Archive for the ‘education’ Category

Who Rules America : Wealth, Income, and Power

Genetic allopurinol sale testing can also highlight chromosomal conditions commonly associated with streak order generic levitra ovaries, such as Turner syndrome and Swyer syndrome. For details cheap robaxin about how these drugs performed in separate clinical trials, see online pharmacy cialis the prescribing information for Prolia and Fosamax. Eating disorders can buy free erythromycin prescription severely affect the quality of life of people living with viagra pharmacy these conditions and those close to them. The treatment and buy amikacin without prescription outlook for aggressive lymphoma vary depending on the type and purchase cheapest erythromycin price tablet stage of cancer and a person's age and overall health. cialis drug Doctors may use interventions such as draining excess fluid from cheap bentyl pharmacy the pericardial sac to relieve pressure on the heart. Depakote certified colchicine may not be the right treatment option if you have augmentin for order certain medical conditions or other factors affecting your health. Animal studies.

First, though, some definitions. Generally speaking,Awealth is the value of everything a person or family owns, minus any debts. However, for purposes of studying the wealth distribution, economists define wealth in terms ofAmarketable assets, such as real estate, stocks, and bonds, leaving aside consumer durables like cars and household items because they are not as readily converted into cash and are more valuable to their owners for use purposes than they are for resale (see Wolff, 2004, p. 4, for a full discussion of these issues). Once the value of all marketable assets is determined, then all debts, such as home mortgages and credit card debts, are subtracted, which yields a person’s net worth. In addition, economists use the concept ofAfinancial wealth — also referred to in this document as "non-home wealth" — which is defined as net worth minus net equity in owner-occupied housing. As Wolff (2004, p. 5) explains, "Financial wealth is a more ‘liquid’ concept than marketable wealth, since one’s home is difficult to convert into cash in the short term. It thus reflects the resources that may be immediately available for consumption or various forms of investments."

We also need to distinguish wealth fromAincome. Income is what people earn from work, but also from dividends, interest, and any rents or royalties that are paid to them on properties they own. In theory, those who own a great deal of wealth may or may not have high incomes, depending on the returns they receive from their wealth, but in reality those at the very top of the wealth distribution usually have the most income. (But it’s important to note that for the rich, most of that income does not come from "working": in 2008, only 19% of the income reported by the 13,480 individuals or families making over $10 million came from wages and salaries. See Norris, 2010, for more details.)

As you read through these numbers, please keep in mind that they are usually two or three years out of date because it takes time for one set of experts to collect the basic information and make sure it is accurate, and then still more time for another set of experts to analyze it and write their reports. It’s also the case that the infamous housing bubble of the first eight years of the 21st century inflated some of the wealth numbers.

So far there are only tentative projections — based on the price of housing and stock in July 2009 — on the effects of the Great Recession on the wealth distribution. They suggest that average Americans have been hit much harder than wealthy Americans. Edward Wolff, the economist we draw upon the most in this document, concludes that there has been an "astounding" 36.1% drop in the wealth (marketable assets) of the median household since the peak of the housing bubble in 2007. By contrast, the wealth of the top 1% of households dropped by far less: just 11.1%. So as of April 2010, it looks like the wealth distribution is even more unequal than it was in 2007.

.:sociology.ucsc.edu->

email

Post to Twitter Post to Facebook

Posted: November 14th, 2010
at 1:54pm by Koookiecrumbles


Categories: business,development,education,trade,americana

Comments: No comments


Hierarchical File Systems are Dead

For over forty years, we have assumed hierarchical file system namespaces. These namespaces were a rudimen- tary attempt at simple organization. As users have be- gun to interact with increasing amounts of data and are increasingly demanding search capability, such a simple hierarchical model has outlasted its usefulness. For this reason, we should design file systems whose organizations map to the ways we access and manipulate data now. We present a new file system architecture in which we replace the hierarchical namespace with a tagged, search-based one.

.:eecs.harvard.edu->

Post to Twitter Post to Facebook

Posted: November 14th, 2010
at 1:59am by Koookiecrumbles


Categories: web,development,education

Comments: No comments


Friends with Cognitive Benefits

ANN ARBOR, Mich.aTalking with other people in a friendly way can make it easier to solve common problems, a new University of Michigan study shows. But conversations that are competitive in tone, rather than cooperative, have no cognitive benefits.

