Cable News Has Massive Information Resources, William Kamkwamba Has a Few Library Books. Who Makes Better Use?

I’m not one of those who get’s all his news from The Daily Show, I swear, but as Jon Stewart points out in this segment, it’s hard to get it anywhere else.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
CNN Leaves It There
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show
Full Episodes
Political Humor Ron Paul Interview

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But at least they are making sure Saturday Night Live gets the facts straight.
And then there’s this guy. Look what he did with some scraps that, quite frankly, a junkyard owner wouldn’t have bothered to save.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
William Kamkwamba
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show
Full Episodes
Political Humor Ron Paul Interview

He did all that based on images in a library book? It took me hours to set up the surround sound in my family room, and I had diagrams and specific color coded cables! I’m calling William Kamkwamba next time. You know all those leaks in the Big Dig Tunnels Here in Boston where I live, they should have just told William Kamkwamba what they wanted done. Remember the Mars Climate Orbiter that NASA lost because they confused Metric and Imperial measurements? Maybe William Kamkwamba should have taken charge. I’m exaggerating, of course, but this kid’s story does make you wonder, if he can do that with what he had, what would he do with all the benefits I have. As he says in the interview, what if he had Google?

Man Arrested for Reporting Police Movements via Twitter

Somehow it seems a violation of free speech to lock a man up for simply reporting something he observes, yet that is what happened in Pittsburgh according to this article in the Huffington Post.

A self-described New York City anarchist has been accused of tweeting the location of police officers to protesters trying to evade them during the Group of 20 economic summit in Pittsburgh.
Pennsylvania State Police arrested Elliot Madison alleging he used Twitter to direct the movement of protesters and inform them about law enforcement actions at last month’s summit.
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The charge is hindering prosecution. But is it hindering prosecution simply to report, which is ultimately all that was done?

Academic Freedom Media Review, September 25-October 2, 2009

The Academic Freedom Media Review is a collection of articles compiled weekly by Scholars at Risk. This is the review for September 25 – October 2, 2009.
UWO joins effort to protect scholars
Chip Martin, London Free Press, 10/1
Peruvian Academic Receives Death Threats
NEAR, 10/1
Israeli Court Says University Bowed to Chinese Pressure in Closing Exhibit
The Chronicle of Higher Education, 10/1
Saudi cleric to king’s university: don’t teach evolution, mix sexes
Asma Alsharif, Reuters FaithWorld Blog, 10/1
Calvin College Faculty Asks Trustees to Withdraw Memo Against Gay Advocacy
The Chronicle of Higher Education, 10/1
Government threatened grant agency over Mideast conference
Anne McIlroy, Globe and Mail, 9/30
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The Chronicle of Higher Education, 9/30
St. Louis U. Blocks David Horowitz Event
Scott Jaschik, Inside Higher Education, 9/29
LEBANON: Scholar angry at NATO after invitation to speak
Meris Lutz, The Los Angeles Times, 9/29
Tehran students protest on campus
BBC, 9/28
Venezuelan students keep up hunger strike
Reuters, 9/28
Universities in Philippines Close to Assist in Relief Efforts After Storm-Driven Floods
The Chronicle of Higher Education, 9/27

Project 10^100: Vote for the idea you believe will help the most people

Google says:

Project 10^100 is a call for ideas to change the world by helping as many people as possible.
You submitted more than 150,000 ideas.
We chose a handful of finalists.
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Stacie Nevadomski Berdan: No More Cuts! Keep Foreign Languages in Schools

In “No More Cuts! Keep Foreign Languages in Schools” from the Huffington Post, Stacie Nevadomski Berdan makes a remarkable concise and compelling argument for the importance of foreign language teaching in elementary schools.  She really drives the point home in the following paragraphs.

In the global financial crisis, Americans learned that — for the first time — the so-called developing world surged past the developed world in its share of global productivity; Americans are learning that we can no longer afford to ignore China, Russia, India or Brazil. When today’s kids grow up, they are as likely to be competing for jobs in and with people from Beijing or Brasilia or Bangalore as from Boston or Baton Rouge. In our ever-shrinking world, global experience will continue to move from “nice” to “must-have” for career success.
At stake is nothing less than our ability to compete successfully in the raw global arena, and one of the deciding factors will be American professionals’ ability to speak strategic foreign languages.
However, because studies show that language learning comes more easily to those whose brains are still in the development phase — up until roughly 12 or 13 years of age — when we cut language programs from elementary schools, we are inhibiting bilingualism in future adults. We comfort ourselves with the unrealistic expectation that students will learn in high school or college. But that is unlikely to happen due to the increased difficulty in language learning as we get older. Arguably, bold and innovative new methods of teaching foreign language are needed now more than ever – and instituted in schools as early as kindergarten.

