Clipmarks | Academia Clips

Have You Ever Wondered, Or Is It Just Me.....?

Sun, 12 Oct 2008 08:59:01 GMT

clipped by: merrie
clipper's remarks: I hope that you can be sufficiently open-minded as to read this.

The following article is EXTREMELY IMPORTANT because it provides an explanation for the above, as well as why Obama has been deceptive about his 10+ years' association with unrepentant American terrorist William Ayers. Please take a couple of minutes to read the article.

Lastly, the reason I find credible the point made by the author, Jack Cashill, that Obama did not write his two celebrated memoirs (which were most probably ghostwritten by Ayers), is because I am a published writer. I
know how hard writing is. I also know that writing is a craft that must be
honed: one does not SUDDENLY overnight become a good writer, especially if
one has never written before.

Peace,

Maria Chang, Ph.D.
Professor Emerita

Clip Source: copiousdissent.blogspot.com

Have you wondered, as I have, why Obama left no paper trail?
1. He has refused to make public his Senior Thesis at Columbia U., not even the title.
2. He has refused to make public his records (grades) at Occidental College, Columbia U., & Harvard Law School.
3. Despite being president (elected) of the Harvard Law Review, he did not write anything beyond a brief legal note (see article below).

4. Despite teaching as a Lecturer at Chicago U.'s law school for years, Obama NEVER wrote or published any law article. That, for anyone familiar with academia, is very very unusual. But it did not stop Chicago from OFFERING OBAMA A TENURED APPOINTMENT.

Now we know why Barack Obama refuses (and will continue to sandbag) to make public his senior thesis & his undergraduate & law school grades & records. Because doing so will make clear that he did not write those two memoirs. Note that many will vote for Obama because they admire him for his writing & "intellect." (Cashill's article within Link).

Tags: jack cashill, obama, ayers, dreams from my father

Demographic Winter - the decline of the human family

Sat, 11 Oct 2008 06:18:47 GMT

clipped by: Efrain Alvarado

Clip Source: blessedamongmen.blogspot.com

"...reawaken society to the importance of the stable, intact family and engender a discussion and greater focus in the media, in academia, in the halls of policy makers, in religious circles, in the committees of civil society, and in households around the world....

In this way, we hope to avert the storm that is now most surely coming on."

If you haven't seen it already (this came out in February), watch the trailer.

Tags: demographics, population

How to Improve Your Self-Control

Wed, 01 Oct 2008 00:03:33 GMT

clipped by: Mohir
clipper's remarks: Some people seem to find it easy to resist temptation while others can be relied on to always yield to self-gratification. To a certain extent we have to accept our starting point on the self-control sliding scale and do the best we can with it.
3. How to improve your self-control:
Global processing. This means trying to focus on the wood rather than the trees.
Abstract reasoning. This means trying to avoid considering the specific details of the situation at hand in favour of thinking about how actions fit into an overall framework - being philosophical.
High-level categorisation. This means thinking about high-level concepts rather than specific instances. Any long-term project, whether in business, academia or elsewhere can easily get bogged down by focusing too much on the minutiae of everyday processes and forgetting the ultimate goal.

Clip Source: www.spring.org.uk

"It's all right letting yourself go, as long as you can get yourself back." ~Mick Jagger

New research suggests self-control can be improved using abstract reasoning.

1. Evidence that abstract thinking improves self-control

It never ceases to amaze just how different two people's views of exactly the same event can be: one person's freedom fighter is another's terrorist. But the way in which we view people or events isn't just constrained by unchangeable patterns of thought that are set in stone. Dr Fujita and colleagues explored the idea that simple manipulations of how we construe the world can have a direct effect on self-control. Their hunch was that thinking from a more abstract, high-level perspective increases self-control.

2. How personality and the situation affect self-control

Self-control is not just affected by how we are thinking at a specific moment, that would be too easy. We have each developed different amounts of self-control.

