites are spaces for identity construction. Here, young people are continuously constructing, re-constructing and displaying their self-image and identity. Also, the network sites make them co-constructors of each other's identities.
    5. The body and sex perspective
       Social networking sites are sexual playgrounds for young
people where they portray themselves in a provocative or soft
porn-style manner. It is all about appearance and body making the youngsters superficial and shallow.
    6. The paedophile and predator perspective
       Social networking sites are an El Dorado for paedophiles and predators who want to harm young people. The people behind the sites are not in control of safety and do not put enough effort into
keeping predators out of the sites.
    7. The bullying perspective
       Social networking sites are places where young people bully and threaten each other and the sites are reinforcing and urging bullying between young people.
    8. The reassurance perspective
       Social networking sites are forums for reassurance and
confirmatory messages between young people constantly reminding them that they are all right and someone likes them.
    9. The genre perspective
       Social networking sites are places where young people imitate and copy different genres, e.g. fashion magazines, music videos, song lyrics, commercials etc. which can be found in their profile texts. 10. The branding perspective
       Social networking sites are places where young people learn the mechanism of branding and learn to sell and brand themselves in a positive manner.
   11. The network perspective
       Social networking sites are places where young people learn the crucial importance of being able to network which they can
benefit from in their future professional life.
   12. The love perspective
       Social networking sites allow young people to express
themselves in a loving manner, thus creating a space for a love
discourse that do not exist outside cyberspace.
   13. The source critique perspective
       Social networking sites force young people to be sceptical of what they see and read online. They know that people can create faker profiles which make them extra aware of the identity of the people they communicate with.
   14. The sincerity perspective
       Social networking sites make young people present themselves in a sincere manner in order to avoid being mistaken for a faker. This also creates a sincerity discourse among the users and people who do not follow this are disciplined.
   15. The democratic perspective
       Social networking sites are places that allow young people to have a voice in society. Here, they can be heard and express their opinions. 16. The materialistic perspective
       Social networking sites are all about materialism and about having the right brands. Youngsters need to be successful with the right clothes and things in order to be accepted on social networking sites. 17. The language perspective
       Social networking sites aggravate the written language of young people. They develop bad habits of misspelling on purpose, which makes them unable to write correctly. On the other hand, their online language is really creative and they do know how to tell right from wrong.
   18. The public perspective
       Social networking sites are "open diaries" of young people, but they do not think about the fact that the whole world can read their text and see their pictures online.
   19. The surveillance perspective
       Social networking sites are surveillance. Everything young people write online are saved and can be used (against them) by
marketing people, future employers and so on.
   20. The group work perspective
       Social networking sites reinforce group work mechanism and young people often work together on profiles and are often willing to help each other.
   21. The time consuming perspectives
       Social networking sites are places where young people spend way to much time preventing them from performing healthy spare time activities such as sports and outdoor time.
   22. The anti-social perspective
       Social networking sites make young people anti-social and incapable of communication with others face to face. They lose
important social competences.
   23. The social perspective
       Social networking sites make young people more social and help them communicate with others. Especially, the sites help youngsters cope with shyness or loneliness.
   24. The generation-gap perspective
       Social networking sites are creating a greater gap between young people and adults such as their parents and teachers who do not understand the youngsters' need to be online all the time.
   25. The learning perspective
       Social networking sites are places where young people gain important IT competences such as HTML design, layout and graphics. 26. The entertainment perspective
       Social networking sites are places young people use for
entertainment just like any other medium. Here they watch videos, play games, upload pictures, listen to music etc. Thus, for many youngsters social networking sites have replaced the function that the tv set had for previous generations.
   27. The communication tool perspective
       Social networking sites are merely a communication tool for young people and they use the sites similar to how they use their mobile phones. In this connection I can mention that the most
frequent message I have seen displayed in young people's guest books is "Hi, what are you doing?"
   28. The creative perspective
       Social networking sites allow youngsters to be really creative and mix and play with different types of content. My colleague Thomas Ryberg refers to this as 'patchwork' or 'remix' culture in his
upcoming PhD thesis on young people, ICT and learning.
   29. The space and place perspective
       Social networking sites are spaces that allow young people to create their own place(s). And those places are as real and important as the offline places where they meet. Also, young people talk about social networking sites as places referring to them as e.g.. "in here". 30. The Nexus of Practice perspective
       A social networking site could be seen as a 'Nexus of
Practice'. This concept comes from Ron Scollon and it "simultaneously signifies a genre of activity and the group of people who engage in that activity." (Scollon, 2001). People are rather loosely connected in a 'nexus of practice' and I think it is a good metaphor for social networking. (I used the term defining Arto in my thesis.)
   31. The Community of Practice perspective
       Social networking sites are therefore not communities in the original sense of the word. However, they do provide the possibility that young people can join in more closely connected interest groups which in Etienne Wenger's terms could be labelled Communities of Practice (CoP's). Thus, a social networking site could be viewed as a 'Nexus of Practice' with numerous 'CoP's' incorporated.
   32. The collection perspective
       Social networking sites are places for young people's
collection mania. Here they collect friends, guest book messages, picture comments etc. (Thanks to Jette Agerbo for pointing out this perspective on her blog.)
   33. The fun perspective
       Social networking sites are "just for fun". Jette Agerbo also mentions this perspective calling it the 'play perspective'. However, I must say that I do not include the more game or play oriented
websites (like Habbo Hotel or Netstationen) in my definition of
social networking sites. But of course some youngsters could be using a social networking site as a way of playing or just having fun.
   34. The technological perspective
       Social networking sites are part of the Web 2.0 and social software technology generation in which case focus on the
technological possibilities is predominant.
   35. The hardcore business perspective
       Social networking sites are hardcore business for the big corporations behind the sites (like Fox). I don't think I quite
covered that perspective in my last list mentioning the consumer perspective.
I have touched upon many of these perspectives during my research, but some of the views are still to be explored. However, I must say that I certainly do not agree with all of the mentioned perspectives, but some of them do represent the opinions (or prejudices) I hear when I am out giving lectures to adults.

Different Categories

It is important to know that all of these different perspectives belong to different overall categories (or different actors or
discourses). Based on my - currently 35 - different perspectives I propose the following six overarching categories:

Research perspectives

It this category we find e.g. the identity perspective, the youth perspective, the language perspective, the genre perspective, the materialistic perspective, the learning perspective, the creative perspective, the Community of Practice perspective and so on. All of those perspectives could (and should) be a way of researching online social networking and youth. (I am on it :))

User perspectives

In this category we find the point-of-view from the users of social networking, e.g. the social perspective, the friendship perspective, the democratic perspective, the love perspective, the reassurance perspective, the sincerity perspective, the public perspective etc. Those perspectives could also be viewed as different motives that the users have for using social networking sites.

Professional or learning perspectives

To this category belongs the perspectives that consider the learning possibilities of social networking or see how it can be used in a (future) professional life. We have here the network perspective, the group work perspective, the source critique perspective, the
technological perspective, the creative perspective, the Community of Practice perspective and more.

Adult or parents perspectives

In this category we have the voices from the worried parents or other adults who have a hard time understanding why the youngsters spend so much time in front of the screen. This is for example the
time-consuming perspective, the anti-social perspective, the
generation gap perspective, the language perspective, the consumer perspective, the public perspective etc.

Moral panic or news media perspectives

Some perspectives emerge out of a public concern or a news media discourse where creating selling headlines comes into play. Thus, we have in this category the paedophile and predator perspective, the bullying perspective, the sex perspective, the network perspective, the youth perspective, the public perspective and so on.

Marketing perspectives

In this category we find the marketing or business perspectives such as the consumer perspective, the materialistic perspective, the
branding perspective, the surveillance perspective and the hardcore business perspective.

Conclusion
As can be seen from the above, some of the perspectives will fit into more than one category and could be taken up by several actors. But I do think it is important to know where one is coming from when
talking about online social networking and youth. In any case,
mapping out the different perspectives has been a good exercise for me as a researcher.

Can anyone think of other perspectives?

Also, check out my colleague Anders Albrechtslund's 21 perspectives on surveillance.
 
