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This article has been very informative and has given me several ideas for implmentation at my own school. While my school is not a "hard-to-staff" school, the ideas for helping new teachers avoid burn-out are numerous. Thank you.
The Recruitment, Retention, and Development of Quality Teachers in Hard-to-Staff Schools
As a national sense of urgency builds towards greater student preparedness and achievement in public schools, the need for the recruitment and retention of quality teachers has reached a fevered pitch. Urban, suburban, and even rural districts are marketing themselves to prospective teachers in the hopes of luring promising educators into their districts and keeping them there.
Yet as effective as teacher recruitment efforts may be in individual districts, the teacher turnover statistic remains alarmingly high. Nationwide, annual teacher attrition (turnover) costs have risen to a staggering 7 billion dollars (NEA, 2007). Even more troubling are the statistics or numbers of teachers leaving hard-to-staff schools; recent numbers indicate that an average of 50% of teachers transfer, resign, or retire from high-risk schools within the first five years of employment (NEA, 2007). It is a sobering reality that teacher turnover is greatest in the most academically challenged environments.
The purpose of this article is to make recommendations for three critical questions regarding teacher recruitment, retention, and development in hard-to-staff schools:
- How do hard-to-staff schools aggressively recruit teachers for their campuses?
- What steps should principals take to develop new teachers once they become apart of their faculty?
- What activities should principals engage in to secure a teacher's long-term commitment to the school?
Throughout this article, the term hard-to-staff applies to schools with the following characteristics:
- Large percentage of socioeconomically disadvantaged students
- Difficult teaching environment
- Undesirable school location
- Low academic achievement of student population (Allen, 1999)
The term 'teachers' will refer to teachers new to any given hard-to-staff campus,regardless of their previous professional experience.
Teacher recruitment: before the first days of school
Principals in hard-to-staff schools can take a proactive approach to staffing by implementing the following techniques:
University Partnerships
Whenever possible, principals in hard-to-staff schools should solicit the cooperation of local colleges and universities to engage in early on-campus recruitment of prospective teachers. Many college graduates remain undecided on their career path as late as graduation day; a proactive approach to recruitment may sway a potential employee.
Pre-service Preparation
In partnering with local colleges and universities, hard-to-staff schools must make the case to the universities to expose pre-service teachers to not only the high-performing, exemplary schools, but to low socioeconomic schools as well. Too often, college graduates become disenchanted with the public school system when their first teaching assignment bears no resemblance to their student teaching experience. New teachers needa more accurate depiction of hard-to-staff schools, so they will know the challenges that await them (and be willing to face them anyway).
Job Shadowing
When a principal's recruitment efforts net potential employees, he or she should move quickly to immerse the new teacher in the life of the campus. Principals in hard-to-staff schools should create job shadowing or apprenticeship opportunities for new employees even before they sign their contracts. The sooner the employee becomes involved, the faster he or she will develop a sense of commitment to the campus.
Early Contract Signing
It is no longer reasonable to expect new teachers to grasp all the inner workings of a campus during the two weeks just prior to the start of school. Rather, new teacher contracts should begin as early as the first of June to ensure that time is allotted for pertinent trainings, job acclimation, and preparation. An earlier start would mean fewer overwhelmed teachers on the first days of school.
New teachers should always be given a great amount of fanfare upon their arrival to a campus. Celebrations that allow new faculty members to meet returning teachers should be initiated at the beginning of the school year and continued on a frequently recurring basis.
The first days of school
You've got the teachers now what will you do with them?
While most new teachers are given mentors upon their arrival, the mentor is almost always another teacher with a full course load and additional duties (since most teacher leaders tend to be involved in a plethora of activities). This arrangement leaves little time for true collaboration, and often leaves a new teacher to fend for his or herself.
To depart from such scenarios, hard-to-staff schools must either allocate (or be subsidized by the school district) funds to hire a full-time teacher mentor. The teacher mentor would be primarily responsible for professional development, cognitive coaching, and coordination of mentor-mentee partnerships.
The use of retired teachers as one-to-one mentors will provide new teachers with the assistance they need and the personalization that conventional mentorship does not afford. Retired teachers would serve as mentors in the classroom, acting in a coaching and co-teaching capacity. Feedback would be instant, giving the new teacher a support system for growth and development. In addition, new teachers should initially have a reduced course load for preparation and observation of best practices in peer classrooms. Principals must find monies to support this critical initiative rather than overburdening existing staff, as the importance of developing new teachers cannot be overstated.
Professional Development
The importance of relevant professional development and training opportunities to the survival of the new teacher cannot be negated. Training must be early, engaging, regularly repeated, and monitored for implementation. Critical topics for professional development in a hard-to-staff school would include:
- Understanding the culture of poverty (and its implications on teaching and learning)
- Discipline management (hard-to-staff campuses should develop a school-wide model for implementation)
- Inclusion strategies for special populations (Special Education and English Language Learners)
- Curriculum Implementation
- Assessment and Data Analysis
- Examining Student Work
- Motivation and Creating Opportunities for Student Success
- Documentation
- Campus policies and procedures
Weekly Debriefing
The campus principal must take a hands-on approach to teacher mentoring. Too often, the responsibility of acclimating new teachers (to the campus) falls to the assistant principal, creating a disconnect between the principal and his newest/most impressionable employees. The principal must set aside time regularly (weekly is ideal) to debrief and interact with new teachers. Time with new teachers is far too critical for a principal to delegate, and should remain a priority on a principal's agenda for the entire academic year.
Test Preparation
On average, 34% of teachers enter the profession without the benefit of full certification (NEA, 2007). While many test preparation programs exist to prepare teachers for state examinations, many of the programs can be costly, and in some cases, only moderately successful. Hard-to-staff campuses would create a win-win situation by compensating campus based teacher leaders to tutor new teachers for certification exams; new teachers could gain relevant information at no additional cost, and schools would increase their number of certified teachers and the teacher's commitment to the school.
Beyond the first day: how to keep quality teachers
Hard-to-staff campuses should establish an incentive pay structure that rewards new teachers with a graduated sum of money for each year that they elect to return to the campus. Retention pay would extend up to five years, as research indicates that most teachers permanently commit to the profession after four to five years.
Insist on Involvement
Teachers must sponsor or co-sponsor at least one student-centered activity or participate in at least one campus based committee their first year. Also, new teachers should be strongly encouraged to attend student-centered events, such as football games and school dances. Teacher presence at student-centered events communicates to students and parents that teachers are genuinely interested and supportive of student pursuits outside of the classroom. This in turn creates a more positive rapport between teachers and students in the classroom, as students are more likely to see the teachers as an individual who cares about their well-being.
Opportunities for growth
Teachers should seek opportunities for relevant professional development and growth outside of the campus, and principals should allocate monies for their pursuits. As a goal, principals should encourage teachers to gain additional endorsements to increase their certification, and when possible, pay for teachers to take the classes needed to attain additional licensures.
In conclusion
In a hard-to-staff school, principals must be sensitive to the need for quality, new teachers and aware of the difficulties they will face in finding them. The success of the new teacher is inextricably linked to the success of students, and if student achievement is a priority, then new teacher development must be a priority as well. Further, when prioritizing, principals must allocate time and funding to support their priorities. It is not enough to say that new teachers are important — sufficient monies must exist in the budget to support the initiative. A principal's commitment to the development of new teachers can ensure perpetuity and ultimate progress to the success of a hard-to-staff school.
Click the "References" link above to hide these references.
Allen, M., & Education Commission of the States, D. (1999, August 1). Teacher recruitment, preparation and retention for hard-to-staff schools. . (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED440948) Retrieved October 19, 2007, from ERIC database.
National Education Association (NEA) (2007). Take a look at today's teachers. Retrieved November 6, 2007, from National Education Association Website: http://www.nea.org/edstats/07todaysteachers.html.


