Dear Commons Community,

Mayor Bill de Blasio and Chancellor Carmen Fariña announced yesterday that all public school students, regardless of family income, will receive free lunch.

The program — called Free School Lunch For All — aligns with the start of the school year, and ends a feud between New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and City Council members, Chalkbeat reported.

At New York City Public Schools, the largest district in the US with about 1.1 million students, nearly 800,000 students have been estimated to qualify for free lunch. But many don’t fill out the proper forms and miss out on the program due to the stigmatization associated with qualifying, Chalkbeat reported. 

The program aims to remove the barriers for all kids to receive access to lunch at school.  

The de Blasio administration has slowly expanded access to free meals: The city began a pilot program offering free lunch to middle school students in 2014, and currently offers free breakfast at every school.

“This is about equity,” schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña said at a press conference Wednesday, where she was joined by city council leaders, union officials, and advocates. “There is a basic level of investment that every New Yorker deserves.”

Great move by the de Blasio and Fariña.  Active, healthy children need fuel if they are to do well in school.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

This is a disheartening week for news given the devastation of Hurricane Harvey, bracing for Hurricane Irma, and the cruel rescinding of the DACA policy.  To add to this is the concern that North Korea has developed a nuclear device similar to a hydrogen bomb. Yesterday, Stephen Moore,  a former Trump adviser and now an analyst for CNN, went on a rant on a morning broadcast about what a “lunatic” and “maniac” North Korean President Kim Jong-un was and the danger he poses given his access to weapons of mass destruction.  I agree but we have a similar problem here in the United States. 

It was two weeks ago on August 23^rd that James Clapper, Jr., former director of national intelligence,  questioned President Trump’s fitness for office following a freewheeling speech in Phoenix, which Clapper labeled “downright scary and disturbing.”

“I really question his ability to be — his fitness to be — in this office,” Clapper told CNN’s Don Lemon. “I also am beginning to wonder about his motivation for it — maybe he is looking for a way out.”

Clapper said watching Trump’s speech, he worried about the president’s access to nuclear codes.

“In a fit of pique he decides to do something about Kim Jong Un, there’s actually very little to stop him,” Clapper said, referencing North Korea’s leader. “The whole system is built to ensure rapid response if necessary. So there’s very little in the way of controls over exercising a nuclear option, which is pretty damn scary.”

Clapper joined a growing chorus of alarm over Trump’s erratic behaviour. The Republican chairman of the Senate foreign relations committee, Bob Corker, said last week that Trump “has not yet been able to demonstrate the stability nor some of the competence that he needs to demonstrate in order to be successful”.

Well this is scary because now we have two national leaders who are being labeled as lunatics, unstable, or unfit to serve in office, who have access to nuclear weapons. 

It is fair to say that Trump’s access is as problematic as Kim Jong Un’s.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

At 11:00 am this morning, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced the  Trump administration’s decision to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.  Response to this decision has been swift.  Mark Zuckerberg called it “cruel” and “a sad day for our country.”  He and hundreds of other corporate leaders are coming out strongly against this policy change.  Below is the letter that Zuckerberg’s is encouraging others to sign.

Tony

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August 31, 2017

To: President Donald J. Trump

To: Speaker Paul Ryan; Leader Nancy Pelosi; Leader Mitch McConnell; and Leader Charles E. Schumer

As entrepreneurs and business leaders, we are concerned about new developments in immigration policy that threaten the future of young undocumented immigrants brought to America as children.

The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which allows nearly 800,000 Dreamers the basic opportunity to work and study without the threat of deportation, is in jeopardy. All DACA recipients grew up in America, registered with our government, submitted to extensive background checks, and are diligently giving back to our communities and paying income taxes. More than 97 percent are in school or in the workforce, 5 percent started their own business, 65 percent have purchased a vehicle, and 16 percent have purchased their first home. At least 72 percent of the top 25 Fortune 500 companies count DACA recipients among their employees.

Unless we act now to preserve the DACA program, all 780,000 hardworking young people will lose their ability to work legally in this country, and every one of them will be at immediate risk of deportation. Our economy would lose $460.3 billion from the national GDP and $24.6 billion in Social Security and Medicare tax contributions.

Dreamers are vital to the future of our companies and our economy. With them, we grow and create jobs. They are part of why we will continue to have a global competitive advantage.

We call on President Trump to preserve the DACA program. We call on Congress to pass the bipartisan DREAM Act or legislation that provides these young people raised in our country the permanent solution they deserve.
Signed,

Dear Commons Community,

It was announced yesterday that the New York Daily  News was acquired  by Tronc, the publisher of The Los Angeles Times and The Chicago Tribune.  The Daily News has been one of the mainstays of New York City with its gossip, sports and city coverage for ninety-eight years.  It was the newspaper that you were most likely to see people reading in the subways during rush hours.  As reported:

“The deal represents the end of an era for The News, which was long a voice for New York’s working class. It may also signal the end of the political influence of its owner, the real estate magnate Mortimer B. Zuckerman, who often used the paper’s bold, front-page headline — known as “the wood” — for commentary about candidates and politicians, locally and nationally.

