Makerbot has just announced the launch of an EU division called Makerbot Europe in order to replicate its US 3D-printing success overseas. The company has already been successfully selling its Replicator Mini (above) and other models through…
Wunderlist is all grown up! The third major version of this popular list-making, list-sharing, and now list-collecting, service is bringing long-awaited features to its faithful followers. But underlying all of these is a new platform that could evolve Wunderlist to become something beyond the humble todo list management app that it was when it started years ago. Wunderlist started out … Continue reading
If there is one particular puzzle that has continued to enthrall little ones over the years, it would definitely be the Rubik’s Cube, where there are moments when you would feel so frustrated at solving the last line of mixed up colors, that you are tempted to remove some of the stickers and rearrange them. While we have seen some interesting Rubik’s Cube accessories in the past like this Rubik’s Cube Light, none of them help you to keep things cool, unlike the $149.99 Rubik’s Cube Fridge.
With the Rubik’s Cube Fridge, this particularly cute little home accessory will ensure that your food remains nice and cool when required, but unfortunately if you get the itch to “solve” it, the colored parts cannot be moved. It will only be able to open up in a single direction – and that is, to have the door swing outwards so that you can place stuff inside or to remove stuff. Alternatively, the Rubik’s Cube Fridge will also be able to help yo keep things inside warm, so you can choose from either one of two settings, depending on the existing situation. Expect it to work with a 110V AC power cord at home, or via a 12V DC power cord while travelling.
[ Rubik’s Cube Fridge shows your visitors how brainy you are copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]
What is up with the world these days?
We wish we could look back on the week and tell you that something, ANYTHING good happened. We wish we could tell you that all international conflicts had been resolved. We REALLY wish we could tell you that Bieber finally got the sock in the face he deserves, but we can’t even tell you that.
What we can do, though, is give you a snarky, silly distraction from all the sh*t going on in the world.
Without further ado, here are the funniest Someecards of the week. We hope they’ll give you a laugh.
P.S. If that didn’t work, here are some adorable kittens that should cheer you up.
Not everyone has been blessed with the mom the of the century, but if you have, you definitely know it. And when it comes to the people in the world most deserving of hugs, moms always come in first place.
Billionaire Bill Gates believes in testing. However, it appears that he believes in “the market” even more. Consider Gates’ words to legislators in 2009:
When the tests are aligned to the common standards, the curriculum will line up as well–and that will unleash powerful market forces in the service of better teaching. For the first time, there will be a large base of customers eager to buy products that can help every kid learn and every teacher get better. [Emphasis added.]
Bill Gates has no background in K-12 classroom teaching. He has no background in assessment. He does have money, lots of money. It must be his money that allows him to even write a guest editorial in the April 2013 Washington Post to share his views on the *appropriate* role of student test scores in teacher evaluation. He assumes that student standardized test scores will work as a component of teacher evaluation. He also assumes that merit pay can and will work, if only “we” would be careful as “we” “drive the long-term improvement our schools need.”
We?
Bill Gates has no background in teaching. Instead, he views education through the lens of business. And if the tests are interfering with business, perhaps it is time to pull back on the testing in order to save Gates’ extensive CCSS investment. To this end, in June 2014, the Gates Foundation declared the need for a “moratorium” — not the end of testing, mind you, and not the end of CCSS — just a break from the consequences of testing in order to take the heat off of CCSS:
The Gates Foundation is an ardent supporter of fair teacher feedback and evaluation systems that include measures of student gains. We don’t believe student assessments should ever be the sole measure of teaching performance, but evidence of a teacher’s impact on student learning should be part of a balanced evaluation that helps all teachers learn and improve.
At the same time, no evaluation system will work unless teachers believe it is fair and reliable, and it’s very hard to be fair in a time of transition. The standards need time to work. …
Including the assessment results in teacher evaluations even though they won’t count for two years also has benefits: First, the teachers can begin to use the assessments to inform their practice, and second, teachers can see how their performance looks using these measures and make sure it lines up with other measures of teaching practice. This is crucial in building teacher trust in the assessments.
In our view, allowing two years in which assessments will be administered and scored but not yet taken into account strikes the best balance between a commitment to teacher evaluations that measure student learning and a commitment to ensure that teachers will not be harmed as they complete the transition to the Common Core.
Protecting the Gates investment. Cutting mass education a deal.
The Gates Foundation published this position only five days after Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin signed legislation to immediately replace CCSS with Oklahoma’s former state standards until new standards and assessments could be developed.
This is not good for Gates’ CCSS investment, which Gates hopes will bring American education “to scale” in order to benefit “the market.”
