Prometheus 6

Driven by newly documented slumps in learning, by crime rates and by high dropout rates in high school, educators across New York and the nation are struggling to rethink middle school and how best to teach adolescents at a transitional juncture of self-discovery and hormonal change.

The difficulty of educating this age group is felt even in many wealthy suburban school districts. But it is particularly intense in cities, where the problems that are compounded in middle school are more acute to begin with and where the search for solutions is most urgent.

If I remember correctly, differences in educational outcomes between Black and white kids appears around the fifth grade. I'd like to see that problem addressed. But that's not the problem they're dealing with here.

Middle school teachers point to the gulf between the smooth-skinned sixth grade “babies” and these eighth-graders on the verge of adulthood, and note how they must guide these students through the profound transformations of adolescence.

“These kids go through more change in their lives than at any other time except the first three years,” said Sue Swaim, executive director of the National Middle School Association.

The Seth Low seventh graders have their own theories about why middle school scores plummet.

Nadine George, 12, said she is struggling in science class now because she never understood it in elementary school, despite getting good grades on tests. “Not that I knew how to do it, but whatever was in my notes I just copied it down,” she cheerily elaborated.

Jeorge Coronado, 13, said he was distracted now by fights and girls, who were starting to “look mad good.” Fabiola Noel, 12, disclosed that during a recent math class, her mind wandered to the look of her hair. In the note that was torn up in science class, Lillian Safa, 13, had asked a friend why a third girl was ignoring her. Two weeks later, Lillian reported, they are once again friends. 

Trying to Find Solutions in Chaotic Middle Schools
By ELISSA GOOTMAN

Sit in with a seventh-grade science class at Seth Low, a cavernous Brooklyn middle school, as paper balls fly and pens are flicked from desk to desk.

A girl is caught with a note and quickly tears it up, blushing, as her classmates chant, “Read it!” The teacher, Laura Lowrie, tries to demonstrate simple machines by pulling from a box a hammer, a pencil sharpener and then, to her instant remorse, a nutcracker — the sight of which sends a cluster of boys into a fit of giggles and anatomical jokes.

“It’s the roughest, toughest, hardest thing to teach,” Ms. Lowrie said of middle school. “I’ll go home and feel disappointed with what’s going on and I’ll try a different tactic the next day.” As for the nutcracker, she sighed, “I should have used a stapler.”

NIce, normal chaos...just the way we like it. 

Diplomats in the region are now hurrying to cobble together an African peacekeeping force to take the place of the Ethiopian forces. But despite murmurs of commitment from several countries, including Uganda, South Africa and Nigeria, no force has yet materialized.

Somalia is far from stable now, with many heavy weapons still in the hands of warlords and anti-government forces, and the country’s reliable level of turmoil is likely to dissuade many nations from volunteering to send troops.

Ethiopia Plans to Pull Troops From Somalia
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia, Jan. 2 — The prime minister of Ethiopia, Meles Zenawi, said today that his country, one of the poorest in the world, could not afford to keep its troops in neighboring Somalia much longer, and that Somalia’s stability depended on the quick injection of foreign peacekeepers.

With the easy achievement gains already behind us, the next level of progress will require rigorous systemic change. The states, for example, will need to adopt rigorous examinations that track the federal test, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, more closely. They will have to crack down on state teachers colleges that turn out poor graduates, and devise ways — including differential pay — to persuade highly qualified teachers to work in failing schools that they have historically avoided. To move forward, the country must also find new ways to support and transform failing schools, beyond labeling them failures and presuming that the stigma will inspire better performance.

A New Year for School Reform

It is not a good thing that selling dollars is now a thinkable thought for those central bankers.

I need to learn a little more about this. I don't think it's as bad as if selling, or just not buying, our debit became a thought they would take seriously. By the time anyone thought about it I'm pretty sure a whole cascade of problems would have to had happened.

