Who said that graphing calculators were dead in the smartphone era? Certainly not Texas Instruments — if anything, it’s showing that there’s still plenty of life left in dedicated math machines. Its new TI-84 Plus CE is 30 percent thinner and 30 per…
Marriott may have dropped its WiFi-blocking efforts, but that doesn’t mean the FCC has forgotten about its petition and the WiFi-blocking habits of some other companies. In a warning issued today as an “FCC Enforcement Advisory”, the agency made it clear that it is not acceptable to jam others’ WiFi hotspots regardless of whether you’re an individual or a company, … Continue reading
It seems to be the week of laptop refreshes, with Panasonic having introduced its updated Toughbook 31 yesterday, and now Dell has done similar with its M3800 mobile workstation. This laptop promises to be the type of powerhouse workstation professionals and otherwise demanding users need while remaining relatively thin and light — something not entirely common in a segment mostly … Continue reading
Something doesn’t compute here.
Last week, President Obama rightly declared in his State of the Union address: “No challenge poses a greater threat to future generations than climate change.”
This week, the Obama administration announced plans open up the Atlantic Ocean to oil and gas drilling and offer more lease sales in the sensitive Arctic waters off Alaska. Ramping up offshore drilling will not only raise the risk of disastrous oil spills and threats to wildlife, but will also deepen our dependence on the very fossil fuels driving us into the global climate crisis.
Here’s the thing about dealing with global warming: You can’t say you want to make it better and then do the opposite. Rhetoric won’t curb carbon dioxide emissions and poetic speeches won’t stop the seas from rising and the planet from warming.
Producing and burning what’s believed to be recoverable oil and gas in the Arctic Ocean could release 15.8 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere – that’d be like adding the equivalent of nine years’ pollution of all the cars, trucks, airplanes and other forms of transportation in the United States.
That’s taking us in exactly the wrong direction.
Climate scientists tell us we need to reduce carbon in the atmosphere to 350 parts per million to avoid catastrophic, irreversible impacts. Today it’s hovering at around 400 parts per million, so we have a long way to go.
The clock is ticking though. The decisions we make now about fossil fuels and energy development will have massive repercussions for future generations – coasts swallowed by rising oceans, dangerously warm temperatures, droughts, food shortages, deadly weather events, wildlife extinctions, the list goes one. We can still avert the worst that climate change will bring but the window for action is rapidly closing. And once it’s shut, there’s no going back.
President Obama ought to be banning offshore drilling in the Arctic and along the Atlantic coasts, not giving them new life. It’s a disappointing and troubling move that casts a long shadow over his promises to finally tackle this crisis.
Yes, the oil and gas industries will be thrilled to sink their drills into these pristine places but the rest of us – people and wildlife today and tomorrow – will be left coping with a planet suffering from the terrible cost of policies that valued profit and greed over all else.
We can do better. And we must, before it’s too late.
Photo: Kulluk offshore drilling rig run aground in Alaska (Coast Guard)
“Ladies and gentlemen, please stow your tray tables. We are now arriving in Boston.” I slunk down in my seat and craned my neck to get a better glimpse of the snowy mass below as we began our descent. Last one, best one, I thought.
Home is always having a delicious pile of books on the shelf that you never get around to reading because there is too much conversation to be had. Home is eating peanut butter out of the jar and having someone waiting behind you, spoon in hand. Home is having her curl up next to you on the bed, unannounced, and by the look in her eyes you know she needs to talk. Home is moments of peace, even when we feel lonely. Unpacking your suitcase. Walking around without pants on. Paintbrushes soaking in the bathroom sink. This is home.
Although Oregon will always be the place where I can breathe the easiest (not only for the moss-induced respiratory reprieve), in my life several locations have fallen under this definition of “home.” Having lived with five different host families in the past few years, I have experienced the arriving-settling-homesickness-returning-wanderlust cycle (almost) too many times, uprooting my expectations every few months like dandelions with the knowledge that feeling “at home” is temporal but not rare. Yet no matter how often I do it, adapting to the rhythm of a new environment is always a little disorienting at first; I feel my tempo is always too slow or too fast for the first week or two.
