Moondoggle: The Forgotten Opposition to the Apollo Program - Alexis C. Madrigal. The Ruling Elite and the Perversion of Scholarship. (Photo: Football helmet via Shutterstock)Fraternities, sororities and football, along with other outsized athletic programs, have decimated most major American universities.
Scholarship, inquiry, self-criticism, moral autonomy and a search for artistic and esoteric forms of expression—in short, the world of ethics, creativity and ideas—are shouted down by the drunken chants of fans in huge stadiums, the pathetic demands of rich alumni for national championships, and the elitism, racism and rigid definition of gender roles of Greek organizations.
These hypermasculine systems perpetuate a culture of conformity and intolerance. They have inverted the traditional values of scholarship to turn four years of college into a mindless quest for collective euphoria and athletic dominance. "Knowledge," as C. Wright Mills wrote in "The Power Elite," "is no longer widely felt as an ideal; it is seen as an instrument. There are few university presidents or faculty members willing to fight back. Why the United States Is Destroying Its Education System. A nation that destroys its systems of education, degrades its public information, guts its public libraries and turns its airwaves into vehicles for cheap, mindless amusement becomes deaf, dumb and blind.
It prizes test scores above critical thinking and literacy. It celebrates rote vocational training and the singular, amoral skill of making money. It churns out stunted human products, lacking the capacity and vocabulary to challenge the assumptions and structures of the corporate state. It funnels them into a caste system of drones and systems managers. It transforms a democratic state into a feudal system of corporate masters and serfs. Teachers, their unions under attack, are becoming as replaceable as minimum-wage employees at Burger King. Passing bubble tests celebrates and rewards a peculiar form of analytical intelligence. Teachers, under assault from every direction, are fleeing the profession. The truly educated become conscious. Copyright © 2011 Truthdig, L.L.C. Fracking 101: The Cozy Relationship Between the Natural-Gas Industry and Academic Researchers - Climate Desk.
Last week, the University of Texas provost announced he would re-examine a report by a professor who had pocketed hundreds of thousands of dollars from energy interests.
Tim McDonnell/James West Last week the University of Texas provost announced he would re-examine a report by a UT professor that said fracking was safe for groundwater after the revelation that the professor pocketed hundreds of thousands of dollars from a Texas natural gas developer. It's the latest fusillade in the ongoing battle over the basic facts of fracking in America. Texans aren't the only ones having their fracking conversations shaped by industry-funded research. The Philosophy of the Technology of the Gun - Evan Selinger. Does the old rallying cry "Guns don't kill people.
People kill people" hold up to philosophical scrutiny? Flickr/United States Air Force The tragic Colorado Batman shooting has prompted a wave of soul-searching. How do things like this happen? Over at Wired,David Dobbs gave a provocative answer in "Batman Movies Don't Kill. Dobbs questions the role of gun culture in steering "certain unhinged or deeply a-moral people toward the sort of violence that has now become so routine that the entire thing seems scripted.
" A Palestine-Mexico Border. Nearly 55,000 people have been killed since 2006 in Mexico's 'Narcoinsurgency.' Thought on drones. Israel UAV success as an case study of the Israeli technology development. Originally, the idea behind developing UAVs, also called drones, was to lower the loss of pilots to a minimum in the event of war, and to track enemy territory. Currently, drones are used for reconnaissance purposes, but major technological advancements are required before they can be used for combat purposes (mainly because these are rapidly changing situations in which human intelligence is more efficient than computers).
The main world producers of UAVs are Teledyne Ryan Aeronautical and Northrop Grumman in the U.S., Target Technologies and Aerospatiale in Europe. I.A.I. in Israel, Kentron in Africa, and Fuji Heavy Industries in Asia. Why Are Universities Buying Up Drones Faster Than Police Departments? May 1, 2012 | Like this article? Join our email list: Stay up to date with the latest headlines via email. For all the attention given to U.S. law enforcement’s interest in adopting drones, the biggest users turn out to be not police departments, but universities. We learned this last week, when the Electronic Frontier Foundation forced the Federal Aviation Administration to reveal that it had approved 25 universities to fly drones in U.S. airspace. The spreading drone curriculum is, for better and worse, a sign of the coming normalization of drones in American life.
“Universities are pushing the limits of the technology,” says Lora Weiss, chief lab scientist at Georgia Tech Research Institute. At Kansas State University students are assisting the Kansas National Guard’s effort to improve its disaster response capabilities by developing drones that can survey towns hit by tornadoes, according to Kurt Barnhart, director of the university’s Applied Aviation Research Center. FAA List of Certificates of Authorizations (COAs) Some Thoughts on IIT. IIT - Indian Institute of Technology - World's Best Educational Institutes & Pride Of India. Pranav Mistry Quote.