But I'm not actually clear on what those problems would be, if there's a point where events cascade. Not like I can really impact that but you have to watch the patterns in your environment that can move you around...and believe it or not, this is one of them.

Dollar’s Skid Puts a Glow on the Euro
By JEREMY W. PETERS

The dollar slumped yesterday and the euro climbed to a three-week high against the currency.

A steady slide in the value of the dollar since late 2005, primarily against the euro and the British pound, has steepened over the last month amid indications that interest rates will rise in Europe, while the Federal Reserve is expected to cut rates this year.

At the same time, countries with large dollar holdings are showing a new willingness to dump the dollar in favor of the rising euro, though the current activity is seen as posing little long-term risk to the dollar.

Who's afraid of the big bad boss? Plenty of us, new FSU study shows
BY BARRY RAY

The abusive boss has been well documented in movies ("Nine to Five"), television (Fox's "My Big Fat Obnoxious Boss") and even the Internet (http://HateBoss.com). Now, a Florida State University professor and two of his doctoral students have conducted a study that shines some light on the magnitude of the problem and documents its effects on employee health and job performance.

"They say that employees don't leave their job or company, they leave their boss. We wanted to see if this is, in fact, true," said Wayne Hochwarter, an associate professor of management in FSU's College of Business.

Working with doctoral students Paul Harvey and Jason Stoner, Hochwarter surveyed more than 700 people who work in a variety of jobs about their opinions of supervisor treatment on the job. The survey generated the following results:

• Thirty-one percent of respondents reported that their supervisor gave them the "silent treatment" in the past year.
• Thirty-seven percent reported that their supervisor failed to give credit when due.
• Thirty-nine percent noted that their supervisor failed to keep promises.
• Twenty-seven percent noted that their supervisor made negative comments about them to other employees or managers.
• Twenty-four percent reported that their supervisor invaded their privacy.
• Twenty-three percent indicated that their supervisor blames others to cover up mistakes or to minimize embarrassment.

Links everywhere to everything that contributed to the psychic gestalt that generated the post, in the order I read them (which is why tabbed browsing is now de rigeur).

Sad Freaks of the Nation - Whiskey Fire

So even as the snivelling plagiarist we're dissecting sneers at the "MSM" for (subjunctively) dismissing Red Dawn as "cheesy" ephemera, he concedes that they would have a point in doing so.

It's all very confused. But it's worth stepping back and recognizing that these are structural ambivalences, necessary consequences of the way the movement conservative identity is being constructed. The imperative here is not to make an argument, or to even make sense. It is to validate the distinct group identity of "conservatives."

The resulting images showed clear differences between a birthday already experienced, and a birthday yet to come.

In particular, when looking ahead, three particular areas of the brain were activated - the left lateral premotor cortex, the left precuneus and the right posterior cerebellum.

These brain areas are already known to be involved in the imagining of body movements, suggesting that when the human brain is thinking about the future, it does so in terms of distinct movements and actions that will happen at that point.

Scan shows how brains plot future

Brain scans have given US scientists a clue about how we create a mental image of our own future.

The Washington University team say that specific areas of the brain are active when thinking about upcoming events.

Save Judeo-Christian values
By Virgil Goode
2 hours, 23 minutes ago

A letter I sent in early December was written in response to hundreds of e-mails from constituents upset about Rep.-elect Keith Ellison's decision to use the Quran in connection with his congressional swearing-in. Their communications followed media reports that Ellison, a Minnesota Democrat, had said that he would swear on the Quran. He repeated that at a gathering of Muslims in Detroit on Dec. 26.

My letter did not call for a religious test for prospective members of Congress, as some have charged. Americans have the right to elect any person of their choosing to represent them. I indicated to my constituents that I did not subscribe to the Quran in any way, and I intended to use the Bible in connection with my swearing-in. I also stated that the Ten Commandments and "In God We Trust" are on the wall of my office, and I have no intention of displaying the Quran in my office. That is my choice, and I stand by my position and do not apologize for it.

