December 2008
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Day December 17, 2008

Entries 4 Total

Teen Pregnancy

Here’s a link to a story on the Vancouver Sun’s website about how lesbian teens are (percentage-wise) more likely to get pregnant than their heterosexual peers. The article supposes that part of the reason behind this is the pressure that society puts upon youth to live up to the idealized mother and fatherhood of heterosexuality. Seems to not say much for our society, and by that I mean society in it’s universal world-wide sense, if kids feel so stigmatized that they have to be so unlike themselves in order to feel accepted.

Here’s the link:  Lesbian youth at high risk for pregnancy: UBC study .

Posted on December 17, ’08

The Fitzgerald Factor

Matthew Yglesias has a great article up about how the scandal brewing in Illinois regarding its Senate seat is quite the confluence of coincidences. It all relates to former Sen. Peter Fitzgerald breaking with the norms of how US Attorneys are usually appointed. From the article:

A ton of consequential things have sprung out from Fitzgerald’s decision to bring in Fitzgerald for basically quirky reasons. But it’s a reminder, I think, that the usual way of doing these appointments is pretty inadequate. Much better to look for serious professionals and see what kinds of corruption turn up elsewhere.

Link to article: Matthew Yglesias » The Fitzgerald Factor .

Posted on December 17, ’08

Education and No Child Left Behind

Here’s an excerpt from a paper I just finished for a School and Society course.

If schools are to serve the public as a means toward social mobility then they must create a situation in which students learn skills that are more developed than simple test taking can judge. There must be a critical element in schools that not only educates students, but provides them with the necessary creative skills to adapt to different situations and modes of knowledge.

It is this educating of students as critical thinkers that schools ought to be held accountable for. Put simply critical thinking inherently cannot be measure by multiple choice tests. Assessment is perfectly acceptable and accountability for schools is also necessary; however, it should not be undertaken through these mass tests of basic abilities. If school’s are to be held accountable and have the consequences that those in Chubb’s book (Within Our Reach: How America Can Educate Every Child) call for then it ought to be for something higher than basic skills. Ultimately schools serve to educate all children and provide for the opportunity for all children to participate in and perhaps even change their worlds and it is this that schools ought to be held accountable for doing. NCLB just does not work toward these higher goals. It just work toward imparting the basics upon students in the most efficient and cost-effective manner which does nothing to address the greater needs of society.

Posted on December 17, ’08

Time Machine

The recent update to OS X (10.5.6) crashed my MacBook so severely that I had to do a complete system restore from my Leopard install DVD. Thankfully I had a Time Machine backup of everything that was important, which was handy considering that it’s finals week. Anyway, after getting my laptop back up to speed with all my apps, files, and updates I needed to get rid of all the Time Machine backups from my previous account. I selected everything from before yesterday and deleted it. After emptying the trash Finder proceeded to prepare a ridiculous number of files for deletion. Currently it’s up to a little over a million (I’ll try and keep track of how high it gets). Seems to be slightly absurd to have to delete this many files just to get a clean hard drive to back up to.

 

50 pm. Who knows where it'll stop?

My Time Machine deletion as of 4:50 pm. Who knows where it'll stop?

Update: It eventually got up to 1.2 million shortly after originally posting this.

Posted on December 17, ’08