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Gideon Burton

Government 2.0: The Currents Of Our Time - 0 views

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    Speech from the Government 2.0 Summit  (Washington D.C. Sept 7, 2010) by Carl Malamud
Mike Lemon

Calls for longer school years face budget reality - Yahoo! News - 0 views

    • Mike Lemon
       
      Is lengthening the school day or year the answer?
  • Education reformers have long called for U.S. kids to log more time in the classroom so they can catch up with their peers elsewhere in the world, but resistance from leisure-loving teenagers isn't the only reason there is no mass movement to keep schoolchildren in their seats. Such a change could cost cash-strapped state governments and local school districts billions of dollars, strip teachers of a time-honored perk of their profession, and irk officials in states that already bridle at federal intrusion into their traditional control over education.
  • Texas already forbids school from starting before the fourth Monday of August, a provision designed to save money on utility bills and increase business for tourist destinations and other summer attractions. "Ultimately the states, not the federal government, should have the final word on this and other public school decisions," said Lucy Nashed, a spokeswoman for Gov. Rick Perry. In Kansas, sporadic efforts by local districts to extend the school year at even a few schools have been met by parental resistance, said state education commissioner Diane DeBacker.
Katherine Chipman

Capital Markets | OER Commons - 0 views

  • This course examines several aspects of the global capital markets, including private and public financial intermediaries, domestic and global security markets, organized exchanges for stock and bond securities trading, and capitalization structure.
Erin Hamson

Communist Manifesto (Chapter 2) - 0 views

  • The Communists do not form a separate party opposed to the other working-class parties. They have no interests separate and apart from those of the proletariat as a whole. They do not set up any sectarian principles of their own, by which to shape and mould the proletarian movement.
    • Erin Hamson
       
      We are for you. You should join us. We will help you become equals, but not into a better position.
  • 1. In the national struggles of the proletarians of the different countries, they point out and bring to the front the common interests of the entire proletariat, independently of all nationality. 2. In the various stages of development which the struggle of the working class against the bourgeoisie has to pass through, they always and everywhere represent the interests of the movement as a whole.
    • Erin Hamson
       
      working to unite the proletariat, which according to chapter one should equalise them with the others.
  • formation of the proletariat into a class, overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy, conquest of political power by the proletariat.
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  • The theoretical conclusions of the Communists are in no way based on ideas or principles that have been invented, or discovered, by this or that would-be universal reformer.
    • Erin Hamson
       
      We don't recognise one world leader, or founder. Unlike capitalism (Smith) or democracy (Locke).
  • but the abolition of bourgeois property.
    • Erin Hamson
       
      mean to abolish their symbol of status, but not divide it to the masses. Say that it is commonly held together.
  • Abolition of private property
  • We Communists have been reproached with the desire of abolishing the right of personally acquiring property as the fruit of a man’s own labour, which property is alleged to be the groundwork of all personal freedom, activity and independence.
  • , that quantum of the means of subsistence which is absolutely requisite to keep the labourer in bare existence as a labourer.
    • Erin Hamson
       
      tells the labourer they ought to be getting more for their hard work in support of the system.
  • allowed to live only in so far as the interest of the ruling class requires it.
    • Erin Hamson
       
      allowed to live only in so far as the interest of the state requires it. A state in which you have no say, but they really do care about you.
  • By freedom is meant, under the present bourgeois conditions of production, free trade, free selling and buying.
    • Erin Hamson
       
      What other sort of freedom is there?
  • It has been objected that upon the abolition of private property, all work will cease, and universal laziness will overtake us.
    • Erin Hamson
       
      Isn't this what happened? Isn't this why they failed? They couldn't get man to work and produce enough products to support the country on virtue?
  • bourgeois society ought long ago to have gone to the dogs through sheer idleness;
    • Erin Hamson
       
      They have to work to keep all the property they supposedly have.
  • Do you charge us with wanting to stop the exploitation of children by their parents? To this crime we plead guilty
    • Erin Hamson
       
      How are the children currently exploited?
  • But, you say, we destroy the most hallowed of relations, when we replace home education by social. And your education! Is not that also social, and determined by the social conditions under which you educate, by the intervention direct or indirect, of society, by means of schools, &c.?
    • Erin Hamson
       
