Why Urban, Educated Parents Are Turning to DIY Education
February 3rd, 2012“Before you can reach a point of effectiveness in defending your own children or your principles against the assault of blind social machinery, you have to stop conspiring against yourself by attempting to negotiate with a set of abstract principles and rules which, by its nature, cannot respond. Under all its disguises, that is what institutional schooling is, an abstraction which has escaped its handlers. Nobody can reform it. First you have to realize that human values are the stuff of madness to a system; in systems-logic the schools we have are already the schools the system needs; the only way they could be much improved is to have kids eat, sleep, live, and die there.”
—John Taylor Gatto, The Underground History of American Education
I didn’t think that this piece got into the real why behind the increase in the number of parents who are homeschooling their children in the U.S. It seems to frame this as a bunch of wishywashy yuppies who have embraced a new fad.
For more about the likely reasons why people are homeschooling their children, definitely see the writings of John Taylor Gatto. He makes The Underground History of American Education available for free on his website if you don’t want to buy the book.
In short, I’d say that increasing numbers of people are figuring out that handing over their children for social engineering, by organizations created by fascists, is an act of madness.
Via: Daily Beast:
They raise chickens. They grow vegetables. They knit. Now a new generation of urban parents is even teaching their own kids.
Are Teenagers More Doomed Than Usual?
February 3rd, 2012“Once the dumb are wished into existence, they serve valuable functions: as a danger to themselves and others they have to be watched, classified, disciplined, trained, medicated, sterilized, ghettoized, cajoled, coerced, jailed. To idealists they represent a challenge, reprobates to be made socially useful. Either way you want it, hundreds of millions of perpetual children require paid attention from millions of adult custodians. An ignorant horde to be schooled one way or another.”
—John Taylor Gatto, The Underground History of American Education
Via: Wall Street Journal:
“What was he thinking?” It’s the familiar cry of bewildered parents trying to understand why their teenagers act the way they do.
How does the boy who can thoughtfully explain the reasons never to drink and drive end up in a drunken crash? Why does the girl who knows all about birth control find herself pregnant by a boy she doesn’t even like? What happened to the gifted, imaginative child who excelled through high school but then dropped out of college, drifted from job to job and now lives in his parents’ basement?
If you think of the teenage brain as a car, today’s adolescents acquire an accelerator a long time before they can steer and brake.
Adolescence has always been troubled, but for reasons that are somewhat mysterious, puberty is now kicking in at an earlier and earlier age. A leading theory points to changes in energy balance as children eat more and move less.
Research Credit: JH
Italy: ‘Pitchfork Movement’
February 2nd, 2012Video from Iranian State Television, PressTV:
Via: Bloomberg:
The fourth day of strikes by truckers continue to disrupt transport across Italy, forcing Fiat SpA to stop production and Coca-Cola Hellenic Bottling Co. SA. to halt two plants, as protests mount against the government’s austerity measures.
Truck drivers demonstrating against high fuel prices, with the backing of farmers, livestock owners and fishermen, are maintaining road blocks in parts of the country. Drivers crippled nationwide commerce on the first day of the protests on Jan. 23 when they blocked toll booths across the country’s highway network.
Fiat said it won’t be able to restart output before 2 p.m. tomorrow because of a shortage of parts. The maker of the Punto and Panda models has lost production of 8,400 vehicles since the start of the strike. Coca-Cola said in a statement it halted two facilities because it wasn’t receiving supplies and was having trouble distributing its products.
Food shortages are driving up prices in parts of the country, and the protests have cost farmers about 100 million euros ($131 million) by preventing delivery of produce, trade association Coldiretti said.
Drivers are suffering from higher levies on fuel included in a 20 billion-euro austerity package passed by Prime Minister Mario Monti’s government last month that left Italy with the region’s highest gasoline prices, currently about $9 a gallon. A second plan passed last week aims to open up closed professions, and has prompted protests from taxi drivers, pharmacists, lawyers and notaries.
2010 Attack on VeriSign Just Recently Disclosed
February 2nd, 2012Via: Reuters:
VeriSign Inc, the company in charge of delivering people safely to more than half the world’s websites, has been hacked repeatedly by outsiders who stole undisclosed information from the leading Internet infrastructure company.
The previously unreported breaches occurred in 2010 at the Reston, Virginia-based company, which is ultimately responsible for the integrity of Web addresses ending in .com, .net and .gov.
VeriSign said its executives “do not believe these attacks breached the servers that support our Domain Name System network,” which ensures people land at the right numeric Internet Protocol address when they type in a name such as Google.com, but it did not rule anything out.
VeriSign’s domain-name system processes as many as 50 billion queries daily. Pilfered information from it could let hackers direct people to faked sites and intercept email from federal employees or corporate executives, though classified government data moves through more secure channels.
“Oh my God,” said Stewart Baker, former assistant secretary of the Department of Homeland Security and before that the top lawyer at the National Security Agency. “That could allow people to imitate almost any company on the Net.”
The VeriSign attacks were revealed in a quarterly U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing in October that followed new guidelines on reporting security breaches to investors. It was the most striking disclosure to emerge in a review by Reuters of more than 2,000 documents mentioning breach risks since the SEC guidance was published.
Even if the name system is safe, VeriSign offers a number of other services where security is paramount. The company defends customers’ websites from attacks and manages their traffic, and it researches international cybercrime groups.
VeriSign would possess sensitive information on customers, and its registry services that dispense website addresses would also be a natural target.