Reader Feedback - 13 Replies

Online/Offline blur
by Allan B. @ 07/07/07, 11:44:36 AM

On-line is as much like off-line these days for the majority of these perspectives. Cliques and clubs in schools for youths or even clubs and organizations for adults feed the majority of the needs expressed here for people. My personal perspective is that the on-line world of communities are an incredible mess as compared with off-line.
Consider all the fraud with fake ID's on-line, duplicate ID's, bots, and dead ID's for accounts that aren't active anymore.
Gaming Perspective
by Allan B. @ 07/07/07, 11:48:19 AM

There are a lot of gaming communities now, not just as forums, but in MMORPG type games where people log on just for the sake of having a virtual world to play in. World of Warcraft, City of Heroes, Second Life, etc... social networking with an emphasis on gaming and living a fantasy. Human Kind's Next Evolutionary Advantage
by Nathan R. @ 07/07/07, 02:16:08 PM

Being a social network member and college student with probably a more technological-than-average view of social networking sites (I hate the poor way that Myspace is set up, but I use it to
communicate. Likewise I love the way Facebook is done), I've noticed that my favorite social networking websites attempt to create a
"mirror" of the real world. That is, they use the tools of a dynamic, web2.0 internet to gather as much information about the real world as possible, and then mirror that information online in a virtual social world. Except that in this virtual world, that information can be combined, indexed, and remixed in ways that it never could be in the physical world. Thus the mirror world that exists on a social
networking website is an augmented, extended version of it's
real-world counterpart with incredible possibilities. I see social networking sites as something much larger than just a money-making scheme. The augmented mirror of reality that they create contains amazing potential as a tool for humanity as a whole, not just the individual. It may sound over-romantic and idealist, but consider the following: We as Homo Sapiens have effectively ended our own
evolution. Our last major evolutionary step was probably the most significant in the history of life on Earth- technology. With this advantage, we triumph over all other species and occasionally even over mother nature. We no longer need to evolve in the traditional sense, medical technology usually makes the process of natural
selection moot. But we can't and won't stop here. We still have a huge threat against our species- ourselves. And I believe that
technology is replacing the process of evolution. Every year our species is still more advanced than it was the year before,
technology advances much faster than traditional evolution. That said, I view social networking sites as the embryonic stage of the first truly significant technological contribution to human
evolution. Think of it this way: What if you had the ability to not only know what was going on in your immediate surroundings, but also know what was going on anywhere else that humanity had touched? What if you not only wanted to have a chat with the person next to you, but also have a chat with your friend on the other side of the Earth? What if you wanted to see the world through their eyes? You can't really do that right now. You can pretend to with things like instant messaging, or webcams, or the phone. But those are just bits and pieces. Social networking combines all those "feelers" and then
attaches them to it's dynamically-updated mirror-world. And it almost works. But it's not seamless, because it's in it's baby stage right now. I believe that once it matures, social networking may not be done by competing websites. It may be an open, global standard. It may not be limited to web browsers and mobile phones. It may be built into your body, inexpensively. I believe that when social networking evolves, it means that human beings won't be limited in knowledge to what exists in their own heads- they'll have access to a hive mind of knowledge that exists between the social network of all of humanity. That's the first major contribution that technology will give to evolution, and that's when social networking will truly have evolved. What it is right now is just a developing form of that. Oh and I know it sounds like I'm talking about the borg or something, and of course as with all new frontier and technologies it has amazing potential for abuse of all sorts. We're humans. As a whole we're terrified of new things. But I think it will happen either way and we'll find ways to deal with those issues, and I'd say it would inevitably do much more good than harm even from the start. Communication creates peace, and open, public communication creates peace even better. This would be open communication at it's highest form- open communication
between the entire world. Wars break out and humans divide when the tribe becomes to large to support a stable community. An advancement like this may just make that tribe-size large enough to support all of humanity, as a whole. So number 36 on your list: Human Kind's Next Evolutionary Advantage."
http://www.socialcomputingmagazine.com/viewcolumn.cfm?colid=432

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"Logged to death
5:00AM Saturday July 14, 2007
By Dev Nadkarni
Honiara has patches of green but indiscriminate logging could make this a rarity. Photo / Dev Nadkarni

Honiara has patches of green but indiscriminate logging could make this a rarity. Photo / Dev Nadkarni

As it enters its 30th year of independence this month, the Solomon Islands finds itself on the brink of a twin disaster. In those three decades, its economy has overwhelmingly depended on just one rapidly disappearing natural resource - timber - which successive governments have failed to manage well, jeopardising the country's environmental health and economic wealth.

Estimates of how much tree cover is left vary, but the general
agreement from most international environment groups is that the archipelago will be rendered almost completely treeless in the next five to six years. Moses Rohana, project manager for Environmental Concerns Action Network of Solomon Islands, fears commercial forestry will end as early as 2010.

The International Monetary Fund warned that at current felling rates, the natural forests will be depleted much sooner than envisaged.

Rick Houenipwela, governor of the Central Bank of the Solomon
Islands, is clearly worried. "The extraction rate is faster than before. We will get to the other end of the forest much before our earlier estimates," he says.

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Despite these loud alarm bells, the country's logging industry is growing at a rate of as much as 12 per cent, according to some
estimates. Against a computed sustainable rate of a quarter-million tons a year, more than four times that volume - more than a million tons - was felled last year.

Perversely, that growth rate makes the Solomon Islands the
fastest-growing economy in the Pacific Islands region at an
impressive 6 per cent. But it is fated to be shortlived, as the main resource propelling it disappears in the next few years.

Over the years, sustainable forestation initiatives have consistently failed to catch up with this indiscriminate rate of felling, and most replanting projects, except for a handful in the country's western province, have been all but abandoned.

Even worse is the failure of successive governments to maximise the value of this fast dwindling resource for the benefit of the economy. In the past two to three years, log prices in the international
markets have increased considerably, according to the Central Bank's annual report. But the benefits of that hike have not trickled down to the economy.

Finance Minister Gordon Darcy Lilo attributes that to the country's failure to invest adequately in downstream processing facilities, thereby missing the opportunity of exporting value-added products that fetch higher prices in the developed world.

Most of the country's raw round logs head for low-yield markets like China and India, where the demand for timber is growing
exponentially, fuelled by the near double-digit growth in their
economies over the past decade.

Houenipwela believes other forces are at play. "There are many
companies operating but I have a gut feeling they are all owned by a few individuals," he says. "I think they are all selling and dealing among themselves."

Lilo denies any cartelisation within the industry but over the years, there have been widespread accusations that local and national
politicians have been in bed with the loggers, giving them a free run over the runaway rate of felling and pricing.

"Instead of ten dollars, the locals get a dollar. For the government, instead of 100 dollars what accrues is just 5 dollars," says Houenipwela.
Lilo agrees the "determined prices" - government parlance for the price of logs on which export duties are calculated - have been low for years, and blames previous regimes. The IMF asked his Government to raise the determined price immediately.

In 2005, the country exported S$510 million worth of forestry
product. Last year's figure is projected to be higher and that's not necessarily because of increased logging activities, says Darcy. "We have increased the value of logs for calculation of duties and cut back on the generous tax breaks given by previous administrations," he adds.
All these measures are too little too late as the present Government seems to realise. It is looking at alternatives to logging more
seriously than any government before and has decided to concentrate on its next biggest sectors, farming and tuna fisheries.

Unlike other Pacific Island countries, it has never concentrated on tourism and receives the lowest per capita tourist numbers in the region. Fewer than 4000 people arrived in 2005, mostly from
Australia. But regional aviation links, tourism infrastructure and inter-island transportation facilities being what they are, the
Government is realistic in favouring other sectors over tourism as a fallback against logging's impending demise.

This same myopia of not investing in downstream processing facilities has plagued its tuna fisheries as well.

Situated in probably the most tuna-rich zone of the Pacific, the Solomons has no processing facility to speak of and depends almost exclusively on access fees it receives from distant countries fishing in its waters.

Unfortunately, those access fees too have been poorly negotiated. And poor policing has considerably increased illegal trawling. "We got S$48 million last year, which is one of the best collections for any year since independence. But even $48 million is peanuts," says Lilo.
The Government has an uphill task putting in place alternatives to prevent its primarily timber-based economy from grinding to a halt in the next few years. And it has no clue as to how it will meet the immense ecological cost as it gets ever closer to felling its last tree." http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/2/story....tid=10451393&pnum=0

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http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/-/2/hi/science/nature/6896753.stm

"Butterfly shows evolution at work
A male Hypolimnas bolina, or blue moon, butterfly
The bacteria selectively kills male blue moons before they can hatch Scientists say they have seen one of the fastest evolutionary changes ever observed in a species of butterfly.

The tropical blue moon butterfly has developed a way of fighting back against parasitic bacteria.

Six years ago, males accounted for just 1% of the blue moon
population on two islands in the South Pacific.

But by last year, the butterflies had evolved a gene to keep the bacteria in check and male numbers were up to about 40% of the population.
Scientists believe the comeback is due to "suppressor" genes that control the Wolbachia bacteria that is passed down from the mother and kills the male embryos before they hatch.

"To my knowledge, this is the fastest evolutionary change that has ever been observed," said Sylvain Charlat, of University College London, UK, whose study appears in the journal Science.

Rapid natural selection

Gregory Hurst, a University College researcher who worked with Mr Charlat, added: "We usually think of natural selection as acting slowly, over hundreds of thousands of years.

