conuly

Some NSA Officials Favor Giving Snowden Limited Amnesty For All The Wrong Reasons

http://bit.ly/1gxXlHZ

Feds joins battle on citrus disease

http://bit.ly/1b5jANq

Obama to review changes in spy policy

http://usat.ly/18JP52D

Tech giants team up in anti-snooping effort

On the one hand: good for them! On the other, I am even more uncomfortable with corporate influence in the government than I am with the NSA, and that is saying an awful lot.

http://usat.ly/19v5TaK

The Return of the Welfare Queen

http://bit.ly/19odyex

Federal judge declares Utah polygamy law unconstitutional

http://bit.ly/1bFgIKy

This Ethiopian village has gained wealth, but has bred hostility

Because they aren't Christians or Muslims, basically.

http://bit.ly/IShpWz

ECONOMIC INEQUALITY: A MATTER OF TRUST?

http://nyr.kr/18Dk0jK

IF YOU REFRAIN FROM TALKING ABOUT RACE, PEOPLE MIGHT THINK YOU’RE RACIST

As many commenters point out, not all of the "black" people on that modified Guess Who? board look unambiguously black. So there's that as well.

http://bit.ly/1k0V0oL

Surprise! Charity Buys 21 Sacred Katsinam for Hopi at Auction in Paris

http://bit.ly/IVI58J

Scientists discover double meaning in genetic code

http://bit.ly/1duyD6q

How cholera evolved to be one of the deadliest diseases in history

http://bit.ly/18IkCil

This study shows how a good metaphor can change the world

http://bit.ly/1bEyUAv

Inside the Rainbow Gulag: The Technicolor Rise and Fall of Lisa Frank

http://bit.ly/1hPDhRG

The second operating system hiding in every mobile phone

http://www.osnews.com/story/27416

A Pen That 3-D Prints Bone Right Onto Patients

http://bit.ly/JeNtEF

In Ukraine, skepticism greets new vow on E.U.

http://wapo.st/1cruH49

Kindergartener signs song for deaf mom. It's the most adorable time of the year!

http://cnn.it/1gxU7UM

Teacher accused of feeding autistic student hot sauce rehired.

Either Florida has a serious teacher shortage or they really hate disabled kids down there.

http://abcn.ws/1ctku7j

It's part of a whole series.

http://nyti.ms/ZFs09c

It comes with pictures

http://nyti.ms/WZlPKO

and a little graph

http://nyti.ms/10tRagR

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http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/05/education/young-latino-students-dont-see-themselves-in-books.html

This is an article basically decrying the lack of diversity in kidlit. It is apparently especially bad with regards to Hispanics. And even when books technically exist, there is no guarantee that families will easily be able to find those books. Not knowing specific titles and authors to look for (and having to ask for them to be specially ordered at the bookstore or library) can be a big barrier for any child.

Framing this article is a logical argument that runs pretty much like this:

1. Many children - and for that matter, many adults! - like to read books where they can easily identify with the protagonists.
2. Children need to practice a lot to learn a new skill. They need to read often, for long periods of time, to become fluent readers.
3. Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that the lack of any real Hispanic in children's literature is a turnoff for many Hispanic children (especially those who already have trouble learning to read English, perhaps because it is not their home language), and makes them less eager to read. This, in turn, is not doing their reading skills a favor.
4. So it is important for publishers and booksellers to make a more diverse range of protagonists available to children.

This is fairly straightforward, right? I should know better than to ever glance at the comments to any article, but I confess, I'm filled with morbid curiosity regarding them.

The comments reinforced my notion that the people most likely to loudly trumpet their reading comprehension skills are the ones who most lack any such thing. From that simple proposition they widely got the impression that third grade teachers want to burn every "classic" book ever authored and not allow high schoolers to read Shakespeare. Also, it's acceptable to ask children who cannot read Spanish to any level of fluency to just wait until they are old enough to read Don Quixote in the original, because it is positively anathema to provide English language books for children that don't feature whites. (Then again, these people might just be against new publications on general principle. Few of them seem to have read any children's books published in the last half a century.) Several people commented with nostalgic approval about the good old days of whites-only Dick and Jane, those days when every child learned to read, even Johnny. If they're old enough to have learned from those basals they're presumably old enough to know better, but apparently not.

