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Discharged for Being Gay, Veterans Seek to Re-enlist

Sun, 04 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By James Dao - Sep. 04 (Investigative Report) - .By some estimates, hundreds of gay men and lesbians among the more than 13,000 who were discharged under the policy have contacted recruiters or advocacy groups saying they want to re-enlist after the policy is repealed on Sept. 20.

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Even a little meditation can change the structure of your brain

Sun, 23 Jan 2011 00:00:00 -0800

io9.com - By Alasdair Wilkins - Jan. 23 (Special Report) - Just a few weeks' worth of light meditation can change the structure of your brain, seemingly for the better. Thirty minutes a day can actually increase people's capacity for learning while shrinking the parts of the brain responsible for stress. Researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital asked their sixteen study participants to take part in an eight-week meditation program centered on building non-judgmental recognition of one's own feelings and sensations. The participants only had to meditate for thirty minutes a day.

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Public libraries: enablers of Americans' dreams

Sat, 21 Aug 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Seattle Times - By Neal Peirce - Aug. 21 (Opinion) - America's public libraries, fast turning themselves into "one-stop shops" for digital job searches, appear to be staging one of their great historic transformations. Responding to a rush of recession-time visitors, 88 percent of our libraries now offer access to job databases. And at least two-thirds of library staffs are helping applicants complete online job applications, according to a national survey by the American Library Association and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

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What Is a Philosopher?

Mon, 17 May 2010 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Simon Critchley - May. 17 (Opinion) - There are as many definitions of philosophy as there are philosophers – perhaps there are even more. After three millennia of philosophical activity and disagreement, it is unlikely that we’ll reach consensus, and I certainly don’t want to add more hot air to the volcanic cloud of unknowing. What I’d like to do in the opening column in this new venture — The Stone — is to kick things off by asking a slightly different question: what is a philosopher?

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New Facebook iPhone App ’Pretty Much Done’

Sat, 08 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By MG Siegler - Aug. 08 (News Report) - As one of the most popular applications on Apple’s popular iPhone platform, a lot of users are eagerly awaiting the next version of the app. And that wait is almost over.

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Making It

Sun, 14 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Elizabeth Chang - Jun. 14 (Interview) - A creator of artistic walking canes offers her customers a little support

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Refuge through learning

Mon, 09 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

citizensvoice.com - By Csheaffer@Citizensvoice.Com - Feb. 09 (Special Report) - Although a medical doctor in his home country, Nyein pursued additional education in the United States to escape persecution in Burma, now known as Myanmar. He had served five years in prison after joining the democratic revolt as a young doctor. He sought refuge in the U.S. and figured becoming a student was the best way to do that. “Dictatorships neither forgive nor forget their opposition,” Nyein said. “They aren’t agreeable to people leaving, either.” Nyein recently started in his new position as Misericordia University’s dean for adult and continuing education. At 59 years old, he says a philosophy of lifelong learning is what brought him to the Back Mountain institution. It is a philosophy he formed early in his life and he is glad to see others gravitate toward it as well. “I’ve embraced that and it put me on a good path,” said Nyein, who completed his doctorate in health education at the University of Tennessee.

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The Jobless Go Back to School and, They Hope, Work

Thu, 05 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Wall Street Journal - By Amy Merrick, Roger Thurow - Feb. 05 (News Report) - Chad Smith considered going to college, but as he landed a series of well-paying construction and auto-industry jobs over the past decade, school seemed like a waste of time and money. "When you're making $55,000 at 18 years old, it's hard to tell yourself to go to school," he says. "You've got the world by the tail." Then, last May, he was laid off from his night-shift job at a Chrysler assembly plant. Even if he wanted to go back to construction, home building already had slowed to a crawl, offering few jobs. Now 29 years old, Mr. Smith is back in school through a federal retraining program, studying software development and computer networking at Rock Valley College, a community college in Rockford, Ill.

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Learning Technologists Look on the Bright Side of Budget Cuts

Tue, 03 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Ohmynews - By William Pollard - Feb. 03 (News Report) - At Learning Technologies, a conference and exhibition in London last week, there was recogniton that training budgets were under pressure in the credit crunch. However there was also confidence that a strong case can be made for e-learning and increased use of the Web as a means to deliver more results for less cost. Adobe promoted Connect and demonstrated a fundamental switch from Postscript origins to a Flash future, behaviour consistent with the Andrew S. Grove theory that "Only the paranoid survive."