No one asked you to.

When the Republicans decided to end the last session without finishing up critical business just to support their political ambitions they left little choice. They have no time to change the rules Republicans set up. Me, I'd make them live under their own rules for at least a year while pursuing what folks actually need. 

Democrats To Start Without GOP Input
Quick Passage of First Bills Sought
By Lyndsey Layton and Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, January 2, 2007; A01

As they prepare to take control of Congress this week and face up to campaign pledges to restore bipartisanship and openness, Democrats are planning to largely sideline Republicans from the first burst of lawmaking.

It's that damn rap music, no one wants the classics anymore because of that damn rap music.

So librarians are making hard decisions and struggling with a new issue: whether the data-driven library of the future should cater to popular tastes or set a cultural standard, even as the demand for the classics wanes.

Library officials say they will always stock Shakespeare's plays, "The Great Gatsby" and other venerable titles. And many of the books pulled from one Fairfax library can be found at another branch and delivered to a patron within a week.

But in the effort to stay relevant in an age in which reference materials and novels can be found on the Internet and Oprah's Book Club helps set standards of popularity, libraries are not the cultural repositories they once were.

Oprah?

OPRAH??

Say it ain't so...but then Oprah is part of Black culture. We can still blame Black culture.

Hello, Grisham -- So Long, Hemingway?
With Shelf Space Prized, Fairfax Libraries Cull Collections
By Lisa Rein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, January 2, 2007; A01

You can't find "Abraham Lincoln: His Speeches and Writings" at the Pohick Regional Library anymore. Or "The Education of Henry Adams" at Sherwood Regional. Want Emily Dickinson's "Final Harvest"? Don't look to the Kingstowne branch.

It's not that the books are checked out. They're just gone. No one was reading them, so librarians took them off the shelves and dumped them.

Along with those classics, thousands of novels and nonfiction works have been eliminated from the Fairfax County collection after a new computer software program showed that no one had checked them out in at least 24 months.

You think this is bad?

For Iraqis, a tie to the United States is a life-threatening liability, particularly in harder-line Sunni neighborhoods. In 2003, Laith, an Army interpreter who would allow only his first name to be used, got a note threatening his family if he did not quit his job. His neighborhood, Adhamiya, was full of Baath Party loyalists. A month later, his father opened the door to a stranger, who shot him dead.

Laith’s mother begged him to stop working, but his salary, $700 a month at the time, supported the entire family. Then someone threw a sound grenade at the house.

If they settle your ass in Red State America, you'll REALLY be fucked. Ya stinkin' A-Rabs...

Few Iraqis Are Gaining U.S. Sanctuary
By SABRINA TAVERNISE and ROBERT F. WORTH

BAGHDAD, Jan. 1 — With thousands of Iraqis desperately fleeing this country every day, advocates for refugees, and even some American officials, say there is an urgent need to allow more Iraqi refugees into the United States.

Until recently the Bush administration had planned to resettle just 500 Iraqis this year, a mere fraction of the tens of thousands of Iraqis who are now believed to be fleeing their country each month. State Department officials say they are open to admitting larger numbers, but are limited by a cumbersome and poorly financed United Nations referral system.

The Black American Problem

When I brought this up earlier I was attacked and it was claimed that the issue just doesn't exist. And yet, here it is again.

"I became so frustrated with visiting inner-city schools that I just stopped going. The sense that you need to learn just isn't there," she says. "If you ask the kids what they want or need, they will say an iPod or some sneakers. In South Africa, they don't ask for money or toys. They ask for uniforms so they can go to school."

There's a problem with the black American culture in America, and I'm going to continue to talk about them, no matter how much people want to close their ears and cover their eyes.

THIS, Oliver, is acting white.

"People should not be afraid that we're going to fall into the Gulf. That's not going to happen," said Roy Dokka, lead researcher and executive director of the Center for GeoInformatics at Louisiana State University.