"But the example in this study happened in the blink of the eye, in terms of evolutionary time, and is a remarkable thing to get to observe."
The team first documented the massive imbalance in the sex ratio of the blue moon butterfly (Hypolimnas bolina) on the Samoan islands of Savaii and Upolu in 2001.

In 2006, they started a new survey after an increase in reports of male sightings at Upolo.

They found that the numbers of male butterflies had either reached or were approaching those of females.

The researchers are not sure whether the gene that suppressed the parasite emerged from a mutation in the local population or whether it was introduced by migratory Southeast Asian butterflies in which the mutation already existed.

But they said that the repopulation of male butterflies illustrates rapid natural selection, a process in which traits that help a
species survive become more prominent in a population.

"We're witnessing an evolutionary arms race between the parasite and the host. This strengthens the view that parasites can be major
drivers in evolution," Mr Charlat said.
"
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6896753.stm

"Thousands of rubber ducks to land on British shores after 15 year journey By BEN CLERKIN - More by this author &#BB; Last
updated at 22:00pm on 27th June 2007

Comments Comments (11)
They were toys destined only to bob up and down
in nothing bigger than a child's bath - but so
far they have floated halfway around the world.

The armada of 29,000 plastic yellow ducks, blue
turtles and green frogs broke free from a cargo ship 15 years ago.
Since then they have travelled 17,000 miles,
floating over the site where the Titanic sank,
landing in Hawaii and even spending years frozen in an Arctic ice pack.
And now they are heading straight for Britain. At
some point this summer they are expected to be
spotted on beaches in South-West England.

While the ducks are undoubtedly a loss to the
bath-time fun of thousands of children, their
adventures at sea have proved an innvaluable aid to science.

Scroll down for more
rubber ducks

The toys have helped researchers to chart the
great ocean currents because when they are
spotted bobbing on the waves they are much more
likely to be reported to the authorities than the
floats which scientists normally use.

And because the toys are made of durable plastic
and are sealed watertight, they have been able to
survive years adrift at the mercy of the elements.

Boxes of the bathtime toys - made in China for
the U.S. firm The First Years Inc - were washed
overboard in the eastern Pacific Ocean one stormy
January night in 1992 and broke open.

In the intervening time an oceanographer, Curtis
Ebbesmeyer, has devoted his retirement to
tracking the little yellow ducks and their
friends over 17,000 miles, and it is he who has
predicted that this summer they will land in the

West of England. Mr Ebbesmeyer said: 'We're
getting reports of ducks being washed up on America's eastern seaboard.
"It is now inevitable that they will get caught
up in the Atlantic currents and will turn up on English beaches.

"Cornwall and the South-West will probably get the first wave of them."
Curtis Ebbesmeyer

Curtis Ebbesmeyer has been tracking the floating
plastic ducks around the world's oceans

Mr Ebbesmeyer said the toys will be easy for
British beachboardcombers to spot because they
have largely faded to white and have the words
"The First Years" stamped upon them.

George Bush Snr was still US President when the
toys from The First Years Inc. were made in
China, packed into a container and put on a ship for the US.

But after falling overboard, the sea water
corroded the card-packaging and the toys floated
free. They circled the northern Pacific once
before being washed up on the Alaskan shore, then
all down the West coast of Canada and the US.

Mr Ebbesmeyer saw immediately how valuable the
little toys would be to scientific research of
the great ocean currents, the engine of the planet's entire climate.
He correctly predicted what many thought was
impossible - that thousands of them would end up
washed into the Arctic ice near Alaska, and then
move at a mile a day, frozen in the pack ice,
around their very own North-West Passage to the Atlantic.

It proved true years later and in 2003, the first
"Friendly Floatees" were found, frozen and then
thawed out, on the eastern seaboard of the U.S. and Canada.

So precious to science are they that the US firm
that made them is offering a &#A3;50 bounty for finding one.

THE JOURNEY SO FAR:

10 JANUARY 1992: Somewhere in the middle of the
Pacific Ocean nearly 29,000 First Years bath
toys, including bright yellow rubber ducks, are
spilled from a cargo ship in the Pacific Ocean.

16 NOVEMBER 1992: Caught in the Subpolar Gyre
(counter-clockwise ocean current in the Bering
Sea, between Alaska and Siberia), the ducks take
10 months to begin landing on the shores of Alaska.

EARLY 1995: The ducks take three years to circle
around. East from the drop site to Alaska, then
west and south to Japan before turning back north
and east passing the original drop site and again
landing in North America. Some ducks are even
found In Hawaii. The National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) worked out that
the ducks travel approximately 50 per pent faster
than the water in the current.

1995 - 2000: Some intrepid ducks escape the
Subpolar Gyre and head North, through the Bering
Straight and into the frozen waters of the
Arctic. Frozen into the ice the ducks travel
slowly across the pole, moving ever eastward.

2000: Ducks begin reaching the North Atlantic
where they begin to thaw and move Southward. Soon
ducks are sighted bobbing in the waves from Maine to Massachusetts.
2001: Ducks are tracked in the area where the Titanic sank.

JULY TO DECEMBER 2003: The First Years company
offers a $100 savings bond reward for the
recovery of wayward ducks from the 1992 spill. To
be valid ducks must be sent to the company and
must be found in New England, Canada or Iceland.
Britain is told to prepare for an invasion of the wayward ducks as well.
2003: A lawyer called Sonali Naik was on holiday
in the Hebrides in north-west Scotland when she
found a faded green frog on the beach marked with
the magic words 'The First Years'. Unaware of the
significance of her find she left it on the
beach. It was only when she was chatting to other
guests at her hotel that she realised what she had seen."
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/arti...768&in_page_id=1770

"`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
   Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
   And the mome raths outgrabe."
http://www.jabberwocky.com/carroll/jabber/jabberwocky.html

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http://timpanogos.wordpress.com/2007/06/29...t-worlds-caddoland/

<http://timpanogos.wordpress.com/2007/06/29...-caddoland/>Maps of lost worlds: Caddoland

(Click on thumbnail for a larger view of this Caddoland Collage)

Caddos, Anadarkoes, Tawaconies, Southern
Delawares &#AD; so many Native American tribes
disappear from U.S. history books, and from U.S.
history. These histories should be better preserved and better taught.
Texas history texts mention the Caddo Tribe, but
largely ignore what must have been a significant
cultural empire, if not an empire that left large
stone monuments. Teaching this material in Texas
history classes frustrates me, and probably
others. Student projects on the Caddos are
frequently limited in what they cover, generally
come up with the same three or four factoids and illustrations.

The Caddo Tribe lived in an area spanning five
modern states, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas,
Oklahoma, and eventually Missouri. Here is an
interactive map that offers more information and
useful photos of Caddoland than I have found in
any other source:
<http://www.texasbeyondhistory.net/tejas/map/arch.html>The Caddo Map Tool.
This is just an image of the tool &#AD; click on the
image above and it will link to the actual site.
One of the things that excites me about this map
is its interactive features, especially the map
that carries links to photos that show just what
the local environment looks like.

The best part is that this just a small part of a
project at the
<http://www.texasbeyondhistory.net/index.html>University
of Texas\s College of Liberal Arts called ]Texas
Beyond History: The Virtual Museum of Texas\ Cultural Heritage^.
The on-line display for Caddo history includes
<http://www.texasbeyondhistory.net/nasoni/wpa.html>information
from Works Progress Administration (WPA) digs of
a Caddo settlement known as Upper Nasoni,
conducted during the Great Depression. For
example, from a museum in Seville, Spain, the UT educators pull this map: <http://www.texasbeyondhistory.net/nasoni/index.html>;
<http://www.texasbeyondhistory.net/nasoni/index.html>Caption
from the Texas Beyond History
site<http://www.texasbeyondhistory.net/nasoni/index.html>;:
The Upper Nasoni settlement on the Red River,
based on Teran\s 1691-1692 expedition. The map,
drawn by an unknown member of the expedition, is
the earliest known cartographic depiction of a
Native American community in Texas. Original map
in the Archivo General de Indias, Seville.

These are small parts of a much grander exhibit
of Caddo history and culture,
<http://www.texasbeyondhistory.net/tejas/te...x.html>including downloadable lesson plans; similar treatments are
given to other tribes and other geography in
Texas. This is a rich, rich site. For economics,
here are great examples of traditional economies;
for geography, here are outstanding examples of
how real geographers use maps, with examples
specific to Texas for Texas history, and examples
useful to show how geographers work in other
parts of the world that Texas kids can visualize;
for history, here are dozens of warm-ups, lesson
plan suggestions, lecture images and
possibilities for student projects from academically solid, on-line sources.
So, while you\re checking out Caddoland, be sure
also to look at these displays:
<http://www.texasbeyondhistory.net/villager....html>Hank\s House, a burned pit house from the 1300s, found
in the Texas Panhandle;
<http://www.texasbeyondhistory.net/villagers/index.html>Plains
Villagers of the Texas Panhandle;
<http://www.texasbeyondhistory.net/forts/index.html>Frontier
Forts;
<http://www.texasbeyondhistory.net/theme/tools/index.html>etc.,
<http://www.texasbeyondhistory.net/adaes/index.html>etc.,
<http://www.texasbeyondhistory.net/adaes/maps.html>etc.

