the best among us

TruthDig | There are no excuses left. Either you join the revolt taking place on Wall Street and in the financial districts of other cities across the country or you stand on the wrong side of history. Either you obstruct, in the only form left to us, which is civil disobedience, the plundering by the criminal class on Wall Street and accelerated destruction of the ecosystem that sustains the human species, or become the passive enabler of a monstrous evil. Either you taste, feel and smell the intoxication of freedom and revolt or sink into the miasma of despair and apathy. Either you are a rebel or a slave.

To be declared innocent in a country where the rule of law means nothing, where we have undergone a corporate coup, where the poor and working men and women are reduced to joblessness and hunger, where war, financial speculation and internal surveillance are the only real business of the state, where even habeas corpus no longer exists, where you, as a citizen, are nothing more than a commodity to corporate systems of power, one to be used and discarded, is to be complicit in this radical evil. To stand on the sidelines and say “I am innocent” is to bear the mark of Cain; it is to do nothing to reach out and help the weak, the oppressed and the suffering, to save the planet. To be innocent in times like these is to be a criminal. Ask Tim DeChristopher.

Choose. But choose fast. The state and corporate forces are determined to crush this. They are not going to wait for you. They are terrified this will spread. They have their long phalanxes of police on motorcycles, their rows of white paddy wagons, their foot soldiers hunting for you on the streets with pepper spray and orange plastic nets. They have their metal barricades set up on every single street leading into the New York financial district, where the mandarins in Brooks Brothers suits use your money, money they stole from you, to gamble and speculate and gorge themselves while one in four children outside those barricades depend on food stamps to eat. Speculation in the 17th century was a crime. Speculators were hanged. Today they run the state and the financial markets. They disseminate the lies that pollute our airwaves. They know, even better than you, how pervasive the corruption and theft have become, how gamed the system is against you, how corporations have cemented into place a thin oligarchic class and an obsequious cadre of politicians, judges and journalists who live in their little gated Versailles while 6 million Americans are thrown out of their homes, a number soon to rise to 10 million, where a million people a year go bankrupt because they cannot pay their medical bills and 45,000 die from lack of proper care, where real joblessness is spiraling to over 20 percent, where the citizens, including students, spend lives toiling in debt peonage, working dead-end jobs, when they have jobs, a world devoid of hope, a world of masters and serfs.

it's overdue time to get money out of politics...,

Bailouts. War. Unemployment. Our government is bought, and we’re angry. Now, we’re turning our anger into positive action. By signing this petition, you are joining our campaign to get money out of politics. Our politicians won’t do this. But we will. We will become an unrelenting, organized wave advocating a Constitutional amendment to get money out of politics.

As the petition grows, the wave grows. Email, Facebook, Tweet -- GET MONEY OUT. We are using The Dylan Ratigan Show on MSNBC, and our ability to influence other media outlets as a platform to force this issue to the center of the 2012 elections. Join us.

From our former Washington Lobbyist, Jimmy Williams, here is a DRAFT of our Constitutional Amendment for public debate this fall:

"No person, corporation or business entity of any type, domestic or foreign, shall be allowed to contribute money, directly or indirectly, to any candidate for Federal office or to contribute money on behalf of or opposed to any type of campaign for Federal office. Notwithstanding any other provision of law, campaign contributions to candidates for Federal office shall not constitute speech of any kind as guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution or any amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Congress shall set forth a federal holiday for the purposes of voting for candidates for Federal office."

To double your impact, send GETMONEYOUT.com to one other person.

nypd barrelfish's protesters on the brooklyn bridge

HuffPo | Joshua Stephens, 33, had joined the protest march and had ended up on the Brooklyn Bridge. He managed to avoid being one of the 500 or so penned in by the NYPD and arrested. HuffPost reached him by phone, and he provided a first-hand narrative of just what happened on the bridge:

"The people who plotted the march did not give out the route in advance. There were people stationed throughout the march in the procession who were helping guide us when it was time to turn. They told people at the beginning 'we have a route, we're not announcing it.' I think that was a reaction to what happened before when the cops pepper-sprayed those women up in Union Square.

