David Cohn has published to his blog his final project to graduate with a Masters from Columbia’s journalism school – a report on the technology and people behind the Dean campaign of 2004 – Drupal Nation: Software to Power the Left.
Category Archives: Public Service, Civics, Government, Activism
The car of the future is here, but will it matter?
LATimes: – – 52 mpg and the darkness before dawn: On a test drive of a – – last week in West L.A. traffic, I managed, without much trouble, to get 52 mpg in mixed city-highway driving. Wait, so, has somebody invented the car of the future and didn’t tell us?
I’ve dashed out the name because people come with their own prejudices and probably won’t click.
A 52MPG FAMILY CAR. A car platform that Consumer Reports has graded as above average in quality, as an equal to any in the world.
But I bet you can’t get past who it is from.
Which is sad.
A stimulus plan that sounds worthy of real discussion
David Sassoon: Transition Team Weighing Blockbuster Housing and Stimulus Proposal:
The automobile industry was revolutionized with the invention of the hybrid engine that could capture and store energy that would otherwise go up in smoke. Now, there’s a counterpart invention for the housing market that extracts the energy wasted by buildings, and uses it to power economic recovery.
It takes the form of a plan that promises to save consumers $142.33 billion to $200.88 billion in energy costs and mortgage payments over a five-year period, significantly reducing the risk of mortgage failure while increasing disposable income and creating millions of new jobs.
The plan of action is now in the hands of the Obama transition team and could rewrite the book on how the stimulus package gets put together. It’s called the 2030 Challenge Stimulus Plan and it was authored by Ed Mazria and his team at Architecture 2030.
via Doc Searls
The safety net is no longer
Inquirer: What about the safety net? ‘A lot of people are falling through.’
As unemployment is failing, Welfare rolls grow for first time since the 90s.
Horrible case in point, reported in the LATimes, is the story of the Himmel family – now living in a SUV – their daughter, Destiny, 16, was diagnosed with leukemia.
Student loans can be dangerous
I need to quickly secure a student loan, and it looks far more complicated and dangerous than it should be. LATimes: Student loans turn into crushing burden for unwary borrowers:
…Hickey knew she would need loans to complete her degree, so she went to the campus financial aid office as a freshman. After she filled out paperwork, Brooks Institute set her up in a loan program administered by Sallie Mae, the nation’s biggest student lender.
Sallie Mae was chartered by the federal government in 1972, and most of its business is in issuing federally insured student loans. But while it may appear to be a quasi-government agency, it is in fact a for-profit company whose stock trades on the New York Stock Exchange.
Hickey ended up with $20,000 in low-interest federally guaranteed loans issued by Sallie Mae, and $120,000 in higher-interest private loans issued by Sallie Mae.
Hickey said no one explained the difference to her.
“The financial aid officer just said that my federal loans weren’t enough to pay the tuition, but that was OK because they had these great alternative loans,” Hickey said. “They made it sound so good that I didn’t ask that many questions.”
Tim Halsey, vice president of finance for Brooks Institute, declined to discuss Hickey’s case directly, citing federal privacy laws. But he said the school’s financial aid officers take great pains to explain the differences between loans and to guide students to the best deals.
“It is really to our advantage to get the loans and interest rates as low as possible,” Halsey said.
“My motivation is to get that person to come to the school, if that’s what they want to do. If I can get those costs as low as possible, it benefits us both.”
Discussion at Kevin Drum’s blog.
This loan mess is made even scarier by the fact that college costs are rising faster than income. According to the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, college tuition and fees, adjusted for inflation, rose 439 percent from 1982 to 2007. Median family income rose 147 percent during the same period.
Inquirer: “Witness the world of college admissions at perhaps its greatest point of divergence.”
Inquirer: “Toward college without a map Lack of counselors leaves students adrift.”:
In Philadelphia, former school district CEO Paul Vallas tried to give students a fairer shake by covering the cost for them to take on-line and face-to-face SAT classes from private companies.
But the classroom SAT prep was halted in 2006 as a budget deficit opened, and the online course was dropped this year, also for lack of money.
Top city and school district officials said last week that, despite budget restraints, they would restore funding for SAT prep classes. They are also planning a call-in center for students to get help on college admissions.
…Superintendent Arlene Ackerman said last week she was stunned upon arriving in June to find how little time counselors spend on college and career guidance and is redirecting their priorities.
The dearth of services is painfully apparent to Philadelphia Futures and White-Williams Scholars, nonprofits that help promising district students get to college.
“Students in the comprehensive high schools must badger their overworked counselors for everything they need in the college admission process,” said Joan Mazzotti, executive director of Philadelphia Futures.
“They do not have the luxury of being badgered by their counselors.”
Overbrook High Principal Ethelyn Payne Young said the outcome was obvious.
“Some of them end up maybe not going anywhere [to college] or not going to where we know they really could go. . . . When you don’t have enough resources, enough manpower to touch every kid, you lose some. You lose many.
The Greatest “What’s So Funny ‘Bout Peace Love and Understanding” talk about community, tech and open source EVER (A repost and re-tweet)
I shared this previously, but it is worth a repost (many reposts), via Jay Rosen (as does title!). I’d say my entire career has been formed by this effect one way or another. And I am thankful.
When we think about the problems we face today, here is how the Internet provides a participatory platform to help. There’s nothing in here that refutes human nature – it just celebrates an important facet of it: When we gather around communities of interest we care deeply about – we look out for others within that community of interest. The Internet changes the stage for which we can connect across those passions.
YouTube: Cay Shirky on Love, Internet Style:
High School Dropout Epidemic
NYTimes: States’ Data Obscure How Few Finish High School:
…many states use an inflated graduation rate for federal reporting requirements under the No Child Left Behind law and a different one at home. As a result, researchers say, federal figures obscure a dropout epidemic so severe that only about 70 percent of the one million American students who start ninth grade each year graduate four years later.
A challenge to Jeff Jarvis and Dave Winer
Christopher Anderson, after noting the conversation that Jeff Jarvis and Dave Winer are having on the future of news reporting, and after outlining how a specific story was produced at the Philadelphia Daily News, lays down a interesting challenge to Jeff Jarvis and Dave Winer.
My thoughts and prayers
I wanted to offer my thoughts and prayers towards those dealing with the horror of the last few days in Mumbai.
Arpit: When terrorism hits home
NYTimes: What They Hate About Mumbai
The Atlantic: Behind Mumbai
Guardian: ‘We were told to kill until the last breath’
BBC: How Mumbai attacks unfolded