Hasta La Gadget!

Now this particular report can be chilling – it does sound as though it hails from the bowels of some science fiction novel, but Harvard professors have issued a warning that ‘privacy is dead’, making predictions that robots as small as the size of a mosquito could very well do its bit to steal samples of one’s DNA down the road. Would this allow unscrupulous acts of stealing DNA? Who really knows, right?
And to think that it is not some group of paranoid students or laypersons out there who came up with such a scenario, but rather, it was thought up of by a group of Harvard professors at the World Economic Forum in Davos. It does seem as though the notion of individual privacy is effectively dead, and who are we to think that such small robots could eventually come equipped with cameras and microphones in order to record all that is going on behind closed doors? Surely such a time would see the strength of one’s character shine through all the more of the tenets of honesty under every circumstance, even when behind closed doors.

At the end of the day, such technology is a double-edged sword, so it really depends on which party would be able to get hold of it – and use it the right way.

Small Robots Could Steal DNA Samples From Targets , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.

I am not quite sure about you, but when it comes to novels or books that expand upon the backstory of a particular video game, perhaps exploring the character’s history in one way or another, it would certainly require an affinity for the title beforehand. Otherwise, it would take a certain amount of courage to actually spend some money on a novel in which you might not probably be interested in the first place. Well, fans of the Halo series who simply cannot get enough of the game might be interested in checking out a spanking new Halo novel that will see Gunnery Sergeant Edward Buck’s history revealed.

Known as Halo: New Blood, this will be a digital-first short novel that will launch this coming 2nd of March. The novel itself will weigh in at 60,000 words, and it is author Matt Forbeck who is behind this read. Just in case you were wondering what kind of credentials does Forbeck carry, he is an award-winning author of many licensed fantasy and sci-fi publications. Surely such a resume would stand him in good stead to be able to churn up something along the way for the masses?

The story would be a brand new one, but Halo 3: ODST fans will definitely be pleased to see familiar characters and situations make up part of the novel.

New Halo Novel Is In The Works , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.

In Da, now revived by the Irish Repertory Theatre during its DR2 season, Hugh Leonard deals with a couple of irrefutable psychological truths. He contends that we all internalize our parents as well as keep track of our younger selves.

He does it–not that he’s the first to do something like this–by bringing Charlie Tynan’s adopted parents and his 17-year-old self into the action. He starts the compulsive flashbacks as the 55-year-old Charlie (Ciaran O’Reilly) returns to his childhood home (very well conjured by James Morgan) directly after the funeral of his Da (Paul O’Brien).

There to begin closing up the house–his mother (Fiana Toibin) is three years gone–he’s not only visited by Da and his younger version but also by his mother, by boyhood friend Oliver (John Keating), by former employer Drumm (Sean Gormley) and by a couple of memorable locals (Nicola Murphy, Kristin Griffith).

Not one of the interlopers is especially welcome, but the least welcome of all is Da, who settles in his old chair to nag at Charlie. Never mind that he’s gone to his reward, no matter how meager it is. This is a Da who refuses to be left behind and who effortlessly walks through walls to make his ceaseless points. Sharp-tongued Mother isn’t much less upbraiding.

Leonard’s writing is extraordinarily pointed, and it’s played with emotional verisimilitude by the cast under Charlotte Moore’s greatly detailed direction. Any one of the scenes has the power to make patrons flinch. Besides the succession of scenes where Da relentlessly keeps after both younger and older Charlie, there’s an argument between Da and Mother so caustic that it can tempt patrons to turn their heads away.

Rousing theater, no doubt, but there’s something going on under the surface that does raise a question about Charlie’s compulsively sharp-tongued Da and his underlying intentions, his motivating urges. At some point, 55-year-old Charlie observes that “love turned upside down is love for all that.”

Does Leonard believe it? Is he really depicting a father who expresses his love–a Mother, too–through unfailing meanness? Or is love turned upside down not love but rather a cruel conscious or unconscious withholding of love?

The only time Da and Mother show any sign of affection is when young Charlie is flying off to his wedding and they stand outside their front door waving him off. Why are they waving? They’ve refused to attend a ceremony taking place 500 miles away. Having done that, how fond of their son can they be?

Before Da reaches its close, Leonard indicates that Da will be trailing (stalking?) Charlie forever. He suggests that it’ll be a cozy, Blarney-like relationship. Will it?