Gates does not restrict his business applications to K-12 education. He is willing to spend his billions on better business models for higher education, as well. Consider this January 2014 grant to the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities (APLU):
Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities:
Date: January 2014
Purpose: to support a cohort of public urban research universities to develop new business models that can increase access, improve success rates and find greater cost efficiencies and then use national association networks to scale promising practices
Amount: $2,507,628
Much of this funding has been divided among seven universities in a seeming “innovations contest” to “improve success rates.” The seven recipients have one year to develop its “innovations” — with the intent that “successful” innovations will be “scaled” (efficiently reproduced).
Temple University was one of the recipients:
The Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU) and the Coalition of Urban Serving Universities (USU) announced today that Temple University is one of only seven universities nationwide selected to participate in an innovative, one-year project that seeks to transform the way higher education is delivered.
Temple will receive $225,000 as part of the Transformational Planning Grant project–an initiative funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation–to research, develop and test new university business models that can increase access, improve student success rates and find greater cost efficiencies. …
APLU intends to use its national network to work to scale the most promising findings and practices of Temple and the six other grantees–California State University, Fresno; Florida International University; Georgia State University; Portland State University; the University of Akron; and the University of Illinois at Chicago–to help its more than 200 public university members across the country better meet the needs of their evolving student populations.
In an interesting turn of events, Temple University plans to use its Gates “better business of education” money to admit students without use of standardized test scores and instead incorporating “noncognitive approaches” to student success:
Temple’s Transformational Planning Grant will be used to develop new approaches for recruiting and evaluating prospective Temple students. The project will be piloted among students in Philadelphia area high schools whose potential may be overlooked by traditional measures of achievement, such as standardized testing. Temple also will analyze how these “non-cognitive” approaches–strategies that take into account factors such as a student’s grit, determination, self-assurance and self-advocacy–can be incorporated into the university’s academic policies, financial aid strategy, and advising and support services.
So, it seems that Gates might experience some “business model clashing” given the Gates preference for standardized testing as assumed “good for education business” and now a Gates grantee assuming that standardized testing could “overlook potential” in some students — which implies that standardized testing has limitations that make it suspect a component for any high-stakes decisions.
No seasoned teacher needs to be told that some students just don’t test well.
But Bill Gates is certainly no seasoned teacher. He is just a man with lots of money who gets to purchase his viewpoint. He believes that standardized tests should be “part” of “measuring” teacher effectiveness.
I wonder what Gates will do if via Temple University’s “innovation” he is faced with the news that forsaking standardized testing “promotes greater cost efficiencies” in the business of higher education.
Would he be willing to promote such a finding “to scale”?
Originally posted 07-30-14 at deutsch29.wordpress.com
While in San Jose for the annual BlogHer conference, I finally got the chance to really explore the charming city. Previously, like with my visits to Atlanta, I had only been to San Jose for quick business trips without any time to explore the third-largest city in California and the tenth-largest in the United States. The city is also a majority-minority, and as a result, the area delightfully reflects this diversity.
If you want to make the most of your future visit, the following recommended activities can be accomplished during a long weekend.
Museums & Sights:
The Tech Museum of Innovation, or simply The Tech, is a bright orange and blue colored building next to the Plaza de Cesar Chavez in downtown San Jose. The Tech has the largest IMAX dome screen in the West and has many hands-on, accessible exhibits influenced by the tech environment of the city. Locally based companies like Google and Adobe both have interactive displays for visitors to experience. There is also a fun earthquake simulator, robotic challenges and many more fun exhibits aimed at kids ages 5-12.
Adjacent to the Plaza is the San Jose Museum of Art, housed in a former U.S. Postal building and library. Celebrating 44 years, the museum hosts a large permanent collection emphasizing West Coast artists of the 20th- and 21st-century and traveling exhibits. Currently, The Emily Fisher Landau Collection is on display, which includes work by Andy Warhol and Keith Haring. Again to reflect the tech roots of the area, they often like to feature new media exhibits as well. The space is bright and calming and can easily be enjoyed in an hour visit. Children under the age of six receive free admission.
4 miles from Downtown San Jose is Santana Row, a popular shopping strip featuring 70 upscale shops even Tesla Motors, 20 restaurants, nine spas and salons and one hotel. The design is very Parisian with European-influenced architecture, boutique storefronts and fountains, benches and piazzas throughout the area. There is even a genuine 19th century, neo-Gothic church façade from Montpellier, France that was moved to the area and now serves as an entrance to a wine bar. It was brought in pieces and reassembled in San Jose. Visitors can also partake in a game of chess on the oversize chessboard in the plaza.