Also, be sure to read
<http://www.texasbeyondhistory.net/images/T...t-online.pdf>the February 2007 plea for donations, which explains
some of the hopes and dreams of the site\s
creators. Four months later, we can already see
some of the results, and it\s spectacular.

Foundation administrators? Are you paying attention?

These tools should work well in a classroom with
a live link to the internet; the possibilities
for lesson plans are enormous and titillating. Have fun.

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http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/aboriginals/

    <http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/aboriginals/>CBC
News In Depth: Aboriginal Canadians
News and feature stories about Canada's
aboriginal population of Indians, M&#E9;tis, and
Inuit, which "is about 1.5 million people,
spanning the nation and bordering three oceans."
Topics include aboriginal history, land claims,
leaders, residential schools, aboriginal people
and the Canadian military, and more. Includes a
FAQ on aboriginal Canadians, photos, and
statistics. From the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC).

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http://scifun.chem.wisc.edu/chemweek/fireworks/fireworks.htm

    <http://scifun.chem.wisc.edu/chemweek/firew...rks.htm>Chemical of the Week: Fireworks
This explanation of the chemistry of fireworks discusses the
compounds that produce specific colors of fireworks, the production and ignition of fireworks, the reactions (oxidations and reductions) that cause the explosions, fireworks safety, and the origins of
gunpowder. From a chemistry professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
from
<http://lii.org/>Librarians' Internet Index: New This Week
New and newly-discovered Web sites for librarians and everyone else, updated every Thursday morning. See more resources on our site,
http://lii.org/.

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"Got discipline?
In a free-speech ruling, Justice Thomas misstates the purpose of education. By Jonathan Zimmerman, JONATHAN ZIMMERMAN wrote
"Innocents Abroad: American Teachers in the American Century."
June 28, 2007

WHAT ARE schools for?

For the last decade, I've taught a history course
with that title at New York University. My
students and I examine the different purposes
that Americans have assigned to public schools, including:

A. to teach the great humanistic traditions of the West;

B. to develop the individual interests of the child;

C. to promote social justice;

D. to prepare efficient workers.

Over the last four centuries, Americans have
struggled to balance these goals a and many
others a in their schools. To Supreme Court
Justice Clarence Thomas, however, there's only one right answer:

E. to instill discipline and obedience

That's what Thomas wrote this week in his strange
concurring opinion in Morse vs. Frederick, better
known as the "BONG HiTS 4 JESUS" case. A banner
with those words was unfurled by senior Joseph
Frederick outside his Alaska high school, and he was suspended.

Ruling 5 to 4 in favor of the principal who
censored the banner, the court decided that the
school's interest in discouraging drug use
outweighed the student's free-speech rights. But
Thomas went further, insisting that the student
had no right to free speech in the first place
and that the history of American education proves it.

He's wrong. Simply put, the accurate history in
Thomas' opinion is not relevant. And the relevant
history that he recounts is not accurate.

Let's start with what he got right. As he
correctly asserts, America's first schools
primarily promoted discipline. "Early public
schools were not places for freewheeling debates
or exploration of competing ideas," Thomas wrote.
The mostly male teaching force in the early 1800s
brooked little or no dissent, often whipping
children who challenged adult authority.

True enough. But so what? Here's the part that
Thomas leaves out. From the very birth of the
common school system in the 1830s, the strict
discipline that he celebrates came under fire
from a host of different Americans. The most
prominent champion of common schools, Horace
Mann, warned teachers against excessive force and
the suppression of students' natural inclinations.

That's one reason Mann and his generation backed
the hiring of female teachers, who were seen as
more kind, tolerant and nurturing. (The other
reason was that schools could pay them less.) By
1900, roughly three-quarters of American teachers were women.

The early 20th century would bring another burst
of change to American schools, centered on the
question of democracy. To reformers like John
Dewey, schools based on strict discipline a and
its pedagogical companion, rote memorization a
could never give citizens the skills they needed
to govern themselves. Instead of fostering
mindless obedience, then, schools needed to teach
children how to make up their own minds a that
is, how to reason, deliberate and rule on complex political questions.
To be sure, plenty of Americans still wanted
teachers to bring the kids to heel. And it's fair
to ask whether schools today promote the kind of inquiry that Dewey envisioned.
The point is not that Dewey was "right" or that
everyone agreed with him. Rather, history teaches
us that Americans have always disagreed on the proper goal for schools.
None of this debate appears in Thomas' opinion,
which gets cut off just when things get
interesting. To Thomas, American educational
history seems to end at the start. Our first
schools aimed to instill discipline, he wrote, so
that's what schools should do.

Worse, Thomas assumes that the schools succeeded
in this task. "Teachers commanded," he wrote,
"and students obeyed." But this command melted
away in recent years, Thomas claims, when courts
invented specious student rights a and
"undermined the traditional authority of teachers
to maintain order in the public schools."

Here's the part of Thomas' opinion that would be
relevant a if it were true. But it's not. Yes,
teachers tried to establish strict order and
discipline in early American schools. As often as not, however, they failed.
Consider the 1833 memoir of Warren Burton, a New
Hampshire minister. When faced with a
particularly cruel teacher, Burton writes, his
classmates revolted. They tackled the teacher,
carried him outside and threw him down an icy hillside.

The theme appears in other memoirs and especially
in fiction from the 19th century, which depicts
unruly students a usually boys a challenging or
mocking teacher authority. Think of Tom Sawyer
lowering a cat by a string to snatch his bald
teacher's wig. Such stories resonated with
Americans because they understood a in ways
Thomas does not a the chaos and violence that pervaded so many public schools.
So Thomas can spare us the nostalgia. Our schools
were never the paragons of discipline he
imagines. And pretending otherwise simply diverts
us from the big question, which will never have a single answer:

What are schools for?"
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-...nion&track=ntottext

Just as people must share seal meat and oil to
maintain physical and social well-being, so, too,
must they share knowledge--so that their minds will not rot.
For Your Information, Teachers, et al.
http://www.quicktopic.com/26/H/7sSUC5pTZDRNV
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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http://www.cbc.ca/canada/north/story/2007/06/27/nu-gradrates.html
    <http://www.cbc.ca/canada/north/story/2007/...=rss>One-quarter of Nunavut students finish high school, stats suggest
Roughly one in every four students who entered Nunavut's high school system went on to graduate in 2004, 2005 and 2006, show statistics just released by the Education Department.


Roughly one in four students who entered Nunavut's high school system went on to graduate in 2004, 2005 and 2006, says the territory's Education Department.

Since 2001, less than half of students starting Grade 12 graduated at year's end, newly released statistics show.

Deputy Education Minister Kathy Ookpik said her department is working on making Nunavut's academic curriculum more appealing to students, partly by introducing some trades programs.

"They want to see other options besides just academics, so we're looking at different types of components," Ookpik told CBC News.

"For example, trades, pre-trades, innovation technology, arts and crafts. We're looking at culture, and language and entrepreneurship."
Ookpik said her department also wants to improve mature education programs for returning students.

Nunavut has long been dealing with one of the lowest graduation rates in Canada. In 2001, only one-quarter of students graduated from high school.

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http://www.boingboing.net/2007/06/26/crustaceans_chewing_.html

    <http://www.boingboing.net/2007/06/26/crust...html>Crustaceans chewing up Japanese island
David Pescovitz: At left is a photo taken between 1955 and 1965 of Hoboro Island off the coast of Hiroshima. At right is a recent photo of the same island. Hoboro Island is quickly being eaten away by isopod crustaceans digging into the rock to deposit eggs.

 From MSN-Mainichi Daily News:
"It's rare, even on a global scale, to hear of biological erosion that has proceeded on such a large scale and at such a rapid pace as to alter the landscape of an island," said Yuji Okimura, an emeritus professor at Hiroshima University.

According to land records of Hoboro Island compiled in 1928, the island was 120 meters long, and its highest point stood 21.9 meters above sea level. In a photo taken between about 1955 and 1965, the island had two rocky peaks, and vegetation was growing on the highest of the peaks.

<http://mdn.mainichi-msn.co.jp/national/new...15000c.html>Link (Thanks, <http://www.saffo.com/>Paul Saffo!)