      Secular learning might be taught in schools, but values, beliefs, toleration are all taught in the home. The only way to have successful society without these being taught in the home is to teach them in the schools. Which they currently are not.
  • Our bourgeois, not content with having wives and daughters of their proletarians at their disposal, not to speak of common prostitutes, take the greatest pleasure in seducing each other’s wives.
    • Erin Hamson
       
      They claim that this is universally true, but they forget the virtue of some people.
  • to freedom of commerce, to the world market,
    • Erin Hamson
       
      capitalism has begun a reduction of national barriers.
  • The Communists are further reproached with desiring to abolish countries and nationality.
  • In proportion as the exploitation of one individual by another will also be put an end to, the exploitation of one nation by another will also be put an end to. In proportion as the antagonism between classes within the nation vanishes, the hostility of one nation to another will come to an end.
    • Erin Hamson
       
      Appealing to the 3rd world countries of the globe. trying to make communism a good thing.
  • The charges against Communism made from a religious, a philosophical and, generally, from an ideological standpoint, are not deserving of serious examination.
    • Erin Hamson
       
      We don't have anything to refute these claims, so we'll say they aren't important. Further we don't believe in religion because it causes differences, we can't refute something we believe in or think should exist.
  • The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class.
    • Erin Hamson
       
      censoship
  • traditional property relations
    • Erin Hamson
       
      People as defined by their property, in a physical sense. Defied by the reputation economy.
  • traditional ideas
  • to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State
    • Erin Hamson
       
      manipulate the people to steal from other people, and then all will be stolen from all people.
  • Nevertheless, in most advanced countries, the following will be pretty generally applicable.
    • Erin Hamson
       
      Capitalism with the State having a monopoly in every area within the country.
  • State
  • exclusive monopol
  • State.
  • State;
  • public
Andrew DeWitt

Learning in the Light of Faith - 0 views

  • When I was just out of graduate school, I attended my first meeting of the American Physical Society in New York City. A highlight was a special event arranged by the conference organizers: the great science fiction writer Isaac Asimov had been invited to speak to us.
  • Hour after hour he wrote down the stories he found in books in the university library about people protesting the invention of things like machines to spin thread and to weave cloth, steam-powered trains, automobiles, airplanes, etc. All of these advances were perceived by the general public either to be physically dangerous or to be a threat to the livelihoods of workers in trades that were about to be destroyed by these advances.
  • when he started to write science fiction, he remembered all of this work he had done. So while his fellow writers were all rhapsodizing about the thrill of rockets and space travel (long before such things were possible), he wrote a story about how the local populace showed up at the launch site with torches and pitchforks in opposition to space travel. Years later, when rockets and travel outside of the earth’s atmosphere became possible, there were protests, and many of Mr. Asimov’s colleagues were astounded that he had predicted so far in advance that this would occur.
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  • “Why,” Mr. Asimov then asked us, “among all of these talented and visionary writers, was I the only one who was able to predict that this resistance to change would occur?” He let us think about the question for an uncomfortably silent minute, then leaned into the microphone and said in an intense voice that I still vividly remember: “It’s because people are stupid!”
  • The lesson I take from my memory of this experience is that the proper attitude to have when confronted with the vast complexity both of the universe and of the ideas and activities of the people who live on this small planet orbiting an ordinary star far away from the center of things in our galaxy is profound humility.
    • Andrew DeWitt
       
      This is how we ought to deal with future shock: "humility"
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    Great Devotional Talk by Ross Spencer.  Includes a great reference to "Future Shock".
Erin Hamson

The Frontier In American History: Chapter X - 0 views

  • As the American pioneer passed on in advance of this new tide of European immigration, he found lands increasingly limited
    • Erin Hamson
       
      The close of the Frontier
  • . But the captains of industry by applying squatter doctrines to the evolution of American industrial society, have made the process so clear that he who runs may read.
  • it seemed not impossible that the outcome of free competition under individualism was to be monopoly of the most important natural resources and processes by a limited group of men whose vast fortunes were so invested in allied and dependent industries that they constituted the dominating force in the industrial life of the nation
    • Erin Hamson
       
      Unregulated turn of events, the people were turned loose and made the best of it. What is wrong with this? They set the standards, and there is no room for competition.
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  • Mr. Harriman
  • mastering the economic forces of the nation
    • Erin Hamson
       
      According to Adam Smith and the free market economy theory, the people are the best regulators. This sounds like socialism...
  • The Granger and the Populist were prophets of this reform movement. Mr. Bryan's Democracy, Mr. Debs' Socialism, and Mr. Roosevelt's Republicanism all had in common the emphasis upon the need of governmental regulation of industrial tendencies in the interest of the common man
  • "the State University and the public school system which it crowns would be the strongest evidence of its fitness which it could offer."
  • "general system of education ascending in regular gradations from township schools to a State University, wherein tuition shall be gratis and equally open to all," expresses the Middle Western conception born in the days of pioneer society and doubtless deeply influenced by Jeffersonian democracy.
    • Erin Hamson
       
      applying pioneer principles of avaliability and indivdualism to education and other opportunities to suceed in life as presently constituted.
  • propaganda to induce students to continue
    • Erin Hamson
       
      Want everyone to go to college to become their best individual self.
  • all under the ideal of service to democracy rather than of individual advancement alone
  • The times call for educated leaders.
    • Erin Hamson
       
      And have yet to cease to call for experienced leaders. Which is why we are all sitting here reading this, to become educated leaders.
  • The test tube and the microscope are needed rather than ax and rifle in this new ideal of conquest
    • Erin Hamson
       
      influence of technology on life
  • It is hardly too much to say that the best hope of intelligent and principled progress in economic and social legislation and administration lies in the increasing influence of American universities.
  • able to think for themselves, governed Dot by ignorance, by prejudice or by impulse, but by knowledge and reason and high-mindedness,
  • The learning of the few is despotism; the learning of the many is liberty.
  • At first pioneer democracy had scant respect for the expert.
    • Erin Hamson
       
      individualism
  • That they may perform their work they must be left free, as the pioneer was free, to explore new regions and to report what they find; for like the pioneers they have the ideal of investigation, they seek new horizons.
    • Erin Hamson
       
      application of pioneer ideals
  • Thus it is the function of the university to reveal to the individual the mystery and the glory of life as a whole
    • Erin Hamson
       
      opening the mind to new ideas and ideals
Bri Zabriskie

Plover: Freeing Stenography | Geek Feminism Blog - 0 views

  • overlap between the stenographic and computer geek worlds is bafflingly small, considering how vital efficient text entry is to virtually every tech field
  • on-commercial applications for stenographic technology.
  • into any X window using a $45 off-the-shelf keyboard.
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  • Steno is the only text input system that’s functionally equivalent to conversational human speech.
  • wearable computing is unlikely to really take off until we get the head-mounted display issue worked out, and I don’t currently have any idea of how to make that happen on a practical level.
  • could be attached to thighs, belly, biceps, or wherever,
    • Bri Zabriskie
       
      initial reaction? weird, weird weird weird!
  • phonetic system in your muscle memory.
    • Bri Zabriskie
       
      which is why TypeWell which expands words when you type all the consonants is so much easier to remember. Plus you can program your own abbreviations. It' makes mroe sense for the general public. And how are Deaf/ HoH people supposed to learn the phonetic system of what to them is a foreign language? That seems a bit short sighted to me. 
  • hackathon
    • Bri Zabriskie
       
      a what?
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    Interview with someone who's created an open source stenograpic keyboard emulator for transcription services. I work in transcription so I think this is pretty stinking awesome.
Morgan Wills

Johanna Schmitt: 'Natural Selection in an Age of Global Change' | Today at Brown - 0 views

  • A famous early example of natural selection in action was actually discovered right here in Providence by a Brown professor, Hermon Carey Bumpus. Passing by the Atheneum (just a few blocks from here on Benefit Street) after a severe blizzard in January 1898, Professor Bumpus found a flock of English house sparrows that had been knocked down by the storm. A typical scientist, he picked them all up and took them back to his lab, where some revived and some didn’t. When he measured them he discovered that the living were morphologically different from the dead. That was a case of natural selection acting in a single night!
  • Some of those experiments have already produced results — such as the rapid, pervasive, and dangerous evolution of antibiotic resistance in bacteria.
  • And a Gallup poll on Darwin’s birthday this February showed that only 39 percent of the American public overall “believes” in the theory of evolution.
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    I've always wondered if Natural Selection is different for humans in a day and age where debilitating physical characteristics don't always prevent humans from reproducing. I found this article and highlighted some interesting points.
Gideon Burton

