From Dave Farber's IP List:
Lets the DOJ bring civil suits on behalf of copyright owners. (Link goes to
text of bill):I especially enjoy the thought of the DOJ having a division that "(employs
and leverages) the expertise of technical experts in computer forensics;
(and) (F) collects and preserves) electronic data in a forensically sound
manner for use in court proceedings". I wonder how far 2 million dollars
will get them in one year.
Keith Winstein writes about his chat with MPAA's Jack Valenti:
Valenti is an incredibly polished advocate for the movie studios. He has numerous legislative and regulatory successes to his name, and his stated commitment to honest debate (he spoke passionately several times about his commitment to the “ideal of civic discourse” and his disgust at Washington, D.C.’s lack of it) is admirable.But we don’t have a real debate on copyright issues. We have rival camps that rarely understand each other. Virtually everybody I know and encounter on the Internet thinks Valenti’s signal accomplishments are bad. He can claim credit for the anticircumvention provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which make it illegal to build your own DVD player and well-nigh impossible to watch DVDs legally under the GNU/Linux operating system, as well as the Federal Communication Commission’s Broadcast Flag, which will make it illegal or virtually impossible to build your own digital television receiver or, again, watch HDTV under Linux.
Peter Maller writes about P. Richard Schumann's efforts to purchase farmer's development rights while they continue farming:
Schumann is preparing an advisory referendum for the November ballot asking residents in the Town of Hartford if they are willing to pay higher property taxes to fund such purchases of development rights.The goal is for the land to remain undeveloped.
"I think we have very strong support," said Schumann, founder and president of the community's newly organized Town Preservation Committee. "Keeping the style of life we have, preserving farmland and green space, is very near and dear to people's hearts."
Kelley Bruss writes about the Northeastern Wisconsin Charter School, opening this fall:
Those who’ve experienced online education say good things are in store when the Northeastern Wisconsin Online Charter School opens in the fall.But students enrolling in the Web-based courses shouldn’t expect a light load. The work is demanding, said Sara Dennison, 17, a Gibraltar High School junior who took an oceanography class online last semester.
“You have to be very driven to want to do the class,” Dennison said. “You really have to stay focused on your own time and be very self-directed to finish it. … You really have to put the effort in and want to learn it.”
Every fifth- and sixth-grader at Johnson Elementary will receive a $1,350 IBM ThinkPad computer loaded with digital versions of state-approved textbooks and 2,000 works of literature. If the experiment works, the program will be expanded to other grades.In Henrico County, Va., where schools give laptops to all high schoolers, Apple Computer Inc. replaced pop-out CD-ROM trays with slides on its iBook laptops when students kept breaking off the trays after forgetting to close them.
"They get heavy use, and occasionally they drop them," said Cathy Fisher, Henrico's director of high school education. Still, she said breakage, as well as thefts, are rare.
The Henrico school board will decide next year whether to renew the deal with Apple, which cost the school district $18.5 million over four years. Fisher said the district can't prove that computers raise test scores, but she said they make learning more interesting.
Smith, whose program serves up to 150 students, doesn't know what he'll do after the experiment with textbook-loaded laptops next year. It all depends on the price, he said.
Jason Van Beck continues to stir things up in South Dakota. Van Beck has more on long time political writer Dave Kranz's close ties to incumbent Senator Tom Daschle.
Osama, the first film to come out of Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban, is about a 12-year-old girl who must shave her head and dress like a boy so she can work to support her widowed mother and grandmother. It is not about Osama bin Laden; "Osama" is the boy's name the girl adopts.via instapundit.I am sent a newsletter from a women's rights group in Pakistan, which lists items from Pakistani newspapers. The following is a recent selection (I checked the items on the newspapers' websites):
Lahore: A girl, Kauser, 17, was strangled by her elder brother because she had married of her own will. She returned home and asked her family to forgive her but her brother strangled her with a piece of cloth. - The Daily Times.
Ghotki district: Two women were killed over Karo-Kari (honour killing). One Nihar Jatoi tied his wife to a bed and electrocuted her. One Bachal axed his wife Salma to death and fled. No arrests were reported. - The News.
Sargodha: A woman is in hospital after having both legs amputated because of severe injuries inflicted by her brother-in-law and mother-in-law, who clubbed her for her alleged illicit affairs. The woman, who was fighting for life, said the real reason was that her brother-in-law was trying to force her to arrange his marriage to her younger sister, but her sister had instead eloped with her paramour. - Dawn.
What chance of this woman becoming an international symbol, as has the boy who so tragically lost his arms during the invasion of Iraq?
Why is international public opinion not outraged at the treatment of women in Islamic fundamentalist societies? Why is it easier for millions of people around the world to see America as the great evil, rather than the countries in which governments ignore such horrific abuses of women?
Its name remains unchanged: Elm Creative Arts Elementary School. Young students still walk the halls, with violins and saxophones swinging at their sides.Interestingly, she includes some other viewpoints on school spending:At first glance, it looks very much the art school its name reflects. Colorful papier-mache and art projects of all kinds decorate the hallway walls and dangle from the ceilings.
But ask the principal and parents what's going on here, and the story is anything but joyous. Some parents cry as they talk about it.
Students at this specialty art school on Walnut St. risk losing their art teachers. Budgetary woes have already claimed three art specialists in the last few years. The remaining four are in jeopardy.
Rep. Luther Olsen (R-Berlin): "Look at the amount of money spent per student. "Wisconsin is number eight in the country. . . . The answer is not dumping more money in because we don't have the money."