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"Rally isn't enough to save Ohio college
Thousands show support at Antioch, a liberal arts
school beset by financial woes and ebbing
enrollment. But it will still close in '08.
By P.J. Huffstutter, Times Staff Writer
June 23, 2007

YELLOW SPRINGS, OHIO a It was perhaps the last
great protest at Antioch College.

The call to arms came last week, when Antioch
College's board of trustees announced that the
school a emblematic of the '60s counterculture
and the Civil Rights and anti-Vietnam War
movements a had run out of money and would close in July 2008.
The news came as a shock to students, local
residents and alumni a who descended upon this
village Friday with one goal: to fight "them" and save their alma mater.
The closure of Antioch College is seen as more
than the end of a university a it is another sign
of the passing of an era when the search for
knowledge brought greater rewards than a degree,
a job and a comfortable place in suburban society.

So the Antioch faithful came by the hundreds,
from across town and throughout the nation. Some
wore anti-Vietnam War T-shirts, others crisp
linen suits. But all shared a connection to the
liberal arts institution founded in the heat of
the abolitionist era, in a place that was one of
the final stops on the Underground Railroad.

"It breaks my heart," said Ralph Keyes, 62, a
local resident who met his wife here on their
first day of school in 1962. "It wasn't just a college. It was a cause."
On Friday morning, trustees and college
administrators tried to explain what went wrong
to an auditorium packed with more than 600
people, many of whom hissed and jeered as college
President Steven Lawry outlined the problems, and
how the school had come to rely almost completely
on student tuition to cover operating costs.

Ever since a student-driven strike divided the
campus in the 1970s, at one point closing the
school for six weeks, enrollment has steadily
declined from its peak of more than 2,000.

Now, only a few hundred undergraduates are
willing to pay $35,400 a year for tuition, room
and board to attend this laboratory for American
liberal education, where verbal assessment a not
grades a is a measure of academic performance.

The school's current endowment of $35 million is
also lackluster. Denison University in Granville,
Ohio, lists its endowment as $545 million; the
endowment at Earlham College in Richmond, Ind., is $279 million.

While there is a long list of famous alumni,
including Coretta Scott King and "Twilight Zone"
creator Rod Serling, the school became known for
educating artists, activists and nonprofit
organizers instead of wealthy business leaders.

It's not enough. The school will finish the
2007-08 academic year, officials said, and then close.

Closing "was the only answer we could find," said
Arthur J. Zucker, chairman of the Antioch
University Board of Trustees. (Antioch University
is the larger organization that, among other
things, encompasses the undergraduate college and
five satellite campuses, including two in California.)

"Some trustees have taken out mortgages on their
homes to keep the college going in the past,"
Zucker said. "This wasn't a matter of a couple
million dollars. This was a matter of needing $30
million to $50 million to save the school."

Such explanations, however, were met with
derision and eye-rolling from protesters.

Time and again, the crowd expressed how they were
shocked that Antioch, whose mantra has long been
to rally support for making the world a better
place, did not rally to save itself.

Some spoke about their willingness to help close
the financial gap, and how their efforts to help had been fruitless.
"Why is it when you call the alumni office, no
one answers the phone? The phones roll you to an
answering system that's not configured correctly"
to allow callers to leave a message, said
Michael-David BenDor, 62, a 1967 graduate who
lives in Ypsilanti, Mich. "How are we supposed to
give money if the phones don't even work?"

The Antioch College of today is a pale shadow of
the institution that took risks that many others did not dare.

Founded in 1852, it was one of the nation's first
coeducational colleges. It was the first to name a woman as a full professor.
And, although slavery was legal less than 100
miles to the south, it was one of the first to
eliminate race as an admission requirement.

By the 1960s, the school a as well as the town of
Yellow Springs a had evolved into a haven for
radical thinkers and social reformists,
surrounded by the cornfields of conservative southwestern Ohio.

But today, the exteriors of many of the school's
structures, including the main building that
housed Friday's meeting, have chunks of brick
missing. The bricks have simply crumbled after
years of harsh weather and neglect.

Some of the sewage pipes are in need of repair.
Several buildings don't have running hot water.
Lawns in front of the residence halls, once
lushly green and neatly mown, have become fields
of dirt and dead wildflowers. At least one of the
residence halls has dozens of empty rooms.

Last academic year, nearly 400 undergraduate students were enrolled.
When students who were accepted for admission but
choose to attend other schools were asked why,
Lawry said, the top reason was the shabby condition of the school's facilities.
Having a tiny staff doesn't help. Finances have
kept the school's classroom faculty to 40, and
there is only one professor per subject matter a
one person charged with teaching history, one for
instructing about literature, one for lecturing on psychology.

And Antioch faces fierce competition,
administrators say, as other colleges have
adopted the same educational approach a such as
cooperative learning and pass-fail coursework a
that once made this campus unique.

Antioch enrollment's downward trend comes in
sharp contrast to the national increase of
student applicants and attendees at small private
colleges, said C. Todd Jones, president of the
Assn. of Independent Colleges and Universities of Ohio.

"It becomes a domino effect. You need students
and you need a wealthy pool of alumni, because
the lifeblood of independent colleges is tuition and endowments," Jones said.
"Without those, you're stuck in a dangerous spiral."

Antioch's golden age endures in Yellow Springs, a
village of 3,600 located about 19 miles northeast of Dayton.

The closure will be a painful blow here. Many
residents attended the college, and the
university is the town's largest employer. Its
taxes make up 40% of Yellow Springs' general
fund, said Village Manager Eric Swanson.
"Everyone knew that the school was in trouble, so
this didn't come as a huge surprise," Swanson
said. "But when it closes, that's going to mean
about 130 jobs lost here. And that's a lot for a village our size to lose."
School officials are hoping to retrench and raise
enough money to reopen the campus in 2012. It's
not an impossible dream: The board has closed and
reopened the school three times in the past,
mostly because of financial issues.

However, administrators acknowledge they may face
a difficult chore in luring new students a and
persuading current ones to stay through next year.

Mandela Freiberg, 20, won't return. The junior,
who has been working toward a dual degree in
psychology and education, is spending the
semester teaching English to rural families and athletes in Tanzania.
"Last weekend, a friend of mine sent me an e-mail
asking, 'What are you going to do, now that
Antioch is closing?' My heart dropped," Freiberg said.

"I got through to my parents and a professor, and
realized it wasn't a horrible joke. I was shocked."

Freiberg said she planned to take the next
semester off, and transfer to another school in
the spring. "It's incredibly scary," Freiberg
said. "I can't believe they let us down like this."

--

p.j.huffstutter@latimes.com

--

(INFOBOX BELOW)

Some well-known alumni of Antioch College

_ Lawrence Block: novelist

_ Olympia Brown: women's suffragist

_ Leland C. Clark Jr.: chemist, built the first practical heart-lung machine
_ John C. Flansburgh: guitarist and songwriter
for the musical group They Might Be Giants

_ Stephen Jay Gould: paleontologist and author

_ Robert M. Greenwald: director and producer of
more than 49 television movies, miniseries and feature films

_ John P. Hammond: blues guitarist

_ Coretta Scott King: activist and wife of civil
rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.

_ Horace Mann: abolitionist and the first president of Antioch
_ Sylvia Nasar: journalist, economist and author of "A Beautiful Mind"
_ Victor Nunez: independent filmmaker whose
credits include "Ulee's Gold" and "Ruby in Paradise"

_ Leonard Nimoy: actor

_ Eleanor Holmes Norton: congresswoman

_ Cliff Robertson: actor

_ Louis Sachar: author of Newbery Medal-winning children's novel "Holes"
_ Mark Strand: former U.S. poet laureate, Pulitzer Prize winner for poetry
_ Rod Serling: "Twilight Zone" creator

Source: Times staff "
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/na...&ctrack=1&cset=true

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"Meghan Daum:
40-love, or 20-love?
A tennis pro's reality show choice: older hottie or younger hottie? June 23, 2007

A "GREAT SOCIAL experiment" has commenced on
Monday nights on NBC: a reality show called "Age
of Love." The idea is to find a mate for
Australian tennis star Mark Philippoussis, a
6-foot-5 former GQ cover boy who, according to
the show, "has everything except someone to share his life with."
As on all reality dating shows, the remedy
involves introducing the eligible party to a pool
of candidates so uniform in their generic
attractiveness that it's a bit like watching
someone select a brand of shampoo. The catch
here, however, is that Philippoussis, who's 30,
is presented with seven women who are tan, toned,
long-haired, big-bosomed and in their 40s! (OK,
one is 39, but her career as a mortgage loan
officer makes her seem more mature.)

Philippoussis, who's touted as "the man every
woman wants" (though rumors that he dated Paris
Hilton may alter that perception), thinks he's
signed up for a conventional dating show. But
just as he develops a fondness for older women,
along come six more females. Like the first
group, they have ample cleavage, voluminous hair
and teeth the color of copier paper. In fact,
they appear almost no different from the 40-ish
women except for one thing a they happen to be in their 20s.

