http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&feature=endscreen&v=l2RMnmjQynM
Dear Commons Community,
Over the next few days we will hear a lot about solar flares as they reach Earth and possibly disrupt communications. Here is a five-minute video on solar flares from NASA with some really neat images.
Tony
Dear Commons Community,
Yesterday Apple announced a new iPad with a high-definition screen, faster wireless connection and several other refinements.
The new iPad is scheduled to go on sale March 16 for a starting price of $499, unchanged from the last generation of iPads. The product has a screen that provides a comparable level of clarity to the iPhone’s “retina display,” with higher-resolution than conventional high-definition televisions, according to Apple executives.
And in a sign that Apple intends to more seriously protect its market share in the tablet market, the company said it would continue to sell its second generation iPad, dropping the price to $399 from $499.
Tony
Dear Commons Community,
Charles Murray, controversial author (Bell Curve, Coming Apart) who is affiliated with the right-wing American Enterprise Institute, has an op-ed piece in today’s New York Times entitled, Narrowing the New Class Divide. He provides four suggestions for narrowing the gap between the rich and working classes as follows:
“For one thing, we should get rid of unpaid internships. The children of the new upper class hardly ever get real jobs during summer vacation. Instead, they get internships at places like the Brookings Institution, the American Enterprise Institute (where I work) or a senator’s office. It amounts to career assistance for rich, smart children…
We can also drop the SAT in college admissions decisions. The test has become a symbol of new-upper-class privilege, as people assume (albeit wrongly) that high scores are purchased through the resources of private schools and expensive test preparation programs. Instead, elite colleges should require achievement tests in specific subjects for which students can prepare the old-fashioned way, by hitting the books.
Another step would replace ethnic affirmative action with socioeconomic affirmative action. This is a no-brainer. It is absurd, in 2012, to give the son of a black lawyer an advantage in college admissions but not do the same for the son of a white plumber.
Finally, we should prick the B.A. bubble. The bachelor’s degree has become a driver of class divisions at the same moment in history when it has become educationally meaningless. We don’t need legislation to fix this problem, just an energetic public interest law firm that challenges the constitutionality of the degree as a job requirement.”
Dr. Murray has a penchant for the provocative. The New York Times has given him the space to do so here.
Tony