Mike Birkley, of the lobbying group Wisconsin Property Taxpayers Inc.: "Our tests scores are going up. Our SAT scores continue to be among the highest in the nation. Our dropout rates are down. The quality of education has not suffered."
Madison School District 2004-2005 $310+m budget discussions continue:
1991 New York State Teacher of the Year, John Taylor Gatto wrote this fascinating article in the Whole Earth Review:
Without a fully active role in community life you cannot develop into a complete human being. Aristotle taught that. Surely he was right; look around you or look in the mirror: that is the demonstration."School" is an essential support system for a vision of social engineering that condemns most people to be subordinate stones in a pyramid that narrows to a control point as it ascends. "School" is an artifice which makes such a pyramidal social order seem inevitable (although such a premise is a fundamental betrayal of the American Revolution). In colonial days and through the period of the early Republic we had no schools to speak of. And yet the promise of democracy was beginning to be realized. We turned our backs on this promise by bringing to life the ancient dream of Egypt: compulsory training in subordination for everybody. Compulsory schooling was the secret Plato reluctantly transmitted in the Republic when he laid down the plans for total state control of human life.
The current debate about whether we should have a national curriculum is phony; we already have one, locked up in the six lessons I've told you about and a few more I've spared you. This curriculum produces moral and intellectual paralysis, and no curriculum of content will be sufficient to reverse its bad effects. What is under discussion is a great irrelevancy.
None of this is inevitable, you know. None of it is impregnable to change. We do have a choice in how we bring up young people; there is no right way. There is no "international competition" that compels our existence, difficult as it is to even think about in the face of a constant media barrage of myth to the contrary. In every important material respect our nation is self-sufficient. If we gained a non-material philosophy that found meaning where it is genuinely located -- in families, friends, the passage of seasons, in nature, in simple ceremonies and rituals, in curiosity, generosity, compassion, and service to others, in a decent independence and privacy -- then we would be truly self-sufficient.
Her Deepness, Sylvia Earle mentioned repeatedly during her recent UW talk that we must never underestimate the power of one. Jeff Jarvis writes today that Kerry DuPont has "done something wonderful in the cause of freedom: She just sent laptops, scanners, cameras and more equipment of citizens' media to Iraqi bloggers, including Zeyad and Omar and Ays."
So many opportunities....
Dan Morain [reg req'd] has an interesting article on California Indian gambling:
A strong majority of Californians believes Indian tribes that own casinos should pay more of their gambling revenue to the state, and does not want card rooms and horse tracks to gain slot machines, a Los Angeles Times poll shows.Dan Gillmor constructively comments on the LA Times proper use of "gambling" rather than the PR oriented term "gaming". Such marketing wordsmithing is more commonplace than ever.The findings come four years after voters overwhelmingly approved gambling on Indian reservations. Now, gambling interests are preparing for an initiative war that could break the tribes' monopoly on Nevada-style casinos. In addition, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is negotiating with tribes to get heftier payments for the state in exchange for the right to obtain more slot machines.
Meg Kissinger writes about the challenge Milwaukee Public Schools face educating homeless children:
Like about 1,400 other Milwaukee schoolchildren on any given day, and more than 13,000 a year, Kenesha has no home to call her own. The challenge of educating her and the others is staggering for school administrators as the children move from one place to another, often without notice.
Activity levels of students drops from years ago according to Nicole Sweeney:
"We want the kids to be smart academically," said Otha Frazier, a physical education teacher at Racine's Case High School. "Well, it's not showing too much intelligence if you're going to destroy the body to prepare the mind."
Tight relationships between the establishment press and entrenched politicians are a real problem (how do we know what to believe? I think these issues discourage voters and are reflected in the ongoing decline of newspaper readers & tv viewers, while fueling the explosive growth of the internet).
Jon Lauck takes a fascinating look at how an insider relationship can influence reporting, in this case, between long time Argus Leader (South Dakota) political reporter Dave Kranz and Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (they met in college).
Lauck has links to memos and additional background information.
Fortunately, weblogs are casting some light on these relationships.
ABQ or Albuquerque's Sunport features free wireless internet access (WiFi). This enlightened approach makes it very easy for passengers and visitors to check email, surf the web or use a VPN (Virtual Private Network), things not possible at our local airport (MSN). I find it astonishing that a supposedly tech savvy area has non existant airport connectivity.
UPDATE: Sharyn Wisniewski in County Executive Falk's office left me a voice mail today that the Madison Airport will be accepting bids shortly for a paid WiFi service, to be installed this summer. Better than the current situation, I find Albuquerque's tech friendly approach to be superior (just works, vs digging out a credit card, signing up and going through the login process). The County should rethink this plan (we're not talking about much money - I would imagine that the administration of a 3rd party contract is more expensive than installing 5 DSL lines with wireless access points).
I think it's time to turn the tables and start getting paid to insert flyers and upsell messages back to the companies we all do business with. Time to pay the local San Diego Gas & Electric utility bill? Fine, here's the check, and oh, here's a coupon for 15% off on your next meal at our favorite restaurant. Time to pay the phone bill? No prob, here's the check, and here's a flyer from the very nice people at Jiffy Lube. Time to pay the fees to your local fitness club? Cool, here's the check, and here's a flyer for discounts to Landmark Theatres. Time to pay off more of your credit card bill? No prob, here's the check and here's a coupon for a family of four to go to Sea World at a great discount. Potential employer has asked you to send in a cover letter and your resume to be considered for that job you heard about? Excellent, and here's a flyer for that bicycle company in La Jolla that's offering half-price rental deals through August.
