Present Tensed

Links/Articles Tagged Between February 19th and February 21st, 2009

Here are some links that I’ve tagged recently. This set is from Feb­ru­ary 19th through Feb­ru­ary 21st:

• Deli­cious Tool­box: 80+ Updated Tools and Resources :: Here are over 80 tools for every­thing from your mobile device to your blog, and more, that can help you view your book­marks in new and unique ways, backup your book­marks in a secure loca­tion, take your book­marks with you on the go, blog about your most recent saves, and then some.
• Infi­nite Think­ing Machine — remix­ing with pri­mary source mate­r­ial :: pow­er­ful web resources that use the increas­ing amount of pri­mary source mate­ri­als online and have the power to engage stu­dents using dig­i­tal tools and their desire to express themselves.
• R-Squared Energy Blog: This is a Good Idea? :: SR: Dis­cus­sion on the idea of tax­ing mileage…
• miscible.net: I thought that’s what the yel­low light was for? :: the DOT stan­dards are basi­cally this: you take the speed limit, the length of the inter­sec­tion, the time it takes to react, the time it takes for a vehi­cle to stop at the speed limit, and you mix that all together so that the light is on long enough for the fol­low­ing to be possible
• Those Chi­nese Com­mu­nists Know What They Are Talk­ing About « Overton’s Arrow ::
• Hyde Park Urban­ist: Text of Wednesday’s Speech :: the last 60 years of Hyde Park and a bit of its future. 60-plus years in 15 minutes.
• 30 Great African Tech Blogs | White African :: SR: Great col­lec­tion of african tech sites
• Negro­ponte on the New (low­er­case): olpc | White African :: Open source hard­ware: where you pub­lish all the specs and all the designs so that any­one can copy it.
• Mobile-XL: SMS Browser for Mobiles in Africa | White African :: Though the XLBrowser is a walled gar­den (content-wise), it is still par­tic­u­larly inno­v­a­tive as they use SMS to send data. This type of tech­nol­ogy is per­fect for places in rural Africa where WAP, GPRS and inter­net con­nec­tions are lim­ited at best. This is the begin­nings of some­thing very interesting.
• Mobile Phone Quick Hits Around Africa | White African ::
• BBC NEWS | Africa | Chinua Achebe: A hero returns :: You might be for­given for think­ing they had turned out to greet Nel­son Man­dela. A huge noisy crowd, com­plete with dancers and drum­mers, gath­ered at the entrance of Abuja air­port in the Niger­ian cap­i­tal at 0530 in the morning.
• BBC NEWS | Africa | Lesotho Aids diary: Orphan :: The BBC, in con­junc­tion with Medecins Sans Fron­tieres, is fol­low­ing the lives of seven peo­ple from the com­mu­nity of St Rodrigue, in Lesotho, who will share their hopes and fears as they each strug­gle to live with and work through the country’s HIV/Aids crisis.
• Claim in Africa About a Leader Is Recanted — NYTimes.com :: The lat­est arti­cle in The Sun­day Inde­pen­dent con­tains this para­graph: “When asked why she had mis­led this news­pa­per and other media houses in the process, the 24-year-old said, ‘I told you what you wanted to hear.’ ”
• …My heart’s in Accra » A One Lap­top Per Child update from Nicholas Negro­ponte :: e points to the Net­book — light­weight, highly sim­pli­fied lap­tops — and tells us this mar­ket is now up to 50% of the world’s lap­top mar­ket. “They didn’t copy the right things from us, but they exist.”
• …My heart’s in Accra » Nate Sil­ver explains racism and elec­tions with sta­tis­tics :: Is this about race?, Sil­ver won­ders. In Louisiana, roughly 1 in 5 white vot­ers told pol­sters that race had been a fac­tor in choos­ing not to vote for Obama — that com­pares to roughly 4% in states like New York and California.
• Vunky Search :: 143 Pho­to­shop tuto­ri­als in database
• Pho­to­shop: Learn a New Pho­to­shop Trick with Vunky­Search ::
• BBC NEWS | Africa | Meet­ing Zimbabwe’s ‘Uncle Bob’ :: Pres­i­dent Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s con­tro­ver­sial ruler, has reached his 85th birthday.
• Ques­tions for Dambisa Moyo — The Anti-Bono — Inter­view — NYTimes.com :: I’ll make a gen­eral com­ment about this whole depen­dence on “celebri­ties.” I object to this sit­u­a­tion as it is right now where they have inad­ver­tently or manip­u­la­tively become the spokes­peo­ple for the African continent.
• BBC NEWS | Africa | Tayeb Salih: Ara­bic lit­er­ary giant :: Sudanese nov­el­ist Tayeb Salih, who won fame with his 1966 novel Sea­son of Migra­tion to the North, died in Lon­don this week, aged about 80.
• A Let­ter From the Thugz — Freako­nom­ics Blog — NYTimes.com :: The unan­i­mous opin­ion among The Thugz was that you must base your work around a time-tested law of ghetto cap­i­tal­ism: losers must die in full view.
• Char­ter school dif­fer­ence found to be small: study :: CHICAGO SUN-TIMES :: Edu­ca­tion :: Chicago’s char­ter high schools enroll fewer poor, spe­cial edu­ca­tion and limited-English stu­dents; aver­age nine more days of school a year and 40 more min­utes of classes a day — yet don’t per­form much bet­ter than city neigh­bor­hood high schools, the new report claims.
• ?olcats :: eng­lish Trans­la­tions of East­ern Bloc Lolcats
• George­town Ele­men­tary School ::
• First MFI work­shop to build upon research on eco­nom­ics of fam­ily ::
• Chicago Bio­Med­i­cine restruc­tur­ing focuses on coher­ence :: “Our deci­sions have been directed by our con­tin­u­ing com­mit­ment to high-quality, com­pas­sion­ate care for patients with the most chal­leng­ing dis­eases; the cre­ation of new knowl­edge; pro­duc­ing the next gen­er­a­tion of lead­ers; part­ner­ing with community-based providers through the Urban Health Ini­tia­tive; and pro­tect­ing our high-technology plat­form for com­plex patient care and leading-edge research on the South Side of Chicago.”
• Beyond benev­o­lence: Uni­ver­sity engages its neigh­bors as part­ners in com­mu­nity ser­vice ::
• The Water­berg Acad­emy : Mod­ern Edu­ca­tion, the nat­ural way. ::
• Many teens blame Rihanna, say dat­ing vio­lence nor­mal — chicagotribune.com :: 1 in 10 teens suf­fer abuse in roman­tic rela­tion­ships, and many think it’s often justified
• Harlem Children’s Zone ::
• Stu­dent Expec­ta­tions Seen as Caus­ing Grade Dis­putes — NYTimes.com :: “I think that it stems from their K-12 expe­ri­ences,” Pro­fes­sor Brower said. “They have become ultra-efficient in test prepa­ra­tion. And this hyper-efficiency has led them to look for a magic for­mula to get high scores.”
• 10 Incred­i­ble Under­wa­ter Vol­ca­noes ::

Pop­u­lar­ity: unranked