What Does It Feel Like to Fly Over Planet Earth – Video

Dear Commons Community,

This video is a time-lapse taken from the front of the International Space Station as it orbits our planet at night. This movie begins over the Pacific Ocean and continues over North and South America before entering daylight near Antarctica. Visible cities, countries and landmarks include (in order) Vancouver Island, Victoria, Vancouver, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles. Phoenix. Multiple cities in Texas, New Mexico and Mexico. Mexico City, the Gulf of Mexico, the Yucatan Peninsula, El Salvador, Lightning in the Pacific Ocean, Guatemala, Panama, Columbia, Ecuador, Peru, Chile, Lake Titicaca, and the Amazon. Also visible is the earths ionosphere (thin yellow line), a satellite (55sec) and the stars of our galaxy.

For those of you interested in space travel, The Spaceship Company (TSC), the aerospace production joint venture of Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic and Scaled Composites, achieved a significant milestone in making commercial space travel a reality with yesterday’s opening of its Final Assembly, Integration and Test Hangar, or FAITH, at the Mojave Air and Space Port. Commenting on the grand opening, Virgin Group Founder Sir Richard Branson said, “Today marks another important step along the road to opening space for everyone. We’re extremely proud of the new FAITH building, which is the world’s first facility dedicated to producing private, commercial manned space vehicles. From this hangar, the talented team at The Spaceship Company will be at the forefront of making space access safe, reliable and affordable.”  Projections are that a space trip will cost about $200,000. and  might be available as early as 2015.  The TSC website indicates that 453 space tourists have already signed up.

Tony

 

Mariano Rivera – 602 Saves!!!!

 

Dear Commons Community,

For all the New York Yankee fans out there, this was a special day.  Mariano Rivera broke the all-time major league record for saves by passing Trevor Hoffman with his 602nd save, a mark that we are not likely to see broken anytime soon.

Thank you Mariano for fifteen years of stellar pitching.

Tony

 

E.D. Hirsch Jr. – How to Stop the Drop in Verbal Scores!

Dear Commons Community,

E.D. Hirsch, Jr. has an op—ed piece in the NY Times today on the need to integrate more content into the language arts programs for early childhood students.     His piece is in response to the latest reporting that the reading and writing scores of American high-schoolers on the SAT have once again declined.   He rightfully comments that the language competence of our students fell steeply in the 1970s and has never recovered.

I don’t agree with everything he says .  For instance:

“This is very worrisome, because the best single measure of the overall quality of our primary and secondary schools is the average verbal score of 17-year-olds. This score correlates with the ability to learn new things readily, to communicate with others and to hold down a job. It also predicts future income.”

The SAT essentially is designed to predict success in the first year of undergraduate study.  Anything beyond this is speculation.  There have also been issues raised about minority bias on the wording of questions on the SATs.  However, I tend to agree with Hirsch’s basic premise that is to teach content and word meaning as early as possible and not just the mechanics of reading.   He comments:

“In the decades before the Great Verbal Decline, a content-rich elementary school experience evolved into a content-light, skills-based, test-centered approach.”  The currently popular “drill and kill” approaches in many of our urban schools that are designed strictly to pass standardized tests has failed to improve the reading and writing ability of children.

Hirsch is right to signal the alarm.

Tony

 

 

Maureen Dowd Zings Rick Perry and the Republican Field of Presidential Candidates!!

Dear Commons Community,

Maureen Dowd has a zinger of a column today in the NY Times aimed at the Republican presidential candidates but mostly at Rick Perry.   Here are a few of her comments/hits:

Rick Perry – “I’m actually for gun control — use both hands…..and

Our education system is going to hell. Average SAT scores are falling, and America is slipping down the list of nations for college completion. And Rick Perry stands up with a smirk to talk to students about how you can get C’s, D’s and F’s and still run for president.”

Sarah Palin, who got outraged at a ‘gotcha’ question about what newspapers and magazines she read, is the mother of stupid conservatism.

Another ‘Don’t Know Much About History’ Tea Party heroine, Michele Bachmann, seems rather proud of not knowing anything, simply repeating nutty, inflammatory medical claims that somebody in the crowd tells her.”

What is really scary is that millions of Americans are going to vote for one of these candidates and the way Barack Obama is sliding in the polls may become our next commander in grief.

Tony

 

 

 

President Obama’s Approval Ratings at an All-Time Low: The US Congress’ Ratings are Worse!!

Dear Commons Community,

The NY Times reported that the latest public opinion polls conducted by various media organizations have been indicating that President Obama’s approval ratings are at an all-time low and are continuing to go down.  Several polls (NY Times/CBS, NBC News) have just over 50% of registered voters disapproving the President’s handling of important issues like the economy.  The President’s advisers need to consider his unpopularity as a dark harbinger for his re-election bid next year.

