OVERVIEW. Oded Na’aman: The Checkpoint. University - 2012 Baccalaureate Remarks. Posted June 3, 2012; 04:17 p.m. by Staff "Don't Eat Fortune's Cookie" Michael Lewis June 3, 2012 — As Prepared (NOTE: The video of Lewis' speech as delivered is available on the Princeton YouTube channel.)
Thank you. President Tilghman. Thirty years ago I sat where you sat. Two Cheers for Double Standards. Why I Am Not A Christian, by Bertrand Russell. Introductory note: Russell delivered this lecture on March 6, 1927 to the National Secular Society, South London Branch, at Battersea Town Hall.
Published in pamphlet form in that same year, the essay subsequently achieved new fame with Paul Edwards' edition of Russell's book, Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays ... (1957). As your Chairman has told you, the subject about which I am going to speak to you tonight is "Why I Am Not a Christian. " Getting Smart on Aid. One cost of the uproar over Greg Mortenson, and the allegations that he fictionalized his school-building story in the best-selling book “Three Cups of Tea,” is likely to be cynicism about whether aid makes a difference.
But there are also deeper questions about how best to make an impact — even about how to do something as simple as get more kids in school. Mortenson and a number of other education organizations mostly build schools. That seems pretty straightforward. If we want to get more kids in school around the world, what could make more sense than building schools?
How about deworming kids? AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL - 50 years.
Taxes. Welcome to the Brave New World of Persuasion Profiling. Statistics. Families. A special report on feeding the world: The 9 billion-people question. A revolution against neoliberalism? Ahmed Ezz, one of several NDP officials arrested since Egypt's revolution began [EPA] Editor's note July 2, 2013: This article was published shortly after the collapse of the Mubarak regime, however it raises crucial issues that still resonate with the current situation in Egypt.
On February 16th I read a comment that was posted on the wall of the Kullina Khalid Saed's ("We are all Khaled Said") Facebook page administered by the now very famous Wael Ghonim. By that time it had been there for about 21 hours. The comment referred to a news item reporting that European governments were under pressure to freeze bank accounts of recently deposed members of the Mubarak regime. The comment said: "Excellent news … we do not want to take revenge on anyone … it is the right of all of us to hold to account any person who has wronged this nation. Opinion > Image > The bright side of wrong. There are certain things in life that pretty much everyone can be counted on to despise.
Bedbugs, say. Back pain. The RMV.
City schools' revved-up summer program gets results - baltimoresun.com. February 01, 2011|By Erica L.
Green, The Baltimore Sun Until last summer, Baltimore City students probably didn't think that Michael Phelps and African step dancers would have much to do with their learning. But city school officials reported that middle-school students who used fractions to clock swimming lessons with the Olympic champion's coaches or calculated the proportion of rhythms by the performers showed significant progress in their ability to retain academic skills over the summer. The lessons were part of Baltimore's revamped 2010 summer-learning program, being hailed as a potential model for the country after it produced notable results that reversed a district trend of murky progress and low attendance.
The program is part of a larger effort to combat summer-learning loss nationwide. According to statistics from city schools, more than 16,500 students enrolled last year in summer school, an increase of more than 3,000 in 2009. THE DANCER AND THE TERRORIST. The Hazards of Nerd Supremacy: The Case of WikiLeaks - Jaron Lanier - Technology. The degree of sympathy in tech circles for both Wikileaks and Anonymous has surprised me.
The most common take seems to be that the world needs cyber-pranksters to keep old-school centers of power, like governments and big companies, in check. Cyber-activists are perceived to be the underdogs, flawed and annoying, perhaps, but standing up to overbearing power. It doesn't seem so to me. I actually take seriously the idea that the Internet can make non-traditional techie actors powerful.1 Therefore, I am less sympathetic to hackers when they use their newfound power arrogantly and non-constructively. LRB · Slavoj Žižek · Good Manners in the Age of WikiLeaks. In one of the diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks Putin and Medvedev are compared to Batman and Robin.
It’s a useful analogy: isn’t Julian Assange, WikiLeaks’s organiser, a real-life counterpart to the Joker in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight? In the film, the district attorney, Harvey Dent, an obsessive vigilante who is corrupted and himself commits murders, is killed by Batman.
San Francisco Passes First Open Data Law. One year ago, San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom issued an executive order directing the city’s departments to make their data public.
Yesterday, the city’s board of supervisors turned that order into law. As far as we could establish, this is the first time any city in the U.S. has implemented an open data law. But given that other jurisdictions often follow San Francisco’s lead in this space, it’s likely not the last. The law is brief. It simply says city’s departments and agencies “shall make reasonable efforts” to publish any data under their control -- provided that doing so does not violate other laws, particularly those related to privacy. Open data, Newsom believes, makes city government more transparent and increases accountability. Simple steps to happier politics.
It’s easy to be discouraged by our polarized political environment.
A new study suggests there may be an easy way out. Right before the 2008 presidential election, prospective voters were asked to complete an online survey. Some of the participants were assigned a brief self-affirmation exercise, where they had to choose the personal trait (from a list of 10) that was most important to them and write a sentence or two explaining that choice.
Other participants encountered the same list but had to choose the trait that was least important and explain why someone else might find it important. All participants then viewed video clips from the last presidential debate. Binning, K. et al., “Seeing the Other Side: Reducing Political Partisanship via Self-Affirmation in the 2008 Presidential Election,” Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy (forthcoming). Green = weak? The problem with talking about it. Diseased thinking: dissolving questions about disease. Related to: Disguised Queries, Words as Hidden Inferences, Dissolving the Question, Eight Short Studies on Excuses Today's therapeutic ethos, which celebrates curing and disparages judging, expresses the liberal disposition to assume that crime and other problematic behaviors reflect social or biological causation. While this absolves the individual of responsibility, it also strips the individual of personhood, and moral dignity. Be Good. April 2008.
Anxiety and Social Networks.
The Acceleration of Addictiveness. July 2010.