Tom Friedman writes about a recent trip to Silicon Valley:
Still others pointed out that the percentage of Americans graduating with bachelor's degrees in science and engineering is less than half of the comparable percentage in China and Japan, and that U.S. government investments are flagging in basic research in physics, chemistry and engineering. Anyone who thinks that all the Indian and Chinese techies are doing is answering call-center phones or solving tech problems for Dell customers is sadly mistaken. U.S. firms are moving serious research and development to India and China.The bottom line: we are actually in the middle of two struggles right now. One is against the Islamist terrorists in Iraq and elsewhere, and the other is a competitiveness-and-innovation struggle against India, China, Japan and their neighbors. And while we are all fixated on the former (I've been no exception), we are completely ignoring the latter. We have got to get our focus back in balance, not to mention our budget. We can't wage war on income taxes and terrorism and a war for innovation at the same time.
Curriculum was and is a hot topic in the Madison School District.
Further, the tech industry has been playing footsie with Hollywood (ironic, given the size of the tech industry vs Hollywood) regarding our fair use rights. Dan Gillmor has recently published a draft version of his upcoming book: Making the News. Chapter 11 includes some very troubling quotes:
When Microsoft shipped its first search-engine (which makes a copy of every page it searches), it violated the letter of copyright law. When Microsoft made its first proxy server (which makes a copy of every page it caches), it broke copyright law. When Microsoft shipped its first CD-ripping technology, it broke copyright law.It broke copyright law because copyright law was broken. Copyright law changes all the time to reflect the new tools that companies like Microsoft invent. If Microsoft wants to deliver a compelling service to its customers, let it make general-purpose tools that have the side-effect of breaking Sony and Apple's DRM, giving its customers more choice in the players they use. Microsoft has shown its willingness to go head-to-head with antitrust people to defend its bottom line: next to them, the copyright courts and lawmakers are pantywaists, Microsoft could eat those guys for lunch, exactly the way Sony kicked their asses in 1984 when they defended their right to build and sell VCRs, even though some people might do bad things with them. Just like the early MP3 player makers did when they ate Sony's lunch by shipping product when Sony wouldn't.
Unfortunately, Microsoft's answer has been to build Digital Rights Management -- the more appropriate term is "Digital Restrictions Management" -- into just about everything it makes.
But now consider the ways it could be used, beyond simple tracking by copyright holders of what they sell. Anderson writes:
[Trusted Computing] provides a computing platform on which you can't tamper with the application software, and where these applications can communicate securely with their authors and with each other. The original motivation was digital rights management (DRM): Disney will be able to sell you DVDs that will decrypt and run on a TC platform, but which you won't be able to copy. The music industry will be able to sell you music downloads that you won't be able to swap. They will be able to sell you CDs that you'll only be able to play three times, or only on your birthday. All sorts of new marketing possibilities will open up.
The potential for abuse extends far beyond commercial bullying and economic warfare into political censorship. I expect that it will proceed a step at a time. First, some well-intentioned police force will get an order against a pornographic picture of a child, or a manual on how to sabotage railroad signals. All TC-compliant PCs will delete, or perhaps report, these bad documents. Then a litigant in a libel or copyright case will get a civil court order against an offending document; perhaps the Scientologists will seek to blacklist the famous Fishman Affidavit. A dictator's secret police could punish the author of a dissident leaflet by deleting everything she ever created using that system - her new book, her tax return, even her kids' birthday cards - wherever it had ended up. In the West, a court might use a confiscation doctrine to `blackhole' a machine that had been used to make a pornographic picture of a child. Once lawyers, policemen and judges realise the potential, the trickle will become a flood.The Trusted Computing moves bring to mind a conversation in early 2000 with Andy Grove, longtime chief executive at Intel and one of the real pioneers in the tech industry. He was talking about how easy it would soon be to send videos back and forth with his grandchildren. If trends continued, I suggested, he'd someday need Hollywood's permission. The man who wrote the best-seller, "Only the Paranoid Survive," then called me paranoid. Several years later, amid the copyright industry's increasing clampdown and Intel's unfortunate leadership in helping the copyright holders lock everything down, I asked him if I'd really been all that paranoid. He avoided a direct reply.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation recently announced the recipients of its 2004 Pioneer awards:
Electronic Frontier Foundation has revealed the winners of the Thirteenth Annual Pioneer Awards.From Slashdot.Focusing on the area of electronic voting security and accountability, they have highlighted the work of Kim Alexander, the president of the California Voter Foundation, David Dill, a Stanford Professor and founder of VerifiedVoting.org, and Avi Rubin, a professor at Johns Hopkins University who co-authored the highly publicized Diebold report of 2003.
The Apple Learning Interchange has posted a virtual field trip: The Wright Start
The invention of the airplane by Wilbur and Orville Wright is one of the great stories in American history. It tells of the creation of a world-changing technology at the opening of an exciting new century, an era full of promise and confidence in the future. At the center of the tale are two talented, yet modest, Midwestern bicycle shop proprietors, whose inventive labors and achievement transformed them from respected small-town businessmen into international celebrities. The influence of their invention on the 20th century is beyond measure. The transport by air of goods and people, quickly and over great distances, and the military applications of flight technology, have had global economic, geopolitical, and cultural impact. The Wrights' invention not only solved a long-studied technical problem, but also fashioned a radically new world.