BUT WAIT;

In a new poll made public yesterday, only 12% of the population approve of the way the US Congress is handling issues like the economy.  In fact, only 6 percent of registered voters say that most members of Congress have earned re-election, while 84 percent say it’s time to give someone new a chance, a historic low for the New York Times/CBS poll.  Furthermore, voters are slightly more disapproving of the Republicans in Congress than they are of the Democrats, with just 19 percent approving of Republicans, compared with 28 percent that approve of Democrats.

What does this all mean?  The American people are fed up with Washington but who are they going to vote for in 2012.  While Obama’s ratings are low, Republican  ratings are worse by a whole lot.  Maybe it is time for a third party in American politics?   And I do not mean the Tea Party!!!

Tony

 

Mitt Romney: Dick Cheney Is ‘The Kind Of Person I’d Like To Have’ As Vice President

Dear Commons Community,

As the Republican primary season continues,  it is my opinion that Mitt Romney so far has been the best of the field.   However, the Huffington Post has an article on a talk that Romney gave last night at a town hall meeting in Arizona.   In response to a question regarding a possible running mate, he stated:

“I think it was last weekend, I was watching C-SPAN, and I saw Vice President Dick Cheney, and he was being asked questions about a whole host of issues — following 9/11, the affairs in various countries in the world…And I listened to him speak and said whether you agree or disagree with him, this is a man of wisdom and judgment, and he could have been president of the United States. That’s the kind of person I’d like to have — a person of wisdom and judgment.”

Cheney was possibly the worst thing that happened to the United States in the past fifty years.  Actually it is a toss-up between him and Donald Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense.   Cheney lied to the American people about missiles of mass destruction as a pretense for the Iraq War, he was deep in the back pockets of the oil industry and Halliburton, and he was as involved as his good pal, Scooter Libby, in the Valerie Plame affair.

Romney’s handlers had better rewrite his script and clue him in that reference to the likes of Cheney as a possible running mate is political suicide.

Tony

 

 

Spending Inequity between Rich and Poor Colleges Rising!

Dear Commons Community,

The gap in spending between rich and poor colleges and universities is rising mainly due to budget reductions in the public sector.  According to the latest Delta Cost Project Report for 2011,

“Disparities between rich and poor institutions in overall spending levels have never been larger. Since policy makers and the public often form impressions about higher education based on a relatively small handful of elite institutions, it is important to note that by far the largest majority of students are being served in institutions that spend on average around $10,000 per student per year—no more than we spend for elementary and second­ary education.”   The highlights of the report are below.

The NY Times in a summary of the report provided the following illustration:

“… from 2008 to 2009, the latest year for which data is available, community colleges’ net tuition increased $113, but their per-student spending declined by $254, mostly because of shrinking state and local financing. In that year, appropriations to community colleges nationwide fell an average $488 per student. At public research universities, which enroll 4.1 million students, net tuition increased by $369 — but appropriations declined by $751 per student, and spending per student increased only $92…

At private institutions, from 2008 to 2009, both tuition and spending have been rising. Private research universities’ per-student spending increased by $907, and private liberal arts colleges’ $298, while their net tuition increased $293 and $381, respectively.”

The situation does not bode well for large comprehensive public university systems like CUNY where reductions in state budget appropriations are expected to continue and in turn, will result in higher tuition for students.   The saddest part is that spending per student for instruction will be reduced or at best stay flat.

If you are interested in this issue, I suggest you participate in a conference, Defending Public Higher Education, that will be held at the CUNY Graduate Center on October 7th.   Registration and program information are available at the conference website.

Tony

=======================================

Highlights of Trends in College Spending, 1999–2009:

The immediate effect of the recession was most evident at public community colleges. Spending per student fell in 2009, fueled by a combination of enrollment growth and revenue losses. As a result, community colleges fell further behind other institutions—public, non-profit, and for-profit—in their ability to serve growing populations of students with resources adequate to ensure access, attainment, and quality.

Although non-profit private institutions experienced large paper losses on their financial investments, other sources of revenue grew and spending went up, continuing a twenty-year trend of widening differences between public and private institutions.

While public four-year institutions were unable to keep pace with spending increases at private non-profit institutions, they did protect educational spending per student even as overall revenues per student declined, spending about what they averaged in 2008.

There is some good news: An uptick in the conversion of enrollments into degrees and lower numbers of student credit hours per degree or certificate signal improvement in educational degree productivity over the decade. These increases have not yet translated to decreased production costs, as spending continued to rise. Only community colleges have managed to lower their production costs per completion, largely through producing less-costly certificates rather than boosting degree output.

Contrary to patterns in previous years, we see in 2009 public four-year institutions protecting instruction and student services by shifting spending away from administration and deferring maintenance. These spending changes suggest that institutions were managing budget reductions more strategically than in previous recessions, when across-the-board cuts were more common.