And of course, there is the ever popular rallying cry of "let's be colorblind". Advocating for a greater diversity in protagonists is racist because good books are accessible to every reader and apparently it's impossible for a good book to not prominently feature white children. Children don't see race until we teach them to, and providing books with nonwhite protagonists just teaches them to see race. Asians do well in school despite there being few books with Asian protagonists and therefore we shouldn't even consider changing a thing because the only thing that matters about kidlit is how well kids do in school, and it's insulting to suggest some children might do better if they had an easy hook. This total lack of diversity worked for ME, so it ought to be good enough for everybody. (Nevermind that a highly motivated reader is going to need less encouragement in general!) If parents care, they should just teach their children themselves (after school, natch, because homeschooling isn't the answer) and order books online. This presupposes that these parents have Internet access and time in the first place, but if you're not willing to give up your family time for this you're just an awful human being.

I tell you, sometimes it's delightful to find out what the Internet-connected public thinks. Usually it's not, but I try to amuse myself.

Edit: you know, it's the hypocrisy that gets me. These are people criticizing teachers for daring to suggest that children might like to, occasionally, read books about kids like themselves. First they say that no, kids should read about people different from them (which means that the preponderance of white characters is harmful to white kids, yes? How is this any better?) and then they inevitably rattle off a list of Good Books they think all kids should read.

Several hundred comments, and a handful of books listed. For all this talk about reading good books, to read these comments you'd think quality children's literature was limited to seven titles.

Maybe that's why they can't comprehend the concept of adding to the library. They aren't actually very well-read, at least not in this area. It's sad, it really is.

An Effort to Bury a Throwaway Culture One Repair at a Time

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An article on race and NYC schools

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One on a pretty awesome 11 year old rock climber

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Solar Installers Offer Deals, Gaining Converts

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There are more coming!

Museums are apparently doing all sorts of special programs to welcome homeschool groups

Here's a piece on Chinese language use to avoid internet censors

An article on how spring break is apparently getting less wild because all this stuff stays online forever

Here's an article on this interesting new idea of altering the pricing for more popular spots on San Francisco to increase turnover of those spots.
The article is pretty positive, but in the comments there's this critical site. I have to say, I have long thought it silly to give zillions of cars up to 2/3 of any given street, just for free!

Here's a slightly older article on a new method of cleaning up lead.

Better than Ana was at her actual age, but not quite as well as during the same part in her school career, if that makes sense.

Both of them had, at this point, a problem with guessing. But they guessed totally differently!

Ana, at this stage, would look at the first few letters and make a guess based on how they should all sound... even if it didn't make sense. So if she had a sentence that ran something like "We all live on the Earth" and she was tired by the end of it, she might read "Earth" as "earring" or "eats" or some nonsense word that sorta sounds right.

Evangeline, looking at that same sentence and being just as tired at the end of it, is much more likely to make a guess based upon the sense of the sentence. So HER guess might come out as "planet" or "world".

This has the result of making Evangeline sound like a much better reader, and the fact that she pays attention to what the words mean is very good... but in the end, I don't really want either one of them guessing at all. When they do (and they don't guess right), deep down I feel like shouting "STOP GUESSING! JUST READ IT! R E A D!"

But I try not to do that. I doubt it's helpful. I know, being able to figure things out from context is an important skill, and Ana, at least, is reading well above grade level, so why worry?

But it really annoys me. I mean, really.

Here's something else about reading, and I'm allowed to post this on the condition that none of you ever mentions it to anybody who might ever meet Evangeline, ever. You're swearing an oath by reading onwards!