Tyler Cowen writes a useful summary of our healthcare system's costs & productivity vs other nations:
The relevant measures were either life expectancy after treatment or measures of the quality of life. And how about the results:The United States is more productive in all these diseases except for diabetes in the United Kingdom. [emphasis added] The reasons for this result can be traced directly to the huge differences in the way the health care sector is organized and governed across these three countries. The UK health care system is almost entirely government owned and run...The result has been that the United Kingdom has no invested as quickly in technologies that have dramatically improved the diagnostic capabilities of medicine and significantly reduced recovery time...Germany, on the other hand, has a system more like the United States had twenty years ago. In Germany, medical expenses are paid for on a task-by-task basis for services of doctors and hospitals. As a result, hospitals in Germany have no financial incentive to reduce length of stay.
Felicity Barringer writes about the Ocean Commission's new strategy for safeguarding the sea:
"Our oceans and coasts are in serious trouble," the commission's chairman, Adm. James D. Watkins, a former chief of naval operations, said at a news conference here today. The existing management system, which spreads responsibility across what he called "a Byzantine patchwork" of federal and state agencies and local fishing councils, "is simply not up to the task" of preventing degradation, Admiral Watkins said.
Pat Schneider writes that the Madison School Board last night delayed a study of administrative costs:
The district would need $318 million to continue current programming next school year, but a state formula caps district spending at $308 million.
Superintendent Art Rainwater proposed cutting approximately 135 jobs, resulting in larger class sizes in middle and high schools, and reductions in special services. Schools would be cleaned less often, and athletic programs would be pared down while fees would be raised.
School board members must hammer out a spending document by July 1, but teachers facing downsizing must be notified by the end of May.
Veteran board member Carol Carstensen, who had proposed the evaluation of administrative costs, said she sought it because of her own limited understanding of many of the district's business functions. "I don't know how many people we ought to have working in the purchasing department," she said, for example.
According to Carstensen, $3.6 million in administrative salaries - not counting 70 school principals - fall under the state spending caps,.
An in-house draft document seeking the administrative evaluation did not include anyone in the superintendent's office, legal services or the district's public information office as among those to be evaluated. No administrators in instructional programs were included, either.
Carstensen acknowledged that no study could be done in time for this year's tough round of budgeting. "But if we don't get it started, we'll never have it," she said.
Board member Ruth Robarts seemed eager for a measure of administrative effectiveness, but she argued that that could not be obtained until the board laid out an instructional plan with performance goals.
Mitch Kapor writes about Korean politics, where a two year old party, The Uri (Our Party) decisively took over the National Assembly in last week's elections:
It was done using the Net. It is no accident that the political coming-of-age of the Net came about in Korea where almost 70% of its households are broadband connected. Starting as a social movement organized through the Net, the new Uri party became a political phenomena.In December 2002, the Uri party used the Net to go around Korea's traditional political structures and elect Roh Moo-hyun President. Korea's national politics have traditionally been regionally based. However, using the Net, the Uri put together a new political coalition based not on geography, but age, bringing together those under 30. Paradoxically, the Uri also used the Net to involve citizens at local face to face meetings.
The Net was used to begin to break the overwhelming political influence of Korea's giant corporate conglomerates, the chaebols, who funded (both legally and illegitimately) much of Korea's politics. The Uri use the Net to help fund their campaign with tens of thousands of small contributions.
J.D. Lasica writes about copyright law and its challengers:
For years, all was peaceful in the house of Horowitz. Jed Horowitz, a 53-year-old New Jersey entrepreneur with sharply chiseled features and gleaming bald head, had been running a small video operation called Video Pipeline that took Hollywood films, created two-minute trailers to help promote them, and distributed them to online retailers such as Netflix, BestBuy, and Barnes and Noble, as well as public libraries. Then one day in 2000, the Walt Disney Co. sent a cease-and-desist order, charging that Horowitz's company was violating Disney's copyright by featuring portions of their movies online.
Or - why Windows PC's can be unsafe at any speed. Yuki Noguchi writes
The Federal Trade Commission today is hosting a daylong workshop in Washington to discuss the effects of hidden software that may be used to control or spy on a computer without its user's knowledge.Some organizations, including the Madison schools, only support a computing monoculture - fertile ground for spyware.....So far most "spyware" and "adware" programs, often placed on Windows PCs by such downloaded programs as file-sharing programs, appear to have been used for the relatively benign purpose of tracking consumer preferences, said Howard Beales, director of the FTC's consumer protection division. The FTC is watching to see if criminals start making widespread use of this technology to steal credit-card and Social Security numbers of unwitting computer users, he said.
"So far [we] haven't thought that it warranted regulation," he said.
Alan Borsuk continues his recent series of education articles with a profile of five Milwaukee area teachers. One of them, Louise Guinn remarks:
"We push a lot for the kids to be successful." And she is convinced all her students - all black, almost all from low-income homes - can learn "if given the right opportunities and the right environment.She says she urges parents to limit television and to read more at home. Children are influenced by this.
But she also knows that many of her students lead challenging lives. During a class discussion of what fourth-graders can do that infants can't, making your bed is mentioned by one student. Another says he doesn't have to do that because he sleeps on the floor. Guinn understands that this means he doesn't have a bed of his own.
