Month: October 2015

Originally shared by Susan Stone

http://www.rawstory.com/2015/10/a-new-species-is-evolving-right-before-our-eyes-an-ultra-successful-mix-of-wolves-coyotes-and-dogs/#.VjPDOkIrfj0.google_plusone_share

Originally shared by Michele Galloway

Now if all of the kids on the globe in this generation join the movement.  I’m going to die happy.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/16/japanese-anti-war-protesters-challenge-shinzo-abe

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/16/japanese-anti-war-protesters-challenge-shinzo-abe

Originally shared by James Allan

Kinkaku-iji Temple, Kyoto January 2015 during the heaviest snowfall for 60 years

Originally shared by John Baez

We need cheaper textbooks

A tenured math professor at Cal State Fullerton tried to use a textbook that costs $76 instead of the $180 book his department was using.   He says the cheaper book is actually better.    But his department has threatened to fire him!  

Who wrote the more expensive book?  The chair of his department!

Read the whole story below.

The ironic thing is that Cal State Fullerton, and the California State University in general, is starting to use free, open-access textbooks for more and more courses.  These books are being developed by OpenStax College.  You can get them here:

https://www.openstaxcollege.org/faculty

As of April 2015 they had these books:

College Physics (released June 2012)

Introduction to Sociology (released June 2012)

Biology (released April 2013)

Concepts of Biology (released April 2013)

Anatomy and Physiology (released June 2013)

Introductory Statistics (November 2013)

Principles of Economics (March 2014)

Principles of Microeconomics (March 2014)

Principles of Macroeconomics (March 2014)

Pre-Calculus (October 2014)

Psychology (December 2014)

U.S. History (January 2015)

College Algebra (February 2015)

Algebra & Trigonometry (February 2015)

Chemistry (March 2015)

College Sociology-2e (April 2015)

Pre-Algebra (October 2015)

More are coming:

Calculus (forthcoming in 2016)

Astronomy (forthcoming in 2016)

Microbiology (forthcoming 2016-2017)

University Physics (forthcoming 2016-2017)

Elementary Algebra (forthcoming 2016-2017)

Intermediate Algebra (forthcoming 2016-2017)

American Government (forthcoming 2016-2017)

Basic College Math (forthcoming 2016-2017)

Let’s stop making students pay outrageous fees for their books!

There’s a lot of open-access, free courseware now:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenCourseWare

Check it out!

http://www.latimes.com/local/education/la-me-cal-state-grievance-20151023-story.html

Originally shared by Andrew Pam

Great article on the pervasive issues of the “attention economy”.

http://blog.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/2015/10/why-its-ok-to-block-ads/

Originally shared by Susan Stone

quote: I don’t know how Clinton would be as a public President, with all the mix of engagement, charisma and circumspection that involves. But showing how she might be as a private president, a Situation Room president, I think it was perhaps a transformative performance. When I watched my thought was, Wow, she’d be rock solid. Granular and detailed is seldom spell-binding. But over the course of the endless testimony, anyone who had the slightest sense that Clinton had been some sort of figurehead Secretary of State who left the key work to subordinates would have been thoroughly disabused of that notion.

Clinton’s time under questioning sent a number of messages. One was simply the scope of her knowledge and experience that made her questioners look increasingly insipid and small. But there was also a simple toughness and resilience under pressure. She knows her stuff and she’s a pro. You could not watch that testimony and not come away with that conclusion. This engagement gave her a live telecast opportunity to demonstrate that fact, which is almost invaluable. It is very difficult to imagine any of the Republican presidential candidates – even the ones serving in the Senate – able to roll with that kind of questioning or show the range of knowledge and clarity that was required to do so.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/long-twilight-struggle

Originally shared by Isaac Kuo

This is the first evidence I trust showing Jeb’s campaign truly is crumbling. I had thought that the continuous flow of “establishment” money would keep his campaign going like the Energizer Bunny until most of the rest simply ran out of steam.

But the inability of that money to shift poll numbers is evidently taking its toll.

What does this mean, in the big picture? What if Trump or Carson continue to ride high into the nomination, despite the fact that the big money donors hate them? Maybe this heralds a new era of democracy, where big money and TV ads don’t have the sway they used to.

Who is driving this? I think it’s the right wing base of primary voters who are highly engaged in political news. These are not “low information” voters, but rather voters who lap up “information” from right wing media such as WND, Drudge, Blaze etc…people who may often find even Fox News too “liberal” or “lamestream media”. Fox News can try to push the establishment candidate onto them, but they now trust alternate political news sources more than FNC…alternate sources which are harder for the establishment elite to control.

I think we’re seeing a demonstration of what an “informed” electorate can do. That these voters are basically living in a weird reality denial bubble makes for an interesting experiment (albeit one which we can’t just dispassionately observe because the consequences are dire).

I am generally skeptical of the idea that the Internet is capable of radically changing the balance of power when it comes to money in politics. But I’ll be delighted to be proven wrong about that…

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/10/jeb-bush-orders-across-board-pay-cuts-on-campaign-215106

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/10/jeb-bush-orders-across-board-pay-cuts-on-campaign-215106

Originally shared by ****

Yay science: