Category — Social Policy

e-passports cloned…:
This was on Wired yesterday (posted on Slashdot). I think it highlights the importance of thinking deeply about how these proposed identity systems work. The other security flaw is the ‘integrity’ of the databases that the passport system is built on.

A German computer security consultant has shown that he can clone the electronic passports that the United States and other countries are beginning to distribute this year.

The controversial e-passports contain radio frequency ID, or RFID, chips that the U.S. State Department and others say will help thwart document forgery.

“The whole passport design is totally brain damaged,” Grunwald says. “From my point of view all of these RFID passports are a huge waste of money. They’re not increasing security at all.”

——–
it is worse than not increasing security… the blind promotion of this technology is actually lowering security. much like libraries and rfid… the use of the technology does not in the end enable the library or the passport holder as much as it enables anyone with a bit of technical savvy to make a mess of the library or passport system.

India rejects One Laptop Per Child | The Register :

issed the laptop as “pedagogically suspect”. Education Secretary Sudeep Banerjee said: “We cannot visualise a situation for decades when we can go beyone the pilot stage. We need classrooms and teachers more urgently than fancy tools.”

Banerjee said if money were available it would be better spent on existing education plans.

Banerjee told the Hindu: “We do not think that the idea of Prof Negroponte is mature enough to be taken seriously at this stage and no major country is presently following this. Even inside America, there is not much enthusiasm about this.”

——–

first healthcare, then primary education, then secondary education, then computers in secondary education, then perhaps one laptop per child… if and only if, you manage to show some benefit of computers in secondary education that implies that the sole purpose of one-laptop-per-child is colonialism via technical means, by which i mean… making people dependent on foreign capital for jobs and equipment.

I’ll take a million please:

The $100 laptop, aka the One Laptop Per Child project just got its first major order – 1 million for Nigeria.

I would love to own one, if its internals were swapped with a MacBook. These things will be a serious nerd fetish item when they become available, and a serious nerd retro-fetish item in 20 years. –MM

Originally posted by Cameron Sinclair from WorldChanging: To Understand and Protect Our Home Planet, ReBlogged by migurski on Jul 26, 2006 at 09:01 PM

———

interesting. i wonder how this will actually work, we’ll see. i don’t believe that the 100 laptop will change anything on a national level other than revealing a huge hidden set of costs for the program, but i could be wrong.

TheDenverChannel.com – News – Marshals: Innocent People Placed On ‘Watch List’ To Meet Quota:
You could be on a secret government database or watch list for simply taking a picture on an airplane. Some federal air marshals say they’re reporting your actions to meet a quota, even though some top officials deny it.The air marshals, whose identities are being concealed, told 7NEWS that they’re required to submit at least one report a month. If they don’t, there’s no raise, no bonus, no awards and no special assignments.
——–

suspicious person? one a month… this sounds very suspicious too me.

/Message: Edglings: A Well-Ordered Humanism and The Future Of Everything:
Here’s some thoughts on the emerging characteristics of web culture: the glue that holds Edglings — and through them, everything else — together:

These facets of society are arrayed in no particular order, and are strongly mutually reinforcing. They share, at the core, a strong predisposition to reject centralized authority, whether in business, goverment, media, or religion. The web allows us to change all the major axes of life, and to work our way onto a substantively different cultural ethos than what has preceded it, specifically the structures of life and work that have been thrown up by the industrial revolution and its aftermath.

——-
stowe boyd has some insights into a phenomenal he calla ‘edgelings’… to me it looks remarkably like postmodernity combined with a more personal informationalism and consumerism.

http://www.prattsenate.org/nytimes_07_02_06.htm
http://www.internationaled.org/mathsciencereport.htm
http://www.pekingduck.org/archives/003837.php

to the NYT articles and letters above…. I respond thusly:

I tend to agree more with the Letters, than with the nyt article and even less so with the report.

I think we have to be very careful about accounting for the cultural institutionalization of learning in China and the U.S. We need to be much more careful than the 29 page report. The report does not do that very well at all, it basically assumes a ‘most similar systems’ model of society and culture to make its comparison. This model is not justified in my mind. The U.S. and China are involved in fundamentally different projects in their educational systems though they have similar goals. Time on task type training, which is ‘efficient’ in China, might not be ‘efficient’ in the U.S. where we likely focus on a different sense of freedom, creativity and progress in learning.