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New Scholarships for Laid-Off Workers - US News and World Report

Mon, 02 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

U.S. News & World Report - By Kim Clark - Feb. 02 (News Report) - A small but growing number of government agencies and colleges are rushing to help laid-off workers afford retraining and college courses by offering them free or greatly discounted tuition.

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When the whole is greater than the sum of its parts

Fri, 30 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

thehoot.net - By Gina Gotthilf - Jan. 30 (Special Report) - Brandeis University takes pride in its diversity. Beyond the verbal emphasis in Brandeis’ mission statement, students are recruited from around the globe and represent different cultures, systems of beliefs and socio-economic backgrounds. However, age remains a constant as most Brandeis students belong to a single generation. Yet this may not be for long with the continuous integration of Brandeis students and students at the Brandeis Osher Lifelong Learning Institute. BOLLI, an organization that offers classes for men and women aged 50 and older, actively represents one of Brandeis’ Core Values: Lifelong Learning.

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Genuine Education For All, essential to Vision 2020 — Pai Obanya

Thu, 29 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

vanguardngr.com - By Olubusuyi Adenipekun - Jan. 29 (News Report) - In an attempt to employ the instrumentality of education to fast-track the realisation of Vision 2020, some stakeholders have stressed the need for Nigeria to embrace a type of education which is not synonymous to schooling. The system of education they are clamouring for is Genuine Education For All (GEFA) which implies education in all its possible ramifications to all segments of the population, and most importantly, as a lifelong process. The arrowhead of GEFA is Professor Pai Obanya, an international education strategist. According to Obanya, the prevailing notion of equating education with schooling leads to the exclusion of a large number of “educables” within a society from benefitting from education and that this narrow conception of education also prevents a government from linking education intimately with other national development sectors, adding that the country is thus unable to harness the education potentials of all sectors of national life, as well as of all social and economic activities of society.

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Books Can't Compete

Fri, 23 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Chronicle of Higher Education - By Mark Bauerlein - Jan. 23 (Opinion) - Here’s a depressing and blunt comment from Larry McMurtry, speaking not only as a novelist but as a bookstore owner (it’s an interview): The end of the culture of the book. I’m pessimistic. Mainly it’s the flow of people into my bookshop in Archer City. They’re almost always people over 40. I don’t see kids, and I don’t see kids reading. I think little kids love to have stories read to them, but when they get to 10 or 11 or 12, they run into this tsunami of technology: iPod, iPhone, Blackberries. They don’t resist it, and it’s normal that they wouldn’t; it’s their culture. I’m not so sure they ever come back to reading. Some will, but most won’t. The tsunami metaphor is apt, and it points out the relationship between books and other media in kids’ lives. The list of options has grown, with books now joined by games, Web surfing, music downloading, Photoshop, YouTube, social networking, blogs, texting, IM, and the rest. Lots of folks think that the environment has grown more challenging and rewarding and enlightening, the addition of digital diversions fostering a rich plurality of texts and images and stories and sounds in which books maintain a central place.

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Library use jumps in Seattle area; economy likely reason

Thu, 15 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Seattle Times - By Mary Ann Gwinn - Jan. 15 (Special Report) - A library card has become a hot property in the Seattle region — area public libraries are experiencing a surge in circulation. While busy libraries in one of the nation's most literate cities are nothing new, some librarians credit (or blame) the recession for a dramatic upswing in business. The Seattle area's two library systems, the King County Library System (KCLS) and Seattle Public Library (SPL), each loaned more than a million more items in 2008 than in 2007.

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Howard Zinn: American Empire Is 'Crumbling'

Thu, 11 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - Sep. 11 (Interview) - If there is any hope, the hope lies in the American people. [It] lies in American people becoming resentful enough and indignant enough over what has happened to their country, over the loss of dignity in the world, over the starving of human resources in the United States, the starving of education and health, the takeover of the political mechanism by corporate power and the result this has on the everyday lives of the American people. [There is also] the higher and higher food prices, the more and more insecurity, the sending of the young people to war.

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How Anti-Intellectualism Is Destroying America

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Terrence McNally, Susan Jacoby - Aug. 18 (Interview) - "It's like these guys take pride in being ignorant." Barack Obama finally said it. Though a successful political and electoral strategy, the Right's stand against intelligence has steered them far off course, leaving them -- and us -- unable to deal successfully with the complex and dynamic circumstances we face as a nation and a society.