Just across the street from Santana Row is the must-see Winchester Mystery House. Built under the direction of Sarah Winchester, widow of the Winchester Rifle fortune, it is one of California’s most unusual mansions. Rumored to be fighting off bad spirits and karma, for nearly forty years from 1884-1922, Mrs. Winchester had a staff of carpenters and gardeners working around the clock, always adding to her home which has more than 160 rooms. The mystery is in the odd design choices like a staircase that leads to nowhere, a room with four fireplaces in it, rooms built within rooms, windows that look out to blank walls and much more. I was afraid it was going to be hokey, but was glad to see the rumored ghost sightings play second fiddle to the house itself, which is an architectural marvel and extremely well preserved. Guided tours are offered daily, every day except Christmas. Summer is their peak season, but during Halloween they also offer candlelit tours.
Dining & Entertainment:
For a casual and social setting, the San Pedro Square Market is a must. The marketplace features several food stalls representing an eclectic variety of foods from sushi tacos, pulled pork sliders, brick oven pizza, Pad Thai, warm chocolate chip cookies and more. Not being able to make up my mind on what to eat, I visited several food vendors for a satisfying hodgepodge of a meal. The different to-go restaurants are set inside two industrial-styled halls with plenty of outside seating shaded by sycamore trees and strung lights. The vibe is laid-back and artsy and I’m told they regularly have special events and live music.
The casual Vietnamese eatery, Pho 69 came recommended to me by several locals, so I made sure I tried their namesake noodle soup before leaving. The serving size was enormous, but I valiantly sipped my way through, barely making a dent in the steaming, savory bowl of soup, which I honestly never wanted to stop eating. If you’re a fan of Pho, make sure you stop here too. It’s quite busy during the workweek though, so you might want to plan your visit during the weekend or before or after the lunch hour rush from Noon to 2 p.m.
For fine dining and a truly decadent meal after work or to celebrate while in town, definitely visit ARCADIA, a modern American steakhouse. Celeb chef Michael Mina is behind this stylish New American eatery serving classic cuts of beef, fish and contemporary steakhouse side dishes like truffle mac n’ cheese. The Burrata salad contains fresh seasonal fruits or beats depending on the time of the year, the pork chops are mouthwatering and the prime steak and Wagyu beef is tender and delicious. Consult their sommelier for local wine label pairings to complement your meal. Recently, OpenTable.com diners voted ARCADIA onto the 2012 OpenTable Diners’ Choice lists. Mina will also have a new restaurant, Bourbon Steak & Pub that will feature fresh, farm-to-table cuisine, opening at Levi’s Stadium this fall.
We’re not sure if Bill O’Reilly found this joke very funny.
Fox News’ Megyn Kelly was on Thursday’s “Late Night With Seth Meyers,” and joked, “My dream is someday I’ll be number one and he’ll write a book called ‘Killing Megyn.'”
She and O’Reilly are actually “good friends,” Kelly added.
O’Reilly, of course, has had the most-watched show on cable news for many, many, many months. “The Kelly File” was the number-two show in July. It’s not the first time that O’Reilly’s colleagues have teased him on-air. Last year, Shep Smith joked that the network fired O’Reilly to make room for Kelly in the primetime lineup.
1. An orgasm might be able to clear your sinuses.
This is according to a paper in the Journal of Medical Hypotheses and several commenters underneath this blog post about the paper.
We often hear about, report on, and share stories about moms who are given a hard time for breastfeeding in public. In some cases, these women are asked to leave restaurants, stores, even churches because they’re nursing. In others, moms are told that they must “cover up.” The constant in all of these anecdotes is that employees and bystanders are unaware of one thing:
The law explicitly protects moms who breastfeed in public in almost all 50 states.
Forty-six states, DC and the Virgin Islands have laws that specifically allow moms to breastfeed in any public or private location. Three of the remaining states — Michigan, South Dakota and Virginia — exempt breastfeeding moms from public indecency or nudity laws, and Idaho is the only state that has yet to pass any similar laws.
Currently, the only protection nursing moms have in Idaho is jury duty exemption. The Idaho Breastfeeding Law Coalition started a Moveon.org petition in effort to bring the state up to speed with the rest of the country, but despite its 1,400 signatures, there’s no indication Idaho is close to passing legislation.
So, the next time you’re in public and see someone sneering at a breastfeeding mom, show them this map:
This article is part of HuffPost Parents’ World Breastfeeding Week series. For more from the series, click here.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