Joan Shelley translated a "knack for knobs" into a fast-growing $1.4m business, according to Doris Hajewski:
Knobs are an unusual foundation for a business, especially for a triage nurse.The mother of eight children, Shelley turned a flair for decorating cakes into a home business. In rapid succession in the 1990s, that led to assisting with commercial kitchen design and then teaming up as a designer with Amish craftsmen from southern Illinois. They made cabinets, and every one of those cabinets needed a knob or handle.
"Customers, especially the high-end ones, wanted something special in hardware," Shelley said.
She acquired lots of catalogs, but she wished there was an easier way to find what the customers wanted.
Enter Kristina Shelley, the self-described computer geek of the Shelley brood. At age 16, in the late 1990s, she had mastered the Web design classes at Oconomowoc High School. She started taking college classes and working part-time at Apex, a now-defunct Web development business in Milwaukee.
Steve Greenhouse writes a useful article on the economic & cultural implications of the Wal-Mart system:
We already know that Wal-Mart is the biggest retailer. (If it were an independent nation, it would be China's eighth-largest trading partner.) We also know that it is maniacal about low prices. (Some economists say it has single-handedly cut inflation by 1 percent in recent years, saving consumers billions of dollars annually.) We know that its labor practices have come under attack. (It charges its workers so much for health insurance that about one-third of them do not have it.)
Verlyn Klinkenborg nicely summarizes recent news in the recording industry's battle against file sharing:
But this isn't just a legal battle, of course. It's a battle of information and ideas. A new book from Lawrence Lessig called "Free Culture" makes a forceful, cogent defense of many forms of file sharing. And — perhaps worst of all from the industry's perspective — a new academic study prepared by professors at Harvard and the University of North Carolina concludes, "Downloads have an effect on sales which is statistically indistinguishable from zero." This directly counters recording industry claims that place nearly all the blame for declining CD sales on illegal file sharing.
Windows PC users are subject to an average of 28 electronic spies on their computer, the BBC reports:
The average computer is packed with hidden software that can secretly spy on online habits, a study has found.The US net provider EarthLink said it uncovered an average of 28 spyware programs on each PC scanned during the first three months of the year.
Over several months, a string of novice tutors from a private company offering federally financed after-school classes had tried and failed to control Room 207's dozen rambunctious students. A supervisor from the company was dispatched to troubleshoot. Effie McHenry, Wentworth's principal, was clucking her tongue in disapproval.I just don't think they're prepared to deal with challenging inner city children," Mrs. McHenry said of the company, talking past the supervisor to a visitor. "I think they expected to find children who'd just sit down and wait for them to expound. These kids aren't like that. They need challenging instruction."
Detroit's Cyprus Taverna: More on this later. Needless to say, it was quite an excellent dinner (try the lamb special & the vegetrian plate). [map]
Tyler Cowen writes a very useful article on where the federal government's $21,671 spending per household (2004) goes - up $3,500 from 2001!
Dan Gillmor has some additional comments relating to the emerging AMT (alternative minimum tax) problem, a subject I discussed some weeks ago.
The Chicago-based Joyce Foundation announced Wednesday that it would provide $15 million over the next three years to support efforts to improve the quality of teaching in low-performing schools in Milwaukee, Chicago and Cleveland.
Dozens of Madison public school students are learning this month that their race can be the sole factor in whether they're allowed to transfer to another district under the state's open enrollment law.The Madison School District said Tuesday it has denied 65 open enrollment requests for next fall because the shift of those students - all of them white - would upset the racial balance at specific schools.
Security expert Bruce Schneier writes about the reality of National ID cards:
The potential privacy encroachments of an ID card system are far from minor. And the interruptions and delays caused by incessant ID checks could easily proliferate into a persistent traffic jam in office lobbies and airports and hospital waiting rooms and shopping malls.But my primary objection isn't the totalitarian potential of national IDs, nor the likelihood that they'll create a whole immense new class of social and economic dislocations. Nor is it the opportunities they will create for colossal boondoggles by government contractors. My objection to the national ID card, at least for the purposes of this essay, is much simpler:
It won't work. It won't make us more secure.
Don Bain, Director of the Geographic Computing Facility at UC-Berkeley, has posted The World Wide Panorama. These Quicktime VR scenes, including one from Mineral Point, were shot March 20, 2004 in celebration of the Equinox. Enjoy - there are some extraordinary scenes.
The 2004 Jefferson Muzzle awards have just been announced.
Since 1992, the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression has celebrated the birth and ideals of its namesake by calling attention to those who in the past year forgot or disregarded Mr. Jefferson's admonition that freedom of speech "cannot be limited without being lost."Announced on or near April 13 -- the anniversary of the birth of Thomas Jefferson -- the Jefferson Muzzles are awarded as a means to draw national attention to abridgments of free speech and press and, at the same time, foster an appreciation for those tenets of the First Amendment. Because the importance and value of free expression extend far beyond the First Amendment's limit on government censorship, acts of private censorship are not spared consideration for the dubious honor of receiving a Muzzle.
Unfortunately, each year the finalists for the Jefferson Muzzles have emerged from an alarmingly large group of candidates. For each recipient, a dozen could have been substituted. Further, an examination of previous Jefferson Muzzle recipients reveals that the disregard of First Amendment principles is not the byproduct of a particular political outlook but rather that threats to free expression come from all over the political spectrum.
....... This year's winners.
Milwaukee's voucher program prompted sustainable achievement gains for the city's public elementary schools, according to a new study by a Harvard economist.Researcher Caroline Hoxby followed up on a study of three years ago, in which she concluded that the private school choice program pushed the public schools to improve.
