We'll be using this one a lot, too late though: lol my thesis

http://lolmythesis.com/page/40

1. 2 Jan

   
   
   

   If you want people to make good decisions about climate change policy, tell them about it when it is really, really hot.

   Geography, University of Colorado - Boulder

lol my thesis, the saddest one of all

http://lolmythesis.com/page/55

1. 26 Dec

   
   

   Looking for a reason to give up on humanity? Study climate change. That shit isn't changing back.

   Environmental Studies, New York University

    From Nick Kristof's NYT column:  "Here’s a scary fact about America: We’re much more likely to believe that there are signs that aliens have visited Earth (77 percent) than that humans are causing climate change (44 percent). . . . A reader from Virginia quoted James Hansen, the outspoken climate scientist: “Imagine a giant asteroid on a direct collision course with Earth. That is the equivalent of what we face now.” . . .  My take is that when Democrats, led by Al Gore, championed climate change, Republicans instinctively grew suspicious. Yet the scientific consensus is stronger than ever. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in September raised its confidence that human activity is the main cause of warming from 90 percent probability to 95 percent or higher.  . . . Nordhaus warns that “the pace of global warming will quicken over the decades to come and climate conditions will quickly pass beyond the range of recent historical experience.” . . .In politics and the military, we routinely deal with uncertainty. We’re not sure that Iran is trying to build a nuclear weapon, but we still invest in technologies and policies to reduce the risks. We can’t be sure that someone is going to hijack a plane, but we still screen passengers. . . ."

For would-be journal keepers

Keeping a journal using email 

Oh Life

Jan 13, 2014 01:00 am

I've written so many "first" journal entries that I've lost count. I have always wanted the benefits of a journal, but could never build the habit, or muster the discipline, to consistently write entries. That all changed when I discovered OhLife.com three years ago.

Oh Life is the tool that helped me successfully keep a journal for the first time. Thanks to it, I now have a record of my life that is richer and more meaningful than I ever expected. Oh life is where I wrote about the birth of my first son, my decision to quit a terrible job, and my excitement about starting a new, better job. It's where I wrote about my brother's cancer diagnosis and where I chronicled the daily milestone's of my son's infant and toddler years. Now I can look back on those events with a clarity that I never had before. In short, given me everything that I'd hoped for in a journal.

What makes Oh Life different is the medium. It is entirely email based. Every day, they send you an email, asking how your day went. All you do is respond to the email, and whatever you write is entered into your journal. The system is completely private so your entries are only accessible by you. As a bonus, each email contains an excerpt from a previous entry, which is a great way to get a daily glimpse into your own past.

I've also known a few people who used it as a shared-private journal. One family wanted a common place for kids, parents and grandparents to share day-to-day experiences and thoughts with each other. They set up an email address that automatically forwarded the daily prompts to all of them. This let them all make contributions in a format that was accessible to all family members but shielded from the public.

The basic service is free, and it offers all of the functionality I've ever needed. However the premium service offers some nice features. For $48 a year, you get:

-Up to 5 photo uploads per entry (vs. 1 with the free version)

-Customized email prompts

-Searchability

-Automatic Backups

-Trending tools, to see changes in particular terms or concepts over time.

If you want the benefits of keeping a journal, but can never seem to make it work, Oh Life might be the tool you need.

-- Scott Lyman

Oh Life
Free

Underdog law blog: Obsidian v Cox -- First Amendment Protects Bloggers!

Yesterday, the Ninth Circuit issued a landmark opinion providing Constitutional protections to bloggers.

The pro bono efforts of attorneys Benjamin Souede and Eugene Volokh appear nothing short of heroic. 

Summary of case: http://www.underdoglawblog.com/2014/01/bloggers-deserve-first-amendment.html

Full text of case: http://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2014/01/17/12-35238.pdf

Undernews: What the test tyrants have done to one teacher

http://prorevnews.blogspot.com/2014/01/what-test-tyrants-have-done-to-one.html

What the test tyrants have done to one teacher

Lynnie Vessels, Virginia Journal of Education - I used to be a great teacher. Then I became a good teacher. Last year I wondered who I was as a teacher.

I used to create the most wonderful lesson plans that allowed me to teach my students developmentally, and by the end of the year they were synthesizing everything they learned. One parent told me if her daughter had lousy English teachers for the rest of her schooling, it wouldn't matter because her love for English was ignited.

Another parent, who was also a teacher, told me, "You understand the mind of a middle-schooler." I do. My own middle school years were painful, and I do everything I can to shake it up for my students, getting them laughing and loving the written word. I had an English teacher in middle school that did that and I learned from him a hundred tricks I've used my whole life.