Tags: self control

Twitter for Academia

Wed, 17 Sep 2008 11:54:14 GMT

clipped by: akipta

Clip Source: academhack.outsidethetext.com

When I first heard about Twitter I thought, this was the example par excellence of these fears, so for many months I did not investigate it at all. Then I read an article by Clive Thompson at Wired. Clive’s article convinced me that perhaps it was worth giving Twitter a try. At this point I have to say, I am so glad that I did. Although I am still beginning to wrap my head around all of its varied uses—I think for the most part Twitter users themselves are still figuring this out—I have been using it for over six months now and come up with some academic uses.

Some of these ideas are general, and some are specifically from a Twittering assignment I did for a class last semester. When I first added it to the syllabus I had no idea what to expect. It was just sort of an experiment that I had planned for the end of the semester (all of the students signed up for twitter and followed each other).

Tags: twitter education

Concordancia

Wed, 17 Sep 2008 00:57:31 GMT

clipped by: hermanosancho

Clip Source: www.juventudrebelde.cu

Ha de decirse: “La mayoría opina que debemos hacerlo así”; pero si el sujeto es: “la mayoría de los trabajadores”, el verbo debe ir en plural: opinan

la Real Academia Española aconseja que el verbo concuerde con el sustantivo más cercano —en este caso, «trabajadores» y no «mayoría». Sin embargo en: «El Consejo de Ministros se reunió», no sucede lo mismo, aquí la forma verbal ha de adoptar el singular, porque «Consejo de Ministros» es una unidad lexicalizada, es decir, constituye un sustantivo, y funciona como tal.

Academia Cutre

Tue, 02 Sep 2008 23:06:20 GMT

clipped by: alberto0071

Clip Source: eee.cervantes.es

El Sueño igualitario 69

Tue, 02 Sep 2008 17:47:37 GMT

clipped by: osserco

Clip Source: cazarabet.com

El homenaje a las víctimas en Monroyo queda deslucido por el “no” del alcalde

José Luis Cuerda, libre y a gusto consigo mismo en "Los girasoles ciegos"

Cine y Guerra Civil: un conflicto inacabado, por José Andrés Rojo

José Luis Cuerda "Era una época de podredumbre moral"

El traductor y editor Alberto Méndez falleció sin conocer el éxito que alcanzó su primer y único libro

La Academia de Cine ofrecerá una doble exposición en homenaje al 25 aniversario de la muerte de Luis Buñuel

El Centro Documental de la Memoria Histórica de Salamanca recibe nuevos fondos

El Ayuntamiento de Palma colocó la nueva placa con el nombre de Plaza de Son Castelló en la antigua Plaza del Caudillo

CTV Teatro enseñará el Canal de los Presos en Europa

La memoria histórica presente en Replega 2008 de Monzón

“Memorias de la Guerra Civil española: transmisión, reapropiación y uso Europa-América Latina”. Maison de l'Amérique Latine (París), 1 al 3 de abril de 2009

Rocket Scientists Say We'll Never Reach the Stars

Sat, 23 Aug 2008 13:32:42 GMT

clipped by: Silkweaver
clipper's remarks: Even the most theoretically efficient type of propulsion, an imaginary engine powered by antimatter, would still require decades to reach Alpha Centauri, according to Robert Frisbee, group leader in the Advanced Propulsion Technology Group within NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

And then there's the issue of fuel. It would take at least the current energy output of the entire world to send a probe to the nearest star

Clip Source: www.wired.com

Many believe that humanity's destiny lies with the stars. Sadly for us, rocket propulsion experts now say we may never even get out of the Solar System.

At a recent conference, rocket scientists from NASA, the U.S. Air Force and academia doused humanity's interstellar dreams in cold reality. The scientists, presenting at the Joint Propulsion Conference in Hartford, Connecticut, analyzed many of the designs for advanced propulsion that others have proposed for interstellar travel. The calculations show that, even using the most theoretical of technologies, reaching the nearest star in a human lifetime is nearly impossible.