In the new study, she adds test score data from two additional years - the 2000-'01 and 2001-'02 school years - and finds that the gains were sustained, although they did not accelerate. The study was published in the Swedish Economic Policy Review.
David Pogue reviews the latest VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) services, which allow you to call anywhere in the United States for as little as $20.55/month (plus your broadband internet connection):.
This development is annoyingly called voice-over-Internet protocol, or VoIP, which means "calls that use the Internet's wiring instead of the phone company's." When you sign up, you get a little box that goes between your existing telephone and your broadband modem (that is, your cable modem or D.S.L. box, a requirement for most of these services).At that point you can make unlimited local, regional and long-distance calls anywhere in the United States for a fixed fee of $20 to $40 a month (plus the cost of your broadband Internet service, of course). Overseas calls cost about 3 cents a minute. These figures aren't subject to inflation by a motley assortment of tacked-on fees, either; voice-over-Internet service is exempt from F.C.C. line charges, state 911 surcharges, number-portability service charges and so on.
Save money, switch! I've been using www.packet8.net for some time.
Bizzaro Wisco Column - [Humor]
Filberto EpsteinMarch 30, 2004
A document released today by the Madison Metropolitan School District
outlines the administration’s proposal to close the district’s $10 million
budget shortfall by eliminating all “education” activities and focusing on
the district’s core “child storage” functions. According to Superintendent
Art Rainwater, the increasing cost of “education” has impaired the
district’s ability to balance its books.
Thanks to Lucy Mathiak for pointing me to this article.
Columbia Journalism Review has a very useful tool: Who Owns What? Locally, Wisconsin State Journal owner, Lee Enterprises, owns a myriad of small regional publications, including 50% of Capital Newspapers, an entity shielded from monopoly concerns by the no longer necessary Newspaper Preservation act of 1970.
Nahal Toosi writes a very thin article about blogging, including campus initiatives.
Last week, Tim Kelley asked me to visit with his UW journalism class and discuss my perspective on blogging. [608K PDF]
Sarah Lonsdale asks: "Where better to rest in peace than in a converted mortuary or burial chapel?"
Virginia Postrel writes about the new 0. Winston Link Museum in Roanoke, Virginia (Link recorded the waning years of steam locomotives)
The museum is in the former Norfolk and Western train station, which famed industrial designer Raymond Loewy redesigned in 1947. As Modernism's Victoria Pedersen writes: "He completely transformed the 1905 neoclassical station, adding 22-foot ceilings, marble walls, terrazzo floors, a futuristic wall of horizontal windows and a dome. He also designed a concorse leading to the train platform that featured the first passenger escalators in the Roanoke Valley, cutting-edge technology for the period." The new station was the epitome of streamlined modernism. But what that meant in the Virginia of a half century ago is spelled out in the letters above the door in these photos from the Library of Congress collection, the first of which Modernism reprinted
Ed Cone writes about a letter his great-great-grandfather carried with him to America in April 1846, and the still-relevant advice therein.
"Whoa" Video of Space Ship One's 40 second burn to mach 2 & 105,000 feet [Windows Media] from gulker.com
Learn more by visiting www.xprize.org
According to city assessor Ray Fisher Friday when 2004 property assessments were released. "My house went up 10 percent this year. I look at it as money in my pocket." - Beth Williams writes. Interesting perspective.... Can't say that I agree with Ray on that one. Bill Novak writes:
"Last year, assessments went up 8.6 percent and the local real estate tax was up 7.1 percent, according to the Assessor's Office. In 2002, assessments were up 8.1 percent and taxes went up 3.2 percent. In 1997 and 1999, assessments went up and taxes went down." What about 1998, 2000 and 2001?
There has been talk in the state legislature of completely shifting school taxes from the property tax to other sources, such as the sales tax. Wayne Wood, a retiring representative from Janesville and Rep Mickey Lehman (R-Hartford) developed a proposal that would have used a sales tax increase to reduce property taxes for schools.
Michigan dramatically changed their school finance system a few years ago, substantially reducing property taxes, in return for an increase in sales taxes.
My view is that the time is long past to remove school spending from Wisconsin's high property taxes. Every Wisconsin property owner should reasonably expect:
How should we replace some of the property tax revenues?
Political paralysis on this issue can only lead to drastic measures in the not too distant future.
Related Links: Assessor's office | Wis Taxpayer's Alliance (lots of useful information)
Imagine an educational system where children do not start school until they are 7, where spending is a paltry $5,000 a year per student, where there are no gifted programs and class sizes often approach 30. A prescription for failure, no doubt, in the eyes of many experts, but in this case a description of Finnish schools, which were recently ranked the world's best.
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A teacher recently gave her students the assignment of balancing the federal budget using this simulation. Some of the results are instructive. From Marginal Revolution...
"Pediatricians and family physicians should not prescribe antidepressants for depressed children and adolescents because the drugs barely work and their side effects are often significant, Australian researchers have concluded", Gardiner Harris writes.
Chris Ramirez shot a very nice Quicktime VR scene of Condoleeza Rice's testimony yesterday in Washington, DC. (VR scenes with lots of people are quite challenging). Very Nice
Former Wall Street bond trader and author of the quite useful book Fooled by Randomness pens an op-ed piece in today's New York Times where he describes black swans (an outlier, an event that lies beyond the realm of normal expectations) with respect to 9/11 and the current investigation:
Most people expect all swans to be white because that's what their experience tells them; a black swan is by definition a surprise. Nevertheless, people tend to concoct explanations for them after the fact, which makes them appear more predictable, and less random, than they are. Our minds are designed to retain, for efficient storage, past information that fits into a compressed narrative. This distortion, called the hindsight bias, prevents us from adequately learning from the past.Black swans can have extreme effects: just a few explain almost everything, from the success of some ideas and religions to events in our personal lives. Moreover, their influence seems to have grown in the 20th century, while ordinary events — the ones we study and discuss and learn about in history or from the news — are becoming increasingly inconsequential.