I was a little surprised when we got down to City Hall, and people started turning onto the Brooklyn Bridge. The Brooklyn Bridge is generally choked with tourists, just choked with tourists. If you are a cyclist, you just never take the Brooklyn Bridge...it's just a really frustrating experience...There's so many people on it all the time.

As we were turning to the entrance to the bridge, one of the protest people, the organizers, appeared to be cooperating with police. They were standing right there in front of cops. This march up until it went on the bridge was all on the sidewalk. The Troy Davis march which I was on, we took the street.

On this march, from basically Wall Street to the Brooklyn Bridge, if you stepped off the sidewalk to go around the signpost you would either be told nicely or as if you were at bootcamp to get back on the sidewalk. There was zero tolerance. If they successfully policed everybody to stay out of the streets up to the bridge, what prevented them from keeping us on the pedestrian walkway?

It just seemed odd to me, all of a sudden, people could go wherever they wanted [on the bridge]. People were splitting off.

The interesting thing is the cops could have stopped people from getting on the motorway at any point. You had thousands of people in that march--easily two or three thousand -- and the entrance to the Brooklyn Bridge is not wide. It's narrow. It's the width of a walkway. You can't just rush it. The march slowed to almost a stop. The police would have had plenty of opportunity to prevent people [from going] down to the motorway.

The police were just standing. I saw police standing there. It was all very chill. They were definitely at ease. It was almost like everything was as it should be. Then once we were on the bridge, all these cops came out of nowhere with flex ties and paddy wagons-- that seemed like a whole separate cadre of cops.

At the time, nothing about it seemed conspicuous. There was a protest organizer who was standing right in front of the cops who was directing people with disabilities up to the pathway. We were cracking jokes, we were all packed in there like sardines at the entrance. Wherever you happened to be you were forced to walk in a straight line. I just happened to be positioned to go up to the walkway.

As we started going up the pedestrian part of it, there were lots of middle-aged and retirement-aged people who ended up down at the motorway--and when the cops began to mobilize, they literally started climbing the fence. Six people at a time, hoisting up over these cast iron posts. People were risking being impaled on this fence to get off this motorway. As you get further on to the bridge, the motorway gets further below.

We didn't get far on the bridge before I saw cops mobilize behind us. There was a formation. I could see maybe 15 to 20 cops all with like reams of flex ties--a square formation standing and then marching towards Brooklyn. And they had paddy wagons going onto the bridge in reverse. They were backing up onto the bridge so they could go forward toward Manhattan. That started happening--I think that happened as soon as the last person got on the bridge.

They had cops coming from the other side and stop them from going any further. I couldn't hear anything. I was too far up. I saw the cops march up. At one point, they actually stopped again. And then they advanced forward again. I was just shocked, I looked down and saw all these people. How the fuck are they going to arrest all these people?

brooklyn bridge arrests on bbcnews cut off

Video - BBCNews interview about Occupy Wallstreet protests

BBCNews | More than 700 people from the Occupy Wall Street protest movement have been arrested on New York's City's Brooklyn Bridge, police say.

They were part of a larger group crossing the bridge from Manhattan, where they have been camped out near Wall Street for two weeks.

Some entered the bridge's roadway and were met by a large police presence and detained, most for disorderly conduct.

The loosely-organised group is protesting against corporate greed.

They say they are defending 99% of the US population against the wealthiest 1%.

Occupy Wall Street called for 20,000 people to "flood into lower Manhattan" on 17 September and remain there for "a few months".

Several hundred remain camped at Zuccotti Park, a privately owned area of land not far from Wall Street.

A police spokesman quoted by Reuters said the arrests came "after multiple warnings by police were given to protesters to stay on the pedestrian walkway".

"Some complied and took the walkway without being arrested. Others locked arms and proceeded on the Brooklyn-bound vehicular roadway. The latter were arrested," the spokesman said.

Many were released again shortly afterwards, police said.

Some of the protesters said police had allowed them on to the roadway and were escorting them across when they were surrounded and the arrests began.