The major problem is that propulsion -- shooting mass backwards to go forwards -- requires large amounts of both time and fuel. For instance, using the best rocket engines Earth currently has to offer, it would take 50,000 years to travel the 4.3 light years to Alpha Centauri, our solar system's nearest neighbor.

Tags: space travel, propulsion

Ray Bradbury on the State of Censorship in Academia

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 04:58:51 GMT

clipped by: bmeuppls
clipper's remarks: A commenter posted this at www.ace.mu.nu. A discourse from Ray Bradbury on the effects of political correctness on literature and free thought.

I doubt the fire-starters would see themselves as Ray does...

Clip Source: minx.cc

The point is obvious. There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches. Every minority, be it Baptist / Unitarian, Irish / Italian / Octogenarian / Zen Buddhist, Zionist/Seventh-day Adventist, Women's Lib/Republican, Mattachine/FourSquareGospel feel it has the will, the right, the duty to douse the kerosene, light the fuse. Every dimwit editor who sees himself as the source of all dreary blanc-mange plain porridge unleavened literature, licks his guillotine and eyes the neck of any author who dares to speak above a whisper or write above a nursery rhyme.

Fire-Captain Beatty, in my novel Fahrenheit 451, described how the books were burned first by the minorities, each ripping a page or a paragraph from the book, then that, until the day came when the books were empty and the minds shut and the library closed forever.

Tags: pc, literature, censorship

Solzhenitsyn's "Myths" Being Edited Out of Textbooks

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 03:17:18 GMT

clipped by: bmeuppls
clipper's remarks: Communism couldn't silence him, but academia will...

Shameful

Clip Source: pajamasmedia.com

In fact, under “classroom strategies” in the Norton instructor’s manual, teachers are told that they are likely to encounter the problem of students accepting the “truth” of what Solzhenitsyn has to say: “Because the story answers to most of the myths and preconceptions Westerners already have about Soviet life, the problem will be to make sure that students read it with the same degree of resistance with which they would normally confront any other piece of fiction.” Here we have the apologists for communism directing teachers: All that you’ve heard about the brutality of communism is merely part of our “myths and preconceptions.” Students must be reeducated to “resist” the testimony of Solzhenitsyn as dramatized in his fictional account.

The communists did not succeed in killing him, but the fashionable tenured academics quietly dispose of his work through their own “memory holes” of excision and distortion.

academHack

Sat, 09 Aug 2008 18:45:53 GMT

clipped by: akipta

Clip Source: academhack.outsidethetext.com

academhack

Clip Source: academhack.outsidethetext.com

The goal of this site is to serve as a resource for academics trying to navigate the world of computing and technology. There are many sites that do a good job of exploring and theorizing how the growing digital presence is changing the world of academia, and there are also a host of sites that catalog ways to use technology effective, there certainly seems to be a lack of sites dedicated to bridging this gap. That is, outlining the more concrete ways technology and computers can be used to improve both teaching (how to get beyond the use of Power Point) and scholarship (did you know there are more effective, cheaper, alternatives to MS Word-how does a $30 word processor designed by academics sound?). To that end, this blog is going to try to chronicle how I use technology in an effort to teach and write more effectively.

Tags: bloc higher-education academia technology tools

Psychology, Sociology most politically correct fields

Fri, 25 Jul 2008 20:30:00 GMT

clipped by: jklugman
clipper's remarks:

The first thing that Simmons does in the study with the database — which covers a range of disciplines and institution types — is to identify a politically correct cohort, reflecting largely common views on a set of issues that are seen as defining political correctness. He finds a set of issues that produce this cohort.

The views are the belief that gender gaps in math and science fields are largely due to discrimination; support for affirmative action; and belief that discrimination is a key cause of racial inequities in American society. Generally, members of this cohort see race and gender as fundamental — and share that belief much more than beliefs about the curriculum or scholarship, such that the study says that “multiculturalism trumps postmodernism.”

Via Tyler Cowen

Clip Source: www.insidehighered.com

The new study, which does so, was produced by Solon Simmons, co-author of last year’s report and an assistant professor of conflict analysis and resolution at George Mason.

