Found on Web Between December 13th and December 20th, 2009
Here are some links that I’ve tagged recently. This set is from December 13th through December 20th:

- Peace Corps Digital Library — | peacecorps digital-library
- America’s foreign policy: Is there an Obama doctrine? | The Economist — By definition, a superpower has to sally forth into the world. Arguably, Mr Obama’s main new idea, much easier to say than to achieve, is that it should also live within its means. | politics
- Direct democracy: The tyranny of the majority | The Economist — Put differently, it is the “tyranny of the majority” that James Madison, a Founding Father, warned about. His reading of ancient history was that the direct democracy of Athens was erratic and short-lived, whereas republican Rome remained stable for much longer. He even worried about using the word “democracy” at all, lest citizens confuse its representative (ie, republican) form with its direct one. “Democracy never lasts long,” wrote John Adams, another Founding Father. Asked what government the federal constitution of 1787 had established, Benjamin Franklin responded: “A republic, if you can keep it.” | usa government politics
- Ezra Klein — Barack Obama on Health-Care Reform: Trust Us. — After that quote, it seems almost redundant to say that this is the clearest indication we’ve gotten that the White House sees conference committee as the focal point for its efforts. | politics health government
- United States congressional conference committee — Wikipedia — | politics government
- When Will White People Stop Making Movies Like “Avatar”? — Avatar — io9 — “Critics have called alien epic Avatar a version of Dances With Wolves because it’s about a white guy going native and becoming a great leader. But Avatar is just the latest scifi rehash of an old white guilt fantasy.” | films sci-fi race.relations culture society
- Everything You Need to Know About Education Reform (By Rona Wilensky) « Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice — According to The New York Times, a new federal study shows that nearly a third of the states lowered their academic proficiency standards in recent years to stay ahead of sanctions under NCLB. And this, in a nutshell, tells you everything you need to know about conventional school reform. | education education_reform nclb
- Technology and education: Where the light is — The problem with standardized testing is that it avoids any such rigorous assessment. It is a hopelessly crude tool, a means of studied ignorance rather than deep understanding. And, as a side effect, it removes all flexibility, the living qualities, from classroom engagement. When you know in advance exactly what knowledge the student-container is supposed to hold, there’s not much incentive to attend to the particular gifts and developmental needs, or the consuming interests, of the individual learner. | standardized_testing blog
- BBC News — South Africa ‘rugby unity’: Fact and fiction — | southafrica films mandela sports
- Social Enterprising: One Laptop Per Child in Rwanda; 50,000 Programmers To Be? — Time will tell if this effort leads to the kinds of outcomes (talented computer programmers) that the government desires. Meanwhile, as the story in The Economist points out, small businesses will spring up around the country to repair the machines, and provide other related services. The children who have access to the computes will have the wonderful experience of active learning as a supplement to their traditional education. Who knows what cool ideas and businesses this will spark. | olpc rwanda africa
- Books of The Times — Chinua Achebe Reflects on Life and Politics in ‘Education’ — Review — NYTimes.com — His new volume of essays, “The Education of a British-Protected Child,” is his first book since he was paralyzed from the waist down, in 1990, in a car accident in Nigeria. | literature africa nigeria
- Pretoria Journal — Afrikaner Holiday, and South Africa’s Racial Chasm, Persist — NYTimes.com — According to a poll released last week by the highly regarded Institute for Justice and Reconciliation, 31 percent of South Africans believe that race relations have not improved since the end of apartheid, and 16 percent actually think they have gotten worse. (About 50 percent said relations had improved.) | race.relations southafrica
- Op-Ed Columnist — Tiger Woods, Person of the Year — NYTimes.com — We’ve rarely questioned our assumption that 9/11, “the day that changed everything,” was the decade’s defining event. But in retrospect it may not have been. A con like Tiger’s may be more typical of our time than a one-off domestic terrorist attack, however devastating. | culture society
- Usury — The pivotal change in the English-speaking world seems to have come with the permission to charge interest on lent money: particularly the 1545 Act ‘An Acte Agaynst Usurie’ (37 H.viii 9) of Henry VIII in England | history wikipedia finance
- Hindenburg disaster — | history
- Why Don’t We Value Teachers? — GOOD Blog — GOOD — He also says that a big part of the problem is the way we churn out teachers the way McDonald’s churns out burgers. Instead of encouraging excellence and creativity and innovation, teachers are run through a factory-like training, then spit out the other side without the professional development, mentoring, a sense of preparedness, fair and honest evaluations of their work, and so on. | education education_reform teaching
- Federal Researchers Find Lower Standards in Schools — NYTimes.com — A new federal study shows that nearly a third of the states lowered their academic proficiency standards in recent years, a step that helps schools stay ahead of sanctions under the No Child Left Behind law. | education education_reform nclb
- The Associated Press: Laredo could be largest US city without bookstore — | literature books culture texas
- President Obama Largely Inherited Today’s Huge Deficits — Center on Budget and Policy Priorities — | economics obama history politics
- 500 Internal Server Error — 500 Internal Server Error | none
- Discussion: The Year In Music, 2009 : NPR — | music lists 2009
- Top News — FTC: Virtual worlds pose real risks to minors — FTC: Virtual worlds pose real risks to minors
FTC report examining 27 virtual worlds reveals that minors are able to access sexual and violent content | virtual_worlds - Top 100 Tools for Learning 2009 — SR: An interesting list of tools | online tools websites lists education
- Walk in My Shoes: Why teens fight – amFIX — CNN.com Blogs — What these teens tell us is not unusual. In fact, nearly 40 percent of Chicago public school students were involved in a physical fight, according to a 2007 Chicago youth risk behavior survey. | chicago cps violence high_school youth teens
- The Way We Live Now — Mammogram Math — NYTimes.com — Much of our discomfort with the panel’s findings stems from a basic intuition: since earlier and more frequent screening increases the likelihood of detecting a possibly fatal cancer, it is always desirable. But is this really so? Consider the technique mathematicians call a reductio ad absurdum, taking a statement to an extreme in order to refute it. Applying it to the contention that more screening is always better leads us to note that if screening catches the breast cancers of some asymptomatic women in their 40s, then it would also catch those of some asymptomatic women in their 30s. But why stop there? Why not monthly mammograms beginning at age 15? | science health usa psychology medicine math academic healthcare
- Controlling a classroom isn’t as easy as ABC — latimes.com — Among the top reasons why teachers are deemed unsuccessful or leave the profession is their inability to effectively manage student behavior, experts say. | classroom management teaching behavior
- Digital Media and Learning Competition — Updated 2010 Digital Media and Learning Competition Site / News / Rules | grants tech digital_media learning
- Buy 200 GB of storage for $50 and get a free Eye-Fi card — SR: These Eye-Fi cards retail for more than $50 still… | online_storage photography wifi eye-fi google picasa
- Discoveries in Planetary Science — DPS Education — Planetary science is a field that is still evolving rapidly, and it can take several years for new advances to work their way into college textbooks.
These slide sets seek to bridge this gap by providing content in the form of 3-slide presentations that can be incorporated into college lectures.
The slide sets are targeted at the Introductory Astronomy undergraduate level.
Each slide set consists of three slides:
a description of the discovery
a discussion of the underlying science
a presentation of the big picture implications of the discovery
A fourth slide includes links to associated press releases, images, and primary sources.
Topics will span all subdisciplines of planetary science. | education astronomy science - Sound Opinions Footnotes — | music lists 2009
- 20 Best Science Fiction Books Of The Decade — Books — io9 — | literature sci-fi books lists
Popularity: 3%