When they read, they like to pretend they're characters in the books they're reading. (And to an extent they do this when watching TV too.) So if I read about how Omakayas felt bad because her sister Angeline teased her (we're reading The Birchbark House now. Good book, but it's about to get REALLY depressing), Evangeline will go "That's me, I feel bad!" or start to "cry" at the same time I'm reading because "My sister was mean to me". Evangeline especially listens very closely for any mention of HER chosen character in whatever book we're reading. (She was Diana when we read Anne of Green Gables. She still IS Diana sometimes.)

One of these shows up every year. As always, the comments are really funny. For some reason, the ones that are all "Oh, we need lots of homework so our students can compete are always misspelled. "Our brain is like a mussel", anybody? (And who says that the best way to exercise is to do repetetetetetetive busywork? There's no exercising your brain by cooking, doing chores, taking music lessons, playing with your friends?)

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Another article on "sovereign citizens", this time featuring a cop who wanted to become one, and now wants to take it back.

Two TSA employees were busted for stealing from baggage. Repeatedly. You have to admire their keen reasoning in only robbing from drug dealers on the grounds that they can't exactly go to the cops, but I wonder if either of them stopped to consider that people who won't go to the cops are exactly the sort of people you do NOT want to piss off. I think they got off lucky, frankly.

And then there's this two-year-old question at Yahoo. A teenager wants to know if it's okay to run a lending library of books her private school has banned. That is just awesome. (I want to know if it's okay to start charging money every time Ana lends out one of the household books to a friend. I don't trust her grubby little classmates!)

(Quite a lot of them have to do with the TSA situation, I'll try to group them together.)

Placards, kilts part of plans for scanner protests
Oversecured America
AP Exclusive: Color-coded terror alerts may end
Schneir on Security's recent update about it all
And an LJ link
An update from the ACLU saying the TSA isn't training its scanners
Why Cavity Bombs Would Make the TSA Irrelevant
TSA chief: Resisting scanners just means delays
For the First Time, the TSA Meets Resistance
TSA Chief: US Will Never Ease Screening Policy
You, apparently, can't just say "Screw it, I don't need to fly today"
Shirtless 8-Year-Old Boy Gets TSA Pat Down
A Pat's Papers article on flying dead bodies
And he happens to think the TSA blog is "actually sort of fun"

Whew! That's a lot!

Bizarre squidworm discovered

Behavior change causes changes in beliefs, not vice versa

On turkeys. Hey, could I raise my own heritage turkey for the holiday next year? You *can* keep poultry in the city if they aren't noisy. And we already have wild or feral turkeys in Staten Island, among other places.

On stuffing your turkey with White Castle burgers.

Coyotes have been released in Chicago to help keep down the rodent population. I suppose that's not very much different than encouraging peregrine* falcons in NYC.

*Peregrine means wandering, of course, and is related to the word pilgrim in the obvious way.

A fluffy little article on Yiddish.
And for that matter, you can check out a nifty language map to see where Yiddish is spoken in the US!

It's time to sign up for SantaThing. This also makes a good gift. However, I will get you nothing in return, so bear that in mind.

University Kicks Student With Down Syndrome Out Of Classroom; Other Students Protest And Are Ignored

On tattoos to improve/monitor your health

Our Disappearing Apples

On taxes

Some graphs on race and the death penalty

Obama, S. Korea leader agree to hold joint military exercise. If somebody manages to start the Korean war up again, I'll be very irked. I'm already irked, frankly, because I see the likelihood of this.

Allergic Teen Seeks High School Perfume Ban

Conservatives at odds with Vatican over condoms

Children Born 'Late Pre-Term' More Prone to Low IQ
Minnesota is using paperwork to deter induced labor

The use of braces for younger kids is increasing

And one from Motortrend.com that's... just well-worth reading for the fun of it.

And FINALLY (I think) one on a school which banned... wait for it... wait for it...





PENCILS!

Ana's homework today was ANOTHER sheet where she's supposed to rewrite the sentence and add descriptive words. It's getting a bit repetitive, but it's a chance for her to practice - her cursive! (Yes, she has progressed enough that she's doing it on homework assignments!) Our focus this year is getting her sizing and spacing right. She finally seems to have her spacing down, but her sizing is... dubious, at best. Still, she's seven. I'm not worried. We're also still talking about holding her pencil properly, I should've been firmer about that back in kindergarten. (Evangeline gets to hear all about it now.)