"This study shows that simply talking to other people, the way you do when you’re making friends, can provide mental benefits," said psychologist Oscar Ybarra, a researcher at the U-M Institute for Social Research (ISR).

Ybarra is the lead author of the study, which is forthcoming in the peer-reviewed journal Social Psychological and Personality Science.

For the study, the researchers examined the impact of brief episodes of social contact on one key component of mental activityaexecutive function. This type of cognitive function includes working memory, self-monitoring, and the ability to suppress external and internal distractionsaall of which are essential in solving common life problems.

.:ns.umich.edu->

Post to Twitter Post to Facebook

Posted: November 13th, 2010
at 2:28pm by Koookiecrumbles


Categories: science,health,education

Comments: No comments


Why Are There No 'Peaces'?

Veteran's Day is upon us, at a time when the number of war veterans has been increasing astronomically, with no end in sight.A Which brings up this troubling thought: Could it be that the reason the United Statesaeven under an avowedly antiwar Presidentahas done such a miserable job of "winning the peace" in both Afghanistan and Iraq, as opposed to its earlier and far more successful initiating of wars is that our leaders just aren't really very invested in peace?A More disturbing yet: Insofar as those in power find violence especially compelling, perhaps they aren't that different from the rest of us.

In short, is peace boring? Most people certainly find it less interesting than war.A Nearly all countries, for example, set aside their own Veterans' Days to honor military victories; by contrast, there are precious few "Peace Days."A War Colleges greatly outnumber Institutes of Peace.

It has been saidaalthough disputedathat the Inuit ("Eskimos") have about a dozen words for "snow" (distinguishing between blowing snow, drifted, wet, powder, icy, etc.) and that among the Bedouin, there are more than a hundred words for "camel" (ornery, pregnant, easy-to-ride, male or female, and so forth).A Similarly, in Englishaand most other languagesathere are numerous terms referring to specific wars. We distinguish between, for example,A the Vietnam War, Korean War, World Wars I and II, etc., but have only one word for "peace."

.:chronicle.com->

Post to Twitter Post to Facebook

Posted: November 12th, 2010
at 3:49pm by Koookiecrumbles


Categories: politricks,education,americana

Comments: No comments


The Rise of the Edupunk

In a bow to the "Edupunks," Sullivan explained that Virginia is incorporating student habits into its pedagogy. For example, the university is experimenting with "flash seminars." Just as "flash mobs" summon young people to engage in some simultaneous bizarre act in a specified place at a specified time, the "flash seminars" alert students to an edgy topic — no examples of how edgy — that will be discussed in a professor’s living room. To raise the hype level, only the first 25 students who show up are allowed to participate in this non-credit-bearing activity.

.:insidehighered.com->

Post to Twitter Post to Facebook

Posted: November 7th, 2010
at 3:59pm by Koookiecrumbles


Categories: diy,education

Comments: No comments


A One-Way Human Mission to Mars

A human mission to Mars is technologically feasible, but hugely expensive requiring enormous financial and political commitments. A creative solution to this dilemma would be a one-way human mission to Mars in place of the manned return mission that remains stuck on the drawing board. Our proposal would cut the costs several fold but ensure at the same time a continuous commitment to the exploration of Mars in particular and space in general. It would also obviate the need for years of rehabilitation for returning astronauts, which would not be an issue if the astronauts were to remain in the low-gravity environment of Mars. We envision that Mars exploration would begin and proceed for a long time on the basis of outbound journeys only. A mission to Mars could use some of the hardware that has been developed for the Moon program. One approach could be to send four astronauts initially, two on each of two space craft, each with a lander and sufficient supplies, to stake a single outpost on Mars. A one-way human mission to Mars would not be a fixed duration project as in the Apollo program, but the first step in establishing a permanent human presence on the planet. The astronauts would be re-supplied on a periodic basis from Earth with basic necessities, but otherwise would be expected to become increasingly proficient at harvesting and utilizing resources available on Mars. Eventually the outpost would reach self-sufficiency, and then it could serve as a hub for a greatly expanded colonization program. There are many reasons why a human colony on Mars is a desirable goal, scientifically and politically. The strategy of one-way missions brings this goal within technological and financial feasibility. Nevertheless, to attain it would require not only major international cooperation, but a return to the exploration spirit and risk-taking ethos of the great period of Earth exploration, from Columbus to Amundsen, but which has nowadays being replaced with a culture of safety and political correctness.