Ken Silva, who was VeriSign’s chief technology officer for three years until November 2010, said he had not learned of the intrusion until contacted by Reuters. Given the time elapsed since the attack and the vague language in the SEC filing, he said VeriSign “probably can’t draw an accurate assessment” of the damage.
‘Gasland’ Director Arrested for Attempting to Film Congressional Hearing on Fracking
February 2nd, 2012Via: Politico:
Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker Josh Fox was arrested Wednesday morning after attempting to film a House Science Committee hearing on hydraulic fracturing.
Fox was led out in handcuffs by the Capitol police shortly after 10 a.m., before the hearing could be gaveled into order. The “Gasland” director was attempting to film the hearing looking into EPA’s investigation of potential water contamination from natural gas drilling in Pavillion, Wyo.
“I’m within my First Amendment rights, and I’m being taken out,” Fox shouted as he was led away.
Fox has been charged with unlawful entry, according to Capitol police spokeswoman Sgt. Kimberly Schneider.
Fox is working on a sequel to his Oscar-nominated “Gasland.”
An ABC news crew was also turned away from the hearing. The committee chairman has the discretion on whether to allow uncredentialed members of the media to film hearings, according to a democratic staffer.
A Swarm of Nano Quadrotors
February 2nd, 2012Via: YouTube:
Experiments performed with a team of nano quadrotors at the GRASP Lab, University of Pennsylvania. Vehicles developed by KMel Robotics.
Research Credit: jakdmsy
Google to Censor Blogger Blogs on a ‘Per Country Basis’
February 2nd, 2012Via: Threat Level:
Google has quietly announced changes to its Blogger free-blogging platform that will enable the blocking of content only in countries where censorship is required.
Twitter announced technology last week addressing the same topic. It said it had acquired the ability to censor tweets in the countries only where it was ordered removed, instead of on an internet-wide basis.
Twitter’s announcement via its blog sparked a huge online backlash. The microblogging service was accused of becoming a censoring agent.
Yet Google’s announcement three weeks ago — buried in a Blogger help page — went unnoticed until it was highlighted by TechDows on Tuesday.
Google wrote Jan. 9 it would begin redirecting Blogger traffic to country-specific URLs, meaning whatever country you’re in, you’ll get that country’s domain for Blogger-hosted blogs.
TechDows reports that this is now happening in India, for example. So when you’re there and click on a Blogger blog, the URL will end .in.
Doing that, Google wrote, means content can be removed “on a per country basis.”
Research Credit: roaches
South Korea: Dr. Smartphone?
February 1st, 2012Not The Onion: Check.
Not April 1: Check.
Via: Reuters:
Tired of long waits at the hospital for medical tests? If Korean researchers have their way, your smartphone could one day eliminate that — and perhaps even tell you that you have cancer.
A team of scientists at Korea Advanced Institute of Science of Technology (KAIST) said in a paper published in Angewandte Chemie, a German science journal, that touch screen technology can be used to detect biomolecular matter, much as is done in medical tests.
“It began from the idea that touch screens work by recognizing the electronic signs from the touch of the finger, and so the presence of specific proteins and DNA should be recognizable as well,” said Hyun-gyu Park, who with Byong-yeon Won led the study.
The touch screens on smartphones, PDAs or other electronic devices work by sensing the electronic charges from the user’s body on the screen. Biochemicals such as proteins and DNA molecules also carry specific electronic charges.
According to KAIST, the team’s experiments showed that touch screens can recognize the existence and the concentration of DNA molecules placed on them, a first step towards one day being able to use the screens to carry out medical tests.
“We have confirmed that (touch screens) are able to recognize DNA molecules with nearly 100 percent accuracy just as large, conventional medical equipment can and we believe equal results are possible for proteins,” Park told Reuters TV.
“There are proteins known in the medical world like the ones used to diagnose liver cancer, and we would be able to see the liver condition of the patient.”
James Cameron Buys Farms, Plans to Move Family to New Zealand
February 1st, 2012Good idea.
Via: Stuff:
Hollywood movie mogul James Cameron is coming to live in Wairarapa – and he is bringing his family with him.
The director of blockbuster films Titanic and Avatar has purchased two large plots of land along Western Lake Rd in south Wairarapa, where he is expected to arrive and live later this year.
Records released today from the Overseas Investment Office show that James F Cameron, of Canada, was given consent in December to purchase two separate properties, one 817 hectares and the other nearly 250 hectares.
The purchase price is listed as confidential.
Pay Fee to Jump to Front of Line at San Francisco International Airport
February 1st, 2012Via: San Francisco Chronicle:
Frequent travelers who use San Francisco International Airport once again will be able to get through security a little faster with the return of a fee-based pre-screening program approved by the Airport Commission Tuesday.
The CLEAR program, operated by a private company, Alclear LLC, will allow people to move to – or near – the front of the line to get their carry-on items screened. It will allow them to bypass the regular first tier of security where travelers must provide a driver’s license or passport to a Transportation Security Administration employee and instead use an automated kiosk.
“It provides predictability in getting to the front of the line and getting through clearance faster,” said SFO chief John Martin.
Participants must pay a $179 annual fee for the special treatment. Spouses or domestic partners can be added on for an extra $50, and their children 17 years old and younger can join for free.
Under the program, the company verifies the identity of participants and creates a card embedded with a digital chip that includes the biometric images of the person’s unique fingerprint and iris.
When they arrive at the airport, they insert their card into an ATM-like kiosk, scan either their eye or finger, and if there’s a match, are escorted by a CLEAR employee to the front of the next checkpoint line where carry-on items are searched.
Research Credit: almaverdad2