He described the slide into the Gulf as "a kind of avalanche of material, except that it is happening very slowly. It moved about the width of two credit cards this year."

While that may seem trifling in the big picture, Dokka said engineers need to include this reality into their plans for levees, floodgates and other projects.

I'll say this, though: that Manhattan-sized iceberg has me convinced everyone around 20 years old or so should consider moving inland.

Study: La. slowly slipping into gulf
By CAIN BURDEAU, Associated Press Writer
Mon Jan 1, 9:47 PM ET

A new report by scientists studying Louisiana's sinking coast says the land here is not just sinking, it's sliding ever so slowly into the Gulf of Mexico.

The new findings may add a kink to plans being drawn up to build bigger and better levees to protect this historic city and Cajun bayou culture.

The belief that the traditional intuitive notion of a free will divorced from causality is inflated, metaphysical nonsense, Dr. Dennett says reflecting an outdated dualistic view of the world.

Rather, Dr. Dennett argues, it is precisely our immersion in causality and the material world that frees us. Evolution, history and culture, he explains, have endowed us with feedback systems that give us the unique ability to reflect and think things over and to imagine the future. Free will and determinism can co-exist.

“All the varieties of free will worth having, we have,” Dr. Dennett said.

“We have the power to veto our urges and then to veto our vetoes,” he said. “We have the power of imagination, to see and imagine futures.”

In this regard, causality is not our enemy but our friend, giving us the ability to look ahead and plan. “That’s what makes us moral agents,” Dr. Dennett said. “You don’t need a miracle to have responsibility.”

Free Will: Now You Have It, Now You Don’t
By DENNIS OVERBYE

I was a free man until they brought the dessert menu around. There was one of those molten chocolate cakes, and I was suddenly being dragged into a vortex, swirling helplessly toward caloric doom, sucked toward the edge of a black (chocolate) hole. Visions of my father’s heart attack danced before my glazed eyes. My wife, Nancy, had a resigned look on her face.

Last Wednesday, incidentally, marked the five-year anniversary of the raid on Maye's home. Five years that he's been in prison. And five years that his kids haven't had a father. It also marked five years since this country's insane drug war unnecessarily took another victim -- Officer Ron Jones.

Cory Maye Denied
Radley Balko | December 29, 2006, 10:26pm

In a terse, eight-page decision, Mississippi Circuit Court Judge Michael Eubanks denied all of Cory Maye's arguments for a new trial today. Maye's defense team put forth devastating arguments that Judge Eubanks either dismissed without discussion, or didn't bother to address at all. The few issues he did take the time to discuss read like they came from the pen of a man who'd come to his conclusion before he'd done any anaylsis. I can't believe he sat through the same hearing I did last September.

Among other predictions for the U.S. in 2007:

-25 percent anticipate the second coming of Jesus Christ.

-19 percent think scientists are likely to find evidence of extraterrestrial life.

Less Shoplifting in Health and Beauty Aisle

There's a lot more at play than just wanting or not wanting to be around white folks. But there's always been a lot of projection in Black Conservative-speak. 

Because neighborhoods are racially segregated, African Americans' homes do not grow in value as fast as whites' homes do. Shapiro calculates that housing segregation costs African Americans tens of thousands of dollars in home equity. Homebuyers look for amenities commonly found in predominantly white neighborhoods. They pay extra for parks, convenient shopping and attractive views. Parents pay huge premiums for what they perceive to be good schools. Few parents can judge schools objectively. Instead, they use easy-to-observe markers, including the race of the students. These preferences raise the costs that first-time homebuyers face when they attempt to buy houses in those mostly white neighborhoods. Economic theory implies that if whites continue to waste money on irrational prejudices like this, market forces will eventually undo the racial disparity in wealth. But the experience of the last 50 years suggests otherwise. Inequality has grown because each new generation has been willing to pay a higher premium for these amenities. The market doesn't punish discrimination; it rewards it.