.:journalofcosmology.com->

Post to Twitter Post to Facebook

Posted: October 22nd, 2010
at 10:51am by Koookiecrumbles


Categories: education,space

Comments: No comments


End Our ‘Multiuniversities’

Before leaving the topic of, "Education, Need to get government out of," in my naive Sunday series on "What is to be done," let me touch specifically on the topic of our universities.

I wrote, recently, a rather facetious piece on this topic for a Catholic website in the United States, in which I asked whether universities were ever a good idea, in the face of the modern assumption that such questions need never be asked. I alluded to evidence that, back in the 13th century, when Europe’s oldest universities were new, the same sort of nonsense prevailed on campus as today: kids suddenly "empowered" by freedom without adequate discipline; professors with a little too much tenure for anyone’s well-being.

The "behaviour issues" that followed from that were noted in ancient Alexandria, too. Young people can easily be persuaded that they know everything. Yet wisdom requires us to realize that we know very little. This should be easiest to grasp when we focus on a subject. It is then that we are most likely to appreciate what perhaps Eratosthenes first observed: that as the radius of our knowledge advances, the circumference of our ignorance spreads.

Forms of "post-secondary" teaching within tightly disciplined monastic institutions, before the Western invention of universities, may well have been a better idea. The Renaissance of the 12th century was, after all, achieved without campus life. (Alas, chronological prejudices inculcated in our modern universities leave students unable to comprehend the significance of that intellectual and spiritual revolution.) Now, do I propose that we go back to the Middle Ages? I would if we could, but since we can’t, I propose something more subtle: that we create the conditions in which significant intellectual and spiritual growth (as opposed to mere technological accumulation) would become possible again. Everything I have written in this newspaper, over the last 14 years, may be read as an indictment of the smug and plausible "liberal" attitudes inculcated in our public schools and universities; of attitudes that are, in fact, inimical to a genuine humanism.

.:ottawacitizen.com->

Post to Twitter Post to Facebook

Posted: October 19th, 2010
at 7:41am by Koookiecrumbles


Categories: mnp is for the children,education

Comments: No comments


Why People Don’t Use Mass Transit

One day in 1974 or so, I was sitting in my car (actually my thesis adviser’s university car) inching across the George Washington Bridge on my way to Manhattan to meet a class where I was the teaching assistant. Suddenly I asked myself "Why am I doing this?" After all, I had alternatives. A bus ran right by the Lamont Observatory where I spent most of my time and went reasonably directly to the uptown bus terminal in Manhattan. From there I could take a subway straight to Columbia University. So as mass transit goes, it was a pretty straight shot. So whyAwas I driving? Well, for openers, the mass transit really didn’t save much time, especially counting waiting time at both ends and the transfer from bus to subway. And it was impossible to do anything productive riding mass transit. Plus there was no privacy or peace and quiet, which I finally decided was the major factor for me. And people in those days worried a lot about subway muggings (realistically, on the 7th Avenue IRT in the daytime, a minor risk), but carjacking was unheard of, so there was a safety issue.

Since I have never, in the 30 years since, seen any article by advocates of mass transit -Anot one -A that bothered to ask why people don’t take mass transit despite all its supposed advantages, I thought it might be useful to explain why people prefer to drive instead of take the bus. Most advocates of mass transit dismiss drivers as selfish, short-sighted and unconcerned about the environment instead of asking whether mass transit itself is to blame for its own problems.

After this page was linked by another site, I got a number of responses that suggested a bit of clarification is in order. This page is not calling for abandonment of mass transit or extolling the virtues of the automobile. ItAis an attempt to lay out what mass transit is up against if it is to succeed. Pretending that the economic issues I describe can be made to go away is a guaranteed recipe for failure. They won’t. Lots of people seem determined to illustrate the is/ought fallacy in action.

.:uwgb.edu->

Post to Twitter Post to Facebook

Posted: October 18th, 2010
at 7:45am by Koookiecrumbles


Categories: science,development,education

Comments: No comments


Stephen Fry : What I’d Wish I’d Known When I Was 18

Post to Twitter Post to Facebook