But college is a different kind of home. More than unemployment, more than failure, I fear losing this sense of community (or “the opposite of loneliness,” as Marina Keegan termed it) that Harvard has come to embody for me. I am afraid that, after I stop living with my best friends, my conversations will no longer be stimulating, I won’t have people to text in the middle of the night, and no one will lend me their mittens when I can’t find mine–irrational as these fears may be. Although Skype makes it easier than ever to keep in contact with people, I fear losing the circles of belonging we have constructed once our paths cross less frequently. With each new home comes the knowledge that there will always be people missing from our lives, despite our efforts to patch up the void.
Over winter break, between sorting through job applications and revising sections of my thesis, I let myself release some of the nervous productivity to soak up this time with my family. At my insistence, one day we took a day trip to the beach on probably the worst day of the year. The rain was sideways–just absolutely miserable–yet my brother and I leaped out of the car with our rain jackets and our audacity, running into the water that stung our eyes shut because I wanted to see the tide pools and smell the ocean. On the drive back, we stopped to feed a drenched seagull that stood stoically in the parking lot, my family laughing as we threw bread out of the car window. The moment itself didn’t mean much, but then again it did, because being with people you love always means something and laughs should never be taken for granted.
This weekend I shoved sweaters and books into my suitcase for the final time, for my last semester at my home in Cambridge. To the sometimes-overheated dorm room, with our mini fridge and our mess, that somehow pulls me like a siren call despite it, too, being temporary. I always enjoy the ample time for reflection on the six-hour flight, but this time–the last time–I felt especially nostalgic. Striking up a conversation with the person sitting next to me, I didn’t shy away when she asked, “Where do you go to school?” knowing it might be the last plane ride during which this question would have any relevancy. And when I showed up at my dorm room and flung my coat on the floor to hug my roommates, brushing the snow off my boots, it felt exactly like coming home.
Home may be temporary and it may be common, but it is also important. This feeling of belonging in a world with so many circles. Not knowing where my next home will be, I can only relish the time I have left in this one. Last one, best one.
The usually grim-faced media mogul practically swooned in his seat. Moments after Jeb Bush delivered what many in the audience described as an unremarkable talk at a conference in Washington, Rupert Murdoch turned to his seatmate, Valerie Jarrett, the White House adviser, to gush over its content and tone.
ATLANTA (AP) — A man convicted in the killing of a fellow inmate has been executed in Georgia despite claims by his lawyers that he was intellectually disabled.
Warren Lee Hill was put to death by injection of a single drug Tuesday at the state prison in Jackson. The 54-year-old was pronounced dead at 7:55 p.m. He did not make any final statement.
Hill had previously come within hours of execution on three separate occasions, but courts granted temporary reprieves each time. The Supreme Court on Tuesday denied a stay, however.
His lawyers argued Hill was intellectually disabled and shouldn’t be executed. The state argued the defense failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Hill is intellectually disabled.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP’s earlier story is below.
The Supreme Court has refused to halt the execution of a Georgia man whose lawyers say he is ineligible to be executed because he is intellectually disabled. Warren Lee Hill’s lawyers argue he shouldn’t be executed because he is intellectually disabled.
The justices on Tuesday turned away a last-minute plea from Warren Lee Hill. He is scheduled to be executed at 7 p.m. at the state prison in Jackson, Georgia.
Different courts have intervened with temporary reprieves at the last minute on three previous occasions. Justices Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor said they would have granted Hill another reprieve.
State and federal courts had already rejected his filings this time around, and the State Board of Pardons and Paroles -the only entity authorized to commute his sentence to life in prison – denied him clemency Tuesday. Hill has filings pending before the U.S. Supreme Court, which is now the only potential barrier between him and a lethal injection of the drug pentobarbital.
“The clemency board missed an opportunity to right a grave wrong,” Brian Kammer, a lawyer for Hill, said in an emailed statement Tuesday. “It is now up to the U.S. Supreme Court to ensure that an unconstitutional execution of a man with lifelong intellectual disability is prevented.”