I used to be a star in my classroom, more exciting than television, a comedian, and I made every kid a star. I created an atmosphere where students learned volumes without ever knowing it. I acted silly, even foolish, and taught them to do the same. I role modeled someone in her element. By the end of the year, the shyest child was able to perform like a pro on the stage with his peers.

I used to stand up every back-to-school night and say, "I love my job, I love the kids, I love my classroom, I love this school. I wake up every day happy and can't wait to get here."

Last year I could still say that, but just barely.

I still love my students but this multiple-choice testing feels like little bombs going off throughout my year. I prepare the kids. They take the tests. Then it feels like I spend weeks cleaning up the debris, collecting data I don't really need because I already know what they know and don't know.

I get that there are slacker teachers, but I've only met three in my 26 years of teaching. While standard multiple-choice tests are meant to lift "up" bad teachers, what about those of us that were soaring all along? We are forced to dumb ourselves and the students down.

The students I released from my care five years ago were far more knowledgeable and better prepared than the students I released this June. If I were a parent, I'd be livid that my children were being prepared for multiple-choice tests and a dumbed-down curriculum.

... This year my school is starting an IB Middle Years Program that is meant to create knowledgeable, principled, global, critical thinkers, but we are still expected to test students constantly, until the point of test exhaustion. Frankly, the two are diametrically opposed and it impossible to do both well. Most educators know this, but we have to "go along" with what we do not believe in. This is why good teachers are leaving in droves.

Do you know how long it takes to prepare a seventh-grader to pass material he'll likely never use? It wastes valuable teaching time when we could be reading, writing and discussing big ideas. I feel like a bird with rubber bands put around her wings, being placed on a moving sidewalk headed to the robotic-teacher factory. I'm flapping, but no one is hearing me. Or worse, I'm seen as a renegade. I cannot compromise my integrity in order to do what I know is wrong for the children in my charge.

I see teachers regularly on YouTube reading letters of resignation. They have given up and left. I haven't given up. I am writing this. I want to stay. But I want to go back to creating my own lessons and tests with my own brain. I want to be the teacher I used to be. I love my colleagues dearly, but none of us wants to be a clone of the other. I respect them enough to see how incredibly talented they are. And I see the young, bright teachers coming in wanting to fly.

... For many of us, teaching is a calling. We are motivated by our love for children. Teaching has been the greatest spiritual journey of my life. I could not have chosen a better profession for my talent, creativity and intelligence. It is what I was put on earth to do, yet I feel like I am being asked to change something as fundamental as a religion is to some. I cannot help my sadness. I miss being excited for another school year.

AeroHance GasPod Project Updates

News From The AeroHance GasPod Project Team View this email in your browser Be Trim Tab Affect The World by Bob Evans PLAYBOY: Isn't it part of that packaging a sense of the individual's impotence to affect events, to improve or even influence our own welfare, let alone that of society?" Happy New Year! 2014 is going to be great! At a party last night, the Captain of an ocean going vessel to which we installed a marine version of GasPods clued me in that preliminary results show a reduction in fuel consumption. Given that GasPods work to reduce fuel consumption when placed on most cars, it should follow that a variation can be made to work as well in reverse – underwater.  Further testing is underway, but these initial impressions bode well for launch of our sister company, Aquahance. This exchange prompted me to begin the day, and year, with a Google search for images of "boat trim tabs." Scanning through the hundreds of relevant images, there appeared a tombstone. Don't be dismayed. This is anything but a bad omen. I clicked through and to my delight appeared a photograph of the graves of the visionary inventor Buckminster Fuller, and his wife, Anne Hewlett. Inscribed prominently above their heads are the words, "CALL ME TRIM TAB, Bucky." My curiosity peaked and motivated my continuing search until I came upon the following quote by Buckminster Fuller from a February, 1972, interview in "Playboy Magazine": "PLAYBOY: Isn't it part of that packaging a sense of the individual's impotence to affect events, to improve or even influence our own welfare, let alone that of society? GasPods are small. Installing them on your vehicle takes no effort at all. GasPods affect the aerodynamic characteristics of your vehicle in a positively significant manner. And, the potential cumulative effect of all of us getting together in an activity seemingly as easy as placing GasPods on your vehicle is atmospheric. 19.4 lbs of CO2 are released with every gallon of gas burned. 97 gallons of water are rendered permanently polluted. If 40,000,000 individuals – that is only 2% of the close to 2 billion vehicles on the road today – join in reducing their vehicle's gas consumption by 5%, by any method or means it is estimated to prevent 11 megatons of  CO2 per year from entering the atmosphere and save more than 118 billion gallons of water from permanent pollution by oil processing. That is more of an impact on preserving our Earth than any one program of industry or government in effect today. FULLER: Something hit me very hard once, thinking about what one little man could do. Think of the Queen Elizabeth again: The whole ship goes by and then comes the rudder. And there's a tiny thing on the edge of the rudder called a trim tab. It's a miniature rudder. Just moving that little trim tab builds a low pressure that pulls the rudder around. It takes almost no effort at all. So I said that the individual can be a trim tab. Society thinks it's going right by you, that it's left you altogether. But if you're doing dynamic things mentally, the fact is that you can just put your foot out like that and the whole ship of state is going to turn around. So I said, 'Call me Trim Tab.'" Start Affecting Copyright © 2014 AeroHance, Inc., All rights reserved. You are receiving this email because you have expressed an interest in the AeroHance GasPod Project and how we are all working together to save fuel, save money, save the World! See GasPods.com to find out how. Our mailing address is: AeroHance, Inc. 27 West Anapamu Street Suite 318 Santa Barbara, CA 93101

