Category — General

Google Book Search: Celebrate Your Freedom to Read:
plore Banned Books

For more information about Banned Books Week (September 23rd-30th), visit http://www.ala.org/bbooks.
Is a book being challenged or banned in your community? The ALA can help you
do something about it.

To Kill a Mockingbird. Of Mice and Men. The Great Gatsby. 1984. It’s hard to imagine a world without these extraordinary literary classics, but every year there are hundreds of attempts to remove great books from libraries and schools. In fact, according to the American Library Association, 42 of 100 books recognized by the Radcliffe Publishing Course as the best novels of the 20th century have been challenged or banned.

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banned books week…..

The Scientist : Are We Training Too Many Scientists? :
After three years of postdoctoral work at the Mayo Clinic, Crystal Icenhour was ready to embrace the life of an independent researcher in a tenure track position. But after more than a year of job searching, and only a couple of job interviews, she was bitterly disappointed. The first job was lost to another more qualified applicant. The second institution was hiring two faculty: one senior, one junior. “I thought I had that one … I was ready to pack my bags because the interview went so well and they asked for start-up requirements,” says Icenhour. But after the senior faculty hire negotiated his compensation, there were insufficient funds for the junior position. “He offered me a postdoc in his lab… I didn’t take it.”

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I don’t think people should take postdocs.. frequently they end up being just another form of underpaid labor. some prestigious postdocs are fine and good institutions, but not all are. postdocs narrow your options and i think, that most cut down on your capacity to seek future employment.

The Globalist | Global Economy — U.S. Universities and Global Competition:
Traditional assumptions about who can and should attend college are no longer adequate, if we are to remain competitive.

Without the economic success that is the product of education, we as a nation may face a reduction in our quality of life in the next generation, something unheard of in our past.

To avert what sometimes appears to me an impending societal train wreck, education must become the central focus of our society.

In China, I witnessed an unprecedented effort now underway to build from scratch approximately 100 research universities.

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larger population means larger talent pool, larger talent pool means more possible genius’s and innovators… the question becomes whether that can be centralized through universities in china, much like the u.s. did in the 50’s-60’s or not.

Yesterday, the Pratt Manhattan Library started the first of what I hope will be a very long tradition of hosting the September Project, we had a good sized audience for the starting event and 3 speakers. Professor Bencivengo presented on the Patriot Act and the ethical issues it raises. Professor Rabina presented on the recent practices and legal aspects of security classified information, specifically the movement to reclassify documents that were previously released. I spoke to the broader issues of where the normative foundations of information professional and librarians might lie in the digital age through my presentation on cosmopolitan democracy: dissent and informational power. Our librarian, Jean Hines, did an excellent job in pulling this effort together and I look forward to working with her on the September Project in the future. Thanks also go to David Silver and his colleagues at University of Washington for imagining the project and providing the network of information that makes it interesting and successful.

xkcd – A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language – COMPLY:
Escher Bracelet

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indeed…. these are some of the funniest cartoons i’ve seen in a while.

Greg Mankiw’s Blog: Yes, education, but what kind?:

Reviewing specific programs, Carneiro and Heckman find that preschool education is highly effective, although with more impact on noncognitive than cognitive abilities. Schools are much less productive, and returns are low to increased investments in K-12 education in the form of higher salaries, smaller classes, and so forth. They suggest that structural changes that increase school choice and competition should have higher returns, but are careful to note that returns to increased investment in schools are limited by what families contribute to the production process. They also conclude that added investments in job training and higher education have low rates of return, particularly for lower ability adolescents and adults.

Brooks is right to focus our attention on education, but our aspirations should be modest. Even the best designed human capital policies are unlikely to reverse the rise in inequality observed over the past several decades.

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the question here, in my mind, is really about the current system. returns are low because the architecture of learning in the u.s. cannot utilize investments. it is not that making the institutions ‘capitalistic’ will change things either. it is the innate practices of education, the classroom, the sitting in rows, the rote knowledge, it is the way that we make students think, their future mode of thought, that is the real problem. it centers on the wrong sort of structures, mainly it is still factory-based and submission based instead of future-oriented and equality-based. if you invest in an old factory, the money generally is wasted on maintenance, making new technologies fit, etc. huge transition costs and because everyone that worked there is still working there, you haven’t changed the habitus, and thus are impinged significantly by traditions, ideations, and practices that limit change. if you build a new factory, build in new practices, you can sometimes save the transition costs and have huge gains.

‘The Best War Ever’ Publicity Video:
‘The Best War Ever’ Publicity Video
The publicity video for ‘The Best War Ever’

Much more accurate than P2911.

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geeze, i hope we don’t get a sequel to this book, or this administration.

Yes, It’s Torture:
Kevin Drum asks (rhetorically), Torture?:

President Bush announced yesterday that 14 “high value detainees” would be transferred from secret CIA prisons to Guantanamo Bay. ABC News describes the interrogation techniques that have been used on on them:

The first — the attention grab, involving the rough shaking of a prisoner.

Second — the attention slap, an open-handed slap to the face.

Third — belly slap, meant to cause temporary pain, but no internal injuries.

Fourth —long-term standing and sleep deprivation, 40 hours at least, described as the most effective technique.

Fifth — the cold room. Prisoners left naked in cells kept in the 50s and frequently doused with cold water.

The CIA sources say the sixth, and harshest, technique was called “water boarding,” in which a prisoner’s face was covered with cellophane, and water is poured over it (pictured above) — meant to trigger an unbearable gag reflex.

Is this torture?

I can’t see how anyone can call waterboarding anything other than torture. I’d also include some of the others on this list — even “open” or “belly” slapping prisoners sounds like a milder form of torture and, whatever you call it, is banned by both the Geneva conventions and every code of practice we use domestically.
And it’s all wrong.
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to abuse someone, physically or mentally that you have completely in your control is always psychological torture, they have no means of escape, they have no means whatever other than their mind and this will put an immense amount of stress on those people. It is torture. It is banned by the Geneva convention and it should not be used because in using it, the whole nation becomes complicit in its use, and we all must then carry the psychological burden of being a nation of torturers and fundamentally that means that we must be a nation that does not respect the dignity of the human being, the rights of a human being, and the freedoms of mind and conscience that is fundamentally what makes us human. we must instead be a nation that preys on the rights, freedoms and dignities of other peoples and nations in order to get what we want. That is not treating people equally or rationally… it is being a monster. Monsters torture people and as such create monsters.

Computer,September 2006 (Vol. 39, No. 9):

September 2006 (Vol. 39, No. 9)

ISSN: 0018-9162
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there are some interesting articles in this month’s issue of ieee computer.

Your daily Rorschach test:

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….. its icy.