Hill was sentenced to serve life in prison for the 1986 killing of his 18-year-old girlfriend, who was shot 11 times. While serving that sentence, he beat a fellow inmate, Joseph Handspike, to death using a nail-studded board. A jury in 1991 convicted Hill of murder and sentenced him to death.
Lawyers for Hill have long argued he is intellectually disabled and, therefore, shouldn’t be executed. State law and a 2002 U.S. Supreme Court decision both prohibit the execution of the intellectually disabled.
But Georgia has the toughest-in-the nation standard for proving intellectual disability. It requires capital defendants to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that they are intellectually disabled in order to avoid execution on those grounds. The state has consistently said Hill’s lawyers failed to meet that burden of proof.
Hill’s lawyers argued that Georgia’s standard is unconstitutional because mental diagnoses are subject to a degree of uncertainty that is virtually impossible to overcome. But the standard has repeatedly been upheld by state and federal courts.
In the challenge currently pending before the U.S. Supreme Court, Hill’s lawyers have cited a ruling that court issued in May that knocked down a Florida law. The high court said defendants should have a fair opportunity to show the Constitution prohibits their execution. Hill’s lawyers say that ruling should also invalidate Georgia’s tough burden of proof.
Hill was previously set to die in July 2012, February 2013 and July 2013, but courts stepped in at the last minute with temporary stays so they would have time to consider challenges filed by Hill’s lawyers. The July 2012 and July 2013 challenges each effectively halted executions in Georgia while they were pending, for about six months and 10 months, respectively.
Days before Hill was to be executed in February 2013, his lawyers submitted new statements from the three doctors who had examined Hill in 2000 and testified at his trial that he was not intellectually disabled. In their new statements, the doctors wrote that they had been rushed at the time of Hill’s trial, and new scientific developments had surfaced since then. All three reviewed facts and documents in the case and wrote that they believed Hill is intellectually disabled.
Included with the clemency application Hill’s lawyers submitted to the parole board were letters from former President Jimmy Carter and his wife and groups that advocate for those with disabilities. In their letter dated Jan. 21, the Carters noted that Georgia was the first state, in 1988, to outlaw the execution of the mentally disabled.
“In light of the undisputed evidence that Mr. Hill is more likely than not `mentally retarded,’ his execution would undermine the State of Georgia’s historic leadership in promoting the rights of the developmentally challenged,” Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter wrote.
Educating for Democracy: Words and Deeds
By Joel Shatzky
Having recently read Governor Cuomo’s State of the State address proposals for “education reform” I felt as if I was in an educational time warp. After my two-year absence from writing my blog, “Educating for Democracy,” I re-read that last post I wrote on February 5, 2013 and realized that the so-called educational “reformers” were still presenting the same misguided proposals for improving education as if the evidence against their practices did not exist. My blog “What Do Grades Mean?” on the limited effects of grading as motivation in improving student learning could have been written today with the same relevance as it had two years ago. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joel-shatzky/educating-for-democracy-w_5_b_2613191.html
In his speech last week the Governor indicated that he would be adding over one billion dollars in state aid to education; IF the teachers would agree to an increase in the weight their standardized test scores would be given: 50%, up from the present 40%. He also proposed other “reforms” that sounded all too familiar: An increase in the number of years required for a teacher to be eligible for tenure; an increase in the number of anti-union charter schools “co-located” with district schools with their often disruptive results; the continual practice of closing “failing” schools whose performance is largely based on the discredited standardized test scores. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/22/opinion/gov-cuomo-takes-on-education.