Leonard has written a playable, in many ways appealing drama, but somewhere under his revealed psychological truths is a deeper psychological truth he seems reluctant to confront for reasons at which an onlooker can only guess.
************************************
Good for Aaron Mark, who directed Another Medea, which Tom Hewitt is performing again, at The Wild Project this time. With this one, Mark really got me going.

I missed the play (or monologue) when it was previously on view and hadn’t had time to read the program closely before Hewitt, identified as Performer, entered, took a pregnant pause during which he looked extremely apprehensive and began talking about having replaced an actor called Marcus Sharp in a play some years earlier.

Saying there’d been little contact with Strong over time, Hewitt goes on to mention he’d nevertheless become intrigued by misfortunes that he’d learned had befallen Sharp. Mentioning the adjective “horrific,” he recounts a correspondence with Sharp, who was in prison, and discloses he eventually visited the inmate.

That’s where Hewitt sits at an unadorned table–the chair and table comprising the only set–and recites the tale told throughout that confrontation, which, incidentally, continues longer than such tete-a-tetes usually do in most depictions of these events.

It seems that Sharp, as he tells it, was wooed and won by an English oncologist named Jason many years earlier. Initially, their affair was red-hot–the sex in particular–but after Jason’s sister, Anjelica, and Sharp collaborated via sperm bank on twin girls, which they presented to the doctor as their joint gift, the men’s love match soured.

Having been replaced by a younger man called Paris List, Sharp suddenly connected his Jason with the mythical Jason who abandoned Medea for a princess. Obsessed with the similarity between the two situations, Sharp–all the while impersonating the involved characters he mentions–reads everything he can about Medea, every play, starting with Euripides through Charles Ludlum and beyond,

Increasingly identifying with the scorned woman who takes vengeance on her Jason by murdering their two sons as well as his royal lover, Sharp is compelled into actions the audience sees coming but that won’t be described in detail here.

It’s enough for this throttled auditor/spectator to say Another Medea is the sort of theater experience that has you wanting to stop listening all the while you’re aching to learn what happens next. You need to find out if it’s even more horrific than what has just preceded it. It’s a tale that if told around a campfire would keep everyone awake for the rest of the night.

Beneath the story is also a look at obsession and how it can be infectious, as in the case of the speaker’s obsession with Sharp. Towards the end of the outpouring, Hewitt talks about having become so affected by Sharp’s confidences that he can no longer work and is $20,000 in debt. (Interestingly, director Mark guided Ben Rimalower through Bad With Money, now at The Duplex. Does he specialize in compulsive accounts of men strapped for cash?)

The last thing I’ll add before recommending you dash to see Another Medea is that Hewitt delivers it chillingly and that Mark’s contributions aren’t limited to his subtle direction.

No, wait. One absolute last note: I Googled Marcus Sharp and found no references to anyone with the background Hewitt supplies. Neither is Sharp accessible on imdb.com (International Broadway Data Base) either. So go figure.
**************************************
With Pan Asian Repertory’s Film Chinois, Damon Chua gets a big kick out of transporting that brand of dark ’40s movie genre to the stage.

The five-actor escapade–in which it’s deliberately difficult to figure out who in this Beijing (when it was still Peking) stands for what and who’s prepared to do what to whom–has its awkward moments. But as directed by Kaipo Schwab at The Beckett and lighted with a love of shadows by Marie Yokoyama, its ambitions remain entertaining.

American OSS man Randolph (Benjamin Jones, who will get even more out of the part as he goes along) plays literal and figurative footsie with Chinadoll (slinky, inscrutable Roseanne Ma), while he also taunts nightclub singer Simone (Katie Lee Hill, trembling and seductive) over whether he’ll deliver her transit papers. (Hello there, Casablanca).

All the while a Belgian ambassador (Jean Brassard, suave, especially when wielding a pistol) hovers, making repeated references to someones or somethings known as “the twins.” James Henry Doan enters and exits ominously as “A Mysterious Presence of Many Faces.”

With cigarettes repeatedly plucked from cigarette cases, then lighted and deeply inhaled, Film Chinois captures the unmistakable undercurrents of those post-war flicks. It perceptively picks up on the disturbing underpinnings of the so-called “good war” that film noir exposed and then takes them one step further.