The News once boasted A-list columnists including Liz Smith, Jimmy Breslin and Pete Hamill, but it has been worn down by a grinding tabloid war with the Rupert Murdoch-controlled New York Post. And like the rest of the newspaper industry, The News has been battered and bruised by the Internet Age, when the equivalent of pithy headlines — a staple of The News — come a mile a minute on Twitter.

Sweeping layoffs have reduced its staff. The paper’s circulation, which exceeded two million a day in the 1940s, is now in the low hundred thousands. And The Chicago Tribune reported on Monday that Tronc purchased The News for just $1, plus the assumption of liabilities.

But while The News wields less influence than it once did, it still has the power to resonate in the city and beyond. This year, the paper and ProPublica shared the Pulitzer Prize for public service for a series on the New York Police Department’s widespread abuse of eviction rules. And its pointed headlines, particularly about President Trump — a longtime real estate rival of Mr. Zuckerman — still attract attention, particularly on social media.

 “The New York Daily News is a venerable New York City institution,” Eric Gertler, the co-publisher of The News, said in a statement. “We believe that under Tronc’s leadership, The New York Daily News will maintain its tradition of excellence in journalism and continue to be a critical voice for millions of print and online readers.”

Amen!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

As we get ready to enjoy our Labor Day holiday, below is a letter from AFT President Randi Weingarten reminding us what this day is about.

Tony

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Dear Members,

Labor Day isn’t just about cookouts and mattress sales, it’s about American workers—like you, your colleagues and me—who serve our communities every day, who make up the middle class, and who just want a chance at the American dream.

In unity,
Randi Weingarten
AFT President 

Dear Commons Community,

After much soul-searching and pressure from students and faculty, Yale will officially change the name of its Calhoun College to Grace Hopper College.  As reported in the New York Times:

“In a dining hall at Yale University, the portrait of an avid proponent of slavery has been replaced with a shield depicting a heraldic dolphin.

On Tuesday, beneath the dolphin’s fearsome eye, Yale’s president and the Navy’s chief of operations will make speeches, a chaplain will offer a blessing, and a secret ceremonial object will be unveiled.

With that, Yale’s Calhoun College, named for John C. Calhoun — a vice president, senator from South Carolina, and founding forefather of the Civil War — will recede further into the New Haven university’s past. The gothic stone building, one of the 14 residential colleges where undergraduates live and eat, will be dedicated as Hopper College, after Rear Adm. Grace Murray Hopper, a boundary-smashing computer pioneer and naval officer. The dolphin on the Hopper College shield is a nod to her maritime career.

The ceremony caps a bitter, exhausting fight that included years of student protests, a smashed stained-glass window depicting slaves, a decision by Yale to keep Calhoun’s name and then, in a reversal, to drop it.

And it comes at the end of a summer of unrest across much of the nation over how to remember and whether to honor those on the wrong moral side of the nation’s greatest conflict.

For Calhoun College students who fought for the name change, returning to campus to see signs for “Grace Hopper College” was energizing. “I think for a lot of people this summer has shown that it’s sort of beyond this ivory tower intellectual debate,” Maya Jenkins, a Hopper senior, said on Friday.

Admiral Hopper helped build the nation’s first electromechanical computer, developed the first compiler, proposed the idea of writing computer programs in words rather than symbols, and retired from the Navy at age 79.”

A good move by Yale.  And Grace Hopper surely deserves to have a college named for her.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson left the International Space Station yesterday wrapping up a career-total 665 days in orbit, a U.S. record. Whitson, 57, ended her most recent stay of more than nine months aboard the station, that flies about 250 miles (400 km) above Earth. As reported by Reuters:

“I feel great,” the biochemist said during an inflight interview on Monday. “I love working up here. It’s one of the most gratifying jobs I’ve ever had.”

During her third mission aboard the station Whitson spent much of her time on experiments, including studies of cancerous lung tissue and bone cells. She also completed four spacewalks, adding to her six previous outings, to set a record for the most time spent spacewalking by a woman.

Two crewmates who launched with Whitson in November returned to Earth three months ago. She stayed aboard to fill a vacancy after Russia scaled down its station staff from three to two cosmonauts.

Whitson returns to Earth with Jack Fischer, also with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and Russian cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin, who arrived in June. The crew’s Russian Soyuz capsule was expected to make a parachute touchdown in Kazakhstan at 9:22 p.m. EDT Saturday (0122 GMT Sunday).

“I’m looking forward to seeing friends and family,” Whitson said during another interview. “But the thing I’ve been thinking about the most, kind of been fantasizing about a little bit, are foods that I want to make, vegetables that I want to sauté, things that I’ve missed up here.”

In April, Whitson broke the 534-day U.S. record for cumulative time in space. Only seven Russian men have logged more time, including Gennady Padalka, the world record-holder with 878 days in orbit.

Whitson, who grew up on a farm in Iowa, said she was inspired by the U.S. Apollo program that landed men on the moon and she was selected as an astronaut in 1996. She was the first woman to command the space station and also the first woman and first non-pilot to serve as chief of the NASA Astronaut Corps.