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This article is more than 1 year old
Video shows armed assault on Kim Dotcom family home
Two helicopters, armed police and dogs used in arrest
A New Zealand court has been shown footage of the 20 January dawn assault by police and the FBI on the home of Kim Dotcom, owner of the Megaupload file storage site.
Dotcom and his co-accused – Mathias Ortmann, Fin Batato and Bram Van der Kolk – face charges of international copyright infringement related to content hosted on various servers across the world. The FBI's indictment also accused the men of using Megaupload and its affiliated sites to make cash from pirated movies and games. Dotcom has denied any wrongdoing.
The hearing was part of an attempt by to overturn a finding by a New Zealand High Court judge that invalid search warrants were used during the property seizures in the January raid.
The court heard yesterday that the portly German (and sometime singer), his wife, three children and a few house guests were woken up at 6:47am by a helicopter landing in the front drive, which disgorged four members of New Zealand's special tactics group armed with assault rifles and handguns who broke down the front door.
Meanwhile four vanloads of similarly armed police and FBI agents, along with a dog squad, arrived at the house by road and overwhelmed the security guard at the gate. Dotcom told the court he was in bed at the time and pressed a panic button, which alerted the other security guard and guests there was a problem, and retreated to a "red room," accessed via a secret door in his closet.
In testimony Dotcom said that he didn't want to go and meet the police in case they accidentally shot him, so he retreated but didn't lock the door. Despite the police having full schematics for the house, it took 13 minutes for them to find him. Dotcom says that he greeted the police with his hands up (they claimed he was armed with a shotgun at the time) and was kicked to the ground and held down.
Dotcom was told that the justification for the heavy-handed raid was to ensure that he, or other members of his company who were staying with him, didn't try to alter server logs or destroy evidence. He said this was impossible, since the FBI had already seized his servers and disabled them.
After reliving the raid in the court room I am angry. So many lies. There was no justification for this! All just a big show for the US!— Kim Dotcom (@KimDotcom) August 8, 2012
When questioned in court the police witness admitted the raid might have been a little "over the top," and said force had been used against Dotcom. None of the officers bothered to wear full body armor, since they were told they would not need it, but still carried out the assault using Colt Commando M4 rifles - loaded and capable of firing 700 rounds per minute - and attack dogs. It's a bit much for what is essentially a copyright dispute.
The arrest and trial of Kim Dotcom and his fellow Megaupload members was, at the time, touted by the FBI and police as a major blow to online piracy and an all-round good thing. However, the subsequent extradition hearings have been described as a farce and are causing red faces among law enforcement.
The case has seen doubts cast of the validity of the paperwork in the case against Dotcom meaning the arrest warrants are invalid, the news that the FBI illegally took evidence out of the country after the raid, and the resignation of the presiding judge after he commented that "we have met the enemy, and he is the US." ®