The proportion of education and related spending financed from tuition revenues went up, exceeding even the jump following the 2001 recession. At public institutions, revenues from tuition rose to replace lost revenues from other sources, but in private non-profit institutions, increased revenues from tuition were redistributed primarily through tuition discounts. Almost everywhere, rising student tuition revenues did not translate into greater education and related spending, so students were paying for more while institutions were subsidizing less. This gap between prices and spending raises troubling questions about the sustainability of the funding model for the future and is the source of growing public and policy critiques of higher education.

Disparities between rich and poor institutions in overall spending levels have never been larger. Since policy makers and the public often form impressions about higher education based on a relatively small handful of elite institutions, it is important to note that by far the largest majority of students are being served in institutions that spend on average around $10,000 per student per year—no more than we spend for elementary and second­ary education.

 

The Lost Decade: 46 Million People Living in Poverty!

Dear Commons Community,

The U.S. Census Bureau reported yesterday that the number of Americans living below the official poverty line, 46.2 million people (15.1% of the population), was the highest number in the 52 years the bureau has been publishing figures on it.    A   NY Times article quoted Lawrence Katz, a Harvard economics professor, that this was the first time since the Great Depression that median household income, adjusted for inflation, had not risen over such a long period.  Katz is quoted as saying:

“This is truly a lost decade…We think of America as a place where every generation is doing better, but we’re looking at a period when the median family is in worse shape than it was in the late 1990s.”

The poverty line in 2010 was defined as a family of four with an income of less than $22,314.

The saddest news is that there is no indication that the economy will be any better in the immediate future.

Tony

 

 

 

Republican Candidates Debate Again!

Dear Commons Community,

Last night CNN and the Tea Party hosted another debate among the Republican presidential hopefuls.  This debate was a bit more spirited than last week’s.  Most of the candidates were gunning for the front-runner, Rick Perry.   Mitt Romney continued to push Perry on social security.   Michelle Bachman challenged Mr. Perry for a program he advocated in Texas requiring girls entering the sixth grade to be vaccinated against the human papilloma virus, which causes a sexually transmitted disease that is linked to cervical cancer.  She went so far as to say that Perry was catering to Merck, the pharmaceutical company that provided the vaccine and a donor to his past campaigns.   Huntsman and Paul attacked Perry’s Texas record on government spending, taxes and jobs. And Santorum on his immigration position.

One disturbing moment was the way the crowd  made up entirely of Tea Party members applauded letting  a man in coma die because he did not have insurance to pay for his medical care. The exchange as reported in the Huffington Post was as follows:

“What do you tell a guy who is sick, goes into a coma and doesn’t have health insurance? Who pays for his coverage? “Are you saying society should just let him die?” Wolf Blitzer asked.

“Yeah!” several members of the crowd yelled out.

Ron Paul interjected to offer an explanation for how this was, more-or-less, the root choice of a free society. He added that communities and non-government institutions can fill the void that the public sector is currently playing.

‘We never turned anybody away from the hospital,’ he said of his volunteer work for churches and his career as a doctor. ‘We have given up on this whole concept that we might take care of ourselves, assume responsibility for ourselves … that’s the reason the cost is so high.’

The answer may have struck a truly libertarian tone but it was clearly overshadowed by the members of the crowd who enthusiastically cheered the prospect of letting a man die rather than picking up the tab for his coverage.”

Education was only mentioned once during the debate and that was when Ron Paul said the Department of Education should be abolished.

Tony

A good summary of the debate is available at:  http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/13/us/politics/13debate.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha24

 

New Book: Jacqueline Kennedy: Historic Conversations on Life with John F. Kennedy!

Dear Commons Community,

The NY Times has a preview of a new book due to be published on Wednesday entitled Jacqueline Kennedy:  Historic Conversations on Life with John F. Kennedy complied by her daughter Caroline Kennedy and Michael Beschloss.  The book is based on a seven-part interview conducted in early 1964 — one of only three that Mrs. Kennedy gave after Mr. Kennedy’s assassination.  In it, Mrs. Kennedy speaks with the late Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., historian, Kennedy aide, and a member of the CUNY Graduate Center’s faculty, about her husband’s presidency, their marriage and her role in his political life.  The NY Times article revealed some of the candid comments in the book about world events such as the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis.   Perhaps the most provocative exchanges are quotes from Mrs. Kennedy of the political titans of the era:

“Charles DeGaulle, the French president, is ‘that egomaniac.’ Indira Gandhi, the future prime minister of India, is ‘a real prune — bitter, kind of pushy, horrible woman.’…Lyndon B. Johnson, then vice president, ‘Oh, God, can you ever imagine what would happen to the country if Lyndon was president?’

It sounds to me like this book is going to be a best-seller especially among the baby boomers who grew up during the Kennedy presidency and remember well his assassination.

Tony