• Search for:

• Categories

  • Education
  • General
  • iPhone
  • Jwill
  • Link
  • Opinion
  • Politics
  • Public Transportation
  • Social Networking
  • Sports
  • Tech

• Recent Posts

  • No Lesbians Here
  • Cutting Junk Food from Schools
  • Oh, Budget Cuts
  • What Was That “i” Thing, Anyway?
  • Central Falls High in R.I. Starting Fresh?

• Archives

  Select Month March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 October 2006 September 2006 August 2006 July 2006 June 2006 May 2006 April 2006

• Meta

  • Log in
  • Entries RSS
  • Comments RSS
  • WordPress.org

Source: boston.com
Read Article

A looming budget deficit could lead to the closing of a significant number of Boston schools over the next two years and further reductions in staff, Superintendent Carol R. Johnson said yesterday.

Johnson, who is still working through the numbers with her staff, said she is making every effort to avoid closing schools for this fall, but was unsure if she could prevent it.

Budget deficits…why is that such a common trend these days? It’s unfortunate. Hopefully they can balance the budget without school closings of any sort. I trust that Superintendent Johnson will make the best decision for Boston Public Schools.

Source: New York Times
Read Article

For more than 2,500 years, mathematicians have been obsessed with solving for x. The story of their struggle to find the “roots” — the solutions — of increasingly complicated equations is one of the great epics in the history of human thought.

And yet, through it all, there’s been an irritant, a nagging little thing that won’t go away: the solutions often involve square roots of negative numbers. Such solutions were long derided as “sophistic” or “fictitious” because they seemed nonsensical on their face.

My girlfriend showed me this article – it’s a really good one and definitely a suggested read if you want a little closure about all that imaginary number stuff.

Source: boston.com
Read Article

CENTRAL FALLS, R.I. – Inside the front door to Central Falls High School, across the street from a boarded-up building, an archway is adorned with an unambiguous boast: “Through these halls pass the world’s best faculty and students.’’

It is a motto that rings false for the local school board, which recently voted to fire all of the school’s staff in a stunning move that made Central Falls a lightning rod in the polarizing debate over improving the country’s education system.

Painful consequences for a school that failed to perform well. Is it really everyone’s fault, though? Whose fault is it, really, when a school underperforms? Is it wholly that of the teachers? Is it wholly that of the administration? I feel like people usually point at the administration when schools perform badly, but bad teaching exists and is prevalent as well. I feel like firing an entire staff is a little drastic, though I don’t completely know the situation here. Perhaps it is necessary, though: replacing the entire staff starts the school over. It allows the superintendent to look for people who all share a similar mission and have similar goals and expectations in place for their students. A school with staff that share a common goal goes a long way toward helping students.

Source: Boston.com
Read Article

[Arnold Schwarzenegger] said that in the last 30 years, prison spending increased from 3 percent of the state general fund to 11 percent while higher education spending declined from 10 percent to 7.5 percent.

“Spending 45 percent more on prisons than universities is no way to proceed into the future,’’ he said.

This op-ed by Derrick Z. Jackson brings up California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s proposal to bar the state from spending more on prisons than on higher education. I agree that we should not spend more money on prison than education. Perhaps this definition of “education” should extend beyond postsecondary education. How about all schools? Or, in general, how about we pay more attention to rehabilitating criminals than to just locking them up repeatedly? I agree with Jackson’s ending point regarding the cocaine laws:

The laws are so embarrassing that this week, in an interview with the Boston Globe editorial board, Democratic senatorial candidate and Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley called the cocaine laws “crazy.’’ It is refreshing to hear a Democrat like her and a Republican like Schwarzenegger say that our criminal justice priorities are insane, with education always getting the strait-jacket. It is the first step out of the asylum.

Source: Wired.com
Read Article

Using a simple scraping tool, a marketer could then turn a list of e-mail addresses into a rich, full-fledged set of markeying profiles, with names, pictures, ages, locations, interests, photos, wall posts, affiliations and names of your friends, depending on how users have their profiles set. Run a few algorithms on that data and you can start to make inferences about race, income, sexual orientation and interests.

While that information isn’t available for all users, Facebook changed its privacy settings in early December so that certain information can’t be made private, including one’s name, current city, profile picture, gender, networks and friend list (the latter can be somewhat hidden from public view).

Anyone with your e-mail address can harvest that information, the company admits.

This doesn’t sound good. I’m still on Facebook and I really do need to cut it from my list of social networks. Problem is, I do still use it for promoting events for my residents and keeping in touch with a few of them. But, I digress. Definitely give this report a read.

Next Page →