Whereas actual entries like Out of the Past weren’t explicitly political, Film Chinois very much is. It refers specifically to upstart Mao Tse Tung and includes several appearances of his Little Red Book (which draws knowing titters from the audience). These underline the production’s awareness of elements leading to later global implications of historic revolutionary events. How smart is that of playwright Chua?

In America, traditional schooling has frequently drawn inspiration from the trusty “three Rs”: writing, reading and arithmetic.

But as the technology sector continues to boom, educators have realized that this trifecta is no longer the end-all, be-all recipe for their students’ success. For today’s K-12 students, technology is a fact of life that affects everything from the way they digest information to the way they socialize.

As a result, these students will face a number of challenges as they move from the classroom into the workforce. Among other unforeseen demands, they will have to find their niche on the web, understand the interplay between biology and technology, work with data and build relationships through social media without forgetting personal contact.

According to many thought leaders, these concepts will need to be introduced early and often to ensure career success for today’s youth. That means that the role of the educator must change.

“Information transfer as the prime method of teaching is going by the wayside,” says Harbrinder Kang, a vice president for corporate social responsibility at Cisco and a spokesperson for the Networking Academy program. “All knowledge is available via the web. The responsibilities of teachers to prepare students for the 21st century is to engage, inspire and coach.”

Paul D. Miller, a multidisciplinary artist, producer and educator and author of The Imaginary App (MIT Press) adds a rapidly changing economy to this set of challenges.

“The current job market will probably be obsolete within 10 years as automation takes over more and more aspects of the modern economy,” he says. “The ‘knowledge economy’ has permeated every aspect of modern life. The classroom needs to teach [K-12] students that they are stakeholders.”

In this spirit, here are some current and potential ways that U.S. education can adapt to teach kids the critical skills they need in an ever-evolving, super-competitive job market.

Eliminate the Gender Disparity in STEM Subjects

Rainier Beach High School students learn to program a calculator in the AP computer science class taught by high tech professionals as part of TEALS, a Microsoft YouthSpark program.

In grades K-12, boys and girls score equally well on science and math skills testing, but women move on to occupy a mere 20 percent of jobs in related fields. Furthermore, minority women represent less than 10 percent of employed scientists and engineers. Women represent half of the workforce, but they haven’t gained proportional traction in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields.

This is not just a loss for budding scientists, but for our economy. After all, since women entered the workforce in the 1970s, they not only contributed thousands of dollars to average household incomes, but expanded the U.S. economy by $2 trillion.

Happily, encouraging females to pursue STEM early in life has become a government and corporate priority. Their initiatives help to boost girls’ confidence to think big -– solving world hunger big, in the case of three Irish teenagers who won the Google Science Fair Grand Prize last year. They demonstrated that bacteria could increase wheat crop yields by 74 percent, a boon for expanding our underfed populations.

How do we make sure that such accomplishments are the norm and not the exception? According to Arikia Millikan, a WIRED journalist who coaches young women in cyber self-sufficiency via her blog, LadyBits, visible role models in math and science will motivate girls to achieve in those fields.

“Once we start to institutionalize the celebration of female scientists and technologists, we will be on the right track to making science as appealing to girls as it is to boys so that we can further scientific progress as a society,” she says.

In a recent interview with HuffPost, Dame Sue Ion, a Royal Academy of Engineering chair, also posited a few ways to attract girls to STEM at an early age.

First, she said, we must dismantle “old-fashioned perceptions” about what engineering actually is. “Engineering can be about creating a cancer-busting ultrasonic to deliver drugs to tumors; it can be about developing bionic limbs; it can be optical fibers … It’s an art and it’s creative,” she said. “But it also deals with devices and everything that makes the world tick in the 21st century.”

While she called it a “gross generalization,” she suggested that girls are attracted to scientific applications with a medical or environmental benefit stuff that improves the environment […] If you use these things to get girls attracted at a younger age … that might be helpful,” she says.

Here is a list of effective ways to talk your kids into loving STEM.

Make Technology a Hands-On Activity

Cisco’s Networking Academy is a partnership with schools, universities and other institutions in 170 countries that teaches people how design, build and manage technology networks.

Three quarters of kids in the U.S. use a smart device, and their time spent on a cell phone screen has doubled since 2011. Only 5 percent of U.S high schools, however, offer Advanced Placement computer science (CS) classes.