The Public Domain | free download - 0 views

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    Free pdf of James Boyle's important book.
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    I can't wait to read this!
Daniel Zappala

The Day The Internet Threw A Righteous Hissyfit About Copyright And Pie : Monkey See : NPR - 1 views

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    An online magazine editor claims "the web is considered public domain" to justify copying anything she wants and re-publishing it on her site. Astounding.
Daniel Zappala

A Logic Named Joe - 1 views

  • Say you punch "Station SNAFU" on your logic. Relays in the tank take over an' whatever vision-program SNAFU is telecastin' comes on your logic's screen. Or you punch "Sally Hancock's Phone" an' the screen blinks an' sputters an' you're hooked up with the logic in her house an' if somebody answers you got a vision-phone connection. But besides that, if you punch for the weather forecast or who won today's race at Hialeah or who was mistress of the White House durin' Garfield's administration or what is PDQ and R sellin' for today, that comes on the screen too.
    • Daniel Zappala
       
      Joe is Google
  • it made Joe a individual
    • Daniel Zappala
       
      Joe has machine intelligence.
  • But I think he went kinda remote-control exploring in the tank.
    • Daniel Zappala
       
      Joe is using data mining.
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  • An' logics can do a Iotta things that ain't been found out yet.
    • Daniel Zappala
       
      In science fiction, machine intelligence launches us into the unknown -- computers might be able to do things that we can't conceive of ourselves!
  • In theory, a censor block is gonna come on an' the screen will say severely, "Public Policy Forbids This Service."
    • Daniel Zappala
       
      Joe disables content filtering services.
  • The screen says, "Service question: What is your name?" She is kinda puzzled, but she punches it. The screen sputters an' then says: "Secretarial Service Demonstration! You—" It reels off her name, address, age, sex, coloring, the amounts of all her charge accounts in all the stores, my name as her husband, how much I get a week, the fact that I've been pinched three times—twice was traffic stuff, and once for a argument I got in with a guy—and the interestin' item that once when she was mad with me she left me for three weeks an' had her address changed to her folks' home. Then it says, brisk: "Logics Service will hereafter keep your personal accounts, take messages, and locate persons you may wish to get in touch with. This demonstration is to introduce the service."
    • Daniel Zappala
       
      More echoes of Google -- privacy vs convenience
  • Then I sweat!
    • Daniel Zappala
       
      Social networking makes it easier to be unfaithful, causes tension in marriages.
  • Logics are civilization! If we shut off logics, we go back to a kind of civilization we have forgotten how to run!
  • That couldn't be allowed out general, of course. You gotta make room for kids to grow up. But it's a pretty good world, now Joe's turned off. Maybe I'll turn him on long enough to learn how to stay in it. But on the other hand, maybe—
    • Daniel Zappala
       
      Technology introduces new moral questions
Katherine Chipman

Fear! Living Under a Mushroom Cloud, a collection at the Museum at the Wisconsin Histor... - 0 views

  • America's post-World War II period is often portrayed as a time of affluence and contentment, but fear of atomic war and Communist infiltration also marked the era and affected the decisions Americans made about their lives and futures. Fear of atomic bomb attacks on the nation's cities helped motivate people to move to the relative safety of the suburbs. Some Americans built fallout shelters to protect their families while others, shocked by the prospect of nuclear annihilation at any moment, sought to live for the present.
  • Once the first atomic bomb was dropped on Japan, Americans realized a new era in history, one defined by the ability of humans to destroy their world.
  • Positive portrayals of atomic bomb blasts, along with toys and games that made light of atomic bomb destruction like those in the case below, may have helped diffuse some of the fear the American public felt about the bomb by desensitizing them to the devastation an atomic bomb could cause.
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  • While "atomic fiction" depicted possible fearful scenarios using atomic bombs and radiation, documentary sources illustrated the reality. Newspapers, magazines, books, and pamphlets described in vivid detail the effects of nuclear bombs on the Bikini Atoll, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki, kept Americans abreast of the latest atomic developments and their destructive forces, and explained the devastating results if a bomb were to be dropped on the United States. All combined to reinforce the fear Americans had about anything atomic
  • Atomic Age fears provided science fiction writers with the inspiration for hundreds of stories, many of which conveyed political and moral messages as they shocked and entertained American readers and movie audiences. Three story types had emerged by the mid-1950s: the first dealt with atomic warfare; the second showed dinosaurs or fantastical beasts awakened or created by atomic blasts; and the third type depicted human deformities resulting from atomic experiments gone awry.
anonymous