I think it would be far more productive, policy-wise, to actually address the issues within the u.s. in regards to graduation and retention rates. Achievement measurement is grossly affected when there are an overwhelming percentage of people who are being ‘left behind’ or ‘unaddressed’ by the school systems in the u.s. In fact, i think we can probably fairly easily show that the single norm distribution basis for ’science and math education measurements’ is actually multi-modal and the arguments based on the covering norm are actually hiding very serious social and educational issues. If the needs of the people represented in the lower achieving modes of the population were addressed and they were taught and graduated, I think you would see the measured norm of science and math education change dramatically in the u.s.

What then is the real politics and policy behind the report? It seeks to legitimize national standards and national testing, taking away a power that has been relegated to local democracies and replacing it with national bureaucracies. It seeks to remove teacher control of the curriculum. It seems better teaching of teachers (ok, i agree with this one, give us educated and inspired teachers). It seeks to replace the open system of education and admissions with examination based access to education, (given what we know about cultural biases in the sat and act … ), etc. etc. In short, I think what we have is just a document that seeks to expand the currently promoted educational regime, which in the last 7 years or so has demonstrated significant problems addressing the needs of all students in the U.S.

“The Fundamental Role of Science and Technology in International Development: An Imperative for the U.S. Agency for International Development”:
The Fundamental Role of Science and Technology in International Development: An Imperative for the U.S. Agency for International Development

The paper copy of this book has just been published. The online version has been available for some time. I suspect the report is must reading for those in the United States interested in science and technology for international development. The book does not deal with UNESCO explicitly, but UNESCO is the lead agency in the UN system for basic science and engineering, as well as social science and some fields of applied science.
———-

This looks like it will be a somewhat informative read.

For the first time in history, there is a chance that a feminist party, with a feminist agenda, will take place in a national parliament. This is a momentous occasion. It is nothing short of a revolution. It is something that could improve the situation of women around the world in many different ways. It would prove that feminism can no longer be ignored in politics.

http://www.feministsupport.com/

feminist initiative party platform

——

the feminist initiative in Sweden is running for seats in parliament. to the best of my knowledge, this is the first organized feminist party platform running for elected national office.

top three:

These are the three best things I’ve read this week:
1. Jeff Jarvis writes about Bill Gates leaving Microsoft: “The Meaning of Bill”.
2. Guy Kawasaki: “How to Kick Silicon Alley’s Butt”.
3. Paul Graham: “Why Start-ups Condense In America”.
Enjoy.
———

i think the guy kawasaki post is the most significant of the three. he focuses on the reality of investing and startups, hits the idea on the head, that idea is ‘people have to have ideas that they want to bring to reality, people shouldn’t be trying to make money’. if you have the idealists with the capacity, then the money will flow. if you don’t have the idealists or the capacity, then you won’t have any real research and development and without research, you only have businesses and business is different from entrepreneurial activity.

Busch Macht Frei:
A sign on the front of the US prison in Guantanamo Bay reads “Honor Bound to Defend Freedom.”

A sign over the gate of the Fort Dix stockade, where war protesters were jailed during the Vietnam days: “Obedience to the law is freedom.”

A sign I saw in 1979 on the Grady County courthouse in Chickasha, Oklahoma: “The Safety of the State is the Highest Law.”

A sign I saw on a billboard in Franco’s Spain in 1958: “Sin orden, no hay libertad.” (Without Order, There is No Liberty.)

A sign beside the gate at Auschwitz: “Arbeit Macht Frei.” (Work Makes You Free.)

And so it goes.

———–

the slip and slide of doublespeak transforms the meanings of freedom into the meaning of slavery and horror. i always try to confront my students with what it could really mean to be free and equal in society and why they might not be free or equal now. if we don’t take an active stance against the reconstruction of freedom, freedom of body, freedom of conscious, freedom of community, we will never have the benefits of our world. i should say that the market does not equate with freedom, nor does laboring, nor does subservience to the state or other forms of obedience. consenting to the state is one thing, obedience is entirely different.