subset: commoncrawl


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Misconception: One can fulfill the obligation to eat Seudah Shelishit (The Third Meal) on Shabbat by studying Torah in lieu of eating.
FACT: The third Shabbat meal, Seudah Shelishit (colloquially termed "shalashudas") is an obligatory meal that should ideally include bread.
BACKGROUND: There is an obligation to eat three meals on Shabbat (Rambam, Shabbat 30:9; Shulchan Aruch, OC 291) that Chazal (Shabbat 117b) derive from the three-fold occurrence of the word "ha'yom" (today) in Shemot 16:25:1 "Moshe said 'Eat it today, for today it is Shabbat for Hashem; today you will not find it [manna] in the field.'" In Talmudic times, generally only two meals were eaten each day; hence a third meal was unique to Shabbat.
The Gemara goes on to praise those who fulfill this obligation. Rav Shimon ben Pazi (Shabbat 118a) says that such a person is spared from three tribulations: the birth pangs of Mashiach, judgment in gehenom, and the War of Gog and Magog. Rav Nachman says (Shabbat 118b) that he is worthy of merit because he eats three Shabbat meals. Noting that this is a strange statement regarding one fulfilling an obligation, Tosafot (Bechorot 2b, s.v. "Shema") suggests that although eating the Third Meal is obligatory, people were lax in its performance. The Chida (Petach Aynayim, Shabbat 118b) rejected this explanation and suggests that although one can fulfill the obligation of Seudah Shelishit without eating bread, Rav Nachman was careful to always eat bread at the Third Meal, and hence he is worthy of merit. The Ktav Sofer (Shu"t, OC 39), however, understood the gemara differently. He observes that oftentimes mitzvot involving eating are difficult to perform with the proper intentions or kavanah; therefore, Rav Nachman was asserting that he ate three meals for the purpose of fulfilling the mitzvah and not for the physical enjoyment.
It is universally agreed (Shulchan Aruch, OC 291:6) that the obligation to eat three meals on Shabbat is incumbent upon women as well.2 Despite it being a time-bound mitzvah, women are obligated either because of "af hen hayu be'oto hanes," they too benefited from the miracle of the manna, which is the source of the mitzvah, or because women are obligated in the Shabbat prohibitions and all who are obligated in the negative prohibitions of Shabbat are obligated in its positive requirements as well. The Aruch Hashulchan (OC 291:4) thus states that women should be encouraged to fulfill this mitzvah.
Having established the obligation, the codifiers go on to address two related issues: when the Third Meal should be eaten and what exactly should be eaten.
Ideally, the three Shabbat meals should be arranged in the following manner: one Friday night, one Shabbat morning, and one Shabbat afternoon. Two meals at night and one in the daytime fail to satisfy the requirement (Halichot Shlomo 8, note 64). The Mishnah Berurah (334:2, in the name of the Bach) and Aruch Hashulchan (OC 288:2) state that the second meal must be eaten on Shabbat morning before chatzot.
Regarding the Third Meal, the majority opinion is that it must be eaten in the afternoon. The Behag, however, does permit it to take place in the morning. The Tur (OC 291) maintains that those who split the morning meal into two do not fulfill the obligation.
It would seem that Seudah Shelishit should take place in the afternoon. But should it be held before or after Minchah? Rabbeinu Tam (Tosafot Pesachim 105a, s.v. "v'hani mili") rules that one should not eat between Minchah and Maariv on Shabbat. The Rema (OC 291:2), however, rules like many Rishonim that Seudah Shelishit should be eaten specifically between Minchah and Maariv. The accepted opinion is that it is preferable to have the Third Meal after Minchah, but one should begin before sunset (Shemirat Shabbat Kehilchata 56:4).
Another debate centers around which foods should be included in the Third Meal. The Shulchan Aruch (OC 291:5) quotes a range of opinions—those who require bread, those who accept any food upon which the berachah of mezonot is recited, and those who allow just fruit. He rules that one should eat bread unless one feels too full from the previous meal. Furthermore, he states (OC 291:4) that lechem mishnah is required, although the Rema observes that there is a common practice to have only one whole loaf at Seudah Shelishit (see Taz 291:4).
A prevalent misconception is that one can fulfill the obligation of having a Third Meal with words of Torah. Where did this misconception come from? Most likely from the unique halachot of erev Pesach that falls out on Shabbat. When this occurs, and neither bread nor matzah may be eaten in the afternoon, the obligation to eat Seudah Shelishit is difficult to fulfill. The Talmud (Pesachim 13a) records that when erev Pesach falls out on Shabbat, one should leave over chometz for two Shabbat meals—Friday night and Shabbat morning. Rashi explains that food for three meals is not needed because the afternoon meal cannot be eaten; thus, when erev Pesach falls on Shabbat, there is a requirement for two meals only.
Some rabbinic authorities, however, do not endorse canceling the Third Meal, and they offer numerous suggestions on how to fulfill the obligation: 3
1. Divide the morning meal into two meals; 2. Have the third meal in the afternoon with cooked or fried matzah meal or matzah ashirah; 3. Have the meal in the afternoon with fruit, meat, or products made from potato starch.
The Magen Avraham (444:2) cites a radically different option. He quotes the Shlah, who writes in the name of the Zohar (Parashat Emor, on the verse "eleh moadei," 95a), that Rav Shimon bar Yochai (Rashbi) studied Ma'aseh Merkavah (Ezekiel 1) in lieu of the Third Meal when erev Pesach was on Shabbat. Thus it appears that according to the Zohar, the obligation to eat the Third Meal can be fulfilled via Torah study. The Gra, however, (444:7) understands the Zohar to mean that Seudah Shelishit can only be fulfilled with bread, and that when erev Pesach falls out on Shabbat, the obligation to eat Seudah Shelishit is canceled. So too, the Meiri (Pesachim 13a) opines that when erev Pesach falls out on Shabbat, there is no obligation to eat Seudah Shelishit. This position is elaborated on by the Aruch Hashulchan (OC 444:6), who explains that just like when Yom Kippur falls out on Shabbat there is no obligation of Seudah Shelishit, similarly, on erev Pesach that falls out on Shabbat the obligation is canceled.
Others disagree with the Gra and Aruch Hashulchan, maintaining that there is an obligation of Seduah Shelishit on erev Pesach. The Kaf HaChaim (444:18) says that Rav Shimon Bar Yochai did fulfill his obligation to eat Seudah Shelishit via learning because he understood the kabbalistic meaning behind the obligation and could accomplish the purpose of the mitzvah through his learning. The rest of us, writes the Kaf HaChaim, are obligated to eat a meal. It is best, he adds, to eat Seudah Shelishit and learn as well.
Erev Pesach Shechal B'Shabbat (Rabbi Zvi Cohen [Bnei Brak, 5754], chap. 21, note 30) states that based on the Zohar, the Chatam Sofer fulfilled the mitzvah of Seudah Shelishit on yom tov with Torah study. But, he then quotes the K'tzeh Hamateh as pointing out that the Chatam Sofer did this only on yom tov when there is no obligation of Seudah Shelishit!4
A story mentioned in Pardes Yosef (Parashat Emor, p. 272; cf. Shu"t Divrei Yatziv, Likutim v'Hashmatot, siman 126) relates to this topic. Rav Yoshe Ber Soloveichik of Brisk (the great-grandfather of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, the Rav) was once at an inn for Shabbat and there was no lechem mishnah for Seudah Shelishit. One of those accompanying him asked: Why don't we fulfill the obligation with divrei Torah? In a clever retort, Rav Soloveichik stated that the possibility exists that one of those present might refute the chiddushim that he would say; in that case, there would be neither food nor Torah, and the obligation to have Seudah Shelishit would not be fulfilled! It's best, he implied, that they fulfill the mitzvah by eating.
The Shulchan Aruch (OC 291:1) stresses the importance of the mitzvah of eating Seudah Shelishit, writing that a person should be "very careful to fulfill this obligation" and should not overeat at the second Shabbat meal to ensure that he will have an appetite at the Third Meal. In fact, Seudah Shelishit is deemed so important that one is obligated to give charity in order to provide a poor person with three meals on Shabbat (Shulchan Aruch, YD 250:4).
Interestingly, one often finds people who are not conscientious about eating Seudah Shelishit all year long engaging in all kinds of halachic contortions to eat Seudah Shelishit on erev Pesach. Better to rely on divrei Torah to fulfill one's obligation of having Three Meals on erev Pesach and be scrupulous about eating Seudah Shelishit the rest of the year.
Rabbi Dr. Ari Zivotofsky is on the faculty of Brain Science Program at Bar-Ilan University in Israel
1. Note that the Talmud Yerushalmi (Ta'anit 1:1) cites this verse as proof that if all of the Jews observed one Shabbat properly, Mashiach would come.
2. Some Chassidic sources quote the Arizal as stating that women are exempt from this mitzvah. There does not seem to be a halachic basis for this. Chabad has a custom of not eating Seudah Shelishit, despite the fact that the Shulchan Aruch Harav (OC 291) writes that men and women should be careful about fulfilling this obligation. See Likutei Sichot, vol. 26, Parashat Bishalach.
3. There are many books that deal with the topic of erev Pesach that falls out on Shabbat. See, for example, Rav Yosef Zvi Rimon, Erev Pesach Shechal B'Shabbat (Alon Shvut, 5765), p. 64-69.
4. See Shulchan Aruch, OC 529:1; Mishnah Berurah 529:13, and Prishah 529:3. Note that there is a custom to have a third meal on the last day of Pesach.


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This ABC News video, "Combatting 'Vampire Energy'" spotlights the alleged eco-friendliness of Asus' new laptops made with bamboo. While soaking in the the video's empty-headedness is worth the 5 minute-watch, the relevant portion begins at 3:55 — just in case you've already reached the saturation point on green vacuity and want to fast forward to the laptop part.
About the laptops, ABC's Andrea Smith reports:
… What's great about it is that it's not plastic, so that, No. 1, it looks really cool. You'll look like you're totally eco-friendly and very chic… The No. 2 thing is that when you're done with this and you need to recycle it, there is no plastic here to clog the landfill… It's bamboo and it's a self-regenerating plant and there's lots of it.
So let's consider the Asus bamboo laptop, Ms. Smith's report, and, importantly, reality:
- There is still plenty of plastic used in the laptop. Only the case is bamboo. And what about the bamboo's shiny urethane finish? Despite the name, volatile organic compounds (VOCs) have generally been viewed by the greens as environmentally-incorrect.
- Bamboo doesn't recycle so much as it decomposes — giving off greenhouse gases. The plastic in laptops can be and is often recycled for other uses. The plastic is actually a better "carbon sink" than the bamboo.
- Recycling doesn't matter anyway — almost all laptops are thrown in the trash. Fortunately, there is no shortage of landfill space. In fact, the U.S. has more landfill capacity than ever before.
- Most bamboo comes from Vietnam and China. Not only are greenhouse gases emitted while farming bamboo, but transporting the bamboo or bamboo finished products to the U.S. involves even more greenhouse gas emissions.
- The Asus bamboo laptop costs $732.81 more than the comparable Asus plastic laptop on Amazon.com.
- Bamboo is not necessarily eco-friendly. Growing bamboo on a mass-scale requires lots of water, energy and fertilizer inputs. Without fertilizer, continual harvesting of bamboo will deplete the soil in a short-time.
The bottom line on Asus bamboo laptop?
You may look cool, chic and eco-friendly, as ABC's Andrea Smith says, but the reality is you're being fooled and ripped-off, while doing nothing for the environment.