But I’m not really that surprised at Governor Cuomo for making things even tougher for teachers than it already is: the teachers unions didn’t support him for re-election! Therefore he “Cristified” these unions through political payback, not by closing a bridge, but by closing his mind to the mounting evidence that test scores as presently administered and evaluated are not a meaningful measure for learning. In my opinion, these tests promote an industrial model for indoctrinating students into a vocational and intellectual dead end. http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/mar99/vol56/num06/Why-Standardized-Tests-Don%27t-Measure-Educational-Quality.aspx
In a recent NY Times article critiquing Cuomo’s proposals(1/21/2015) noted educator Diane Ravitch directly disputed the validity of Cuomo’s “reforms” by using Value Added Model (VAM) to evaluate improvements in learning. “Cuomo’s staff evidently did not read the American Statistical Association statement on value-added models. It says, as I wrote in an earlier post: “Most VAM studies find that teachers account for about 1% to 14% of the variability in test scores, and that the majority of opportunities for quality improvement are found in the system-level conditions. Ranking teachers by their VAM scores can have unintended consequences that reduce quality.” The ASA points out: “This is not saying that teachers have little effect on students, but that variation among teachers accounts for a small part of the variation in scores. The majority of the variation in test scores is attributable to factors outside of the teacher’s control such as student and family background, poverty, curriculum, and unmeasured influences.” http://dianeravitch.net/2015/01/21/cuomo-wants-test-scores-to-count-for-50-of-teacher-evaluation/ html?_r=0
Although I am in general agreement with Ravitch’s criticism, I don’t believe that Cuomo’s staff is ignorant of the studies that show the governor’s approach to improving learning is all wrong. I think he may be well aware that he is misleading the public by appearing to try to solve the problems students have in learning by increasing the number of charter schools and giving a greater reliance on test scores to evaluate teachers. But parents, many of whom do not have the expertise to know what constitutes good learning practices, respond to numbers as evidence of successful learning.
On the other hand, there are significant problems that need to be addressed if we are serious about meaningful educational reform. As far back as twenty years ago studies on vocabulary fluency have shown that the educational disadvantages of young learners from impoverished homes begin even before they start their formal education. At the time, the study attributed this disadvantage to a deficit of 30 million spoken words in their households compared to children from middle-class families. A more nuanced recent study indicated that the quantity of words was not as important as the way they are spoken as reported in the New York Times:
“A study presented . . . at a White House conference on ‘bridging the word gap’ found that among 2-year-olds from low-income families, quality interactions involving words — the use of shared symbols (“Look, a dog!”); rituals (“Want a bottle after your bath?”); and conversational fluency (“Yes, that is a bus!”) — were a far better predictor of language skills at age 3 than any other factor, including the quantity of words a child heard. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/17/us/quality-of-words-not-quantity-is-crucial-to-language-skills-study-finds.html?_r=0 But however this deficit is measured, it clearly has an effect on whether or not children are “learning ready” on their first day of school.
Given the evidence in these and other studies that economic disadvantage is the most reliable predictor of poor school performance, it is counterproductive for Cuomo to put even more emphasis on standardized test scores as a measure of teacher competence. But what I believe is the real objective of standardized tests is to exclude the students who are not able to adjust to this narrow way of drilling–I would not call it learning–rather than include them by developing best ways to connect to them so they can want to learn.
The term “grit” has been used recently to differentiate those students who have sufficient motivation to want to learn compared with those who become indifferent to school learning and drop out of school early. However, the continued repetitious and boring drilling — frequently used in schools as a method to prepare students for an exercise in disconnected and meaningless questions– can drive many young learners into alienation and indifference toward school. This can often happen even if they initially approached education with interest and enthusiasm when first entering a classroom.
Success in taking standardized tests– and others that are used to determine students’ qualifications for specialized schools and “talented and gifted” programs– is increasingly more dependent on private coaching and tutoring, often unaffordable for low wage families, but relatively accessible to middle-class families. But learning to take a test is not the same as learning to understand a subject. The most important skill young learners must begin to master is the technique of “learning how to learn.” If they know how to learn independently, then they have the tools needed for innovative and critical thinking so important in this globally competitive world of work. But much of this kind of learning is not necessarily the result of formal education
Although I think that teachers are a significant influence on student learning, the students themselves, their parents, families, friends and intellectual experiences and values are far more important in fostering good learning, certainly when compared to the destructive effects of standardized testing. However, in environments where little cultural and intellectual capital is available, primarily due to poverty, teachers have a difficult time trying to compensate for their lack, particularly when educators are ham-strung by such “reforms” as the Cuomo administration mandates.