"This was not a protest against the NYPD. This was a protest of the 99% against the disproportionate power of the 1%," protester Robert Cammiso told the BBC.

"We are not anarchists. We are not hooligans. I am a 48-year-old man. The top 1% control 50% of the wealth in the USA."

Another protester, Henry-James Ferry, said: "It is not fair that our government supports large corporations rather than the people.

"I only heard about the protest on day one when I came across it. I then decided to go back every day," he told the BBC.
March on police HQ

The protesters have had previous run-ins with New York's police.

On Friday, about 2,000 people marched under the Occupy Wall Street banner to New York's police headquarters to protest against arrests and police behaviour.

Some 80 people were arrested during a march on 25 September, mostly for disorderly conduct and blocking traffic, but one person was charged with assaulting a police officer.

A series of other small-scale protests have also sprung up in other US cities in sympathy with the aims of Occupy Wall Street.

good, the nytimes finally had to take notice...,

Video - Initial RT coverage of Occupy Wallstreet

NYTimes | Ever since the Arab Spring, many people here have been pining for an American Autumn. The closest we’ve gotten so far is Occupy Wall Street.

For two weeks, a “leaderless resistance movement” of a couple hundred people (depending on whom you ask) have camped out and sat-in at a tiny park in Lower Manhattan to protest greed and corruption, among other things. The protests were first called for in July by the magazine Adbusters, which calls itself “a global network of culture jammers and creatives.”

As New York Magazine reported the day before the protest began, protesters would first be meeting at Bowling Green Park for a program that included yoga, a pillow fight, and face-painting. The N.Y.P.D. thwarted those plans.

Still, it feels like a festival of frustrations, a collective venting session with little edge or urgency, highlighting just how far away downtown Manhattan is from Damascus — the hyper-aggressiveness of the police not withstanding.

It has, though, attracted institutional agitators such as Michael Moore and Cornel West, both who seem to ache for an uprising to fit the narratives of their personal discontent.

While it lacks the clarity and size — at least so far — of other protests we’ve seen in this country, let alone in other countries, it does highlight a growing sense of disillusionment among Americans and the failures and ineffectiveness they feel from the current government in addressing their concerns.

transit workers union wields formidable monkey wrench...,

Video - Why the TWU supports the Occupy Wall St. protest

Business Insider | According to Daily Kos, The New York Transit Workers Union (TWU) voted to support the Wall Street Protestors at their meeting last night.

A member of TWU Local 100 told a reporter that they would join the protest Friday at 4PM.

Here's more about them from their website:

The TWU has four main divisions: Railroad; Gaming; Airline; Transit; and Utility, University and Service. The Union has 114 autonomous locals representing over 200,000 members and retirees in 22 states around the country.

Occupy Wall Street has been picking up some decent support from unions in the past few days.

specious application of game mechanics...,

TechnologyReview | The world is in the midst of a gamification revolution—a mad dash to incorporate points, levels, and achievement badges into nearly every online and mobile experience. According to the hype, these "game mechanics" are a magic potion that can motivate anyone to do anything—purchase brand-name clothing, publicly share location information, or adopt healthy behaviors. Yet like many Internet revolutions, this one is tinged with irrational exuberance. Truly understanding what game mechanics can do requires significantly more nuance.

The intuitive idea is simple and appealing. Games are engaging, so making anything more gamelike should make it more engaging too. The scientific justification seems equally straightforward. Game mechanics invoke reinforcement learning; like B. F. Skinner's rats, we are repeatedly rewarded to produce the desired behavior.

Although behaviorist psychology is sound science, however, it is insufficient to justify gamification. Skinner's rats pressed a lever to get a morsel of food, and there is little debate about whether that constituted a reward. For human beings, what counts as a reward is much less clear. Points, levels, or badges are not inherently rewarding. The reward, when there is one, comes from underlying psychological phenomena such as social status, reputation, and group identification. Very little quality research has been done to show how game mechanics invoke these phenomena, and what the effects may be when they do.