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Comcast Balks At Refunding $6,300 To Customer Who Forgot Decimal Point
Imagine if Comcast made an honest-to-goodness, easily explained error and accidentally sent credited your account to the tune of more than $6,000. Now imagine how they would respond if you refused to return the funds, but told Comcast it could just slowly chip away at the money until the account was zeroed out again. We don't imagine the Lords of Kabletown taking that suggestion too kindly, and yet that's exactly what Comcast proposed to a customer who forgot a decimal point and overpaid his bill by thousands of dollars.
The customer, who happens to be 86 years old and a 25-year customer of Comcast, says that when he went online to pay his bill of $64.53, he accidentally omitted the decimal point and entered $6453 — 100 times what he owed the cable company.
The man tells WKRG-TV that he noticed the goof about a week later while reviewing his paid bills.
"I called the bank, and they said it had already been processed," he says, "there was nothing they could do."
His daughter attempted to talk some sense into Comcast but all the company said it could do for the long-time customer was to use the credit for future bills, meaning the man wouldn't have to worry about another cable bill until the age of 94.
Of course, he'd be out thousands of dollars in the meantime.
Even after WKRG got involved, it still took a visit to the local Comcast depot, "several phone calls, and seven hours" before someone finally made a decision that makes any sense.
"We are issuing a full refund… and we apologize for not reimbursing him sooner after his inadvertent payment was first brought to our attention," reads an e-mail statement to the TV station.
Of course, if the customer paid via debit card or e-check, it can still take up to 10 business days for that money to eventually show up in his bank account.
Thanks to Charles for the tip!
Want more consumer news? Visit our parent organization, Consumer Reports, for the latest on scams, recalls, and other consumer issues.


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Bailouts Spike Atlas Shrugged Sales
All of the government's pesky market intrusions have people snapping up copies of Atlas Shrugged like they were bailout packages. Since it's not like Ayn Rand's laissez-faire fantasies got us into this mess.
Former Fed chair Alan Greenspan, architect of the endless free credit of the 2000s, was famously an acolyte in Rand's "Objectivist" inner circle. He and George W. Bush were all for lighter regulations and oversight of an already-wild Wall Street.
Now, of course, everything has come crashing down. Corporations of all sorts beg the government to socialize their losses. The SEC was, in retrospect, incompetent. De-regulation (of say credit default swaps) and under-regulation (of say Fannie Mae) helped bring on the crash. Free market mechanisms like credit ratings and elaborate risk-hedging failed.
And yet Atlas Shrugged, the worst sort of libertarian porn, went to an average monthly Amazon ranking of 127 from 542, spiking recently to around rank 30, according to the Economist.
It's hard to tell which is more sad: That bailed-out financiers are successfully agitating the masses against bailed-out poors via tools like CNBC's Rick Santelli, or that Atlas Shrugged is still the go-to polemic for people pissed at the government. Surely someone can write a superior manifesto, and make it popular? It stands to reason someone will. But then counting on people to behave "rationally," as Rand might put it, hasn't panned out very well lately.


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The Internet has enabled projects that openly accept contributions from a global audience. Many such projects, including open-source software and Wikipedia, do so without any obvious reward for their contributors. Their success has apparently fascinated sociologists, who propose two explanations for it: some people contribute as a way to gain reputation, and others contribute as a way of furthering their specialized field of interest. A study performed by Dartmouth researchers provides some support for this perspective, but has a few issues that may undercut its ability to draw any conclusions.
The study used Wikipedia as a model open contribution system, and used the French and Dutch versions as the source of its raw data. It focused on the difference between anonymous users and those with registered accounts; only the latter could hope to cash in contributions for reputation. Because of the potential for accumulating reputation, the researchers hypothesized that the registered contributors (who they termed "zealots") would put effort into the quality of their contributions, which would result in an increase in quality proportional to the amount of contributions.
In contrast, anonymous contributors were expected to fall into two groups. The group with higher rates of contributions would include spammers and vandals, so quality was expected to be low. But the infrequent anonymous contributors should include what the authors termed "good samaritans"—those who make a rare contribution on a subject of expertise, solely because they care about the topic. The authors suggest that this should result in anonymous contributors with the fewest posts having very high quality.
Based on their methodology (which I'll discuss below) this is precisely what they found. Good samaritans with less than 100 edits made higher-quality contributions than those with registered accounts and equal amounts of content. In fact, anonymous contributors with a single edit had the highest quality of any group. But quality steadily declined, and more-frequent anonymous contributors were anything but samaritans; their contributions generally didn't survive editing. In contrast, the zealots' quality improved proportionally to their contributions, so that those credited with over 100 edits consistently outpaced the quality of equivalent anonymous editors.
Problems of method
The conclusions seem fairly clear, and match well with intuitive expectations. The methodology of the study, however, calls the whole enterprise into question. For one, the identification of anonymous users across contributions was tracked by the IP address logged. In most markets, including the Netherlands, IP addresses are commonly assigned dynamically, meaning that a single IP address could have been assigned to a variety of users during the period studied. In addition, this approach would pool all contributors on a network that shares a single point of access to the Internet, such as a free hotspot or a university.
The assessment of quality is also problematic, as it was divorced from any semantic content, and simply evaluated in terms of the persistence of a user's contribution at the character level. Thus, radical changes in meaning caused by further edits would still allow a contributor to obtain a high "quality" score. To give a concrete example, the insertion of the word "not" in a sentence could completely reverse the original meaning while leaving all of the original contribution intact. The authors also recognize that contributions in the form of stubs on obscure topics might survive unaltered indefinitely, inflating the importance of single contributions. I'd also note that it's frequently easier to rewrite existing material than to generate it from scratch, a phenomenon that would artificially inflate quality scores.
Objective ratings of quality are difficult, and it's hard to fault the authors for attempting to find an easily-measured proxy for it. In the absence of independent correlation, however, it's not clear that the measurement used actually works as a proxy. Combined with the concerns regarding anonymous contributor identity, there are enough problems with this study that the original question should probably be considered unanswered, regardless of how intuitively satisfying these results are.


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NSS Labs 2018 SD-WAN Comparative Report - Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)
Implementation of new WAN infrastructure solutions can be associated with several factors such as overall cost of deployment, maintenance, and upkeep. NSS looks at the product price, operational benefits such as zero-touch provisioning, ROI assessment, product maintenance, installation and upkeep time. When the rubber meets the road, Fortinet Secure SD-WAN was hands down the best solutions in terms of value at $5.00, maximizing the investment customers make in their deployment.


