[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBam6B9wrdI[/youtube]
Dear Commons Community,
The NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory announced yesterday that its Reconnaissance Orbiter has discovered what might be water (in its actual liquid state not as ice) on Mars. The commentator, Alfred McEwen, on the above video makes the point that where there is water there may be life.
BRAVO NASA!
Tony
Dear Commons Community,
The Huffington Post has an article on college students seeking out sugar daddies to help them pay for tuition. There is actually a website, seekingarrangement.com, that helps needy female students to hook-up with men. The article for instance describes in some detail how a student from Hunter College living in Harlem takes a train to Greenwich, CT to meet her “sugar daddy” in person for an afternoon of socializing. The article quotes the founder of the website as:
“Over the past few years, the number of college students using our site has exploded,” says Brandon Wade, the 41-year-old founder of Seeking Arrangement. Of the site’s approximately 800,000 members, Wade estimates that 35 percent are students. “College students are one of the biggest segments of our sugar babies and the numbers are growing all the time…”
Wade sees his company as providing a unique service, a chance for “men and women living through tough economic times to afford college.” He bristles at the notion that he’s merely running a thinly veiled, digital bordello, choosing instead to describe his site as one that facilitates “mutually beneficial relationships.”
The article also references survey research in the United States and the United Kingdom that supports Wade’s assertion that the number of college students willing to engage in the sex trade to help with tuition has been increasing. Tough economic times especially has forced many of them to seek this desperate way to earn money.
Maybe these students could use some good counseling .
Tony
Dear Commons Community,
The House of Representatives voted yesterday in favor of the bill raising the debt Ceiling and all but assured that it will become law today and in time to ward off the dire fiscal consequences predicted for the American economy. However, as the vote was being taken last night, the real human interest story was the appearance of Representative Gabrielle Giffords in the House chamber for the first time since being shot in the head by an assassin seven months ago. The Huffington Post described the scene when she cast her vote as:
“Giffords entered the chamber to sustained, standing applause, shaking hands with colleagues whom she had not seen since that January day. Her vote, a sideshow to the far more important and compelling personal drama, was in favor of the bill, which passed through the chamber by a margin of 269 to 161.”
It was quite an emotional scene watching her colleagues come to her seat, many of whom embraced and kissed her.
Tony
Dear Commons Community,
It appears that President Obama and congressional leaders of the Democratic and Republican Parties have reached an agreement on the debt ceiling according to a flash news report on the Huffington Post website.
Tony
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Huffington Post
August 1, 2011
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama and Republican congressional leaders reached historic agreement Sunday night on a compromise to permit vital U.S. borrowing by the Treasury in exchange for more than $2 trillion in long-term spending cuts.
Officials said Republican Speaker John Boehner telephoned Obama at mid-evening to say the agreement had been struck.
Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid said that both his party and opposition Republicans gave more ground than they wanted to. He said it’ll take members of both political parties to pass the measure.
Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said that the pact “will ensure significant cuts in Washington spending” and he assured the markets that a first-ever default on U.S. obligations won’t occur.
Both the leaders said they will brief their colleagues tomorrow on the details of the agreement.
Dear Commons Community,
I am passing along this message sent by the National Education Policy Center (NEPC) at the University of Colorado – Boulder. It refers to a letter and recommendation for how K-12 educator evaluation systems should be developed. Written by the 2010 Principal of the Year and her colleague from the NEPC, it was solicited and sent to U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. Within it, there are recommendations for evaluation systems that include components described as: a) summative, (b) formative, (c) working conditions, and (d) incentives. The letter also cautions against evaluation systems based on monetary incentives (New York City) and IMPACT (Washington , D.C.) which place too much dependence on student test scores.
Tony
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BOULDER, CO (August 1, 2011)—On July 14th, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan picked up the phone, called high school principal Carol Burris—named the 2010 New York State Outstanding Educator by the School Administrators Association of New York State—and during their conversation asked her to send him a letter describing guiding principles for the evaluation of educators and detailing suggestions for how to realize those principles. Duncan’s call was his response to Burris’s open letter to him in the Washington Post’s “Answer Sheet” blog. In that letter, Burris argued that the current push for punitive evaluation policies is harming schools like hers.
On July 27th, Burris and National Education Policy Center director Kevin Welner responded to Duncan’s request. A public version of the letter they sent him is now available as a policy memo on the NEPC website: http://nepc.colorado.edu/publication/letter-to-Arne-Duncan
Burris and Welner note that high-quality evaluation of educators is important and should be pursued, even while they stress the obvious fact that “If we fail to invest in our schools and communities, even the highest-quality educator evaluation will lead to little success.”
They point out that a useful and productive evaluation of educators would stand up well to being evaluated itself, based on its overall effect on student learning. Such an overall effect implicates at least four overlapping areas: (a) summative, (b) formative, (c) working conditions, and (d) incentives. Each of these is described in the letter.
Burris and Welner conclude with specific recommendations that suggest a way forward in which educator evaluation is organized and conducted in a way that values research evidence and knowledge.