Consider: How would an understanding of the world on June 27, 1914, have helped anyone guess what was to happen next? The rise of Hitler, the demise of the Soviet bloc, the spread of Islamic fundamentalism, the Internet bubble: not only were these events unpredictable, but anyone who correctly forecast any of them would have been deemed a lunatic (indeed, some were). This accusation of lunacy would have also applied to a correct prediction of the events of 9/11 — a black swan of the vicious variety.
Incumbent Senator Russ Feingold is supported by 51% of Wisconsin residents in an early poll, according to Graeme Zielinski
By 51% to 29%, residents polled in March said they would like to see Feingold re-elected for his third term, with the remainder not answering the question or saying they didn't know.In a separate question, 47% said they had a favorable impression of Feingold, while 19% said their view was unfavorable, figures that have stayed relatively constant since fall. About a third said they didn't know enough to have formed an impression.
Meanwhile, Feingold's Republican rivals remained largely unknown, with neither state Sen. Bob Welch (R-Redgranite), construction executive Tim Michels or car dealer Russ Darrow registering with more than one in five residents.
Ever wonder how the politicians determine who to call, mail or why they might knock on your door?
These articles on data mining with voter information, local demographics & door to door politics tell the story:
- Data Churners Try to Pinpoint Voters' Politics
- Grass roots, door to door politics is back. I believe this is a cause/effect of declining tv & newspapers users.
- Landslide counties: Tim Noah on geographic political segregation
Sara Lin & Monte Morin write about a familiar topic - local opposition to Wal-Mart Supercenters:
A bid by the world's largest corporation to bypass uncooperative elected officials and take its aggressive expansion plans to voters failed Tuesday, as Inglewood residents overwhelmingly rejected Wal-Mart's proposal to build a colossal retail and grocery center without an environmental review or public hearings.With all votes counted Tuesday evening, 4,575 Inglewood residents had voted in favor of Wal-Mart's plan, while 7,049 had voted against it
Speaking of Entrepreneurs, IBM launched System/360 on April 7, 1964. Many consider it the biggest business gamble of all time. At the height of IBM's success, Thomas J. Watson, Jr. bet the company's future on a new compatible family of computer systems that would help revolutionize modern organizations. Get a behind-the-scenes view of the tough decisions made by some of the people who made them, and learn how the System/360 helped transform the government, science and commercial landscape.
John Byrnes has written one of the better articles [164K pdf] I've read on the topic of Wisconsin's generally poor entrepreneurial track record. He correctly points out that:
- Most attendees at recent VC & Economic Conferences were from government agencies, community development organizations, schools and universities (why? most real entrepreneurs don't have time to sit around and talk, they'd rather make things happen)
- Byrnes further muses that perhaps our culture is to blame: "We may be dealing with the long-term effects of an overprotective social climate that discourages risk taking."
- Too much overhead: Byrnes cites a recent study by the California-based Milken Institute which shows that Wisconsin has more economic development offices and business incubators per capita that almost every other state, including California! Byrnes calcuates that the ratio of business support people to entrepreneurs is 100 to 1; if you add educators, the ratio is 1000 to 1!
Byrnes is right on. We don't need more state sponsored programs (that generally only benefit the largest firms). We in fact, need less paperwork (I can't imagine how a small business keeps up with it all....), more risk taking and a more entrepreneurial financial environment (California has this in droves).
Byrnes article appeared in the April, 2004 issue of Corporate Report Wisconsin.
David Brooks pens a too funny look at the proposed Liberal Air and it's counterpart Right Wing Express. The faculty seating arrangements are too funny....
On a more serious note, I recently received an email from County Executive Kathleen Falk regarding non stop air service to and from our local airport. She also attached a note from Brad Livingston, our airport director regarding their current initiatives (non-stop service to and from Atlanta along with potential incentives to increase service).
Dane County 04/06/2004 spring election results are available here.
Locally, congrats to Ruth Robarts, Shwaw Vang and Johnny Winston, Jr. for their School Board seat victories. None of the races were all that close (although from a spending perspective, Winston & Vang far outspent their opponents while Robarts was substantially outspent by Olson & MTI). Thanks also to Alix Olson, Sam Johnson and Melania Alvarez for taking the time to run.
We do indeed need more discussion about local issues, and this election, with debate on topics such as curriculum, budget, board leadership and PAC/Group spending was useful. Bummer that so few people showed up to vote!
UPDATE: Lee Sensenbrenner summarizes the results here, along with Doug Erickson's summary of the board races here.
Isthmus, Madison's Weekly, has a somewhat interesting forum running on the School Board Elections.
Ron Brownstein summarizes John Kerry's positions on education reform, then and now, including a discussion of the No Child Left Behind Act.
"Her Deepness", Sylvia Earle gave a fascinating speech this evening as part of the UW-Madison's distinguished lecture series. Daily Cardinal article.