When we look at game mechanics this way, it also becomes clear that they are unlikely to affect everyone in the same way. Some people actively seek status in the eyes of others, for example; other people are actually status-averse. Offering one-size-fits-all rewards may motivate certain people while putting others off. We need to understand more about the types of people who are motivated by specific gamelike rewards.

Another risk is that the extrinsic motivations supplied by game dynamics could crowd out motivations that are intrinsic to an activity. The most active Wikipedia editors, for example, are motivated by a shared investment in activities, interests, and beliefs that form a genuine connection among community members. The same is true in many online systems. Game dynamics, on the other hand, offer rewards that can be comparatively superficial and short-term. We know little about how gamification can undermine or support deeper, long-term motivation.

juan crow?

Philly.com | Hispanic students have started vanishing from Alabama public schools after a court ruling that upheld the state's tough new law on illegal immigration.

Education officials say scores of immigrant families have withdrawn their children from classes or kept them home this week, afraid that sending the children to school would draw attention from authorities.

There are no precise statewide numbers. But several districts with large immigrant enrollments reported a sudden exodus of children of Hispanic parents, some of whom told officials they would leave the state to avoid trouble with the law, which requires schools to check students' immigration status.

The anxiety has become so great that the superintendent in one of the state's largest cities, Huntsville, appeared on a Spanish-language television show Thursday to try to calm widespread worries.

"In the case of this law, our students do not have anything to fear," Casey Wardynski said in halting Spanish. He urged families to send students to class and explained that the state was only trying to compile statistics. Police, he insisted, were not getting involved in schools.

In Montgomery County, more than 200 Hispanic students were absent the morning after the judge's Wednesday ruling. A handful withdrew.

fit'na do this on monday - any thoughts, suggestions?

Video - brainzooming building the gigabit city

brainzooming | The area’s most avid internet users and innovators will convene with business, education and civic leaders to brainstorm ways to capitalize on Google’s bestowment of ultra-high speed fiber internet network upon Kansas City.

After Google announced last spring that Kansas City, Kansas and Kansas City, Missouri are the two initial cities to benefit from “internet access more than 100 times faster than what most Americans have today,” the task falls to the community to determine the best ways this technological gift should be used.

In response, the Social Media Club of Kansas City (SMCKC) will host “Building the Gigabit City: Brainstorming a Google Fiber Roadmap” October 3rd at the Kansas City (MO) Public Library Central Branch, one of the event’s major sponsors.

SMCKC member Mike Brown, founder of The Brainzooming Group, will lead the invitation-only, daylong work session. Brown volunteered to fully donate the company’s innovation services and the Brainzooming Methodology to the session that will bring together more than 50 individuals from SMCKC as well as the broader community—a combination of visionary entrepreneurs, developers, business leaders and creators.

A public presentation of preliminary results from the Gigabit City session and a call for public input will be conducted from 6:30 to 8 p.m. at the Kansas City Public Library Central Branch Helzberg Auditorium at 14 W. 10th Street in Kansas City, MO.

google green the big picture

do moods on twitter follow biorhythms?

NYTimes | However grumpy people are when they wake up, and whether they stumble to their feet in Madrid, Mexico City or Minnetonka, Minn., they tend to brighten by breakfast time and feel their moods taper gradually to a low in the late afternoon, before rallying again near bedtime, a large-scale study of posts on the social media site Twitter found.

Drawing on messages posted by more than two million people in 84 countries, researchers discovered that the emotional tone of people’s messages followed a similar pattern not only through the day but also through the week and the changing seasons. The new analysis suggests that our moods are driven in part by a shared underlying biological rhythm that transcends culture and environment.

The report, by sociologists at Cornell University and appearing in the journal Science, is the first cross-cultural study of daily mood rhythms in the average person using such text analysis. Previous studies have also mined the mountains of data pouring into social media sites, chat rooms, blogs and elsewhere on the Internet, but looked at collective moods over broader periods of time, in different time zones or during holidays.