I believe if the Governor really wants to improve student learning he should address himself to the problems of student living: poverty, unsafe neighborhoods, dysfunctional families. But, as my mother, a great educator once said: “Some kids are smart enough to pick the right parents.” What she really meant is: some kids are lucky enough to be born in an environment where they are stimulated by the many words they hear, books that they read and are read to them, visits to museums, concerts, plays, trips to interesting places they go to with their families, opportunities to develop their interests in the arts; and raised in an environment without fear for their safety and uncertainty about their future lives. If Governer Cuomo wants to be considered an educational “reformer” in the true sense of the word, he should put the standardized tests where they belong: in the Museum of Failed Ideas.
The day of ecological reckoning looms over us. I am not talking about whether the Keystone XL Pipeline gets rammed through our backyards. I am down the rabbit hole of environmental concern with another problematic petrochemical — plastic.
We get plastic from oil, and have ingeniously transformed this hydrocarbon polymer into a multitude of plastic things, giving our lives a facade of durable-but-lightweight convenience.
Meantime there’s mounting evidence the dark side of plastic is much more than we bargained for, or can cope with.
First off, the wholesale recyclability of plastic is a happy ending environmental types — such as your author — want to believe. But in the U.S less than 10 percent of plastic gets recycled. And, even when it is recycled, the amount has become overwhelming. Globally there’ll be 45 million tons of plastic scrap looking to be recycled this year.
Most scrapped plastic ends up in China, bound for the Wen’an region. Once a bucolic piece of countryside, Wen’an is now a toxic cesspit, where people are paralyzed by off-the-chart blood pressure problems, after enduring horrendous work conditions in a bid to recycle — or otherwise dispose of — all the plastic.
What can’t be recycled is burnt, releasing dioxins — the worst of the worst toxins. Dioxins are carcinogenic, linked to developmental and reproductive impairment, heart disease, diabetes, and in extreme cases of exposure a nasty skin ailment – chloracne.
Next inconvenient truth — a huge amount of our plastic debris ends up in the ocean. Last months first scientific accounting of total ocean plastic pollution estimates the amount at a mind boggling 5.25 trillion pieces. Plastic only started becoming a household item in the 1950’s, so this amount of trashed plastic happened in 60 odd years.
Almost as worrisome, these researchers found 100 times fewer micro-sized plastic particles than expected. Because that’s another pesky thing about plastic, it does NOT biodegrade, it photodegrades — meaning in sunlight plastic simply breaks into smaller and smaller pieces, which are nearly impossible to detect but have huge and brutal consequences as they enter the food chain.
Which brings us to one of the worlds tiniest but most significant fish species: Myctophids, aka Lanternfish, account for over half of the oceans fishy biomass, and are apparently scoffing down plastic like there’s no tomorrow.
/>Iddy biddy fish ingesting miniscule particles of plastic might not sound too awful. Until now these four to five centimeters long, two to five grams fishes were seen as inferior to our other little finned friends – the sardine or anchovy. Myctophids were ground into fodder for industrial fish farms. However the line from plastic-gobbling Myctophids to your next meal is about to get a lot more direct.
Some in the fishing industry see huge potential for this “untouched resource” and are developing methods to convert this plentiful, but low value fish, into a high value-added product. Ungutted Myctophids will be processed into surimi (the Japanese term for mechanically deboned fish mince) with uses ranging from fish products, to meat substitutes, and dessert dishes.
It would seem ecological folly to mess with a fish species that is the very basis of important marine food webs – swordfish, tuna, dolphins and seals eat Myctophids.
Not to mention the risk taken if we ingest plastic — a possibility that is in the news more and more these days. Last fall scientists discovered there are microplastics in two-dozen German beers and European shellfish lovers ingest 11,000 pieces of plastic a year in their pursuit of gastronomic nirvana.