That awful screeching sound you're about to hear?
It's not the nails-on-a-chalkboard effect of
reality television, it's the ensuing catfight
between the "cougars" and the "kittens." That's
what NBC decided to call these rival gangs,
describing them on the "Age of Love" website as
"beautiful and sophisticated" and "enthusiastic
and fun," respectively. And although the two
sides haven't yet seen each other, previews from
upcoming episodes suggest that the level of
competition will elicit some sparkling repartee.

"What's a synonym for old?" we hear one kitten ask.

"Decrepit," answers another.

"Age of Love" executive producer J.D. Roth, who's
behind such shows as "The Biggest Loser" and
"Beauty and the Geek," said last week in an
interview on RealityWanted.net that he gets his
best ideas from listening in on the women when he
and his wife socialize with other couples. When
the subject of older women dating younger men
arose one night, and Roth suggested that such
scenarios were beyond his female dinner
companions' reach, he was duly scolded. Then he
realized he had the kernel of a great idea. Or at
least an idea that could make effective use of
the tiki torches, evening wear and porno
soundtrack-style music without which no reality dating show is complete.
But unlike "The Bachelor," which has a nearly
identical structure but teaches nothing about
human attraction that can't be gleaned by
attending a high school prom, "Age of Love" comes
with a pseudo-scientific veneer a not to mention
a whiff of pseudo-feminism. By opening the show
with the warning "The Experiment Begins Now,"
we're asked to believe at least two things: 1)
that there's some really groundbreaking TV going
on here, and 2) that all the scientific data
suggesting that female sexual desirability is
directly related to fertility are quite possibly a bunch of hooey.
In other words, we're supposed to be impressed by
this show's progressive-mindedness. Most reality
(or even nonreality) shows wouldn't even ask the
question of whether a wealthy, 30-year-old hottie
would choose a 40-ish cougar over a 20-ish
kitten. "Age of Love" not only asks, it's going
to make us squirm through eight weeks of the answer.

But judging from the first episode, what's really
being showcased here are the latest advantages in
cosmetic self-preservation. Make no mistake,
these 40-something women do look spectacular.
Though many have children (one as old as 25!),
there's not an ounce of jiggling flesh visible
among them and, what's more, many have retained
the giggling, slumber party demeanor that will
forever be associated with youth (after all, you
don't make it onto reality TV if you can't making
whooping noises and apply a mud mask at the same time).

Still, there's no getting around the fact that
the cougars' particular brand of fabulousness is
less about their accomplishments (one is a legal
secretary, another is listed on the website
simply as "freelance") than their willingness to
override nature with science. As they present
themselves to Philippoussis, coyly disclosing
their ages as though they were lifting up their
clothes to reveal prosthetic limbs, we watch him
struggle to keep his composure by offering up wan
little compliments like "you look incredible" and
"you're very beautiful." The unspoken second half
of that sentence is, of course, "for your age."

"Age of Love" masquerades as an empowerment
vehicle for middle-age women, but it's really
just an advertisement for the Restylane
injections, liposuction and long shag haircuts
that can be used to look not quite so middle-aged.

The message is not that older women are wiser or
more interesting than their younger counterparts
but that, with the right tools (and enough
money), 40-year-olds can access that formulaic
version of hotness seen in 22-year-old pole
dancers everywhere. And why bother being
interesting when you can look like that?

--

mdaum@latimescolumnists.com"
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-...nion&track=ntottext

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"Cheney claims a non-executive privilege
He asserts he's exempt from showing an agency how
his office keeps secrets because he's not fully part of the administration. By Josh Meyer, Times Staff Writer
June 22, 2007

WASHINGTON a For the last four years, Vice
President Dick Cheney has made the controversial
claim that his office is not fully part of the
Bush administration in order to exempt it from a
presidential order regulating federal agencies'
handling of classified national security information, officials said Thursday.
Cheney has held that his office is not fully part
of the executive branch of government despite the
continued objections of the National Archives,
which says his office's failure to demonstrate
that it has proper security safeguards in place
could jeopardize the government's top secrets.

According to documents released Thursday by a
House committee, Cheney's staff has blocked
efforts by the National Archives' Information
Security Oversight Office to enforce a key
component of the presidential order: a mandatory
on-site inspection of the vice president's
office. At least one of those inspections would
have come at a particularly delicate time a when
Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis
"Scooter" Libby, and other aides were under
criminal investigation for their suspected roles
in leaking the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame.

In an eight-page letter to Cheney on Thursday,
Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles) also charged
that Cheney or his top staffers tried to abolish
the Information Security Oversight Office this
year after its director tried repeatedly to force
Cheney's office to comply with the presidential order.

Cheney spokeswoman Lea Anne McBride confirmed the
vice president's position Thursday but said she
could not discuss the matter in detail, including
whether Cheney or his aides tried to abolish the
information security office. "We are confident
that we are conducting this office properly under the law," McBride said.
Some legal scholars and government secrecy
experts noted the irony in Cheney's stance that
his office is not fully part of the executive
branch, given his claims of executive privilege
when refusing to provide information requested by Congress.

Cheney's office has also refused to file required
reports with the National Archives elaborating
how much national security information was being
classified and declassified, which was first
reported by the Chicago Tribune last year.

Documents released Thursday offer new details
about the intensifying dispute between the office
of the vice president and the National Archives.
The archives has appealed to Atty. Gen. Alberto
R. Gonzales to intervene but has not received a response.

President Bush amended an existing executive
order regarding classified information in 2003 to
address post-Sept. 11 concerns that sensitive data were being mishandled.
Cheney's staff filed annual reports with the
National Archives in 2001 and 2002, as required
of all federal agencies that handle national
security matters. But it hasn't filed any of the
reports since 2003, when Bush's order established
a uniform, government-wide system for
safeguarding classified national security
information to ensure it is not accidentally
released or leaked for political gain.

Waxman and others criticized Cheney and his
staff, saying their refusal to comply with the
presidential order could endanger national security.

"To my knowledge, this was the first time in the
nearly 30-year history of the Information
Security Oversight Office that a request for
access to conduct a security inspection was
denied by a White House office," Waxman wrote to Cheney.

What's more, the congressman said, it suggests
that the vice president considers himself above
the law a even when the directive in question was
created by his own boss, Bush.

"This is a very dangerous position he is taking
and a ridiculous one, but it is a quite serious
one," Waxman, chairman of the House Committee on
Oversight and Government Reform, said in an interview.

"I don't know if he is covering something up or
not, but U when somebody refuses to make this
information available, you wonder what they don't
want the inspectors from the National Archives to know."

A frequent critic of the Bush administration,
Waxman also asked Cheney how the vice president's
office could claim, as it has in correspondence
he cited in his letter, that it was not "an
entity within the executive branch."

One Cheney staffer familiar with the matter said
Thursday that the vice president has not complied
with the order because his office has dual
functions: It is part of the executive branch a
the Bush administration a but also part of the
legislative branch, given Cheney's position as president of the Senate.
As such, the vice president's office has no legal
obligation to abide by the order because it only
applies to the executive branch, said the Cheney
staffer, who was not authorized to publicly
discuss the inner workings of the office and requested anonymity.
Cheney's position is articulated in the 2004
edition of an annual government directory of
senior officials known as the Plum Book:

"The vice presidency is a unique office that is
neither a part of the executive branch nor a part
of the legislative branch, but is attached by the
Constitution to the latter. The vice presidency
performs functions in both the legislative branch
U and in the executive branch."

Waxman said Cheney's refusal to allow oversight
of its classification system was a problem for
another reason: The office has had a history of
leaks of classified information in recent years.

In his letter to the vice president, Waxman said
two Cheney staffers a including Libby a have been
criminally prosecuted in the alleged illegal
disclosure of classified information.

Waxman also said the Libby prosecution uncovered
information suggesting that Cheney himself
"apparently misused the declassification process
for political reasons U as part of a
damage-control effort" to defend the
administration's rationale for going to war in Iraq.

"Your office may have the worst record in the
executive branch for safeguarding classified information," Waxman wrote.
Steven Aftergood, director of the Federation of
American Scientists: Project on Government
Secrecy, said the information that Cheney's
office is required to report is essentially
trivial, most of it routine data on
classification and declassification activity levels.

"But the significance of the dispute is enormous.
It reveals with unusual clarity how stubbornly
this vice president resists oversight," Aftergood
said. "If the executive order on classification
can be violated at will, as the vice president
has done, then agencies can abuse secrecy to
conceal all kinds of mischief, and worse."