Coding is the language of the future, and programs like CodeAcademy, Code.Org, and others are picking up the slack to turn kids from consumers into creators. Programs like Cisco Networking Academy also partner with schools to supplement computer science and technology programs. By combining soft-skills training with more specialized, technical training, they aim to train high school students for highly rewarding, in-demand computer networking jobs.

Similarly, Microsoft’s volunteer TEALS (Technology Education and Literacy in Schools) program pairs computer science professionals as mentors to educators teaching computer classes. The two teach tandem until the educator becomes a CS expert. Demand for the program is high: Since 2009, TEALS has grown from one volunteer in a single school to deploying nearly 500 volunteers teaching 6,600 kids in 131 schools across the U.S.

These supplemental programs produce real results. Students suddenly gain interest in careers they might never have considered otherwise, and they gain tangible, technical skills. Nathaniel Boggs, a Networking Academy alum from Indiana, realized he had a leg up once he got to college: “I found myself in computer science classes with students who had no high school preparation for the material,” he says. “The way technology is shaping our world, kids should have this kind of education earlier.”

“It’s a big problem when one of the biggest drivers of the U.S. technology is computer science, and there are no kids studying it at the high school level,” echoes Kevin Wang, founder of TEALS. “CS is actually viewed somewhere between art practice and art history, but you need it to be successful in any field in the future. Any computational thinking will get kids ahead.”

Even if students don’t decide to pursue a career in tech right away, a seed planted early in life may cause a career turnaround — just in time for a growing demand for science and design jobs. Danielle Sipple, 32, a writer studying for a degree in chemical engineering, is a great example of this phenomenon.

“I was introduced to little bits of STEM education through an accelerated learning program I was invited into,” she says. “There is so much emphasis on the social sciences like sociology and psychology but without the hardcore development of skill sets in STEM, specifically chemistry, engineering, mathematics and physics, there will be huge gaps in the job economy.”

To bring up an earlier point, bringing science into the classroom helps students realize the sheer possibilities that are available to them.

Turn Up the STEAM

What is STEAM? from Brown SPS on Vimeo.

The greatest contributions to knowledge have come from thinkers who forgot the distinction between science and art. Today, leading learning centers like the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) want to fortify STEM subjects with arts and design emphasis (STEAM), which Kang says are critical to innovation and engagement.

Arts and design – the ability to emotionalize and conceptualize information in a personal way – is what brings data to life. RISD’s STEAM students have made breakthroughs in treating Ebola, fortifying indigenous mud houses, and making electric vehicles more compact, because they looked at the world through the lens of preserving its beauty while imagining ways to improve people’s lives.

Daniel Moran, a high school social studies department supervisor in East Brunswick, N.J., and Disney’s American Teacher Award winner, leads workshops on teaching common-core humanities standards, which are integral to critical thinking.

“Common core standards are all about sophisticated skills that kids need to master to be college and career ready: networking, collaboration, speaking, listening and synthesizing solutions,” says Moran.

“We’re all supposed to be data junkies,” he continues. “Now how do you sell that data? The humanities make us human, and the human voice is an important piece of technology.”

Exciting developments come from people who fuse art, design, and technology – really, anywhere imagination meets practicality.

“These people are equally likely to draw inspiration from an obscure piece of scientific research, a 19th century poet or counterpoint music theory,” says Julia Kagansky, director of NEW INC., the New Museum’s technology and design incubator. “They don’t identify as purely left or right brain -– in fact, they dismiss that binary notion all together –- and instead attempt to fuse code and art, science and fashion, engineering and design in their practice.”

Nurture Collaboration and Communication

When seeking talent for a marketing project, Floyd Hayes, a creative advertising director whose clients have included Dove, MINI Cooper, and the SyFy channel, often overlooked applicants fresh from ad school.

“We looked for peer thinkers and great storytellers with a certain edge and interesting life stories, combined with disciplined and strategic thinking,” he says.

Unfortunately, he has observed a decline in basic communications skills – manners, table skills, and eye contact – among colleagues, which inhibits true collaboration that feeds on communication.

“Business etiquette is lacking in the modern workplace,” Hayes says of meetings where even senior executives sit fiddling on their phones. “It creates a mental and physical barrier with the people you’re working with to create solutions.”

Just like artful design has become indispensable to the economy, says Kang, collaboration and personal interaction have become emblematic of the millennial mindset.