Apart from how unappetizing eating or drinking plastic sounds, it’s all the nasty chemicals in plastic (phthalates – known endocrine disruptors – are used to soften plastic) and that adhere to plastic so eagerly in the marine environment (POPs, DDT and flame retardants) that make it highly toxic.
But now for the good news: with this growing pile of evidence about the pervasiveness of plastic pollution, we can take action.
This is the moment to change our reliance on the not-so-disposable-after-all polymer. If we can move beyond a single-use throw-away mentality, and incentivize the plastics industry to design effective end-game recyclability into their products – the size of the problem will begin to diminish.
Which is precisely what’s needed to assist less discerning species cope with our plastic mess.
Captain Charles Moore of Algalita Marine Research and Education, describes himself as the ocean’s “voluntary public defender” – The Lorax who speaks for the seas, if you will. He says organisms can’t cope with plastic because it’s happened too quickly, “people think stupid myctophids to eat plastic, but evolutionarily speaking they have no selection process to avoid to it.”
Myctophids are Captain Moore’s “Humming-Fish” but unlike the fictional Lorax he can’t send them away to an ocean without plastic — that ocean no longer exists.
Crafty little guys, Myctophids, stay low in the water column during daylight avoiding predation, then rise to feed on zooplankton at the ocean surface during the darkest hours of night.
To aid in this diel migration, Myctophids have swim bladders that alter their buoyancy as required. But what will happen to this mechanism in a fish that has a belly full of flotation devices – plastic particles.
If it hasn’t been incinerated, every piece of plastic ever produced is still with us. There is no time for any species to biologically adapt to cope with plastic, including us. We have to make an effort to culturally evolve with way less plastic.
Put another way: think long and hard about what you want to be eating and gazing upon in the days to come.
SEOUL, Jan 27 (Reuters) – South Korea and China warned Japan on Tuesday not to backtrack on its apology issued 20 years ago over its wartime past when Prime Minister Shinzo Abe makes a statement on the 70th anniversary of the end of World War Two.
Japan’s ties with South Korea and China have worsened sharply as Abe has adopted a conservative agenda, including a less apologetic tone toward the wartime past and bolstering Japan’s defenses.
Abe has said he intends to express remorse over the war in his statement and his cabinet upholds past apologies, including the landmark 1995 remarks by then-premier Tomiichi Murayama but suggested he was not going to stick with the original wording.
“I would like to issue a statement with the focus not on whether the same terms will be used but on the Abe government’s thought on the occasion,” Abe said on public broadcaster NHK at the weekend.
The anniversary of Japan’s defeat falls on Aug. 15, but no date has been set for the release of the Abe statement.
South Korea’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Noh Kwang-il has already accused Japan of trying to “undermine” a separate 1993 apology to Asian women it forced to work as wartime sex slaves in Japanese brothels by conducting a review of it last year.
The Japanese government must remember “the historic significance of every single passage” used in past apologies by former premiers, Noh told a news briefing on Tuesday.
“It should reflect carefully, looking squarely at history how the international community and neighboring countries will react if it takes key parts out from statements by Murayama on the 50th anniversary and Junichiro Koizumi on the 60th.”
Koizumi issued a similar statement in 2005.
Noh added Japan should take lessons from the consistent position of remorse and responsibility taken by German leaders about the Nazi past.
China’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said on Monday Beijing was concerned about “what type of attitude the Japanese government and leaders adopt with respect to the past period of aggression and the type of information it sends out to the outside world.”
“Will it play down the history of aggression and continue to carry that negative asset? Or will it show profound and sincere remorse over its history of invasions and travel lightly forward? The international community waits and sees,” she told a media briefing in Beijing.
Abe has questioned the 1993 statement in the past and in what many saw as a nod to his conservative base, asked a panel of experts to review it. However, mindful of the potential diplomatic fallout, he has said he would not revise it.
South Korea, China warn Japan not to backtrack on apology over wartime past(Reporting by Jack Kim in Seoul, Sui-Lee Wee in Beijing and Linda Sieg in Tokyo; Editing by Jeremy Laurence)
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