Gordon Silverstein, a constitutional scholar at
UC Berkeley, said Cheney's claims were all the
more noteworthy given his repeated assertions of
executive privilege, based on his senior position
within the Bush administration, as a reason why
he has not had to testify before Congress or
provide lawmakers with information on such
national security issues as torture,
interrogation and CIA renditions of terrorists.

"Here's a guy who raises 'executive privilege' to
historic levels to exempt himself from all rules
and oversight, and now he says he's not part of
the executive branch?" said Silverstein. "Here we
have a subordinate part of the executive branch
asserting independent constitutional authority
even against its own superior. It is flabbergasting."

--

josh.meyer@latimes.com"
http://www.latimes.com/news/la-na-cheney22...l=la-tot-topstories

http://timpanogos.wordpress.com/2007/06/07...kers/#comment-28079
Anyone can subscribe to comments on Ed's blog. He has several
interesting discussions going with his readers. This is just one that might be of interest.

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The DocuTicker is available as a feed, about release of governmental reports, etc.

http://www.docuticker.com/?p=13968

    <http://www.docuticker.com/?p=13968>Gender Differences in
Performance in Competitive Environments: Evidence from Professional Tennis Players

<http://www.iza.org/index_html?lang=en&main...ct=papers>Gender Differences in Performance in Competitive Environments: Evidence from Professional Tennis Players
Source: Institute for the Study of Labor

This paper uses data from nine tennis Grand Slam tournaments played between 2005 and 2007 to assess whether men and women respond
differently to competitive pressure in a setting with large monetary rewards. In particular, it asks whether the quality of the game
deteriorates as the stakes become higher. The paper conducts two parallel analyses, one based on aggregate set-level data, and one based on detailed point-by-point data, which is available for a
selected subsample of matches in four of the nine tournaments under examination. The set-level analysis indicates that both men and women perform less well in the final and decisive set of the match. This result is robust to controls for the length of the match and to the inclusion of match and player-specific fixed effects. The drop in performance of women in the decisive set is slightly larger than that of men, but the difference is not statistically significant at
conventional levels. On the other hand, the detailed point-by-point analysis reveals that, relative to men, women are substantially more likely to make unforced errors at crucial junctures of the match. Data on serve speed, on first serve percentages and on rally length suggest that women play a more conservative and less aggressive
strategy as points become more important. I present a simple
game-theoretic model that shows that a less aggressive strategy may be a player's best response to an increase in the intrinsic
probability of making unforced errors.

+ <http://ftp.iza.org/dp2834.pdf>Full Paper (PDF; 427 KB)


http://www.docuticker.com/?p=13897
    <http://www.docuticker.com/?p=13897>Health and Safety
Deficiencies at Bureau of Indian Education Elementary and Secondary Schools
<http://www.doioig.gov/upload/2007-G-0023.pdf>Health and Safety
Deficiencies at Bureau of Indian Education Elementary and Secondary Schools (PDF; 597 KB)
Source: U.S. Department of the Interior, Office of Inspector General
This report describes conditions at Bureau of Indian Education (BIE) schools that require immediate action to protect the health and
safety of students and faculty.

We visited 13 schools as part of our Department-wide audit to
determine if the Department of the Interior and its bureaus have effectively identified, prioritized, and mitigated health and safety deficiencies related to maintenance of their constructed
infrastructure that could affect students, employees and the public. Although we have not yet completed this audit, we wanted to bring to your attention the serious health and safety deficiencies we
identified at BIE schools.

We found severe deterioration at elementary and secondary schools, including boarding schools, that directly affects the health and safety of Indian children and their ability to receive an education. Deterioration ranged from minor deficiencies, such as leaking roofs, to severe deficiencies, such as classroom walls buckling and
separating from their foundation. Other severe deficiencies included outdated electrical systems, inadequate fire detection and
suppression systems, improperly maintained furnaces, and condemned school buildings that have not been torn down to remove the health and safety hazards. Some of these buildings have been condemned for over 10 years and are still not surrounded by protective fencing to prevent access to students.

These severe deficiencies have the potential to seriously injure or kill students and faculty and require immediate attention to mitigate the problems. This report highlights conditions at four schools in Arizona, including Chinle Boarding School, Kayenta Boarding School, Shonto Preparatory School and Keams Canyon Elementary School. The appendix describes conditions found at the other nine schools we visited.

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<http://classroom20.ning.com/xn/detail/6497...st:26841>Toondoo and Spresent in other Languages - Yes!!

Great news for teachers of students for whom English is not their mother tongue, particularly in elementary school.

ToonDoo <http://www.toondoo.com/>www.toondoo.com now supports unicode - meaning that students can create comics in any language they
choose. UI is still in English but the editor is very user friendly and easy to learn.

This is my first attempt - a bit predicatable maybe, but my aim was really to test the language option, that's my excuse and I'm sticking with it.
Another application which has added other languages is the online flash presentation creator Spresent at
<http://www.spresent.com/>www.spresent.com. Languages supported so far (including User Interface) are: English, Spanish, Portugese, Japanese, French, German, Vietnamese AND Hebrew, with Russian
apparently being next on the agenda. The developers invite anyone wishing to help translate the UI to their language of choice to
contact them from their blog at
<http://www.v-chat.com/blog/>http://www.v-chat.com/blog/

<https://www.spresent.com/view/?p=/tsairi@bezeqint.net/spresent_he2>I created a demo in Hebrew just to show a few of the features and to try a work round for the problem of right to left alignment - which unfortunately is still not supported

http://classroom20.ning.com/xn/detail/649749:BlogPost:26841

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http://www.boingboing.net/2007/06/18/how_to_write_about_a.html

    <http://www.boingboing.net/2007/06/18/how_t...about_a.html>How to write about Africa
Xeni Jardin: This essay by Binyavanga Wainaina
from an Africa-themed issue of GRANTA is not new.
But I just stumbled on it in the course of
researching a story about Africa and bloggers,
and found much worth paying attention to:

Never have a picture of a well-adjusted African
on the cover of your book, or in it, unless that
African has won the Nobel Prize. An AK-47,
prominent ribs, naked breasts: use these. If you
must include an African, make sure you get one in
Masai or Zulu or Dogon dress.

In your text, treat Africa as if it were one
country. It is hot and dusty with rolling
grasslands and huge herds of animals and tall,
thin people who are starving. Or it is hot and
steamy with very short people who eat primates.
Don't get bogged down with precise descriptions.
Africa is big: fifty-four countries, 900 million
people who are too busy starving and dying and
warring and emigrating to read your book. The
continent is full of deserts, jungles, highlands,
savannahs and many other things, but your reader
doesn't care about all that, so keep your
descriptions romantic and evocative and unparticular.

Make sure you show how Africans have music and
rhythm deep in their souls, and eat things no
other humans eat. Do not mention rice and beef
and wheat; monkey-brain is an African's cuisine
of choice, along with goat, snake, worms and
grubs and all manner of game meat. Make sure you
show that you are able to eat such food without
flinching, and describe how you learn to enjoy it&#AD;because you care.
<http://www.granta.com/extracts/2615>Link.
Binyavanga Wainaina lives in Nairobi, Kenya, and
founded the literary magazine
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kwani%3F>Kwani?
(unfortunately, the magazine's website appears to
be dead). Image: detail crop from the cover of
Granta #92, in which this essay appeared, from
January 2006.
<http://www.granta.com/shop/product?product_id=2758>You
can purchase a copy
online<http://feeds.feedburner.com/~a/boingboing/iBag?a=kQYz8V>;.

Today 10:05 AM | Label This |
<http://localhost/#GreatNewsTag_EmailItem_177914>Email
This |
<http://localhost/#GreatNewsTag_BlogThis_177914>Blog This | by Xeni Jardin

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Without a desire by speakers, the funding and "immersion" and
computer programs will not work. However, it is important that the financial support is available to assist communities. I think it is also important that languages be allowed to "die" or "modernize", as they always have done. Maybe the key is to support people who wish to make an effort; that is, not to settle for a default result.

I still think that communities need to discuss and resolve some
serious questions about the use of language, "tradition", etc.
Parents allowed television into their homes. Local schools, instead of boarding schools, were insisted on. And the Internet has been grabbed up, all without considering predictable effects, positive and negative.
Tokelau and Bhutan are two examples of impact assessment analysis prior to shifting to a written history and Internet/Television
respectively. Santa Clara Pueblo decided, when there were only about 5 men over 55, NOT to videotape or audiotape religious materials for the future sons.
mpb

Funding will save native languages

CAROL CLARK Monitor County Editor

Three million in funding for the Esther Martinez Native American Languages Program was awarded Thursday in an effort to prevent more native languages from dying out.

"The urgent need to protect and preserve Native American languages is clear," Rep. Tom Udall, D-N.M., said Thursday in a news statement. "Today, with great hope for the future, I'm extremely pleased we funded the Esther Martinez Native American Languages Program. This is an important step that will be vital in reversing the trend of
disappearing Native Languages."

