Holy crap: Backscatter vans
“Drive-by Scanning: Officials Expand Use and Dose of Radiation for Security Screening” - ProPublica
I got this e-mail from my former department, addressed to us lovers of education and culture, and while the news is infuriating, sadly there also is nothing unbelievable about it. Arizona attacks its own citizens. Now it is doing so on multiple fronts. They have begun to patrol literature and history with the same arrogance, closed-mindedness, and fear with which they guard their borders and patrol their streets, detaining anyone who looks like they may not be Caucasian, assuming they have come to Arizona illegally and do not rightfully belong…and it follows that scouring and ejecting books is just the next step of this bleaching revisionism and entitlement. This is wrong, outrageous, shameful, and flat-out frightening behavior. This is not what our nation stands for.
Let freedom [read].
(FWD FROM: Aboriginal Health Interest Group at McGill
<aboriginalhealth@googlegroups.com>)
Tucson schools bans books by Chicano and Native American authors
[...] Posted by Brenda Norrell - January 14, 2012 at 11:53 pm
TUCSON -- Outrage was the response to the news that Tucson schools has
banned books, including "Rethinking Columbus," with an essay by award-
winning Pueblo author Leslie Marmon Silko, who lives in Tucson, and
works by Buffy Sainte Marie, Winona LaDuke, Leonard Peltier and
Rigoberta Menchu.
The decision to ban books follows the 4 to 1 vote on Tuesday by the
Tucson Unified School District board to succumb to the State of
Arizona, and forbid Mexican American Studies, rather than fight the
state decision.
Students said the banned books were seized from their classrooms and
out of their hands, after Tucson schools banned Mexican American
Studies, including a book of photos of Mexico. Crying, students said
it was like Nazi Germany, and they were unable to sleep since it
happened.
The banned book, "Rethinking Columbus," includes work by many Native
Americans, as Debbie Reese reports, the book includes:
This is awesome. A “Disloyalty” card for patronizing local coffee shops.
“Coffee slingers of Boston are uniting to celebrate the city’s incredible café landscape and the art of brewing up high-quality artisanal coffee.
Buy a drink and receive a stamp at each of these eight independently owned cafes. Then redeem the completed card for a free drink at the café of your choice between now and March 15th 2012.” - Disloyal Boston
(via @mat and @BostonTweet)
As “adult” websites prepare to dominate the xxx domain, The University of Texas is just one of a number of schools scrambling to buy sites in the xxx domain to protect the reputation of the mascots, nicknames, and sports cheers associated with their institutions. Hook ‘em horns, indeed. In a nice way.
‘With Newt Gingrich emerging as serious contender, some Republicans are questioning his fitness for a general election campaign by seizing on comments the former speaker made in 2007 about Hispanics.
Making the case against bi-lingual education at a National Federation of Republican Women event, Gingrich said children should be taught “the language of prosperity, not the language of living in a ghetto.”’
- Politico
My head just exploded.
I hadn’t heard Gingrich speak on bilingual education, but sadly I am not surprised that this is his stance on such an invaluable tool for children and society as a whole. He followed up by saying his word choice was not the best. I would add, “Nor the sentiment, Newt.” What an ignorant ass.
“While Kindle users have been able to post quotes from the ebooks they are reading to Twitter or Facebook for some time now, only recently has this feature been expanded to allow users to utilize their Kindle profiles in some potentially interesting ways. Before I get into what those ways might be, let me clarify that a Kindle profile and an Amazon profile are not one and the same […]. In a nutshell, Kindle profiles are focused on reading and Amazon profiles are focused on buying. […]
To get to your own kindle.amazon.com page, you must login (again) with your Amazon account information. Logging in again brings the now familiar Highly Followed Users and Books With the Most Public Notes, but it also lists your recent activity (passages that you have highlighted, annotated, or shared on Twitter or Facebook).” - Chronicle of Higher Education
Interesting. I see how this could be tremendously useful for teachers to guide their students through a reading, or for study groups and book clubs to share thoughts, questions, and references. It’s a nice step towards fostering a communality of reading, and it resembles the sharing features presently being incorporated into several e-based textbooks, perhaps a harbinger of more overlap between the industries.