“There’s just a torrent of new digital data coming into the field, and it’s transforming the social sciences, creating new lenses to look at all sorts of behaviors,” said Peter Sheridan Dodds, a researcher at the University of Vermont who was not involved in the new research. He called the new study “very exciting, because it complements previous findings” and expands on what is known about how mood fluctuates.

He and other outside researchers also cautioned that drawing on Twitter had its hazards, like any other attempt to monitor the fleeting internal states labeled as moods. For starters, Twitter users are computer-savvy, skew young and affluent, and post for a variety of reasons.

“Tweets may tell us more about what the tweeter thinks the follower wants to hear than about what the tweeter is actually feeling,” said Dan Gilbert, a Harvard psychologist, in an e-mail. “In short, tweets are not a simple reflection of a person’s current affective state and should not be taken at face value.”

The study’s authors, Scott A. Golder and Michael W. Macy, acknowledge such limitations and worked to correct for them. In the study, they collected up to 400 messages from each of 2.4 million Twitter users writing in English, posted from February 2008 through January 2010.

They analyzed the text of each message, using a standard computer program that associates certain words, like “awesome” and “agree,” with positive moods and others, like “annoy” and “afraid,” with negative ones. They included so-called emoticons, the face symbols like “:)” that punctuate digital missives.

The researchers gained access to the messages through Twitter, using an interface that allows scientists as well as software developers to work with the data.

ironies abound in the media reaction to the English riots that erupted between August 6-10.

Media Lens | It was widely reported that two young men acting independently - Jordan Blackshaw, 20, and Perry Sutcliffe-Keenan, 22 – had been sentenced to four years in prison for trying to incite riots via Facebook in the Manchester area. This ‘despite both being of previous good character’, and despite the fact that their Facebook entries - viewed by a few hundred people – failed to generate a single rioter. Farcically, the only people waiting for Blackshaw at his gathering point were the police.

The four-year jail sentences were harsh indeed, as the Guardian noted:

‘If the two Cheshire men had left home and actually taken part in a riot, it is likely they would have been charged with violent disorder. The average sentence passed on the 372 people convicted of violent disorder in 2010 was just over 18 months. The 1,434 people convicted of public order offences last year got, on average, two months inside.

‘Normally, to qualify for a four-year sentence, a convict would have to kidnap somebody (average sentence 47 months in 2010), kill someone while drink driving (45 months), or carry out a sexual assault (48 months).’

Clearly, judges felt that even failed attempts to incite disruption via social media were worse than actual participation in the riots.

Writing in the Daily Mail, columnist Melanie Phillips located the cause of the riots in ‘fatherless boys who are consumed by an existential rage and desperate emotional need, and who take out the damage done to them by lashing out from infancy at everyone around them’.

This vicious behaviour is fostered by ‘a world without any boundaries or rules. A world of emotional and physical chaos. A world where a child responds to the slightest setback or disagreement by resorting to violence.’

And who can doubt that compassion and restraint in the face of disagreement offer the best hopes for a peaceful world? The 11th century Buddhist poet Ksemendra recalled the wise counsel offered to one enraged king:

'Lord, do not talk like this. If you return anger for anger, anger increases. If you give hate in return for hatred, you will never be rid of your enemies. Would you put out a fire by covering it with wood? It will always rekindle... If you meditate on tolerance to overcome anger, all will become your friends.' (Leaves of the Heaven Tree, Dharma Publishing, 1997, p.333)

Earlier this month, Phillips commented on the tenth anniversary of the September 11 attacks:

‘The real problem with the US and UK reaction to 9/11 was that they did not follow through… we should have gone on to deal with Iran, Syria, Pakistan and Saudi as well.’

Did she mean ‘deal with’ their concerns and grievances in a just and even-handed way? Should the US and UK have recognised their own wrongdoing, their own responsibility for generating hatred? In clarification, Phillips quoted herself from September 2002:

‘The US hopes that sorting Saddam will deliver to these other states the simple message: unless you desist from terror, you're next.’

A world ‘without any boundaries or rules’, in other words, where unilaterally ‘resorting to violence’ and 'lashing out' is the natural response.

