[ This blog was crossposted on Software Freedom Conservancy's website. ]
Reading
April 18, 2017 What Student Test-Takers Share with Ejected Airline Passengers By Alfie Kohn Social media exploded in early April after a video was posted of a doctor being dragged off a United flight for which he had a ticket. The outrage continued to build for days not just because we could watch what this man experienced but because the ... Read More
I had worked a night shift. The dog woke me at lunch time. Re must have just left for work. I tried to sleep more but I was awake. I took the dog down the beach for a walk. Picked up some beer, food and milk on the way home …
Max killed himself this week. I found out from a message on my phone. I was sitting in the cab of my ute after a day at work. I stared at my phone.
I thought I’d misunderstood the message. I read it again, the words became disjointed and I …
Why is it all so fucking hard?
I am not reinventing the wheel. I just wanted a simple way to post text and the odd picture online. I do not want to post via some ‘service’ in which I end up being owned by them. I did not want to …
March 23, 2017 Is Trump a Conservative Only by Accident? By Alfie Kohn Perhaps you’ve heard it said that Donald Trump is all about ego, not ideology. The reason many conservatives were so slow to warm up to him, on this view, is that they realized he’s not really one of them. He is driven not by any political ... Read More
I encourage all of you to either listen to or read the transcript of Terry Gross' Fresh Air interview with Joseph Turow about his discussion of his book “The Aisles Have Eyes: How Retailers Track Your Shopping, Strip Your Privacy, And Define Your Power”.
Now, most of you who read my blog know the difference between proprietary and Free Software, and the difference between a network service and software that runs on your own device. I want all of you have a good understanding of that to do a simple thought experiment:
How many of the horrible things that Turow talks about can happen if there is no proprietary software on your IoT or mobile devices?
There are a lot of problems in our society, and particularly in the USA, right now, and plenty of charities who need our support. The reason I continue to focus my work on software freedom is simply because there are so few focused on the moral and ethical issues of computing. Open Source has reached its pinnacle as an industry fad, and with it, a watered-down message: “having some of the source code for some of your systems some of the time is so great, why would you need anything more?”. Universal software freedom is however further from reality than it was even a few years ago. At least a few of us, in my view, must focus on that cause.
February 7, 2017 “Free-Range Kids”? It Depends… By Alfie Kohn Not long ago, the New York Times Magazine published an article about a Silicon Valley entrepreneur who turned his backyard into an elaborate play space for neighborhood kids so they could “take risks and play rough and tumble” without adult supervision. No doubt many readers smiled and nodded to hear ... Read More
Employment is about buying the former and generating the latter. How does that relate to the Job Guarantee?
Shane would like to say thank you and God bless you to all the people who are offering kind words... Read more »
The post THERESE MACGOWAN RIP appeared first on Shane MacGowan.
December 12, 2016 The Case for Abolishing Class Rank By Alfie Kohn When students are rated with letter or number grades, research shows they’re apt to think in a shallower fashion – and to lose interest in what they’re learning – as compared with students who aren’t graded at all. Alternative methods for reporting student progress are not only less ... Read More
Basic income is a desire to be paid twice - once self consuming your own hours and once consuming the output of somebody else’s hours
How the Job Guarantee solves the matching problem
December 1, 2016 Narcissist-in-Chief A Psychological Take on a Political Reality By Alfie Kohn Reporter: What do you think people will take away from the [Republican National] Convention? What are you hoping? Donald Trump: From the convention? The fact that I’m very well liked. – New York Times, July 21, 2016 The initial shock has given way to a twofold ... Read More
Tom’s 2017 calendar features 12 recent portraits of Tom Baker. Most of these portraits are new and previously unseen, although some are from shoots where similar photos have been used in Tom’s website or on his Facebook
In the shop, we have a greeting card for Christmas and the New Year – or for any special occasion – featuring a portrait of Tom taken by Oliver McNeil.
We’re still in the early days of understanding how cities work. But we do know that creative, healthy and productive cities have certain things in common – and it’s all to do with their ‘urban DMA’.
[ This blog was crossposted on Software Freedom Conservancy's website. ]
As I mentioned in an earlier blog post, I had the privilege of attending Embedded Linux Conference Europe (ELC EU) and the OpenWrt Summit in Berlin, Germany earlier this month. I gave a talk (for which the video is available below) at the OpenWrt Summit. I also had the opportunity to host the first of many conference sessions seeking feedback and input from the Linux developer community about Conservancy's GPL Compliance Project for Linux Developers.
ELC EU has no “BoF Board” where you can post informal sessions. So, we scheduled the session by word of mouth over a lunch hour. We nevertheless got an good turnout (given that our session's main competition was eating food :) of about 15 people.
September 27, 2016 The Bonus Effect One Kind of Interest that Rewards Don’t Kill By Alfie Kohn For nearly half a century, research has raised troubling questions about the practice of dangling rewards in front of people to get them to do what we want. It doesn’t matter whether the people in question are male or female, children or adults. ... Read More
EDUCATION WEEK September 07, 2016 On Punishment for Bullying — and Punishment as Bullying By Alfie Kohn Bullying at school has attracted an enormous amount of attention, spurring academic studies and popular books, regulations and training sessions for educators. By now its status as a serious problem is widely acknowledged, as it should be. We can never go back ... Read More
I’ve been a registered nurse for a mere six months now and am very aware of my ignorance. University did not teach me about the paperwork and associated procedures to arrange things like outpatient xrays. However I know I’ll figure that stuff out with experience. In the meantime …
September 6, 2016 Do Our Expectations of Kids Aim Too High or Too Low? By Alfie Kohn “Old-school” parenting and teaching are often distinguished by a failure to understand what children are capable of doing or understanding, or to provide the support they need and the respect they deserve. But does that mean kids are being underestimated — or overestimated? ... Read More