Good stuff: Eco-School Network Forming in Salem

subject: Eco-School Network Forming in Salem
Reply-To: FSELC Upcoming Events <fselc@fselc.org>

Calling all parents & teachers! Eco-School Network forming in Salem. First meeting Feb. 11th at Straub Environmental Center View this email in your browser Eco-School Network forming in Salem Introductory Meeting: Tuesday, February 11th 7 pm - 8:30 pm Straub Environmental Center 1320 A St. NE, Salem The desire for a Salem Eco-School Network is emerging.  All interested parents and teachers from each district and private school in the area are invited to attend an informational meeting on February 11 to learn more about this idea and to contribute their thoughts.  The meeting will be of great interest to any parent or teacher who is or would like to advance sustainability initiatives at a school.   The Salem Eco-School Network idea is supported by Straub Environmental Center and the Center for Earth Leadership, which formed similar networks in Portland, Beaverton, Corvallis, and Lake Oswego school districts.    At the meeting parents from the Portland Eco-School Network will share about their experience and Center representatives will lead a discussion on how the program might benefit Salem schools.   For more information, check out the Eco-School Network site, go to: http://earthleaders.org/programs/eco-school-networks/   RSVPs requested to Emily Klavins at 503-227-2315 or emily@earthleaders.org, or if you cannot attend but would like information please contact Emily.   Copyright © 2014 Straub Environmental Center, All rights reserved. You are receiving this email because you attended one of our programs and gave us your email address. Our mailing address is: Straub Environmental Center PO Box 12363 Salem, OR 97309 Add us to your address book

shopgoodwill.com - Categories

http://www.shopgoodwill.com/listings/

Bringing Wealth Creation Closer to Low-Income Communities

http://community-wealth.org/sites/clone.community-wealth.org/files/downloads/wellspring.pdf

Probably the most important Salem City Club talk ever happens Jan. 24

Subject: SCC eBulletin - Salem Civic Center: Proposed Changes and Upgrades
Reply-To: Salem City Club <office@salemcityclub.com>