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Asia and the Mideast Gain Ground in Higher Ed

Sun, 10 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Newsweek - By Zvika Krieger - Aug. 10 (Special Report) - Drive down Sheikh Zayed Road, Dubai's main thoroughfare, and you'll pass the world's only seven-star hotel, its tallest building and its largest man-made resort island. But head off into the desert and you'll hit a modest-looking set of office buildings and construction cranes that promise to be just as superlative. This is the site of Dubai International Academic City: the future home of a Michigan State University campus and the center of the local effort to make the emirate into a new global hot spot for higher education. "There is a war out there for talent," says Abdulla al-Karam, director-general of Dubai's Knowledge and Human Development Authority, "and we're not going to let everyone else take the best."

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Alexander Solzhenitsyn, gulag chronicler, dies

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Seattle Times - Aug. 04 (News Report) - With "The Gulag Archipelago," he gave a name to the brutal network of labor camps that spread across the Soviet Union during dictator Josef Stalin's frenzied industrialization drive. Tens of millions of men, women and children died in the effort.

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Mix It Up!

Sun, 03 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Greater Good - By Jennifer Holladay - Aug. 03 (Review) - Today's students are the most racially tolerant generation our nation has ever seen. According to recent studies, they are more likely to have friends, or to date, across racial and ethnic lines than the generations who came before them. On the whole, they believe racism is wrong. But we still have a long way to go. According to federal statistics, one in four students report being targets of racial or ethnic bias in a typical school year; one in 10 say they've been called an offensive name at school; and, in urban schools, nearly 40 percent of students report seeing bigoted graffiti on campus. Disturbingly, schools are the third most common location for hate crimes. So what can educators and schools do to help elevate levels of racial tolerance among students?

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Hilary Duff - Stranger; Official Remix Video (HQ)

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0700

YouTube - By Albert Castillo, ItaloSuave, MichaelBernard1, mdelcamp1, Hilary Duff - Aug. 01 (Entertainment) - I would like to dedicate this MashUp FanVid Music Video remake of Hillary Duff singing Stranger, to our White House Vice President "Tricky" Dick Cheney. I do so on behalf of both the American People generally, and President George W. Bush specifically. I think our Veep (and his NeoCon Wife and fellow travelers) has earned this award and designation. Enjoy. . .

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The Billion Dollar Dropout

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0700

gather.com - By Dr. Don Hutson - Jul. 09 (Editorial) - If our global economy and future do in fact lie in a knowledge-based economy, it seems incumbent upon our education system to insure that our students can learn. And, that our teachers are more empowered to teach.

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One nation, not just speaking English

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Salon - By Andrew Leonard - Jul. 09 (Opinion) - There's nothing particularly exceptional about Obama's position, unless you are an English-only partisan cowering in fear of your cultural identity being swamped by funny-looking people from strange lands. Or one of the similarly insecure patriots who believe any criticism of the U.S. is a sign of "blame-America-first" treachery. And I suppose the whole comment about "going to Europe" opens Obama up to more charges of elitism, and disconnection from the lives of those who, right now, can't afford to even think about going to Europe.

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Citizen Stupid

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Mother Jones - By Rick Shenkman - Jul. 02 (Special Report) - "About 1 in 4 Americans can name more than one of the five freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment (freedom of speech, religion, press, assembly and petition for redress of grievances.) But more than half of Americans can name at least two members of the fictional cartoon family, according to a survey.

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How Smart Are Americans?

Sun, 29 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Newsweek - Jun. 29 (Poll) - The Newsweek Poll gauges what U.S. citizens know on a broad range of topics, from the price of oil to the works of Shakespeare.

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Travel guru assesses Iran

Sat, 21 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Seattle Post Intelligencer - By D. Parvaz - Jun. 21 (Editorial) - "My job is not to say we're right and they're wrong or that they're right and we're wrong. ... It's that, as a travel writer, to help America better understand Iran, because it's clear that we don't know anything about Iran," said Steves, 53, sitting behind his desk at his Edmonds office, his demeanor more intense than what we see on his shows. "And as an electorate, we're being asked to make decisions of war and peace and life and death for a country of 70 million people."

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