Journalists like Phillips, who use national media platforms like the Daily Mail (circulation 2 million) to agitate for war at a time when the decision lies in the balance, are typically garlanded with awards, not sent to the slammer.  After two years spent cold-selling Blair’s war on Iraq, David Aaronovitch, then of the Guardian, won the What the Papers Say Columnist of The Year Award for 2003. In the same year, following a similar pro-war performance, the Independent’s Johann Hari was made Young Journalist of the Year at the British Press Awards (to his credit, Hari has since recanted his support for the Iraq war). Phillips was awarded the Orwell Prize for Journalism in 1996.

Politicians do even better, of course. Last month, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that Tony Blair, now the Middle East Quartet’s Special Envoy, was to receive an award ‘to express Israel’s appreciation for his efforts toward Middle East peace'. A decision worthy of a different kind of Orwell Prize. Meanwhile, Channel 4 reports:

‘Since resigning in June 2007 Tony Blair has financially enriched himself more than any ex-Prime Minister ever. Reporter Peter Oborne reveals some of the sources of his new-found wealth, much of which comes from the Middle East.’ 

the rat race for prestige

The Atlantic | Stephen Joel Trachtenberg understands the prestige war from the inside. When he became president of George Washington University in 1988, tuition was $14,000 -- below average for a private, four-year university, as Washington Monthly reported. When he left in 2007, tuition had skyrocketed to $39,000. During that time, undergraduate applications tripled, the endowment quintupled to $1 billion, SAT scores jumped by 200 points, and the university created five new schools. This essay is adapted from an interview with The Atlantic.

You can buy a pair of jeans at Wal-Mart for $29 and one from Ralph Lauren for $98. While both cover your backside, one comes with a label of status that appeals to some and not to others. Customers -- and lets not forget that students are customers of academic services -- like choices and they usually make selections based on more than one factor, price being only one.

When my son checked into his freshman dorm, there were no lights in his room - nothing on the ceiling, walls or desk. There were two outlets: if you wanted light, Yale required you to bring your own lamp. I thought this took the parable of Plato's Cave a bit too far.

Applicants to GW look for more than overhead lights: they want living and dining choices, places to study and swim, comfortable desks and chairs, and tennis and basketball courts. Yes, they are looking for great professors but they want more than classroom life. The only way to provide more books in the library, more theaters for performances, laboratories for experiments, coffee shops for study breaks is to have the dollars to build and maintain all these things - and dollars come from tuition.

At the same time as the demand for quality services increased, so too did the cost for basic utilities: electricity, water, security, oil, insurance, personnel health and other employee benefits have all risen over the past 40 years.

PERCEPTION IS REALITY: WHY TUITION KEEPS RISING

The only way to buy more books and build more labs is more money. And the money come from tuition. The top 50 universities are not a monolithic list. They can probably be divided into two parts: the top 15 and the next 35. Within the first group, there is little difference of quality - it is all cream with nuances of flavorings. For the next group - numbers 16-50, there is cream, buttermilk, latte, and lots of special tastes. There is also jockeying for position. The top ten always get a mention by the general press. Sometimes, the next 5 or 10 are in a paragraph lower down the column. No question that number 35 wants to move up.

Tuitions rise because costs rise. As the payroll grows, tuition goes up. As the expense of goods and services used by the institution inflate, or become more extended and expanded, tuition goes up. Universities really do get better faculty by providing better compensation and benefits. Professors, it turns out, are economic men and women: Prestige tends to be indexed to quality and quality tends to be measured by the attributes of an institution: the laboratories, libraries, studios, playing fields, recreational and residential facilities; the services for counseling. When one talks about a top 50 university, one is talking about both perception and reality. These are in significant measure indexed to the size of endowment, the fundraising and the tuition income available to the school to provide what the students seek.

the rise of the adult student

The Atlantic | The quintessential American college student leaves home at 18 to live on a college campus for four years. We've historically defined "nontraditional" students as those over the age of twenty-four, those enrolled part time, and those who are financially independent. But today, the "typical" student is the exception.