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Liam Hemsworth is living it up in one of the most glamorous, romantic spots on the planet . . . without fiancee Miley Cyrus. The Australian actor, 23, hit the Cannes Film Festival to attend a Friday, May 17 promotional event for Hunger Games sequel Catching Fire; reuniting with costar Jennifer Lawrence, the pair posed for photos with their new costar Sam Clafin, cast last year in the coveted role of Finnick.
As Cyrus, 20, stays behind recording her album in Los Angeles, Hemsworth took advantage of the film festival nightlife. The blue-eyed hunk first arrived at the Belvedere party's VIP Room around 1:20 a.m. on Saturday with a small group of male executives. Sipping beer (after declining an offer of champagne) and smoking a few Marlboro Lights, Hemsworth bopped along to the hip-hop tunes — and politely spoke to two pretty blonde, female fans who approached the table.
Next up, Hemsworth moved on to the Nikki Beach at Les Marches with a bodyguard for more low-key drinks and friendly chats with pretty fans. (He left past 3 a.m. alone.)
Although it's tricky to keep up with Hemsworth and Cyrus' relationship status, the Hannah Montana star recently began wearing her engagement ring again — flashing the rock in a recent Twitter pic and donning it to the Maxim 100 party in NYC earlier this week.
Tell Us: Will this couple make it to the altar?
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Before fame nestled on its doorstep, A New Found Glory (as the group was known then) was four classmates at Parkland's Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. Bassist Ian Grushka, singer Jordan Pundik, guitarist Steve Klein, and a drummer known as Taco Joe got together in May 1997 to kick out some Green Day¯ inspired jams. Soon afterward they heard that Chad Gilbert, teenage vocalist for Revelation Records' hardcore act Shai Hulud, wanted to play guitar in a punk band, and they recruited him. After five months A New Found Glory recorded the five-song It's All About the Girls for Miami punk label Fiddler Records. While the band would grow musically and produce better records, the lyrical content was by then set in stone. Every single New Found Glory song to date is about guitarist Klein's relationship woes.
To promote It's All About the Girls, A New Found Glory played every all-ages haunt in South Florida that would admit its underage fan base. The group's Mexican-jumping-bean stage antics packed Miami's now-defunct punk palace Cheers (where Fiddler owner Amy Fleisher worked) and Davie's Club Q with hardcore boys and pop-punk girls. About this time the band dumped Taco Joe for Cyrus Bolooki. "Taco Joe would rather mow his folks' lawn than show up to practice," snipes Grushka. "So we replaced him with someone who not only wanted to be in the band but could actually play the drums."
With its permanent lineup solidified, A New Found Glory was only hindered by its members' school schedules. Gigs were scheduled for weekends, vacations, and teacher workdays. Punk DIY ethic in full effect, A New Found Glory's initial road trip was far from glamorous. To get to gigs set up via e-mail with kids they met on Internet message boards, the musicians stuffed themselves into a Ryder box truck with Boca Raton emo band Vacant Andys. Four people squeezed in the front while six contorted themselves in the back. "We traveled Nazi-style," recalls Bolooki. "It was literally feet to neck." Ventilation was at a premium. Bolooki remembers: "The only way we could get air in the back was for the a/c to be cranked full blast, so in the front they'd be in full winter gear while in the back we'd be practically naked."
Back in South Florida in October 1998, A New Found Glory banged out its first album, the 12-song Nothing Gold Can Stay, with Eulogy Recordings. Recorded for $1200, Nothing Gold Can Stay is perhaps the greatest indie-rock bargain since the $600 Nirvana spent on Bleach. Powered by the aforementioned "Hit or Miss," Nothing Gold Can Stay's irresistible combination of pop hooks and guitar crunch melted the ears of all who heard it, including those of Drive-Thru Records' emo band Midtown. As soon as members of Midtown got their mitts on a copy, they played it for Drive-Thru's co-owner, Stephanie Reines. "We were in New Jersey, in the middle of a mall parking lot, and it was snowing," recalls Reines. "It was time to go, and Midtown said they had to play me a CD. I said, "No way! I'm freezing, I'll listen to it later!' They go, "You'll listen to it NOW,' popped it in, and started dancing in the snow with their shirts off. I was blown away. It was the greatest thing I'd ever heard, and I just knew I had to sign them."
Reines flew home to Los Angeles and set about wooing A New Found Glory to Drive-Thru. Since Drive-Thru has a manufacturing and distribution deal with major label MCA, the courtship was short. In the ultimate act of rock 'n' roll altruism, Eulogy Recordings owner John Wylie licensed Nothing Gold Can Stay to Drive-Thru for the spare change needed to reimburse his pressing expenses. "John is our friend," affirms Gilbert. "We loved his label, but he understood we wanted to be as successful as possible and didn't stand in our way." Fiddler owner Fleisher has a different spin: "John didn't know what he had. None of us did."
Once in the Drive-Thru camp, New Found Glory dropped the "A" and Klein, Grushka, Pundik, and Bolooki all dropped out of college. Gilbert left J.P. Taravella High School without a degree. "I went to see the guidance counselor with my mom and told him the situation," he recalls. "He said if this is truly your dream, go for it! So I did."
Once freed from scholastic obligations, New Found Glory hit the road with abandon, touring with punk-rock luminaries such as Reel Big Fish, Less Than Jake, and Fenix Tx. To support the rising stars, Drive-Thru made a video for "Hit or Miss" starring former teen movie star Corey Feldman. The video, a sendup of Cops, made waves on JBTV and The Box. But for once timing was not on New Found Glory's side. Gilbert expounds: "We showed it to MCA, and they told us they couldn't send it to MTV, because Corey shoves a nightstick up Ian's ass in the video. It turns out we shot it around the time the NYPD did the exact same thing to that Haitian guy, Abner Louima."
In December 1999 New Found Glory took a two-week respite from the road and recorded From the Screen to Your Stereo, a seven-song EP of rip-roaring renditions of movie themes. This rest would be the band's last for quite some time; in 2000 the group logged nine months on the road, at one point going for six months straight. "It's all we do," a beleaguered Grushka grimaces. "We wake up, eat, drive to the next show, eat, play, sleep, and repeat the process the next day. We become punk-rock robots." To alleviate the grind of life on the road, New Found Glory and its tour mates play elaborate practical jokes on one another. "We covered Saves the Day's van with meat one night," Grushka grimaces. "The next day they dumped pounds and pounds of foot powder on us when we were on-stage. When we jumped it looked like it was snowing. To this day I still have foot powder on my amp."
In June 2000 New Found Glory took six weeks off from the road and went into the studio with Everclear producer Neal Avron. Steve Klein's relationship woes once again were on display, but this time they were backed by a seasoned band whose chops had been honed razor-sharp by a year of touring. Gilbert's songwriting talent, already obvious to all who heard Nothing Gold Can Stay, took a quantum leap forward and delivered 12 songs that contain no filler whatsoever. Breakneck tempos, powerhouse choruses, and the most interesting bridges this side of San Francisco make it nearly impossible to listen without singing and dancing like an idiot. Especially infectious is the second coming of "Hit or Miss." "It's my favorite song of ours," Gilbert offers. "We recorded the last record so cheap, I wanted to give "Hit or Miss' a chance with a real budget." MCA was more than willing, giving the green light for a new "Hit or Miss" video starring Mormon Julie from MTV's Real World New Orleans. For the video's performance scene, New Found Glory sent an open invitation to the taping via their Website. More than 1000 kids showed up to the 150-capacity warehouse where the filming was held, causing the Los Angeles County fire marshal to shut down the set.
But even the fire marshal couldn't douse the flames once New Found Glory was released in September. At press time the record has sold 81,451 copies at a clip of 6000 units per week. Firmly fixed within the demographics of their fan base, these photogenic punks are growing with their record sales. On February 27 Bolooki celebrated his 21st birthday at a gig in Denver. Headliners Less Than Jake made the occasion memorable by setting up a bar on-stage, complete with a personal bartender for Bolooki. New Found Glory will play the first two-week leg of the Vans Warped Tour -- a sign of commercial coming of age -- then hop off to do six weeks of arenas and outdoor sheds with fellow pop-punksters Blink 182. In the fall New Found Glory will embark on a headlining tour of its own, conquering whatever is left in its path to rock stardom. Chances are Pundik will marry Britney Spears, Gilbert will become engaged to Mormon Julie, Klein will get sued for palimony, and Grushka and Bolooki will shack up with the Bush twins. Carson Daly will officiate at the Spears-Pundik wedding, and they'll honeymoon at the Las Vegas resort Circus Circus. Roll over, 'NSync, and tell the Backstreet Boys the news.


