Handbag Made of Keyboard Is Geeky, Stylish, and Impractical

Very cool bag - recycled keyboard keys. Not sure how comfortable or useful it is, but it is definitely cool!

Read the full article here

Relocate flood victims?

Yeah, lets see  - living on a river bank in a flood prone area - maybe you should NOT live there and complain that water comes into your home! Duh - of course they should be relocated!

Works and Transport Minister Colm Imbert says the ultimate solution to the flooding that has been experienced by those who live close to river banks in flood prone areas may be to have them relocated.

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No laptops at our meeting! I HATE that directive!

Especially when the meeting is a WHOLE DAY meeting! It's so counterproductive!

in my case a laptop is a used in a meeting to digitize thoughts for indexed access afterwards, and to obtain additional information needed to process new directives.

No laptops at our meeting!

ICANN plan for new TLDs comes under barrage of criticism

Currently, there are just a handful of generic Top Level Domains (gTLDs), including well-known extensions like .com, .net, .org, and .biz. ICANN's new plan would expand the number of potential gTLDs by several orders of magnitude, and would allow for extensions 3-63 characters long. Allowed extensions would include pretty much anything a company might want—Ars Technica, for example, could conceivably register *.ars, *.arstechnica, or *.arstech. ICANN claims that this new system would offer domain name holders vastly improved choices and allow for more diversity in domain names, particularly for non-English-speaking countries. In and of themselves, these are worthy goals, but arbitrarily redefining the meaning of gTLDs seems a poor way to achieve them, particularly when said redefinition wrecks the current system so thoroughly.

ICANN plan for new TLDs comes under barrage of criticism

Tyler Brûlé - Why Christmas needs to make a comeback

New York used to do a brilliant job at Christmas. Over the past two decades, however, corporate-fuelled political correctness has done a wonderfully efficient job of extinguishing one of the biggest holidays on western calendars. And so, paradoxically, in their drive to avoid offending some customers, they’ve managed to forget that many of the trappings that have been stripped from the retail experience have also left stores feeling rather dull and flat. What consumers have been left with is a sort of holiday mush that doesn’t mean much to anybody and results in a lot of very confused window-dressers and visual merchandisers.


December 2008 should be the time for Christmas to make its big, global comeback. Many world leaders are sitting around thinking about how to stimulate year-end spending and are failing to recognise that the solution is sitting on the calendar. Sadly, few possess the Christmas nuts to go down in the basement and pull out all the decorations and really go for it.

 Read the full article here: Tyler Brûlé - Why Christmas needs to make a comeback

The 'Certified' Teacher Myth

Interesting study here...

The 'Certified' Teacher Myth - WSJ.com
Harvard researchers Paul Peterson and Daniel Nadler compared states that have genuine alternative certification with those that have it in name only. And they found that between 2003 and 2007 students in states with a real alternative pathway to teaching gained more on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (a federal standardized test) than did students in other states.

The study undermines the arguments from colleges of education and teachers unions, which say that traditional certification, which they control, is the only process that can produce quality teachers. The findings hold up even after controlling for race, ethnicity, free-lunch eligibility, class size and per-pupil state spending.

What viciousness!

The Goldman family just said on TV that they were PROUD that their efforts to drive OJ Simpson crazy drove him to commit the burglary and kidnapping in Las Vegas. How can someone be PROUD and thrilled that they drove someone to commit a crime? No matter what they thought he was guilty of - he was found innocent by the justice system, and to deliberately pursue an innocent man for THIRTEEN YEARS with the aim of driving him mad and driving him to commit a crime is SICK!

Pupils won't ruin tax-funded netbooks

This story from Australia indicates, interestingly, the changing attitudes towards student responsibility and school-provided laptops. Just a few years ago, the majority opinion was that they would be destroyed or stolen. Now that seems to be the minority, as least in NSW, Australia.

Unfortunately, such enlightenment has not reached across the seas to us in Trinidad and Tobago. We still believe that computer resources are to be locked up in "computer labs"in the schools, and separate from, not integrated into, the general learning environment.

I hope that this attitude will disappear very soon from the educational administration here, as if we are to achieve Vision 2020, we will need to have tech resources integrated across the curriculum at ALL levels of the education system.

Jacqueline

SENIOR NSW education bureaucrats have angrily rejected suggestions that public school students will trash the 197,000 laptop computers to be provided for them next year using federal taxpayer funds.

The $98 million tender for the mini-laptops, also known as netbooks, was issued yesterday and is believed to be the single largest purchase ever of such devices. A further $60 million will be spent rolling out a wireless computer network in 571 NSW public schools. The states and territories have received about $2 billion from the Rudd Government to upgrade computers in schools, with the NSW Labor Government deciding to spend its share on netbooks that students between Years 9 and 12 can use at school and at home.

Many students in elite private schools are already provided with laptops.

While the NSW program has broad support among principals, teachers and parent groups, one principal has dismissed the plan as "crazy".

http://www.australianit.news.com.au/story/0,24897,24749264-15306,00.html?referrer=email

President-Elect Obama: 100 Days to Demonstrate Commitment to Human Rights

Excellent Petition - walk the walk, don't just talk the talk!

"To: President-Elect Obama
We petition that…
You can bring to an end the previous administration's seven-year assault on human rights.

I call on you to demonstrate your commitment to justice by:

1. Announcing the timeline to close Guantanamo
2. Issuing an executive order to ban torture and other ill-treatment as defined under international law
3. Ensuring that an independent inquiry into the USA's detention and interrogation practices in its 'war on terror' is set up

These are three key steps on Amnesty International's checklist for your first 100 days in office. You can counter terror with justice. We are counting on you
Sincerely,
The Undersigned"

Death to film critics! Hail to the CelebCult! - Roger Ebert's Journal

Death to film critics! Hail to the CelebCult! - Roger Ebert's Journal
So very correct!