Lucky Marine Tricks Death

10:54:25 PM    

Geneva convention: "Donald Rumsfeld is outraged because by parading of five US PoWs, Iraq violates article 13 of the Geneva convention. What he prefers not to mention is that with the detention of 641 men in Guantanamo Bay, the USA is in violation of articles 4, 5, 13, 18, 22, 26, 28, 34, 38, 41, 70, 71, 72 and 118 of the same convention, says George Monbiot in The Guardian." [The Aardvark Speaks] [Universal Rule]

While I find the discussions at the end of this article hard to believe, I do believe that we have probably violated many more provisions of the Geneva Convention with our detention of men at Guantanamo than Iraq has done. Hell, even 24 was using detention at Guantanamo as a plot point last night. Send the terrorist to Guantanamo so we can really interrogate him. It may become the new Gulag for America. People get sent there to never be heard from again. They do not exist in the US legal system, or in any international legal system. The US will never make the mistake again of letting a terrorist be allowed access to our legal system. Off to Guantanamo soonest.  10:32:16 PM    

Publish (Electronically) And Perish? "The moral of the story is that there is a downside to electronic publishing, and even those things you do with the best of intentions can come back to bite you if not approached with the utmost care." (TidBITS via MyAppleMenu) [MyAppleMenu] [Universal Rule]

A very nice cautionary tale. We will all have to make some adjustments for the new mode of publishing.  11:04:52 AM    

Doing well in school and at work - Creative Communities - Richard Florida.

What cities are the ones that are attracting the creative? Why are creative people leaving cities like Pittsburgh that have symphonies, galleries, universities restaurants, museum etc?

Richard Florida tells us what type of community and social environment spurs on learning and creativity

[Robert Paterson's Radio Weblog]

And one of the critical of creativity is diversity, not just in people but in culture, climate and community. There are some very important points raised here that resonate with ALL the creative people I know. WHat is fascinating is that 'non-creative' centers keep trying to take a top-down approach for recruiting creative people: large amounts of money spent on business parks, malls and sports stadiums. All things that are 'fake' to the bottom-up, smart mob approach of the creators. It sounds somewhat like a social form of the Innovator's Dilemma . Cities that rose to power based on one mode of cultural and organizational structure can not make the leap to another form and simply continue repeating their old patterns.  10:55:58 AM    

Family Functioning or Culture - the other Social driver for Learning and attainment.

It is conventional wisdom to link social and economic status with education and behaviour. A powerful belief is that if you are poor you are at risk. New research in Canada conducted by Doug Wilms refutes this.

There are more kids in trouble from middle class families than from any other sector. His theory is that what is at the heart of poor attainment is what he calls Family Functioning or Culture. The worst results come from highly authoritarian families - the my way or the highway style. Just in behind are permissive families - any thing you do dear is OK with me. What is best is a style he calls authoritative. We have rules here but we explain them and as you get older you participate in developing them.

The article links in to a remarkable technology  created by Values Technology that has ben used to measure culture in the workplace for many years. The ah ha for me was that VT show the same linkage to poor results with these styles at work. Maybe this is why many are so unhappy in bureaucracies which are both authoritarian and permissive in that they have a lot of rules but you can behave badly

[Robert Paterson's Radio Weblog]

Of course I agree wholeheartedly with this since my wife and I have made a conscience choice to raise our son with the authoritative model. We talk a lot with each other and with our son about the whats and whys of our family life. We set firm guidelines for his behavior but with full input from all of us. So far it seems to work. We actually have him taking out the recyclables and putting away the dishes in order to pay for his Yu-Gi-Oh card habit ;-) Quid Pro Quo.  10:22:48 AM    

Doing well in school - A Series - Social Capital and Education - Robert Putnam.

What are the factors that help our children do well in school? We fuss alot about the school, the teacher and the curriculum.

Here is the first of three articles that will take a different tack. They draw on new research that show clearly a link between the environment and the attainment. The first article is by the King of Social Capital - Robert Putnam

He makes the case for a gradient showing that parts of the US with high Social Capital - which tracks TV watching - have better educational results. The gradients are steep.

Great graphs in the text as well - see how your state does!

[Robert Paterson's Radio Weblog]

A highly enlightening paper. I liked the factoid that the higher the population of Scnadinavian descent, the higher the social capital, since both my wife and I have Scandinavian ancestors (Mine from Sweden; hers from Norway). Some really nice data, although the paper also ends with a word of caution because this is an early examination of all these data but some of its examination is quite robust. But it does fit my view that the more social contacts one has, the better we all are.  10:17:15 AM