Whites fail to see any injustice in these differences. Shapiro's interviews convinced him that whites hide their privilege from themselves and, accordingly, feel no guilt for the hidden costs they impose on African Americans. People who inherited tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars nonetheless told Shapiro that they were self-made and self-reliant. They proudly told him how the assets they inherited grew under their stewardship. White parents use wealth to send their children to private schools or to give their adult children down payments for homes. They do not see how such practices hand today's inequalities on to the next generation.

Shapiro argues convincingly that these private matters spill over into public investment, too. He interviewed one upper-middle-class woman who told him that she was unconcerned with troubles in the local public school because she never intended to send her children there. Shapiro points out that her indifference -- and that of others like her -- is just one more obstacle in the path of people trying to improve local public education.

The Hidden Cost of Being African American
Reviewed by Michael Hout
From The Washington Post's Book World

African Americans often seem cut off from the economic mainstream. They face higher risks of poverty, joblessness and incarceration than their fellow citizens do. Community organizing, civil rights legislation, landmark court decisions and rising education have advanced the cause of racial equality. Overt bigotry has been banished from public places, and polls show that whites harbor fewer prejudices than they used to. But these improvements have not been enough.

How can disadvantage persist so long after most laws, minds and practices have changed? Thomas M. Shapiro argues in this sober and authoritative book that we should look to disparities of wealth for the answer. Whites are wealthier than African Americans, and whites' wealth advantage is much bigger than their advantages in either income or education (the point of Shapiro's earlier study, Black Wealth/White Wealth, co-authored with Melvin Oliver). Whites start out ahead because they inherit more from their parents, and America's racially segregated housing markets boost whites' home equities, while depressing those of African-American families. Shapiro, a professor of sociology at Brandeis, takes readers through the implications of these inequities and concludes that African Americans will not gain significant ground in the wealth divide until inheritance and housing policies change.

Seems someone was fishing for support for Orlando at Brad DeLong's joint.

The excellent Jon Hilsenrath and Rafael Gerena-Morales have an article http://online.wsj.com/article/SB116727318376761110-email.html about the Clinton-era "Moving to Opportunity" pilot program. And, coincidentally, a correspondent asks me this evening if it is indeed the case that high relative poverty among African-Americans today is principally due to residential segregation, and whether residential segregation is in turn principally due to African-Americans' preference to live near other African-Americans.

Ignore that WSJ link...here's one that works.

In On having the courage of one's convictions, I wrote

Following referrals and such, I noticed something about the reaction to Orlando Patterson's latest effort. Everyone, with only three exceptions I can find, ducked. And I'm one of the exceptions.

Well, it's happened again with his accusation that Black people are to blame for segregation. There's not much out there on either; maybe because it all came during the height of Saternalia, maybe because the soup was too thin to feed on.

While You Were at War . . .
By Richard A. Clarke
Sunday, December 31, 2006; B01

In every administration, there are usually only about a dozen barons who can really initiate and manage meaningful changes in national security policy. For most of 2006, some of these critical slots in the Bush administration have been vacant, such as the deputy secretary of state (empty since Robert B. Zoellick left for investment bank Goldman Sachs) and the deputy director of national intelligence (with Gen. Michael V. Hayden now CIA director). And with the nation involved in a messy war spiraling toward a bad conclusion, the key deputies and Cabinet members and advisers are all focusing on one issue, at the expense of all others: Iraq.

Named in honor of Charles Darwin, the Darwin Awards salute the improvement of the human genome by honoring those who accidentally remove themselves from it, thus ensuring that the next generation is one idiot smarter. Of necessity, the Awards are generally bestowed posthumously.

For 2006, the Winners are:
2006 Darwin Award Winner: STAR WARS
1st Runner Up: HAMMER OF DOOM
2nd Runner Up: HIGH ON LIFE
2006 Honorable Mention (no one dies): SNAKE IN THE GRASS
2006 Honorable Mention (no one dies): FLYSWATTER

Astronomers Relegate Pluto to Dwarf Status

After a week of contentious public and private debate, a small cluster of astronomers voted to demote Pluto from its planetary status. The world wept, and we wept with you.

