Category: Academia

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Event (web): 11 Jan – Google, CERN (Euro nuclear research org), LEGO, Nat Geographic & Sci American Holding a Global, Web-Based Science Fair

04 Education, Academia, Civil Society, Commerce
event sign-up

On January 11 at 9 a.m. EST, Google will host a live event on its brand new Science Fair YouTube Channel. More details about the fair will be announced then; we’re assuming the site will be fleshed out at that time, as well.

The global science competition is being hosted in partnership with CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research), LEGO, National Geographic and Scientific American. The goal is “to create a new kind of online science competition that is more global, open and inclusive than ever before.”

Teachers who want to receive classroom materials, including posters, stickers and bookmarks, as well as get registration information, can start signing up now.

Thanks to those posting to Mashable's Twitter feed (source article).

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ClimateGate Rolling Update CLOSED

03 Economy, 03 Environmental Degradation, 04 Education, 05 Energy, 12 Water, Academia, Collaboration Zones, Earth Intelligence, Ethics, Key Players, Non-Governmental, United Nations & NGOs
ClimateGate Rolling Update
ClimateGate Rolling Update

REMINDER:  Environmental Degradation, not Climate Change, is High-Level Threat #3.  Climate Change is less than 10% of that, and within Climate Change, mercury and sulfer are more important than carbon.  Furthermore, it is not possible to address any one threat without addressing the other nine (e.g. #1 Poverty) with harmonized policies from Agriculture to Water, so the bottom line is that these talks are isolated and worthless.  The world needs a serious global strategy with serious analytics, a commitment to understanding true costs of every product and service, and a commitment to bringing the five billion poor into a prosperous world at peace.  Anything less is a betrayal of the public trust.

19 Dec Top 10 Bad Developments For Global Warming Alarmists (HumanEvents)

Continue reading “ClimateGate Rolling Update CLOSED”

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Journal: The College Education Bubble-Scam-Implosion

03 Economy, 04 Education, Academia, Commercial Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence

Jerry Bowyer

The Great Relearning

Higher education's price-earnings ratio looks like Nevada housing circa 2007.

Jerry Bowyer, 12.16.10, 03:15 PM EST  Forbes

The overwhelming cultural consensus of the post-WWII generation was that if you are middle-class, then you simply must own your own home and your children must go to college. Out of that cultural consensus emerged a complex system of tax breaks and special lending deals designed to make sure that the number of Americans who bought houses and bachelor's degrees was as high as possible–or maybe more so.

Many people now understand that this system of tax-and-lend has created a multigenerational housing bubble. But only a few have noticed that a very similar tax-and-lend system has also created a multi-generational higher education bubble.

Read rest of article….
Phi Beta Iota: There is good news.  The smartest of the smart have been dropping out of high school, not just college, and then learning what they need to learn online and through hands-on experience.  Like most bubbles, including not just the housing mortgage bubble but also the DoD acquisition bubble, the DoD private military contractor bubble, and so on, this bubble rests on fraud being permitted–a lack of accountability for outcomes.  In today's world, with transparency emergent and soon rampant, accountability is going to be a fact of life.  That is a good thing.

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Event: 25-26 March 2011, Open Minds 2011 at the Wash DC National Museum of American History

03 Economy, 04 Education, 07 Health, 12 Water, Academia, Civil Society, Gift Intelligence, Peace Intelligence, Technologies
event link

Open Minds (formerly known as March Madness for the Mind) is the acclaimed annual exhibition of cutting-edge innovation from NCIIA's (National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance) best student teams. The exhibition takes place each year during NCIIA's annual conference, and is an opportunity for student teams to demonstrate their products and companies, and receive local and national media coverage. 10-15 teams are selected to participate in this high profile event, which involves an evening exhibition for NCIIA conference attendees as well as an exhibition open to the general public and an exciting video competition.

Open Minds 2011 will be held in Washington, D.C. at the National Museum of American History, March 25-26, 2011. Learn about participating 2010 teams here.

The Open Minds online application deadline has been EXTENDED until Friday, January 14, 2011.

Watch all the 2010 videos here.

Also see this list of events from Inventor's Digest

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Reference: The Kids Are All Right–Mad as Hell!

03 Economy, 04 Education, 11 Society, Academia, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Reform
Jon Lebkowsky Bio

Let the word go out, indeed. “Those are OUR streets, and we will always be there to demonstrate… people learned a lot… we are no longer that post ideological generation, we are no longer that generation that doesn’t care… we are now the generation that will stand with everyone who’s fighting back…” They’re mad as hell, and they’re not going to take it anymore.

15 year old Tells Establishment to Stick-it.

Coalition of Resistence National Conference 27 November 2010 Camden UK

You Tube 4:50 Minutes

See Also:

Ady Cousins, Counterfire.org

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Journal: Reinventing Education–Putting Students First

04 Education, Academia, Civil Society, Cultural Intelligence

Steve Denning

Reinventing education and the StudentsFirst.org movement

The US education is in crisis. The evidence is well-known and summarized in my post earlier this week.

Classroom A root cause of the crisis is the application of the factory model of management to education, where everything is arranged for the scalability and efficiency of “the system”, to which the students, the teachers and the parents have to adjust. “The system” grinds forward, at ever increasing cost and declining efficiency, dispiriting students, teachers and parents alike.

The root cause of the problems: factory model of management

. . . . . .

The five shifts that are needed in education

Just as in reinventing management, where five fundamental and interdependent shifts are needed, so in reinventing education five fundamental and interdependent shifts need to occur:

1.      The first shift concerns the goal which has to shift from a focus on the efficiency of “the system” to one of putting students first.

. . . . . .

Continue reading “Journal: Reinventing Education–Putting Students First”

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Journal: Mice, Men, Aging, & Policy

11 Society, Academia, Augmented Reality, Earth Intelligence, Methods & Process

Aging Ills Reversed in Mice

Scientists Tweak a Gene and Rejuvenate Cells, Raising Hopes for Uses in Humans

By GAUTAM NAIK

Scientists have partially reversed age-related degeneration in mice, an achievement that suggests a new approach for tackling similar disorders in people.

By tweaking a gene, the researchers reversed brain disease and restored the sense of smell and fertility in prematurely aged mice. Previous experiments with calorie restriction and other methods have shown that aspects of aging can be slowed. This appears to be the first time that some age-related problems in animals have actually been reversed.

Phi Beta Iota: Utterly fascinating in isolation.  However, in the context of the fragmentation of knowledge and the incoherence of policy, this kind of development is frightening in the absence of a draconian move away from stove-pipe and inherently corrupt (again, integrity is about coherence, not honor per se) governance, and toward comprehensive design that nurtures all humans, all minds, all the time.

See Also:

Graphic: Web of Fragmented Knowledge

Reference: 8 Populations, 4 Methods

Reference: 12 Core Policy Domains

Reference: 10 High-Level Threats to Humanity

Review: The Life and Death of NSSM 200 –How the Destruction of Political Will Doomed a U.S. Population Policy

Dennis Kucinich, Vice President for the Commonwealth–and Some Details