Edward R. Murrow - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 0 views

  • See It Now focused on a number of controversial issues in the 1950s, but it is best-remembered as the show that criticized McCarthyism and the Red Scare, contributing if not leading to the political downfall of Senator Joseph McCarthy. On March 9, 1954, Murrow, Friendly, and their news team produced a half-hour See It Now special entitled "A Report on Senator Joseph McCarthy".[9] Murrow used excerpts from McCarthy's own speeches and proclamations to criticize the senator and point out episodes where he had contradicted himself. Murrow knew full well that he was using the medium of television to attack a single man and expose him to nationwide scrutiny, and he was often quoted as having doubts about the methods he used for the report. Murrow and Friendly paid for their own newspaper advertisement for the program; they were not allowed to use CBS' money for the publicity campaign or even use the CBS logo. Nevertheless, the broadcast contributed to a nationwide backlash against McCarthy and is seen as a turning point in the history of television. It provoked tens of thousands of letters, telegrams and phone calls to CBS headquarters, running 15 to 1 in favor. In a retrospective produced for Biography, Friendly noted how truck drivers pulled up to Murrow on the street in subsequent days and shouted "Good show, Ed. Good show, Ed." Murrow offered McCarthy a chance to appear on See It Now to respond to the criticism. McCarthy accepted the invitation and made his appearance three weeks later,[10] but his rebuttal only served to further decrease his already fading popularity.[11] In the program following McCarthy's appearance, Murrow commented that the senator had "made no reference to any statements of fact that we made" and contested the personal attacks made by "the junior senator from Wisconsin" against himself.[12]
Kristen Nicole Cardon

Cellphones - Third World and Developing Nations - Poverty - Technology - NYTimes.com - 1 views

  • The premise of the work is simple — get to know your potential customers as well as possible before you make a product for them. But when those customers live, say, in a mud hut in Zambia or in a tin-roofed hutong dwelling in China, when you are trying — as Nokia and just about every one of its competitors is — to design a cellphone that will sell to essentially the only people left on earth who don’t yet have one, which is to say people who are illiterate, making $4 per day or less and have no easy access to electricity, the challenges are considerable.
  • Text messaging, or S.M.S. (short message service), turns out to be a particularly cost-effective way to connect with otherwise unreachable people privately and across great distances. Public health workers in South Africa now send text messages to tuberculosis patients with reminders to take their medication. In Kenya, people can use S.M.S. to ask anonymous questions about culturally taboo subjects like AIDS, breast cancer and sexually transmitted diseases, receiving prompt answers from health experts for no charge.
  • A cellphone in the hands of an Indian fisherman who uses it to grow his business — which presumably gives him more resources to feed, clothe, educate and safeguard his family — represents a textbook case of bottom-up economic development, a way of empowering individuals by encouraging entrepreneurship
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  • For this reason, the cellphone has become a darling of the microfinance movement
  • companies like Wizzit, in South Africa, and GCash, in the Philippines, have started programs that allow customers to use their phones to store cash credits transferred from another phone or p
  • urchased through a post office, phone-kiosk operator or other licensed operator
  • Interestingly, the recent post-election violence in Kenya provided a remarkable case study for the cellphone as an instrument of both war and peace.
  • Carrying a full-featured cellphone lessens your needs for other things, including a watch, an alarm clock, a camera, video camera, home stereo, television, computer or, for that matter, a newspaper. With the advent of mobile banking, cellphones have begun to replace wallets as well.
  •  
    Chipchase has a cool job :)
anonymous

Changing Education Paradigms - 0 views

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    A great RSA animate that discusses how outdated our public education system is.
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