Email not displaying correctly? View it in your browser. Celebrating 46 Years of exceptional civic discourse Join Us! Register now for the January 24 program. Luncheon, 11:30 a.m. Program, Noon Willamette Heritage Center at The Mill 1313 Mill Street, SE Salem, OR 97301-6351   For luncheon reservations, call 503.370.2808 or email rsvp@salemcityclub.com by noon, the Wednesday before each program. Register online at www.SalemCityClub.com   Member Lunch, $12 Member No Lunch, No Cost Nonmember Lunch, $15 Nonmember No Lunch: $5 Vegetarian or vegan entrees are available and must be requested at time of RSVP   Free parking Doors open at 11:30 a.m. Not a Member yet?  Join online at SalemCityClub.com Contact Info for SCC 503.370.2808: rsvp@salemcityclub.com   CCTV Broadcast Schedule  SCC programs can be seen on CCTV, Comcast Cable Channel 21, for two weeks starting the Wednesday after the meeting on Wednesdays at 4pm, Thursdays at 4:30pm, Fridays at 7pm, and Saturdays at 1pm.  Salem City Club's mission: "...to provide a common meeting ground for persons of divergent  beliefs, politics and occupations, for the interchange of ideas and stimulation of intelligent thinking and action on civic affairs; and to inform and activate its members and the community in public matters, and to arouse in them an appreciation of the responsibilities of citizenship."     Thank You Sustaining Contributors! Platinum Contributors Kathleen Beaufait Egon & Diana Bodtker Beverly Bow Deborah Dancik & Edd LeSage Britta Lion Franz Roger P. Gillette Mary Kamppi Steve Kenney Jan & Les Margosian Anita Saalfeld Linda Teal Bob & Leslie Zeigen   Gold Contributors Keith York & Mary Hart Ruth Young Silver Contributors Adele Egan Nancy Kuehn Bill Mainwaring Raquel Moore-Green Kathy & Steve Sansone Martha H. Curry And thank you to those members who donated and wish to remain anonymous   January 13,  Volume 46, Issue 10 Peak Oil and Ponzi Finance: LAST GASPS OF A TERMINAL ECONOMY?   Join us on Friday, January 24th at noon, when we will hear from Mr. Charlie Stephens.  He is a long-time public policy specialist, with a wide range of experiences.  He spent 17 years at the Oregon Department of Energy as a lead policy analyst.  His broad areas of expertise include energy policy, energy efficiency, renewable energy, transportation systems and land use, economic and community development, macroeconomics, sustainable agriculture, international trade and foreign policy, and climate change. He is a retired Navy Commander, having served 22 years in the Navy and Coast Guard.   Mr. Stephens will talk about money and oil connections throughout history, including the role of energy and finance in our current economic problems. He will give his assessment of current energy options as we look to the immediate future, including nuclear, shale, tar sands and fracking.   He is a graduate of Dartmouth College and the Thayer School of Engineering in Hanover, New Hampshire.  While at Dartmouth, he played a key role in modeling one of the five sectors within the Meadows/Forrester team that produced the original Limits to Growth study.  Currently, he is one of the leading national experts on energy efficiency of appliances and related technologies.   When he's not working, Charlie enjoys spending time in the cathedrals of the old growth forests of the Pacific Northwest, and riding and working with his horses.   Please join us Friday, January 24, 2014, as we welcome Charlie Stephens at the Willamette Heritage Center at the Mill.   For lunch reservations email rsvp@salemcityclub.com before noon Wednesday, January 22, 2014.  Parking is free.  Doors open at 11:30 AM.  For more information on this program please go to www.salemcityclub.com.   2013 Fall Membership Drive: A Smashing Success!   Thank you, Members, for making our Membership Drive a smashing success. We welcomed 28 new members from September 1 through the end of the year. Those members are: Steve Aanonson, Anne Bauer, Jonathan Bauer, Keith Bauer, Madge Bauer, Michael Conroyd, Martha Curry, William Dalton, Tom Dutoit, Dorothy Eberhardt, Dan Ebert, Brian Fordham, Brian Hart, Rose Kachadoorian, Marcia Kelley, Cynthia Kimball, Kim Lemman, Kathy Lincoln, Nicholoas Nikas, Sean Nikas, Selma Pierce, Michael Powers, Sam Wegner, Kathleen West, Jill Woods, Jo Ann Yockey, Jon Yoder, Mary Lou Zeek.   Members who introduced someone to the Club, who then joined during the drive, were entered into a prize drawing for a Weekend at the Beach. CONGRATULATIONS to Hans West, who introduced Kathleen West. Because this introduction was so easy, he promised to get another membership. We'll hold him to it. (The original name drawn on December 13 was not eligible for the drawing. A replacement drawing was held on January 10, prior to the program.)   Building membership is a full-time, 365 day-a-year mission. The strength and variety of our programs makes it easy to invite a community member to experience the club. Often, one experience will lead to a member joining the Club. Please be sure to mention your membership in Salem City Club when you are out with friends and family. Encourage them to see Salem City Club at work and we can all get the benefit of increased membership: energy, diversity, and financial strength.    Mark Your Calendar,      Save the Dates February 7: Coordinated Care Organizations: Oregon's Unique Approach to Better Health Care.  Ruth Bauman, Chairwoman of the Board, Willamette Valley Community Health, A CCO Serving the Mid-Willamette Valley; Dr. William C. "Bud" Pierce, M.D., Immediate Past President, Oregon Medical Association; Cheryl Nestor-Wolfe, Chief Operations Officer, Salem Health.  This is the fourth program in the series, Health Care for Oregonians.    February 19:  State of the City Address:  Mayor Anna Peterson.  A joint effort by Salem City Club, Downtown Rotary, and the Salem Area Chamber of Commerce.  Noon - 1:30 p.m. at the Salem Convention Center. February 21: At the Helm of NOAA: Science and Policy from Sharks to Rats.  Dr. Jane Lubchenco, former Administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; currently Valley Professor of Marine Biology and Distinguished Professor of Zoology, Oregon State University. March 7:  "Win, Place, Show: Wagering on Health Care Reform."  This is the fifth program in the series, Health Care for Oregonians.   Supporting Business Partners        Business Partners