Discipline

Moderately Correct

Politically Incorrect

Politically Correct

Non-Committal

Psychology

15.2%

21.7%

58.7%

4.3%

Sociology

48.2%

1.8%

44.6%

5.4%

English

30.2%

18.9%

41.5%

9.4%

History

50.0%

16.7%

31.5%

1.9%

Elementary education

40.0%

28.9%

24.4%

6.7%

Communication

35.6%

31.1%

22.2%

11.1%

Nursing

41.8%

25.5%

18.2%

14.5%

Art

46.3%

17.1%

14.6%

22.0%

Business (general)

27.0%

37.8%

13.5%

21.6%

Political science

58.3%

14.6%

10.4%

16.7%

Criminal justice

63.6%

25.5%

9.1%

1.8%

Economics

32.6%

51.2%

4.7%

11.6%

Marketing

31.8%

43.2%

4.5%

20.5%

Accounting

40.0%

4.0%

16.0%

Computer science

42.4%

48.5%

3.0%

6.1%

Biology

62.7%

19.6%

2.0%

15.7%

Finance

34.3%

0.0%

31.4%

Management information

19.4%

72.2%

0.0%

8.3%

Mechanical engineering

17.6%

50.0%

0.0%

32.4%

Electrical engineering

34.1%

19.5%

0.0%

46.3%

Tags: sociology, psychology, academia, academics

Comments from Huffpo

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 20:05:04 GMT

clipped by: kittyh1k
clipper's remarks: This is a succinct statement explaining what is wrong with McCain......he is the same as Bush.

Clip Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

What concerns me is I don't think most people are really questioning McCain's intelligence for the job. The media and everyone else seems to be giving him a free pass like they did George Bush. Why? Because most are afraid to question a former POW as if that confers some kind of protective status and forgives everything else. When you graduate almost at the bottom of your class, that should mean something to more people and neither Dubya nor McCain would have been accepted into prestigious schools had it not been for their father's influences. So what's wrong with American voters that they prefer nitwits and uncurious people who haven't distinguished themselves in academia over those that have done well in school or made it through academia based on their own merits and not their parents?

Love...Science...EGOS 2008

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 19:25:42 GMT

clipped by: bkuba
clipper's remarks: EGOS 2008 in A'dam

Clip Source: www.egosnet.org

Tags: conference, academia, academics

PMMG - Treinamento

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 14:24:47 GMT

clipped by: Marinho
clipper's remarks: (continua...) Na impossibilidade de realizar um treinamento massivo para os cerca de 10 mil policiais civis no estado, a Academia de Polícia Civil de Minas Gerais (Acadepol) finaliza esta semana as gravações de um vídeo com informações sobre abordagem policial, e que será enviado para os membros da corporação no interior, junto com uma cartilha. Já os 300 novos PMs que vão integrar a corporação tiveram na quinta-feira um treinamento intenso, na academia da Polícia Militar, no Bairro Prado, na Região Oeste de Belo Horizonte. Depois de três anos no curso de formação de oficiais, eles puderam experimentar tudo o que aprenderam num torneio de práticas policiais.

Clip Source: www.uai.com.br

Na Acadepol, prática serviu para que fosse gravado um vídeo a ser enviado para delegacias do interior. Em agosto, curso será ministrado

Na impossibilidade de realizar um treinamento massivo para os cerca de 10 mil policiais civis no estado, a Academia de Polícia Civil de Minas Gerais (Acadepol) finaliza esta semana as gravações de um vídeo com informações sobre abordagem policial, e que será enviado para os membros da corporação no interior, junto com uma cartilha. Já os 300 novos PMs que vão integrar a corporação tiveram na quinta-feira um treinamento intenso, na academia da Polícia Militar, no Bairro Prado, na Região Oeste de Belo Horizonte. Depois de três anos no curso de formação de oficiais, eles puderam experimentar tudo o que aprenderam num torneio de práticas policiais.