Category — General

Digital Opportunity Index (DOI):
Digital Opportunity Index (DOI)

Policy Research Tool:
UNESCO is launching a new tool to support policy-making based on research results from international social and human sciences.

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this is a cool tool. this post is also post 5900 according to the numbering system….

United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization | UNESCO.ORG:
This conference brought together decision-makers, academics, members of government, and leaders from various facets of civil society to discuss ways in which to better, and more directly, harness scientific and technological progress for the promotion of peace and sustainable development.
Download publication – PDF

Math Trek: Good Stories, Good Math, Science News Online, Nov. 10, 2007:
Good Stories, Good Math

Preschoolers who can tell good stories develop good mathematical skills by the first grade
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so to teach the next generation of mathematicians and scientists… the best thing we can do is tell them inspiring stories and fantasies.

Too many students attend college:
Too many students attend college
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I actually agree to some extent with this idea, but not the evidence presented here. I think people need time to explore and find something they are passionate about before they engage in college. Too many students enter college, I think, with an unpurposefulness, which while fine in a general sense, is not conducive to learning. This combined with the problem of credentialism that students are taught by their high school and parents (cause i don’t teach that), causes dynamics in the classroom where students want you to tell them ‘what will be on the test?’ amongst other things. In other words, they don’t seem to want to learn as much as they want to pass the test. Those are not the same thing.

This article and this article provide a basis of critique for people using 14 letter passwords in rc5 and assuming some sense of security. Hint is… it is not secure. It is not as bad as Microsoft using rot13, but it is close. Computing power and memory win against encryption. Given extensible memory and speed, password and/or public/private key hacks can be managed the same way. granted it would take a ton of resources to build the massively parallel computer that could do such a key shuffle, but it is theoretically conceivable and likely from my sources already existing. Now granted, what one can do in a small black-hat setup is fairly limited in terms of 1024 encryption, and most people scoff at the resources required to do a large shuffle.

smart kids:
The Secret to Raising Smart Kids
Hint: Don’t tell your kids that they are.
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it can be very disempowering to be told you are smart, or smarter… what does that mean anyway? intelligence varies across too many dimensions to really make that claim too strongly as far as i’m concerned. there are people who are demonstrably disadvantaged in any number of ways in terms of mental faculties, but past the demonstrable, I’m not sure i believe in ’smart’ as much as I might have a few years ago.

Continental Philosophy » Blog Archive » E-Texts: Guattari, Molecular Revolution:
Guattari, Felix. Molecular Revolution: Psychiatry and Politics (Peregrines). New York City: Puffin, 1984.
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this is a good resource to get started on for some of guattari’s work.

Undercover restorers fix Paris landmark’s clock | Special reports | Guardian Unlimited:
“The Latin Quarter is where the concept of human rights came from, it’s the centre of everything. The Panthéon clock is in the middle of it. So it’s a bit like the clock at the centre of the world.”

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this is the way the world works…. I like it.

YouTube – Nationl Anthem Fenway Park:
National Anthem Fenway Park
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the beauty of this is that the crowd kicked in and supported this young gentleman’s song.