“Our students have a desire to give back and build a pillar of social entrepreneurship, which taps into millennials’ motivations and desires,” says Kang. Emphasizing collaboration in school, through work that stirs imaginations, is a sure way to overcome shortening attention spans.

Millikan of LadyBits worries that creativity is being stamped out of the classroom. One middle school teacher’s willingness to immerse students in nature inspired Millikan to embark on an accelerated science track because she “could not stop consuming science knowledge and wanted to carve out a spot ahead of the rest of my peers so [she] could ensure a lifelong career in science and engineering.”

Today, imaginations must thrive, and minds must meet, for kids to grow up in — and create — a progressive world. By bringing technology to life in the classroom for all, marrying it with the humanities (STEAM), and demolishing the standardized transfer of facts that is the hallmark of traditional K-12 education, we can truly prepare this generation for a bright future.

Naturally, the President’s recent pitch for a major expansion in community college funding has been greeted with equal parts praise and criticism. As a long-time advocate for collaborative, directed vocational education, to me it simply makes good economic sense.

In the State of the Union address, the President reconfirmed to the nation why his plan for free community college is necessary for a productive and competitive economy. Political horse-trading aside, policy makers have known for a long time that investment in state and community colleges is among the most cost effective for local economies. Investment in community colleges gives people stable employment, communities a skills base, and local business dividends, in large part because community colleges (unlike their more expensive four-year counterparts) are uniquely positioned to work with policy makers and business to ensure that curriculum design is in line with local job markets.

The logic is pretty straightforward. The greatest gains to investments in education come from raising the floor, not lifting the ceiling. Right now, 9 million Americans are unemployed, even as 4.8 million jobs remain unfilled due to lack of applicants with the necessary skills to fill them. Greater access to community college means more people with the skills and credentials to move into middle class incomes — an overall economic boon.

The success of the President’s plan, if enacted, will depend upon meaningful collaboration between educators, policy makers, and industry. That is, we need to come together to lift whatever stigma hovers over community college and view it with the value and prestige it deserves. The fact is that community college is often the best place to develop the technical and practical skills in highest demand by today’s employers, giving community college graduates a leg up in the job market over their baccalaureate counterparts. Contrary to popular belief, a community college degree offers graduates the opportunity to command wages and salaries equal to — and sometimes better — than those of the average college graduate; indeed one-third of two-year college grads with occupational majors, in fact, out-earn their four-year college peers.

Since the Global Financial Crisis, the ‘college or bust’ mentality that dominated thinking for decades has rightly come under pressure. The combined financial and opportunity cost of a four-year degree, and the lack of tangible benefits upon graduation has forced policy makers to rethink some of their foundation beliefs. Given the current oversupply of college graduates, and the conflating problem of tepid job growth, there’s no better time than the present to start thinking outside the box.

Many young people have been asking the obvious ‘is it worth it?’ question, and deciding traditional four-year college programs are a poor investment. Partly, it’s the cost. The average student today graduates $30,000 in debt and national student loan debt is now at $1.2 trillion. The average tuition at a public institution for in-state residents is $9,139, an increase of 2.9 percent since last year. Since 1974 tuition has risen by 3 percent or more every year.

For years, the four-year college degree has increased exponentially in price, while decreasing in value. As any student of economics 101 will tell you, if you expand supply, you risk diluting its quality. As enrolments and tuition have gone up, standards went down, and the prestige and earning power along with it.

While this may have been good for college balance sheets in the short-term, its long-term impact is now clear. We have been oversupplying the marketplace with degree-qualified graduates who are underwhelming our corporate HR departments. In a fragile part of the economic cycle, few people want or need generalists, and if everyone else has the same qualification, how does an individual stand out and signal their value?

Community colleges work because the model is based on ongoing value creation — not just for the institution, as in the case of many private colleges, but for the student, the local businesses, and the economy at large. A key feature of successful vocational education models throughout the world is the relationships among local educators, employers, and industry groups, whose interests are aligned. There is ongoing collaboration between stakeholders, where push and pull factors are calibrated regularly to identify workforce needs and create programs that give students a real shot at local jobs. To me, that is what a 21st century education can, and must, look like.

If enacted, the President’s proposal could increase access to this very type of education — and ultimately provide 9 million people the path to rewarding careers. Differences aside — political or otherwise — we all have economic incentive to support making free community college available to all.

Image: Cristie Guevara/i Stock