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Audacity for blind users
From Audacity Wiki
Revision as of 19:00, 4 May 2014 by Galeandrews (talk | contribs) (Reply to Peter (Blind Tips should I guess stay on Wiki if we want them). Added caveats about Orca.)
Peter 4May14: ToDo-2 Do we want to move this page to the manual or leave it here?
- Gale 04May14: I think Navigating Effects should move to the Manual. It's mainly up to David to decide if a short blind tips primer is useful on Wiki (I don't think that should be in the Manual).
|This page contains information for blind or visually impaired users of Audacity.
A very important feature of Audacity is the ability to fully manipulate the selection using the keyboard.
Screen reader access works very well on Windows and Mac OS X but still needs further development on Linux. Please read the Accessibility page in the Manual for full information about Audacity's keyboard and screen reader accessibility.
Please read the "Free Screen Readers" section below for links to free screen readers.
Documentation and mailing lists
Further help is at hand if you need it.
- There is an Audacity4blind mailing list for "blind people helping each other use Audacity". The list archive is at http://www.freelists.org/archive/audacity4blind/ and you can subscribe at http://www.freelists.org/cgi-bin/lsg2.cgi/l=audacity4blind. The subscription is a somewhat complex three-stage process:
- Enter the e-mail address you want to subscribe with at http://www.freelists.org/cgi-bin/lsg2.cgi/l=audacity4blind, leaving the password field blank
- Wait for an e-mail that contains an activation link, then click that link
- In the web page that you come to, click the "Subscribe" button under the "Available Commands" list on the right.
- A Guide to using Audacity 2.0.5 with the commercial JAWS screen reader for Windows, by David Bailes. It includes tips for navigating Audacity 2.0.5 without the mouse which should be helpful to users on all operating systems.
Tips for blind users
Gale 15Feb14: ToDo-2 David B. has suggested the below links are looked at to see if they are still relevant to 2.0.x. Navigating Effects is definitely relevant to 2.0.x.
- Some of this content may only be relevant to legacy 1.2 versions of Audacity.
Free Screen Readers
- NVDA for Windows. This works well with Audacity.
- VoiceOver built-in screen reader for OS X. Audacity works well with VoiceOver.
- Orca for Linux/Unix. As of GNOME 2.16, Orca is a part of the GNOME platform, so is already provided by default on a number of operating system distributions, including Open Solaris, Fedora and Ubuntu. It does not work with the KDE environment. Orca works moderately well with Audacity, including reading most of the toolbar controls, but does not read TimeText controls (spinbox digits). Orca does not indicate track focus or selectedness.


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The Leafs fall to 8-6-0 as their four game win streak ends with a tame effort in Carolina.
1 – A "staged" fight between Orr and Westgarth provided a brief flash of mild excitement early in the first, a pretty even bout amid a boring, uneventful first half-period filled with Leafs icings. I counted just four shots through the first 9 minutes of play.
2 – After Liles rang iron on the powerplay, the Leafs continued to ice the puck throughout the remainder of the first, spending a lot of time in their own zone and struggling to initiate breakouts without icing it or giving the puck away. The Leafs lost the possession battle cleanly and were fortunate to be even after 1, despite a level 8-8 shot count. With the Leafs struggling to get into the game, Carlyle gave Kadri some time with Kessel and JvR, and Nazem led an excellent breakout where he went by two or three Canes in the neutral zone before dishing the puck to Kessel for a good chance. Feeling confident, Kadri tried the same thing starting deep in his own zone and lost the puck to a pokecheck at his own blueline. Scrivens stood tall as the Leafs went under siege.
3 – Things didn't get a whole lot better to start the second. With the Leafs pinned in again after a blown clearance, Dion and Grabovski botched chances to get the puck out directly in front of the net, and Corvo hopped on the puck and ripped it top left. Phaneuf served that one up on a tee with a soft backhand (pass? clearance? Beats me) right in front.
4 – The two made up for it on the powerplay shortly thereafter. Grabovski slid it to Phaneuf on the point, who, refreshingly, shot it low and hard and a good thing happened. The puck deflected off McBain, then off Kadri's leg and in. That's Kadri's fourth goal and team-leading 12th point.
5 – The game really opened up toward the middle of the second as the teams started trading chances. Bozak had a great chance to put the Leafs up 2-1 after a nicely timed pinch by Dion, who again just got it on net, producing a rebound in the slot. Bozak appeared to skate over the puck with Dan Ellis down and out.
6 – The Leafs gave up a cheap goal on the penalty kill with seven minutes left in the second. Scrivens came out to claim the puck, missed, and Jussi Jokinen dispatched it into the net. That's way too easy. Scrivens looked to the officials either appealing for a whistle or to claim he was interfered with, but he came way out and never had the puck corralled. That stood up as the game winner.
7 – Shortly thereafter, Liles got caught trying to hold the blueline, the puck got past him and it was a three on one and a half for the Canes (Kadri was trying to get back but was behind the play). The initial chance didn't go in, but the Leafs didn't restore defensive shape and Jordan Staal scored to make it 3-1.
8 – Another odd man opportunity with a Leaf defenceman caught, this time Mark Fraser, sent Skinner and company in on a 3 on 1. Fortunately, it ended with Fraser planting Skinner into the boards and not in a 4-1 goal. The struggles to get the puck deep and establish a forecheck were leading to odd man opportunities the other way for the Canes, with dangerous attempts to hold the blue by the Leafs D and too many turnovers high in the zone (see Kessel's giveaway for a breakaway midway through the third, he fortunately got back to make up for it).
9 – This one wasn't pretty for Carlyle's Leafs, between the Leafs struggles to get the puck deep and establish a cycle, their inability to consistently clear their zone and their trouble executing clean breakouts. Carlyle described it as the Leafs "least inspiring performance in a while." The Canes are a good looking team and seem to have their number. They've got two dangerous lines offensively with the additions of Alex Semin and Jordan Staal to go along with Eric Staal, Jeff Skinner and Jiri Tlusty. Defensively, their ability to bottle the Leafs up, take away their time and space, close lanes and transition up the ice off of the turnovers they generated was impressive.
10 – I'd express concerns that we didn't seem to have the usual boost from the third line without Frattin, or about Scrivens letting in a weak one, but this was pretty poor team effort overall; the Leafs just didn't have it tonight. We'll have to see where it goes from here. The loss puts a four game winning streak to an end, and could mean we see a few lineup changes now that there isn't a streak to worry about disrupting. Gunnarsson may be ready return to the mix on Saturday.