Useful Links: The Revolutionaries | Google Search | Teoma | Alltheweb | Yahoo Search
1990 UW Grad & Washington Post foreign correspondent Anthony Shadid won a Pulitzer for international reporting for his coverage of the Iraq war and its uncertain aftermath.
Dane County's election results, including the municipal judge and school board races will be posted here.
Alan Borsuk writes about the demise of Milwaukee Public Schools 8-T program, an initiative "aimed at dealing with a problem that perplexes urban school districts across the United States: what to do with the large number of eighth-graders who are not really ready for high school".
Extensive research indicates that neither holding students back a grade nor promoting them unprepared fosters achievement," the North Central Regional Educational Laboratory said in a report summarizing the issue.So what do you do with such students?
In 1997, the Milwaukee School Board voted to require students to meet a set of proficiency standards before they graduate from middle school in an effort to deal with a "social promotion" problem that made ninth grade, in the words of one MPS administrator, "a parking lot" for hundreds of kids who were doing poorly.
The technology legend and his wife Betty Moore donated $250,000 to the school's foundation, charter-school supporters announced Saturday during a casino-night fundraiser held at the Fremont Hills Country Club.
Gordon Moore, who is famous for predicting that a computer chip's power would double every two years, stated in the charter-school foundation's press release that ``Betty and I feel very strongly that competition in educational opportunities results in innovation and significant improvements for all participants.'' From Tim Oren
The Washington Post Magazine Features a series of articles on integration.
Many researchers see the root causes of this gap in the early years. There is a growing conviction that even good schools cannot do enough for students who start far behind."If we send kids to kindergarten with this big gap, we can be pretty sure that as things stand, the gap is not only going to remain, but will get bigger," said Deborah Stipek, the dean of Stanford University's School of Education.
Increasingly, educators are focusing on preschool programs as a critical step in making up the deficit, and they are developing - or being pushed to develop - programs that are more overtly academic than ever. Nationally, some programs are cutting nap time; others have instituted more formal assessments. Literacy blocks - the jargon for early language and reading programs - are becoming as common as wood blocks.
Fascinating series on the making of California wine:
"Over two years, Chronicle writer Mike Weiss documented the making of the 2002 Ferrari-Carano Fumé Blanc. The glory of spring in a verdant vineyard. A couple who risk a fortune on a dream. The subtle science of nurturing flavor from soil. The tale of migrant workers from a Mexican village. This serial saga will continue Monday through Friday in Datebook. The story opens today in a New York restaurant, where the first bottle of the vintage is to be finally uncorked."Photo Gallery
Incumbent Seat 5 School Board Candidate Ruth Robarts forwarded me a note today that outlined MTI Voters (Madison Teachers, Inc. PAC) expenditures on behalf of her opponent, Alix Olson:
This looks like a rather expensive election. Olson has raised nearly twice as much money as Robarts, according to recent campaign finance disclosure filings. MTI Voters had $47K on hand according to their March 25, 2004 campaign finance disclosure filing [116K PDF].
- Radio
- $3656.00
- $2700
- $150
- $3390
- $500
- Newspaper Ads:
- Badger Herald: $192.00
- Capital Newspapers [286K 10-K PDF]: $3,341
- Daily Cardinal: $152
- Latino Newspaper (did not get the title): $114
- Flyers: $2,767
* MTI Voters Campaign Finance Disclosure shows a $1,560 contribution to Johnny Winston, Jr's campaign on March 17, 2004, but Winston's March 29, 2004 disclosure does not show the receipt of this contribution.
Raised most $'s: Alix Olson $11,203.21 Received most Pac $'s: Alix Olson $2,185.00 Raised least amount: Sam Johnson $1,656.30 Raised least PAC $'s: Ruth Robarts $0.00 PAC with most cash: MTI Voters
(Madison Teachers, Inc. PAC)$47,391.55 PAC with least cash: Get Real $289.81 Fund raising Summary Seat 3 Sam Johnson $1,656.30 Shwaw Vang $5,153.98 PAC Receipts $306.30 $2,135.00 Seat 4 Melania Alvarez $2,111.27 Johnny Winston, Jr.$9,683.93 PAC Receipts $266.27 $600 other + $1560MTI* Seat 5 Alix Olson $11,203.21 Ruth Robarts $5,839.44 PAC Receipts $2,185.00 $0.00 Learn more here... and vote April 6, 2004
- UW-Madison Math & Computer Science Professor Jin-Yi Cai in Lee Sensenbrenner's article on the Madison School District's Connected Math controversy.
Board of Education candidate Melania Alvarez has made curriculum (esp math) a centerpiece of her campaign. Melania's interview transcript has quite a few useful links on this subject.
Google, which makes a very nice living scraping internet sites (copying & storing images, text & data from sites around the world) and presenting that data to search users has issued a issued a cease-and-desist order against British programmer Julian Bond with a warning that the creation of a news feed from the results of Google News was against its terms of reference. From Jeff Jarvis.
Search engine alternatives: Teoma | Alltheweb | Yahoo Search
Two interesting items related to the April 6, 2004 Madison School Board Election:
- Doug Erickson writes that Madison Teachers, Inc. filed a request with the UW Madison for all records pertaining to Ruth Robarts salary & compensation. (Robarts is an assistant law school dean)
- This Week's Isthmus has a fascinating set of letters regarding their recent article on the School District's math curriculum. Unfortunately, not online.
Rene Sanchez updates us on Yosemite's $440M plan to "change human activity in and around the glorious & beleaguered park".
I posted some photos from a 2003 trip to Yosemite here.