And she had a math sheet, and she also had a page of paragraphs to read and answer context questions like "What does gaze mean in the paragraph above?"

The last gave me a chance to teach her a very useful trick - read the question first. By reading the question first she was actually able to ANSWER most of the questions without reading the paragraph above at all. Win! And the few she did have to read, she could skim because she knew what she was looking for. This is a useful skill, because next year she's starting a long and tedious career of test-taking. (Boo!)

Also, of course, it speeds up homework. Two pages of reading and questions boiled down to about 30 seconds of circling the answers.

Now, the nieces' school, of course, has uniforms - blue and navy. And PS 16 has uniforms, white and navy, and the charter sharing with Trinity Lutheran has uniforms, gold and navy, and Trinity Lutheran of course has white and navy, and PS 75, in the annex of PS 16 has uniforms, the dark green and khaki. (That last pisses me off. Every other school in the area has navy, and half the kids at 75 must have older brothers and sisters! I can understand having a different colored shirt so you can differentiate your kids from the ones at 16, you're sharing that space, but to make it so NOTHING can be handed down? There are families in this area with two or three kids, close in age, going to a different elementary school each (as they all scramble to stay out of 16 if they can, or if they can't to get into the bilingual program or the gifted program there), and you're screwing up the whole system by having your kids wear khaki!)

This of course is wildly different from when I was a kid, when only the non-public schools had uniforms. (Well, Trinity Lutheran isn't a public school anyway.) But a "law" was passed about a decade ago (if you call a totally opt-in ruling a "law") to encourage uniforms, and now something like 85 or 90% of the elementary schools have them, although they vary with how they're enforced and how strict the uniform is to begin with. (Some schools only ask for a certain color of shirt and whatever pants you like, which is sensible in a poorer neighborhood.)

As I recall, the rationale was primarily "Uniforms keep kids from arguing over who has better clothes, keeps the focus on schoolwork, and lessens gang activity in the schools". It seemed like a silly argument even then - surely, a determined enough gang will always find SOME way to differentiate themselves, and absolutely kids will find other ways to compare and contrast even if it's only by sneakers, but that's beside the point here.

The point is that it's only the elementary schools that require uniforms. After you leave the 5th grade, they don't. I mean, I think some charters do, but that's about it.

But... if the big push was "gang activity" and "let's not have them dividing themselves up by class", shouldn't uniforms START when kids are older? Pre-k kids are a lot less likely to do harm with any form of violence, even if they know what gangs *are*. And they're also less likely to try wearing very revealing clothes either.

Which leads us (sorta) into my segue here: The middle school options on the Island suck. I went to IS 61, and it wasn't a bad school then (academically, if you were in the "smart" classes... though they had a REAL problem with bullying, ask me how I know that - or don't, actually) but right now it's hideously overcrowded. And I don't see it getting better - we're finally getting new elementary schools (finally!), but the kids whose parents started pushing for this originally, they're already in the 4th and 5th grades!

And obviously the nieces will be zoned for the same school I was.

So the real solution right now is we need more middle schools. Charter school, regular public, I actually don't care, but we need more of them. And I have *no* idea how to go about doing that. But I'm actively trying to find out. (Everybody says I have to talk to Jackie down the block, who does know how to do things like this, but I'm putting it off and putting it off.)

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/01/education/01math.html
It has a single image with it.

In the comments, some people questioned the need for a "pictorial" stage in between "concrete" and "abstract". "Isn't drawing 25 pennies the same as holding them?"

As other articles make clear, they're drawing visualizations slightly more complex than that.

And another article linked to in the comments. The first one is under the cut!

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First things first, here's their website. Notably, their website isn't the standard site that's never updated.

Learning by Playing: Video Games in the Classroom

There's a video too.

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I'm not sure what I think of this, but it is fascinating to me.