Newfound Fossil Is Transitional between Fish and Landlubbers

Dubbed Tiktaalik roseae, this large, predatory fish bears a number of features found in the four-limbed creatures that eventually gave rise to all amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals. Plus, it gave our editor in chief another chance to take on creationism.

 Courtesy Iraq Coalition Casualty Count.

And a Happy New Year to you, too.

You should see the large trailer.

[F]our African nations -- Sudan, Ethiopia, Egypt and Uganda -- rank among the world's top 10 recipients in aid from the United States.

Bush Has Quietly Tripled Aid to Africa
Increase in Funding to Impoverished Continent Is Viewed as Altruistic or Pragmatic
By Michael A. Fletcher
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, December 31, 2006; A04

President Bush's legacy is sure to be defined by his wielding of U.S. military power in Afghanistan and Iraq, but there is another, much softer and less-noticed effort by his administration in foreign affairs: a dramatic increase in U.S. aid to Africa.

The president has tripled direct humanitarian and development aid to the world's most impoverished continent since taking office and recently vowed to double that increased amount by 2010 -- to nearly $9 billion.

Cool looks instinctive, but growing up with three brothers and raising three sons taught me something surprising:

Cool is learned.

The Hard Core Of Cool
Confidence, Grace And Underneath It All, the Need to Be Recognized
Donna Britt
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, December 30, 2006; C01

Years ago on a summer day, I was driving along the Detroit riverfront and saw a black man strolling down a wide downtown sidewalk.

Long, lithe and fluid as the river by his side, the man seemed to be gliding. Bareheaded, he wore a white, ankle-skimming djellaba from some sultry, equatorial nation. Yet something whispered that he was African American, something about his utter nonchalance as his garment whipped in the breeze and insinuated itself around his calves. Trust me:

He couldn't have been hotter -- or have seemed more chilled out.

Cool.

Over the years, I've seen plenty of striking men. But when someone mentions "cool," I hearken back to that strolling stranger. It wasn't his distinctive garb that burned his image into memory but his confidence. Flanked by skyscrapers and businessmen, he wore his exotic ensemble with such authority, the sweating corporate types around him seemed out of place.

Confidence is cool's most essential element. Perhaps that's why black men -- for whom the appearance of assurance can be a matter of life or death -- so often radiate it. Perhaps that's why in the United States, where men as different as Frank Sinatra, Joe Namath, Bruce Lee, Sean Connery, Benicio Del Toro and Johnny Depp have been deemed cool, black men remain cool's most imitated, consistent arbiters. I mean, there's cool -- and then there's brothercool.

I watched this show, Aftershock: Beyond The Civil War, on The History Channel last night. Interesting. They managed to display tolerance of the Confederate cause without displaying actual support (which from a neo-Con perspective nets out to support, but...).

When they talk that "letting tax cuts expire is a tax increase," just point out that's the legislation the Republican Congress passed. You're just acknowledging the sense of that Congress.

Seize the Chance
The politics of inequality have shifted. Now policy must follow.
Sunday, December 24, 2006; B06

THIS SERIES opened with the observation that Americans prefer not to discuss inequality. Nine months later, the climate has changed. John W. Snow, who served as Treasury secretary until July, broke ground for this administration by acknowledging that inequality was worth debating -- though he never quite conceded it was a problem. His successor, Henry M. Paulson Jr., forthrightly declared that "amid this country's strong economic expansion, many Americans simply aren't feeling the benefits." Meanwhile, Ben S. Bernanke, installed by President Bush as Federal Reserve chairman, has called for the fruits of globalization to be distributed more evenly. During his 2000 presidential campaign, Mr. Bush quipped that his base consisted of the "haves and the have-mores." We doubt he would make this joke now.