apple juice

Cute video.

Ninety-seven percent of scientists agree: #climate change is real, man-made and dangerous. Read more: OFA.BO/gJsdFp

— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) May 16, 2013

It’s going to take a lot more than tweets to get new policy on climate change. but there is hope. You probably read the guardian’s recent post that 97% of scientific papers on climate change agree that it is man-made. You’ve also probably read that we’ve passed 400ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere.

Here’s hoping that the next 30 years brings serious and sustained action on climate. Time to vote the deniers out of office… Glenn Gruenhagen of Glencoe – I’m looking at you for starters. “United Nations fraud and lie”? Conspiracy theory much?

the new daft punk is my official summer record. there is a wonderful groove permeating this record. I’ve only streamed via iTunes. Contemplating a vinyl purchase. But it’s $33.49 on Amazon. That is a serious premium over the digital version.

graduation is nearly upon us this year, and I just found this speech by David Foster Wallace. Worth a listen.

THIS IS WATER – By David Foster Wallace from The Glossary on Vimeo.

The best programs draw people who majored as undergraduates in the subjects they wanted to teach; focus on extensive clinical practice rather than on classroom theory; are selective in choosing their applicants rather than treating students as a revenue stream; and use data about how their students fare as teachers to assess and revise their practice.

via Teachers – Will We Ever Learn? – NYTimes.com.

Good article – if you do just a little bit of reading about the system in Finland, you’ll get the sense that we could do a lot better.

This will blow your mind…

La surconsommation from Lasurconsommation on Vimeo.

Revolution Hits the Universities – NYTimes.com:

“My opening discussion of C. Wright Mills’s classic 1959 book, ‘The Sociological Imagination,’ was a close reading of the text, in which I reviewed a key chapter line by line. I asked students to follow along in their own copies, as I do in the lecture hall. When I give this lecture on the Princeton campus, I usually receive a few penetrating questions. In this case, however, within a few hours of posting the online version, the course forums came alive with hundreds of comments and questions. Several days later there were thousands. … Within three weeks I had received more feedback on my sociological ideas than I had in a career of teaching, which significantly influenced each of my subsequent lectures and seminars.’”

Good op-ed about MOOCs. I don’t know if they are the silver bullet, but they are another avenue. My experience with an online course on Coursera last semester was positive, but we had the face-to-face time as well participating online.