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WASHINGTON — The principal of one of the District of Columbia's largest public high schools told students for the first time Wednesday that he is gay at a Pride Day event.
Wilson High School Principal Pete Cahall was joined Wednesday by Mayor Vincent Gray and by the first openly gay member of the DC Council, David Catania.
"I want to say publicly for the first time, because of your leadership, care and support, that I am a proud gay man who just happens to be the principal of Wilson High School," Cahall said.
The 50-year-old school leader said he hid in the shadows for the last 50 years but was inspired by his students to come out publicly for the first time. He said he was also inspired by recent revelations from gay professional athletes, including the NBA's Jason Collins and football player Michael Sam.
Students greeted the announcement with loud cheers for their principal.
For years, being gay was a fireable offense in schools. Now more gay teachers and school administrators are open about their sexual orientation. Despite changes in society, gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender students still face bullying in school. Wilson High School's pride event is unique among DC high schools.
Cahall's announcement drew expressions of support, as well as criticism from those who oppose gay rights. Peter Sprigg of the Family Research Council said a public high school should not be holding a gay pride event.
Kansas-based Westboro Baptist Church said it plans to protest Wilson's pride event on Monday. About 1,000 Wilson students are planning a counter-protest.
Washington's mayor had some choice words for the planned Westboro protest.
"In my best biblical reference, they can go straight to hell," Gray said.


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David Coleman: Bye Bye, Classics
Countdown # 9
This is the second in a countdown series of introductions, a list of the top ten scariest people leading American education reform. (#10 on the list is posted here.)
David Coleman, lead "architect" for the English Language Arts (ELA) portion of the Common Core, is not an educator, but a businessman. Recently promoted to president of the College Board, he has promised to align the SAT with the Common Core that he built. He plotted education for K-12 students, and now he's plotting it for postsecondary students, too.
How can a one-size-fits-all alignment make sense for all students –whether bound for a minimum wage job, a two-year college or the top university in the world– prepare each using a one-size-fits-all Common Core program? Either the lower-level students are to be pushed beyond reasonable expectations, or the higher level students are to be dumbed down. Or both.
Coleman is an outspoken antagonist to narrative writing and is no fan of classic literature, so he singlehandedly slashed most of it from the education most children in America will know, either already –or soon. Ask your kids, but remember, Common Core testing begins in 2014, so the intense pressure for teachers to conform to Common Core is yet to be fully felt.
What did Coleman do to Language Arts? He mandated that dreary informational text, not beautiful, classic literature, is to be the main emphasis in English classes, incrementally worsening as students get older.
What it looks like: little children in an ELA classroom may read no more than 50% classic literature. High school seniors may only read 30% classic literature. The other 70% must be informational text, which means everything from historical documents (um– why not read those in history classes?) to insulation installation manuals, presidential executive orders, environmental programming, and federal reserve documents. These are actually on the recommended reading list.
Another weird twist to Coleman's Common Core is that he says students must "stay within the four corners of the text" as if that were possible. Context is not to be part of a discussion? Outside experience is not to be compared to the informational text? For a thorough, and eloquent, explanation of what has happened to English Language Arts because of Coleman's influence, please read "Speaking Back to the Common Core" by Professor Thomas Newkirk of the University of New Hampshire.
What Coleman does not understand (–hmmm, maybe actual English teachers should have been invited to those closed-door meetings–) is that narrative is so much more than a style of writing.
Narrative isn't just using the "I" word. It's more than "What I Did Last Summer."
Narrative is a pattern woven (often unconsciously) into every style of memorable writing, whether argumentative, persuasive, expository, etc. The best informational texts are narratively satisfying.
Coleman's knocking down of narrative writing and slashing of it from academic standards is both ignorant and, to English teachers and astute kids, really confusing. For a funny, punchy review of the muddly ELA writing standards, read Professor Laura Gibbs' "Inspid Brew of Gobbledygook".
David Coleman is largely ignorant in the field of writing language arts standards. One member of the official Common Core validation committee, Dr. Sandra Stotsky, pointed this out and refused to sign off on the validity of the Common Core standards.
And David Coleman is not even nice, as you'll see from the video linked here, where he mocks student narrative and uses the "sh–" word in a professional development seminar for teachers.
Lastly, Coleman's large financial contribution to the campaign of Education Committee Senator Todd Huston (Indiana) whom Coleman hired for the College Board after his election, forms another branch of reasons that I can not trust this man to make wise decisions affecting children.


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In 1926, Annie Nerland rejoined her husband in Fairbanks after their son, Les, completed school at the University of Washington and married Mildred Kildall. Each winter Andrew had traveled south for several months at a time to see his wife and child. Back in Fairbanks, he was a leader in the Masonic Lodge, the Elks, Odd Fellows, Pioneers of Alaska, and the Presbyterian Church. He was instrumental in establishing and overseeing the Alaska Agricultural College and School of Mines, precursor to the University of Alaska Fairbanks. He was city mayor, served on the city council, and was elected to the Territorial Legislature seven times, where his last term of office ended when he was 80.
Les and Mildred Nerland came north and joined the Nerland family operation in 1930, and he followed his father's footsteps in community service and political leadership. Also, under the guidance of the younger Nerland, the home furnishings store expanded widely, and by 1953, after 49 years in its original location, Nerland's moved to a 15,000-square-foot, three-story building between Third and Fourth Avenues in Fairbanks. The new building included a top-floor apartment for Les and his family, plus accommodations for Andrew and Annie on the second floor.
In 1955, Les was elected a delegate to the Alaska Constitutional Convention. Andrew was especially pleased because in 1917, while serving in the Territorial Legislature, he had introduced a bill advocating statehood. On February 6, 1956, the last day of the convention, Les brought his copy of the document home to show his 85-year-old father. He remembered his father saying, "This is a big step toward statehood." Fifteen minutes later, Andrew collapsed and died. Annie lived six more years before her death at age 92.


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It was on a rocky seaside cliff that we first met Carl Sagan, famed astronomer and science communicator. As waves crashed and wind tousled his hair, Sagan opened his miniseries by declaring the cosmos, "All that is, or ever was, or ever will be."
This Sunday, 35 years later, Neil deGrasse Tyson will meet millions of viewers on that very same seascape as he introduces Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey. Tyson, if you don't know him already, is an astrophysicist who heads the Hayden Planetarium at New York's American Museum of Natural History (and also dances a mean moonwalk). Tyson's spin on the Cosmos television series will air this Sunday in a global simulcast that promises to showcase scientific discovery and inspire further exploration beyond the stars.
In both visual effects and scientific content, the Cosmos reboot delivers on its word. Tyson wastes no time in getting to the good stuff. Within minutes of the opening sequence of the first episode, he has already unveiled invisible planets and speculated about the existence of multiple universes. In a nod to the original Cosmos, Tyson captains a sleek, modern take on Sagan's Ship of the Imagination, and later strolls along a stunning interpretation of the original series' cosmic calendar, which tries to communicate the vastness of geologic time.
"Humans evolved in the last hour, of the last day of the cosmic year," Tyson says, as he paces along the Paleozoic. "Every person you've ever heard of happened in the last 14 seconds of the cosmic calendar."
Sagan's legacy is woven throughout the series, and it works—usually. But at times, the show's insistence that viewers hail Tyson as the new Sagan feels a bit heavy-handed. During the first episode, the Ship of the Imagination buzzes the sun and blasts through the Oort Cloud, but Tyson concludes his adventure by brandishing an old datebook, proving once and for all that he actually met Carl Sagan back in 1975. It's a bit much.
And while Tyson's gorgeous (and scientifically faithful) tour of the universe is sure to inspire, expect some blowback, too. At one point, Tyson narrates the animated tragedy of Giordano Bruno, a friar and astronomer who told the Church that the universe is infinite, and was burnt alive as punishment. The segment seems out of character for Tyson, and for Cosmos; the original is so beloved in part because of Sagan's warm, inclusive, "we are all star stuff tone."
But it's 2014, and Tyson isn't the only force behind Cosmos. Seth MacFarlane, of Family Guy fame, is an executive producer on the show, and the series will be broadcast originally on Fox. "Fox specializes in discomfort," MacFarlane told the press after an advance screening of the series at the Hayden Planetarium. Perhaps we're hearing a bit of Fox and MacFarlane when an anguished Bruno shouts at the Church, "Your god is too small!" before he is thrown into a dungeon.
Yet the few detours are worth the trouble. Cosmos showcases a vast, beautiful and terrifying universe. Since the production team has the talent and resources to deliver a solid hour of breathtaking vistas and cutting-edge research in each episode, I might have preferred a little less of Neil and a little more of the cosmos. But to hear Tyson mull over the origins of life as the universe blooms before him is to forgive the series for its shortcomings. "You, me and everyone…we are all made of star stuff," Tyson reflects.


