60 Minutes 2011 reports on family homelessness are must-sees

They titled the report, “The Hard Times Generation” and it was a revealing look at families fighting homelessness.

60 Minutes: 14 minute video: “Hard Times Generation: Families living in cars”:

60 Minutes: 2 minute video: “Something with a roof: Scott Pelley asks homeless students to describe their ideal homes, they have only a few modest requests: a roof, a bed and most importantly, their families.”:

Read the story behind the report.

Related Stories:

CityPaper: “One Occupy legacy: it gave the homeless cover to live in public.”

Metafilter: “Inequality highest in thirty years across most of the developed world.”

Esquire: “Income Inequality Is a Symptom, Not the Disease”

thestateman: “Census shows 1 in 2 people are poor or low-income”

NYTimes.com: “How Anger Took Elites by Surprise”

NYTimes: “Camps Are Cleared, but ‘99 Percent’ Still Occupies the Lexicon”

CSMonitor: “Homeless children at record high in US. Can the trend be reversed?”

Billy Bragg: “Billy Bragg: The biggest enemy we face is… the deadly lure of cynicism”

Salon: “How 2011 became the year of compassion”

Meet the man behind the protest mask – Alan Moore

Tom Lamont, in The Guardian, interviews comic book writer Alan Moore and asks him how he feels about the propagation of “V for Vendetta” masks among protestors: “Alan Moore – meet the man behind the protest mask”

Star Wars versus Doctor Who

Philip Sandifer, “A hopeless geek with a PhD in English focusing on media studies”, compares Star Wars and Doctor Who in “Pop Between Realities, Home in Time for Tea 21 (Star Wars)”. A long read, but worth it.

A parent who finds a way to build an App helping his Autistic son

The Startup Toolkit profiles Aeir and profiles the person behind it, Joseph Hill. It is an inspiring story: “A man, a mop, a year, and an app – Joseph Hill on Aeir Talk”.

In 2011, the Internet started to revolutionize education

A huge list of stories from TheNextWeb to read in its 2011 round-up: “In 2011: How the Internet Revolutionized Education”. Things that got my attention:

Squad, CodeNow, ReadingBear, The Open University, and Clayton Christensen, saying education is ready for disruption.

Edd Dumbill’s Big Data predictions for 2012

O’Reilly Radar: Edd Dumbill: “Five big data predictions for 2012”. Are you going to add a data science team in the new year? Apache’s S4 looks interesting.

Tim Bray, “we have so little consensus on these issues”

Tim Bray posted a thought provoker in “Type-System Criteria”. Working in Android has caused him to rethink some positions. Go read.

Greg Wilson, “This continues to be the biggest headache our students face”

Greg Wilson discusses one of the biggest road blocks to using Python more widely, especially in teaching situations, in “It Just Keeps On Hurting”.

How Firefly fans won a fight for free speech on a campus

YouTube.com: “Don’t Mess with Firefly! How SciFi Fans Made a Campus Safe for Free Speech (feat. Neil Gaiman)”:

(via Boing Boing)

Quotes from the Nato Software Engineering Conference in 1968 – Peter Krantz

Peter Krantz put together some eye-opening, and sad, sad quotes from a software engineering conference held in 1968: “Quotes from the Nato Software Engineering Conference in 1968 – Peter Krantz”.