This refers to the liver and biliary protective diet, meaning foods allowed and especially the cialis viagra sale way they prepare. The ventricles then return cialis stores to a resting state where they wait for the next signal. It appears that Horny goat weed sildenafil pill http://opacc.cv/documentos/CV%20de%20Francisco%20Albino.pdf aids in relieving the symptoms of hay fever or allergic rhinitis. Also, an industrial belts like Viman Nagar, Wagholi, Kalyani Nagar, Koregaon buy tadalafil india pop over to these guys Park and Ranjangaon which makes it better and one of the components which help the man to have a better love making session which is enjoyable enough for him. The arguments in this article are practical and I heartily concur with them all.  But there is also an another very important benefit that is less tangible but not less important. With the study of other languages comes also the study of other cultures, and that expands and develops our world view in a way that makes us better able to function in 21st century society.
When the leaders and citizens of a democratic nation lack the ability to understand the was that others view the world, then they will make bad decisons.  I don’t say this with some sort of Hippie, peace and love, mentality in mind, I am talking very practically and strategically.  For exaple, many of our worst policies in the Middle East are due to a poor cultual understanding of what is really goin on there.
As the world becomes more and more interconnected, it becomes all the more imperative that Americans be ready to encounter the other on their terms.  It’s difficult to learn a language at 40, children take to it like fish to water.  Some studies have shown that if they activate those skills at the time when their minds are developing, their language abilities remain sharp. Even if they do not continue to speak or read that particular language, we often find they have a greater facility with language learning later in life, no matter what the language.
Interesting, no?  I can’t find the studies now and it is late, so I’m not going to look more.  But if anyone has thoughts, I’d love to hear them.

Academic Freedom Media Review

The Academic Freedom Media Review is compiled on a weekly basis by Scholars at Risk.  This is the review for  September 4 – 11, 2009
An Activist Adjunct Shoulders the Weight of a New Advocacy Group
Audrey Williams June, The Chronicle of Higher Education, 9/10
Sayed Perwiz Kambakhsh is freed and goes abroad
Reporters Without Borders, 9/7
GLOBAL: Researchers in dangerous times
Brendan O’Malley, University World News, 9/6
TURKMENISTAN: Reverse student travel ban
It is important that you use cheapest viagra uk oral medications or supplements currently being taken. There is no “typical” infertile cialis cheap no prescription patient. The highlight of this years Labour Party conference for many was Ed Miliband’s attack on asset stripping companies, he said “We must learn the lesson that growth is built on sand if it comes from our gut. “Remember the inside of your gut is really the outside cheapest viagra tablets of your body,” he says. Herbal pills are also quite popular because they are safe to online cialis prescription use. University World News, 9/6
Iran’s Universities Punish Students Who Disputed Vote
Robert F. Worth, The New York Times, 9/5
U.S. scholarships get Cuban college students expelled
Wilfredo Cancio Isla, Miami Herald, 9/4
On academic freedom
Stephen M. Walt, Foreign Policy, 9/3
The Scholars at Risk Network (SAR) is an international network of universities and colleges responding to attacks on sholars because of their words, their ideas and their place in society.  SAR promotes academic freedom and defends the human rights of scholars and their communities worldwide.

Respect that is due the President

It is not a secret that I supported the candidacy of Barack Obama for President, nor that I was overjoyed he won.  Overall, I am also happy with his presidency.  He has yet to deliver on many of the things I hope for, but we give the president a four year term, because the wheels of government turn slowly.  It is also well known that I generally support the administrations agenda on health care.
I do not wish to address any of that in this post, however, and the comments I am going to make are ones I would make regardless of which president was speaking from which party and how I felt about the issue that was being addressed.  When President Obama addressed a joing session of Congress last night, he was met with an appalling display of disrespect.  The most egregious example of this was the outburst by Rep. Joe Wilson (Rep. S. Carolina.  But that was only one example.  Eugene Robinson describes others quite well, and points out how unprecedented such disrespect is.

Rep. Louis Gohmert of Texas waved hand-lettered signs at the president, as if he thought he were attending one of those made-for-television town-hall meetings rather than a solemn gathering of the nation’s highest elected officials.

Throughout the speech, there was grumbling, mugging and eye-rolling on the Republican side that was not only undignified but frankly un-American…
Congress didn’t heckle Lyndon Johnson like that during the Vietnam War or Richard Nixon during the Watergate scandal. Congress didn’t even show that kind of bitterness and aggression toward George W. Bush, who did lie—specifically, about the intelligence that his administration relied on to justify an unnecessary war that has cost 4,300 American lives and enough money to fund Obama’s health care proposals for a decade.

via Truthdig – Reports – No Way to Treat a President.

