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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."
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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"
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-bi...ocal&track=ntottext

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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).