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Get the upper South mug.
Well contrary to that definiton above me the Upper South is an unoffical region of the United States. It's a region that while it is Southern is Southern to a less degree than the Deep South. The states that automatically come to one's mind are Tennessee, Kentucky, and Virginia. I few pending states are North Carolina (might be too Southern), West Virginia, and Maryland. This region usually refered to as the Mid-South. During a major survey called to Southern focus survey to see the percentage of residence in the Southern states that identify with the South, the Deep South had over 90% (which also included North Carolina and Tennesee) of their residence's identifing with the South Kentucky and Virginia had 86% of their residences identifing with the South. Maryland on the other hand had less than have of their residence identifing with the South. The city's that define this region are Memphis, Louisville, Nashville, Richmond, Virginia Beach,
The point I'm trying to make is that some people like Kentucky yank and all the other pro Northern peopleish (could just be one person) are very misleading when it comes to Kentucky. They are so quick to name Kentucky as Midwestern, when it's the complete opposite from places like Minnesota and Wisconsin. I mean honestly calling those states Kentucky's sister states over ALabama or North Carolina is completely historically inaccurate. Kentucky is purely a Upper South State identical to Tennesse and Virginia, not no damn Ohio, or Indiana honestly give me a break those yankees states have nothing to do with Kentucky, aside from Southern Indiana being apart of the Louisville Metro area.
by Louisvillian A Southerner November 12, 2006
Get the Upper South mug.
Geographic location located in southern Ohio and Indiana, Kentucky, West Virginia that is culturally and sociologically the Upper South as opposed to the midwest, the east or the north. This would include Dayton and Cincinnati Ohio, Indianapolis, Louisville and Lexington Kentucky and Huntington, West Virginia. This is the bottom buckle of the snow belt and the top buckle of the Bible belt, where people may eat Cincinnati Chili, stewed tomatoes, goetta (a pork sausage that includes pin-cut oats,) Ale-8-1 pop (a beverage made in Winchester, KY) Esther Price chocolate candies, Mike-Sells and Grippo potato chips. They eat at places like Frisch's Big Boy and Skyline Chili and there are actually still drive-in theaters in this region. Regional pizza favorites are LaRosa's, Cassanos and Marions in southwest Ohio. Soft drinks are referred to as pop as opposed to soda or Coke. The main grocery establishement is Kroger.
"I was passing through the Upper South on my way to Cleveland, so hit three Kroger stores, where bought some Ale-8-one in Lexington and some Grippos in Cincinnati. Then I stopped in Dayton for some Esther Price and Cassanos and picked up a copy of "Southern Living" magazine before I headed to the frozen north.
by Marthakay December 12, 2005


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JACKSON HOLE, Wyo. — Chairman Ben Bernanke made clear Friday that the Federal Reserve will do more to boost the economy because of high US unemployment and an economic recovery that remains "far from satisfactory."
He also argued that the Fed's moves so far to keep interest rates at record lows and encourage borrowing and spending have helped bolster the economy.
Bernanke stopped short of committing the Fed to any specific move, such as another round of bond purchases to lower long-term rates. But in a speech at an annual Fed conference in Jackson Hole, Wyo., Bernanke said that even with rates at super-lows, the Fed can do more.
After Bernanke's comments were released at 10 a.m. Eastern time, stocks initially gave up most of their earlier gains. But as investors digested the speech, stocks bounced back. By late morning, the Dow Jones industrial average was up more than 100 points. Broader stock indexes also surged.
Bernanke noted that further action carries risks but says the Fed can manage them. The Fed "should not rule out" new policies to improve the job market, he said.
The most dramatic step the Fed could take would be another round of bond buying. This is known as quantitative easing, or QE. In two rounds of QE, the Fed bought more than $2 trillion of Treasury bonds and mortgage-backed securities. Many investors have been hoping for a third round — QE3— to be unveiled as soon as the Fed's next policy meeting in September.
In light of Bernanke's comments Friday, some analysts said that might be a stronger possibility now.
"Bernanke has taken a further step along the path to more policy stimulus, most likely a third round of asset purchases (QE3) to be announced at the mid-September FOMC meeting," said Paul Dales, senior US economist at Capital Economics.
At the same time, the Fed chairman avoided hinting of any one policy move or any timetable.
"This is really all he could say," says Steven Ricchiuto, chief economist at Mizuho Securities. "He is not at liberty to promise anything without the (policy) committee's approval, and there seems to be various opinions on the committee about the best way forward."
In his speech, Bernanke cited studies showing that the Fed's first two rounds of bond purchases created at least 2 million jobs.
"It is important to achieve further progress, particularly in the labor market," Bernanke said. "The Federal Reserve will provide additional policy accommodation as needed."
That remark echoed what the Fed had said in a statement after its most recent policy meeting, July 31-Aug. 1. Since then, somewhat stronger economic news had led some analysts to say the Fed might now feel less urgency to act. But Bernanke's reiteration Friday of the Fed's readiness to provide more help suggested that his economic outlook remains dim.
The US economy is still struggling to grow. It expanded at a tepid 1.7 percent annual rate in the April-June quarter, the government estimated Wednesday.
The minutes of the Fed's July 31-Aug. 1 policy meeting showed that officials spoke with increased urgency about the need to provide more help for the US economy.
The policy committee decided that action "would likely be warranted fairly soon" unless it saw evidence of "a substantial and sustainable strengthening" of the economy. After it meets in mid-September, the Fed's policy committee will meet once more, in late October, before the November elections.
QE3 isn't the Fed's only option. It already plans to keep short-term interest rates near zero through late 2014 unless the economy improves. It could settle for extending that pledge into 2015.
Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics, is among those who think the Fed will extend its timetable for record-low rates into 2015 at the September policy meeting. And unless the economy improves, Zandi expects the Fed to launch another round of bond purchases after the election.
Bernanke's comments Friday made clear that the economy has a long way back to full health.
"Unless the economy begins to grow more quickly than it has recently, the unemployment rate is likely to remain far above levels consistent with maximum employment for some time," he said.
At the end of every August, economists and central bankers convene in the Rocky Mountains at a symposium organized by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. They present papers and argue about economic issues. But mostly, they wait to see what the Fed chairman has to say.
In August 2010, Bernanke hinted during his remarks at Jackson Hole that the Fed might begin a second round of bond purchases, a policy called quantitative easing, or QE2. The Fed started buying bonds three months later.
Many analysts think a third round of bond purchases — QE3 — would include both Treasurys and mortgage-backed securities.