“I am working on paying forward some of the advice and mentoring that I received on my journey, in hopes that one day those young people will do the same and look back on a life in which they leapt at the opportunities and broke their own records,” she said.”

Quite an achievement!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Oren Etzioni, the chief executive of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, has an op-ed in today’s New York Times, that establishes three rules for regulating artificial intelligence as follows.

“First, an A.I. system must be subject to the full gamut of laws that apply to its human operator. This rule would cover private, corporate and government systems. We don’t want A.I. to engage in cyberbullying, stock manipulation or terrorist threats; we don’t want the F.B.I. to release A.I. systems that entrap people into committing crimes. We don’t want autonomous vehicles that drive through red lights, or worse, A.I. weapons that violate international treaties.
Our common law should be amended so that we can’t claim that our A.I. system did something that we couldn’t understand or anticipate. Simply put, “My A.I. did it” should not excuse illegal behavior.

My second rule is that an A.I. system must clearly disclose that it is not human. As we have seen in the case of bots — computer programs that can engage in increasingly sophisticated dialogue with real people — society needs assurances that A.I. systems are clearly labeled as such. In 2016, a bot known as Jill Watson, which served as a teaching assistant for an online course at Georgia Tech, fooled students into thinking it was human. A more serious example is the widespread use of pro-Trump political bots on social media in the days leading up to the 2016 elections, according to researchers at Oxford.

My rule would ensure that people know when a bot is impersonating someone. We have already seen, for example, @DeepDrumpf — a bot that humorously impersonated Donald Trump on Twitter. A.I. systems don’t just produce fake tweets; they also produce fake news videos. Researchers at the University of Washington recently released a fake video of former President Barack Obama in which he convincingly appeared to be speaking words that had been grafted onto video of him talking about something entirely different.

My third rule is that an A.I. system cannot retain or disclose confidential information without explicit approval from the source of that information. Because of their exceptional ability to automatically elicit, record and analyze information, A.I. systems are in a prime position to acquire confidential information. Think of all the conversations that Amazon Echo — a “smart speaker” present in an increasing number of homes — is privy to, or the information that your child may inadvertently divulge to a toy such as an A.I. Barbie. Even seemingly innocuous housecleaning robots create maps of your home. That is information you want to make sure you control.

My three A.I. rules are, I believe, sound but far from complete. I introduce them here as a starting point for discussion. Whether or not you agree with Mr. Musk’s view about A.I.’s rate of progress and its ultimate impact on humanity (I don’t), it is clear that A.I. is coming. Society needs to get ready.”

I agree with Etzioni’s recommendations, however, they need to be expanded to address the employment issues. It is very likely that in the not too distant future say fifteen years, we will see widespread displacement of workers because of A.I. applications. This displacement will be beyond assembly line robotics that have already taken over many blue-collar jobs.  How do we regulate the transformation of labor especially in the white-collar and professional sectors.  What careers/positions do we retrain these workers for?

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

In an op-ed for the Washington Post published on Thursday, John McCain, the Arizona Republican senator called on Americans to focus on “shared values” rather than differences. McCain denounced the “repugnant spectacle of white supremacists marching in Charlottesville” and lauded Heather Heyer, the counter protester killed by a white supremacist at the rally.

But McCain also criticized the partisanship in Congress.

“We seem convinced that majorities exist to impose their will with few concessions and that minorities exist to prevent the party in power from doing anything important,” McCain wrote of recent congressional deadlock.

“Congress must govern with a president who has no experience of public office, is often poorly informed and can be impulsive in his speech and conduct,” McCain wrote. “We must respect his authority and constitutional responsibilities. We must, where we can, cooperate with him. But we are not his subordinates. We don’t answer to him. We answer to the American people.”  

McCain’s fellow Repbulicans should hear and follow McCain’s call to “answer to the American people” and not to Trump and to partisan interests.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Faculty and students at Hunter College have been wondering what is going on with a display of the American flag on its sky bridges above Lexington Avenue.  It was just announced that the artist Robert Longo will open his “American Bridge Project,” which consists of vinyl renderings of the original First Amendment document and the American flag,  starting today and remaining until Dec. 1.  As reported by the New York Times:

“Mr. Longo, whose art is often politically charged, hopes to provide a daily reminder of the importance of unity and free speech.

To create this site-specific work, which was curated by Jill Brienza, Mr. Longo enlarged portions of two of his charcoal drawings, often visiting 68th Street to examine the possibilities of scope and color.

“It was really difficult to figure out what would work from a distance,” Mr. Longo said in an interview. “It’s like these slivers of images; they slice the sky. And bridges are metaphorically something we need politically more than ever.”

The lower piece, on the third-floor bridge, is based on his 2017 work “Untitled (First Amendment, September 25, 1789),” in which he drew the First Amendment by hand in an effort to convey its very human origins.

 “People address the Constitution as if it was the Bible,” Mr. Longo said. “I was quite touched when I actually looked at it and realized it was written by someone with penmanship, by hand.”

The seventh-floor installation is based on Mr. Longo’s 2012 charcoal drawing “Untitled (Berlin Flag).”  

Creative use of Hunter College’s sky bridges!

Tony