During his time in Congress, Udall said he has had the "great honor" of visiting the pueblos in his district in northern New Mexico and learn many of the traditions and characteristics unique to each
individual tribe.

"One similarity, however, is that Native languages are being lost," he said. "Tribal elders are often the only ones fluent in the
language as an increasing number of children are growing up in homes that speak only English."

Of the more than 300 pre-colonial indigenous languages spoken in the United States, only 175 remained a decade ago, according to the
Indigenous Language Institute.

Rep. Heather Wilson, R-N.M., told a crowd gathered for a special ceremony at the Poeh Cultural Center on April 10 that native
languages are being lost at a rate of 12 every three years. Once lost, they can never be recovered, Wilson said at the time, adding that by 2050, only 20 languages would be spoken with regular use unless efforts were taken to teach the languages to new generations.
"This program funding, named in Martinez' honor, is an indication that the importance of cultivating and passing languages down to younger generations is now being recognized," Udall said.

Martinez' grandson Matthew Martinez is a tribal officer for the Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo. He thanked Udall and Wilson and said it's important that there is a collaboration among the congressional delegation on the issue of language preservation.

Language preservation is one of the most important pieces of
legislation, Matthew Martinez said, adding that his grandmother
strived to teach and preserve language and the greatest legacy and tribute in honoring his grandmother would be to continue the effort.
"Language preservation is not a cultural project or a New Mexico project; it's an American project that honors American people," he said.
Santa Clara Pueblo Lt. Gov. Alvin Warren said this morning that he was excited to hear that the funding had been appropriated.

"All of the 19 pueblos are very supportive of the Esther Martinez Act," Warren said. "We very much appreciated Rep. Udall and Rep. Wilson for their efforts. One of the unique aspects of this act is that it includes funding for emerging educational programs to develop and strengthen our languages."

Funding for the program was determined in Udall's subcommittee on labor, health and human services, and education. Udall serves as a co-vice chair of the Congressional Native American Caucus and was appointed at the start of the 110th Congress to the House Committee on Appropriations, which is responsible for setting all House
expenditure levels for the federal government.

Edward Calabaza, public information officer for the New Mexico Indian Affairs Office said details of how the funding will be allocated amongst the tribes has not been specified.

The Native American Languages Preservation Bill was renamed the
Esther Martinez Native American Languages Preservation Act. The late pueblo linguist and storyteller was killed in a car accident on Sept. 16 while returning to Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo from Washington, D.C., where she received a National Heritage Fellowship for her work to preserve the Tewa language.

Martinez developed dictionaries, translated key texts and taught the language to several generations of youth in the San Juan Pueblo
schools from 1974-1989. She also worked with the Wycliffe Bible
translators to translate the New Testament into Tewa.

- Published in the June 12, 2007, print edition of the Los Alamos Monitor." http://www.lamonitor.com/articles/2007/06/...ine_news/news04.txt

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"Duringthelastfortyyears,hearingtheveryword]diffusion^
has raised the blood pressure of ]independent invention-
ists^amaking them see red.
During a lifetime of challenging accepted wisdom, the
late Professor George F. Carter never shied from asking
tough questions or pointing out the Emperor\s sartorial
condition.
In this collection of musings mixed with a wide spectrum
ofsolidevidenceaevidencerangingfrombotanical(peanuts,
potatoes, cotton to hibiscus), crustaceous (cowrie shells), to
animal (cats and chickens to elephants)aGeorge Carter has
brought the ]D^ word out of the closet, giving transoceanic diffusion a star role in the peopling of the Americas."
www.neara.org/carter/carterfacts.pdf

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I wish there were more details as to what exactly
was measured. Some genes by themselves wouldn't
identify when chooks made it around.

Betty Meggars of the Smithsonian has always
advocated for Asia-Ecuador links (particularly
Japan). George Carter in Texas (inventor of the
carterfact, a supposed tool of australopithecines
in California) earlier had done work on the geography of chickens.
Then there are those other folks that believe
everyone had to be Egyptian or Phoenician or
Celtic because indigenous Americans weren't quite
up to the mathematical, engineering, and
scientific feats actually found in pre-Columbian Americas.
mpb

-------------------------------------------------------------- ------- Polynesians beat Spaniards to South America, study shows
Analysis of chicken bones found in Chile shows
Polynesians reached the continent no later than 1407.
By Thomas H. Maugh II, Times Staff Writer
June 5, 2007

After decades of contention, New Zealand
researchers have provided the first direct
evidence that Polynesians sailed across thousands
of miles of the Pacific Ocean to reach South
America long before the arrival of the Spanish around AD 1500.

Their proof? Chicken bones.

Using genetic analysis and radiocarbon dating of
chicken bones found in Chile, the researchers
showed that the fowl originated in Polynesia, not
Europe as was previously believed, the researchers said Monday.

"The Polynesian contact probably didn't change
the course of prehistory, but I think maybe it
makes us recognize the ethnocentrism in our
long-standing views of the prehistory of the New
World," said archeologist Terry L. Jones of Cal
Poly San Luis Obispo, who was not involved in the research.

"The basic premise has always been that there was
only one civilization capable of crossing the
ocean and discovering the New World," he said.
The new findings, reported in the Proceedings of
the National Academy of Sciences, indicate that
"the prehistory of the New World was probably a
little bit more complicated than we thought in the past."

The possibility of contact between Polynesia and
the New World has been a subject of contention
since Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl's famous
1947 voyage aboard his crude raft Kon-Tiki.

Heyerdahl believed that an ancient, fair-haired
race originating high in the Andes around Lake
Titicaca sailed to the Pacific islands.

He attempted to prove his ideas by setting off on
a trip from the west coast of South America on a raft based on Inca designs.
The 4,300-mile trip from Peru to the Tuamotu
Islands took 101 days, but subsequent trips were
much faster once researchers learned how to steer the boats.

Despite Heyerdahl's demonstration, the idea that
Polynesians could have routinely a or even
occasionally a navigated across the Pacific was
considered farfetched, primarily because of the lack of proof.

"Scientists have not been willing to fully accept
the idea" of prehistoric contact between
Polynesia and South America, Jones said, "but it is hard to understand why."
The most convincing previous evidence of cultural
contact was the presence of sweet potatoes a a
native American plant a at archeological sites throughout Polynesia.
Most notably, sweet potatoes dating from about AD
1000 have been found on the Cook Islands. Equally
important, Jones noted, the name of the potato
used throughout Polynesia is the same name given it by South Americans.
Heyerdahl's trip and the discovery of the sweet
potatoes showed South Americans could have taken
the sweet potato to the islands but did not
demonstrate that the islanders could have come to South America.

The new findings show that definitively, said the
senior author of the new report, archeologist
Elizabeth A. Matisoo-Smith of the University of Auckland.

The chicken bones were recovered from a site
called El Arenal-1 in south-central Chile, about
a mile and a half inland on the southern side of
the Arauco Peninsula. Thermoluminescent dating of
ceramics from the site indicates it was occupied from AD 700 to 1390.
Analysis of the bones was conducted by graduate
student Alice A. Story in Matisoo-Smith's lab.

Matisoo-Smith said she didn't expect much from
the study because finding evidence of Polynesian
contact would be like "finding a needle in a haystack."

But radiocarbon dating showed the bones were
about 622 years old. Even with potential errors,
they dated from AD 1321 to 1407 a before Spaniards first trod the New World.
Genetic analysis of the chickens showed that they
were identical to genetic sequences of chicken
from that same time period in American Samoa and
Tonga, both more than 5,000 miles from Chile.

The sequences were very similar to those of
chickens from Hawaii, also about 5,000 miles
distant, and Easter Island, about 2,500 miles away.

"I was pretty excited when the dates came back as
clearly pre-European," Matisoo-Smith said. "There
were no questions. The Europeans didn't pick them
up in Polynesia and bring them back" to South America, she said.

Sailing into the wind from the islands to South
America "requires significant sailing technology
and navigational skills," she said. "But if you
look at the winds, leaving from Easter Island,
you would actually land [in South America] around
the area where El Arenal-1 is located. You could
then make the return voyage further north."

Jones of Cal Poly is particularly pleased because
the find supports his theory that Polynesians
also landed in the Northern Hemisphere. He and
linguist Kathryn A. Klar of UC Berkeley have
argued that the Chumash Indians of Southern
California learned to build their sewn-plank
canoes from the Polynesians, in part because the
names of the ships are very similar in the two unrelated languages.
Composite bone fishhooks used by the Indians also
closely resembled those used in Polynesia.

If we know they landed in Chile, he said, "then
why is it so difficult to imagine they couldn't
have made it to Southern California from Hawaii?"

thomas.maugh@latimes.com
"
http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci...?ctrack=2&cset=true