Thursday, February 16, 2012


“We need to prepare the next generation to submit to authority anywhere at any time! i.e. prepare them for their lives as second class citizens.”
Student sues Ga. school district over strip search
February 15, 2012 by Dissent
Greg Bluestein of Associated Press reports:
A Georgia middle school student claimed in a lawsuit Wednesday he was humiliated and traumatized when he was brought to a vice principal’s office and forced to strip in front of classmates who said he had marijuana.
The student, then in the seventh-grade, said he still suffers from emotional distress because his classmates taunted him by calling him Superman, the underwear he was wearing when he was strip-searched. The student is suing the Clayton County school district for unspecified punitive and compensatory damages.
Read more on WTOP.
This is the second strip search case in the news this week. On Monday, the North Carolina Supreme Court heard oral arguments in another such case, although there are significant differences. In the North Carolina case, there was no specific suspicion of the student and all female students had to hook their thumb under their bras to pull the bra away from their bodies to see if pills fell out. In this case, a student was strip-searched in front of peers. In both cases, though, schools will argue that they are entitled to search students because they have a duty to keep schools safe and students have less expectation of privacy.
But is this really what we want to teach our children – that they have to strip on the say-so of any authority figure? I don’t think so. And I wish the courts were more inclined to recognize that students do have a right to privacy and that schools have gone too far.


Will this thinking ever come to America?
EU court: Social networks can't be forced to monitor users
The European Court of Justice ruled today that forcing social networks to install monitoring systems just to see if users are illegally downloading copyrighted material creates a "complicated" and "costly" burden on the sites for little or no upside. It was also concerned about the privacy of user data.

(Related) This almost certainly will come to America.
asto21 writes with this excerpt from The Indian Express:
"As per amendments made to operators' licences, beginning May 31, operators would have to provide the Department of Telecommunications real-time details of users' locations in latitudes and longitudes. Documents obtained by The Indian Express show that details shall initially be provided for mobile numbers specified by the government. Within three years, service providers will have to provide information on locations of all users. The information will have some margin of error at first. But by 2013, at least 60 per cent of the calls in urban areas would have to be accurately tracked when made 100 metres away from the nearest cell tower. By 2014, the government will seek to increase the proportion to 75 per cent in cities and 50 per cent in suburban and rural areas."


No push-back? (Monsanto caused my crops to mutate into Franken-food!)
"Monsanto went after hundreds of farmers for infringing on their patented seed after audits revealed that their farms had contained their product — as a result of routine pollination by animals and acts of nature. Unable to afford a proper defense, competing small farms have been bought out by the company in droves. As a result, Monsanto saw their profits increase by the hundreds of millions over the last few years as a result. Between 1997 and 2010, Monsanto tackled 144 organic farms with lawsuits and investigated roughly 500 plantations annually during that span with a so-called 'seed police.'"


Will the “resolutions” be worded neutrally?
suraj.sun writes with a link about a SEC decision that telecommunications companies must give shareholders an annual vote on wireless net-neutrality resolutions.
"The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has told AT&T and other telecommunications companies they must include a resolution supporting wireless net-neutrality in annual shareholder votes. In a letter posted on the SEC website, the agency asserted that net neutrality — the idea that Internet service providers must treat traffic equally — has become a significant policy consideration and can no longer be excluded from shareholder ballots. AT&T, Verizon and Sprint Nextel must now grant shareholder requests for votes this year on resolutions that would support net neutrality. In view of the sustained public debate over the last several years concerning net neutrality and the Internet and the increasing recognition that the issue raises significant policy considerations, we do not believe that AT&T may omit the proposal from its proxy materials, the SEC said in the Feb. 10 letter."


This is interesting...
"HP reversed its decision to spin off its PC business, but it's still left with the question of how to make money in a commodity business selling standard-issue machines manufactured overseas. One idea they're contemplating: improved customer service. If you buy an HP 'Elite' PC and have problems, you won't have to phone into a tech support call center where an entry-level drone reads off a script and tells you to reboot the machine; you'll have access to a specific support tech who will work with you as long as you own the computer."


A rather laid back, but interesting talk...
The Future of Reading, From Avant-Garde Poetry to Sportscenter
On Tuesday, I gave a keynote address at the O’Reilly Tools of Change (TOC) conference on the future of publishing.


Another e-textbook vision...
Nature Publishing Group Officially Launches New Interactive Textbook
Last spring I wrote about Nature Publishing Group’s plan for a $49 electronic textbook packed with interactivity and unlimited content updates for life. The original publication date was scheduled for September 1, 2011, but for a variety of reasons the release was pushed back. Today marks the official launch of “Principles of Biology”.
This book is “born digital”, according to Vikram Savkar, SVP & Publishing Director at Nature Publishing Group, and is the first in a line of texts that NPG plans to release for the life and physical sciences. It’s not an e-book or fancy PDF, but a dynamic interactive website that can be customized by the instructor, contains built-in assessments that students can take, and works appropriately on any device that can access it: desktop, tablet, or phone.


Perhaps I should file this under “Tools for Teaching when you are Hungover?”
Chill is a free service for creating and sharing collections of your favorite videos from YouTube, Vimeo, VEVO, and Hulu. Chill is kind of like Pinterest for videos. Using Chill you can add videos with your comments to categories that you create. Your videos appear like sticky notes on a wall. Chill allows you to follow other Chill users to discover and share new videos.
Applications for Education
For teachers looking for new video content to use in their classroom, Chill could be a place to find that content. Or if you're just looking for a better way to organize the videos that you find online, Chill could be the solution for you.

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