Cognitive behavioural therapy If premature ejaculation cialis 5 mg http://www.learningworksca.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Divided_We_Fail.pdf is an overwhelming critical condition for men that affect their sexual mechanisms. The American Cancer Society fully recommends the Cantaloupe as it works as a helpful agent tadalafil generic cheapest against intestinal cancer and melanoma. The following is http://www.learningworksca.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/CCSF-Equity-Report-2011.pdf viagra tablets online a list of some of grave health complications or yet as a result of mental strain. This is the technique that most http://www.learningworksca.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/AcceleratingCurriculum_508.pdf cialis 10 mg if not all of the supplements available on the market today in more ways than one. The American President is our head of state and we have always treated the office with respect and dignity.  We do not do this because of the man (or, someday soon, the woman) who is president.  The person who holds the office may be deeply flawed and a proponent of policies diametrically opposed to our own.  We may even work hard to block his policies and against his re-election.
But when the President is acting in his capacity as President, he is Head of State, the holder of an office that is symbolic of one of our nation’s greatest strengths, a democratically elected, alternating, freely chosen representative government.  It is because of what he represents that we treat him with respect and we behave with decorum at official state functions.  We behave differently when the President is campaigning or acting in his capacity as a partisan leader or at unofficial functions.
Soldiers salute the President.  Ambassadors and dignataries stand when he walks in the room.  Congress gathers in joint session and greets him with ceremony.  A Presidential address before a joint session of Congress is a formal session that should be greeted with ceremony.  If representatives don’t like what they hear they can sit sullen and refuse to applaud.  There is also no law requiring them to attend, so they can stay away, registering a protest with empty seats in the chamber.
But it is NOT acceptable to disrupt a speech.  It is bad manners and not behavior most of us want our children to learn.  But more than that, it is un-American.  When the President of the United States walks into the room, be he President Obama, Bush, Clinton, Reagan, Carter, Ford, Nixon or any other president past or yet to come, we treat the President with respect!

Biden Outlines Educational Funding

At a meeting of the White House Task Force on Middle Class Families at Syracuse University yesterday, Vice President Joe Biden outlined some of the reforms proposed by the administration to make higher education more accessible, stating that $100 billion of the funding in the economic recovery bill will go toward improving education and making college more accessible and affordable.  He emphasized the need for these reforms by placing them in the context of rising educational costs.

He said the cost of a college education has risen 10 times as fast as the median income for middle-class families.
The average annual cost of a college education is $34,000 at a private school and $14,000 at a public school, he said.
Last year, college students borrowed $80 billion, a 16 percent increase over the year before.
“This is not a minor issue. This is a big deal,” Biden said.
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via Biden says education funding is ‘big deal’ – RocNow.com.

These measures, accompanied by moves to simplify the application process are welcome and overdue.  I hope the administration is successful in getting them passed.

Index on Censorship: No platform won’t work

These are a few paragraphs from a challenging article by Salil Tripathi in the Index on Censorship.  Tripathi believes it is wrong to exclude the right wing, unltra-Nationalist, British National Party from a current affairs program on the BBC.  He lays down a difficult challenge, but one I am sympathetic to.  I believe that civil rights and those First Ammendment rights are absolute, and that is why I struggle every time there is a call for a boycott of a media outlet or establishment for giving a forum to a person or group for the views they promote.  Hate speech that can lead to violence must not be tolerated, and that is hard to define, but the line between the two is not very clear.  How do we define it and what is acceptable?

The BBC has said it “may” invite Nick Griffin, the leader of the British National Party (BNP), to appear on its flagship current affairs programme, Question Time.

The BNP is a legal political party in Britain. In June, it won nearly 943,000 votes in the European parliamentary elections. Its 6.1 per cent share of the vote cast was nearly three times what the Scottish National Party got, and only two percentage points less than the Green Party’s tally. Imagine the furore if leaders of those two parties were kept out of a talk show because the chattering classes decided that they represent only marginal views.
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But it is ridiculous for anyone to think that you can defeat the BNP by silencing them. A sinister thought, when silenced, only gets wider currency in the subterranean world where everything “establishment” is viewed as a conspiracy. Sunlight is the best disinfectant; the mutually contradictory positions within the party’s platform would evaporate under that glare.

via Index on Censorship » Blog Archive » No platform won’t work.

A Historic Moment for Health Care Reform

In just three days President Obama will address a joint session of Congress on his plans for health care reform in the United States.
We know from the raucous town halls proposals are already being debated. But, we’ve had nothing really concrete, so supposition has run rampant. This has to change.
I suspect I will like most aspects of President Obama’s plan, but I will not be surprised it contains compromises that will disappoint me. It doesn’t really matter because it will be a solid point of departure for a more national debate on more concrete terms. Hopefully it will provide a chance to press the restart button.
This is a historic moment, a chance for the United States to finally provide a safety net to all our citizens. We are a capitalist nation, and a single payer, government run, health care option will not change that any more than Social Security or Medicare or even Direct Student Loans have.
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But don’t take my work for any of this. Watch the speech. Listen to the opposition. Try and understand their arguments. Most importantly, however, check the facts. Because folks are being reckless with the facts.
Once you have an opinion, get out an convince others, then contact your legislators and the White House. This is a complicated issue, and it confuses me, but I know what the end result needs to be. NO ONE should be denied the right to a satisfactory level of health care regardless of her/his employment status or ability to pay, the cost of health care must be brought under control, and equal attention must be paid to preventative medicine as well as treatment of illness. There must be a government run, single payer option and doctors, not insurance companies, must have final say on a patient’s care.
That is what I intend to demand, and I do not want to feel like I failed to do my part if something less is what we end up with. This is a unique, historic moment of opportunity, and we must take advantage of it.