There are currently 17.6 million undergraduates enrolled in American higher education. The National Center for Education Statistics reports that just fifteen percent of them attend four-year colleges and live on campus. Forty-three percent of them attend two-year institutions. Thirty-seven percent of undergraduates are enrolled part-time and thirty-two percent work full-time. Of those students enrolled in four-year institutions, just thirty-six percent actually graduate in four years.

The most significant shift is probably the massive growth in the adult student population in higher education. Thirty-eight percent of those enrolled in higher education are over the age of 25 and one-fourth are over the age of 30. The share of all students who are over age 25 is projected to increase another twenty-three percent by 2019.

The demands for degrees reflect this changed population. Slightly over half of today's students are seeking a "subbacalaureate" credential (i.e. a certificate, credential, or associate's degree). In 2008-09, postsecondary institutions conferred 806,000 certificates and 787,000 associate's degrees, or a total of about 1.59 million, as compared to 1.6 million bachelor's degrees. In 2008, more than half a million students were enrolled in a health sciences certificate program, making it the largest certificate program area. Another 173,000 students sought a certificate in manufacturing, construction, repair, and transportation. While public discourse often focuses on four-year degrees, these other credentials matter, a lot.

There are plenty of good jobs that don't require a four-year degree. After all, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reports that two-thirds of the labor force has less than a four-year degree, including nearly half of those in professional occupations and one-third of those in management roles. It pays for workers to earn these credentials; according to the BLS, that workers with an associate's degree earned $141 more per week, on average, than those whose highest degree is a high school diploma.

But subbacalaureate programs continue to be regarded as marginal in the press and the higher education mainstream. Universities turn their nose up at them. Policies and norms remain oriented towards "traditional" students. Rankings, awards, and honors go to institutions with great sports teams, prize-winning researchers, or elite student bodies--never to those that are helping nontraditional students master new skills and so that they can reenter the workforce, get promoted, or change careers.

why you should root for colleges to go online

The Atlantic | In early August, Apollo Group, parent company of the University of Phoenix, made an acquisition that is small compared to the billion-dollar deals common to high-tech industries. Apollo paid less than $100 million to acquire Carnegie Learning, a provider of computer-based math tutorials. Such technology acquisitions are rare in higher education, to say the least. Yet this seemingly small deal is a signal of disruptive revolution in higher education.

Carnegie Learning is the creation of computer and cognitive scientists from Carnegie Mellon University. Their math tutorials draw from cutting-edge research about the way students learn and what motivates them to succeed academically. These scientists have created adaptive computer tutorials that meet students at their individual level of understanding and help them advance via the kinds of exercises they personally find most engaging and effective. The personalization and sophistication is hard for even an expert human tutor to match. It is a powerful, affordable adjunct to classroom instruction, as manifest by Carnegie Learner's user base of more than 600,000 secondary students in over 3,000 schools nationwide.

Some of Apollo's potential uses of this software are immediately apparent. It will prove a boon to the hundreds of thousands of University of Phoenix students who take math courses in almost all of its programs of study. Also, the underlying learning and computer science technology are likely to be applied to math-related courses, such as those in economics, finance, and accounting that the University of Phoenix offers its undergraduate business and MBA students.

Then there are the strategic marketing possibilities. The secondary school students who have come to value and rely on Carnegie Learning's math tutorials are future college students. They might not think now of the University of Phoenix for college. But Sony discovered something interesting about the teenagers who bought its inexpensive pocket-size transistor radios and Walkman cassette tape players: they grew up to be faithful consumers of its larger stereos and television sets. Initially, Magnavox and RCA didn't worry about the low-profit-margin products for kids. In hindsight, they should have. Fist tap Bob.

exhausting our year's supply of earth resources

Fist tap Nana.

rethinking education

Video - part of the tower and the cloud, higher education in the era of cloud computing

2011 visions of students today project

Video - Visions of students today

an anthropological introduction to youtube

Video - the loss of community and networked individualism

the machine is us/ing us

Video - Web 2.0 in just under 5 minutes.