“What are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?”

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At this point, McCain should be embarrassed to even say that tax cuts for the rich help the economy. Tax cuts for the rich help the rich, they don't help the economy. It's that simple.

This economic catastrophe was many years in the making. There is no painless way to recover from the collapse of the housing bubble and the correction from an over-valued dollar. We do know that Senator McCain's plan to keep giving the rich more money is not a road to prosperity because that is exactly what we have been doing.

We can't know exactly how Senator Obama will address the economy's problems if he takes office in January in part because we don't know exactly where the economy will be. However, a plan that focuses on supporting ordinary workers and promoting clean technologies, is likely to produce much better results than policies that are focused on redistributing even more income to the wealthy.

CEPR – The Whiner’s Recession, Dean Baker.

This piece could be subtitled, “Or why continuing the Bush/McCain class war is not a good idea.” Or maybe that Einstein quote about the definition of insanity as repeating the same thing again and again and expecting new results. I keep thinking, too about that “Drill Baby Drill” chant at the Republican Convention.

My immediate family, most of whom live on the Texas and Louisiana coasts, have been emailing in all weekend, reporting on everyone, talking about who had to leave for shelter and how long it might be before the electricity comes back. My mother was particularly scared by the Tornado warnings Friday night, in Lake Charles.

Meanwhile gas prices shoot up and giant financial institutions collapse. I can’t help but wonder if people are connecting all of the dots. We can’t blame global warming for a storm, although we might blame it for the ferocity. We can blame so-called free market capitalism, though, for destroying wetlands, which make the storms worse.

The Republican party, starting with Reagan, have consistently dismissed alternative energy and refused to provide capital and leadership. The gas hikes from Ike are a result of the disruption of domestic refineries and supplies. Unless we want to relocate our refineries in a bunker somewhere, Gulf Oil will always be unreliable.

Posted in: Autobiographical, Economics, Writing

Twit Twit

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It is easy to become unsettled by privacy-eroding aspects of awareness tools. But there is another — quite different — result of all this incessant updating: a culture of people who know much more about themselves. Many of the avid Twitterers, Flickrers and Facebook users I interviewed described an unexpected side-effect of constant self-disclosure. The act of stopping several times a day to observe what you’re feeling or thinking can become, after weeks and weeks, a sort of philosophical act. It’s like the Greek dictum to “know thyself,” or the therapeutic concept of mindfulness. (Indeed, the question that floats eternally at the top of Twitter’s Web site — “What are you doing?” — can come to seem existentially freighted. What are you doing?) Having an audience can make the self-reflection even more acute, since, as my interviewees noted, they’re trying to describe their activities in a way that is not only accurate but also interesting to others: the status update as a literary form.

Laura Fitton, the social-media consultant, argues that her constant status updating has made her “a happier person, a calmer person” because the process of, say, describing a horrid morning at work forces her to look at it objectively. “It drags you out of your own head,” she added. In an age of awareness, perhaps the person you see most clearly is yourself.

I’m So Totally, Digitally Close to You – Clive Thompson – NYTimes.com.

I’ve grown increasingly skeptical about Utopian claims for technology, mostly becuase they seem to ignore or minimize modern capitalist culture. Whatever else it is, micro-blogging is the latest in a long line of products designed to distract. That may or may not be good, and people may or may not use it for its original function.

I just don’t believe, though, that you can separate it from its “get rich now” roots; whatever else Web 2.0 might be or might become, it arises out of the same profit-minded system that produced the pet rock. So I was happy to see Thompson’s thoughtful piece and particularly surprised by the ending. Thompson suggests that micro-blogging may encourage self-reflection.

He also suggests what seems obvious: that these are, in effect, defensive technologies designed to help ameliorate the alienation and isolation that has always accompanied capitalist cultures. Things can get rough if the center is profit not people. The hope, of course, is that these technologies might also take on an offensive form too.

Posted in: Economics, Language, Writing

Online Learning with Second Life

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Through its ability to enhance social presence, Second Life provides a virtual, learner-centered environment through which instructors and students can mediate the tensions that typically arise in many current approaches to online education. Such technologies allow for a “relationship among learning, playing, and helping” (Barab, Arici, and Jackson 2005, 15) by providing opportunities for human interaction that, in turn, can sustain authentic, meaningful learning experiences. In doing so, they promote curricular innovations that can help students and instructors better understand each other’s needs, abilities, and interests (McCombs and Whisler 1997).

This understanding is necessary in our world where change, globalization, and diversity converge upon our learning environments and where respect and trust are required to foster motivation and learning (McCombs and Whisler 1997). These developments bring social foundations to the forefront. As we adapt to changing conditions, we will need to examine social values, educational contexts, access issues, and basic human needs, from relationship building to creating and donating one’s work to the world. When new educational technologies are vetted theoretically and philosophically through curriculum theory and social-foundations perspectives, then such technological innovations can become truly transformative.

Innovate: Mediating the Tensions of Online Learning with Second Life,. Innovate

Nancy Evans, Thalia M. Mulvihill, and Nancy J. Brooks

A decade ago convergence was the big word: all of these separate technologies, for email, scheduling, music, and video, would merge into a single device. The cell-phone may well be the ultimate expression of this idea. Educational technology is no different. A dozen years ago we had websites, email, maybe a MOO or a MUD. Over time, they converged more or less successfully into course management software.

I think in the next few years the term convergence may come to apply more and more specifically to online education, as old school ‘course management’ systems, which I use now, begin to move closer to what Evans and Brooks call new style “multiuser virtual environments (MUVEs)” such as Second Life. This means that the pioneers of MUVEs today are, in effect, mapping out the technologies and teaching methods everyone in distance education will be using in future.

It’s easy to forget that the current systems are rooted in rapidly disappearing technological limits. Or, rather, that they are rooted in technological limits that are unequally distributed along class lines. It’s easy to imagine an education system in which the wealthiest districts have MUVE classrooms, and the poorest are stuck with static classroom management software.

Posted in: Economics, Professional, Writing

The Real Class War Again: In Class

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Nearly every child in America hopes to become a college graduate. Her ambitions are at least partly realistic—rates of high school graduation and college-going are very high. But the chances she will succeed in college are more modest: Less than 60 percent of students entering four-year institutions earn bachelor’s degrees, and barely one-fourth of community college students complete either associate’s or bachelor’s degrees within six years of college entry.

Students from socioeconomically disadvantaged families are even less likely to realize their college ambitions. Only 40 percent of beginning college students from low-income families complete a two- or four-year degree within six years. Rates of degree completion are much higher among high-income students (62 percent). Focusing on the most lucrative undergraduate degree, the baccalaureate, there is a 40 percentage point gap in completion rates between individuals from the bottom and top income quartiles. Since future economic and social success is largely predicated on holding a college degree, this low chance of college success among the poorest students perpetuates growth in income inequality.

A Federal Agenda for Promoting Student Success and Degree CompletionBy Sara Goldrick-Rab, Josipa Roksa | August 12, 2008, Center for American Progress.

Here’s more data from the real class war; this time, on the specific mechanisms that make class mobility more difficult than many believe. Or, rather, one of the mechanisms. It’s also the cost of college, from tuition to room and board, and the drying up of student loans, among other things.

What’s interesting about this report is that it focuses on the “lower-class” of the university system, arguing that more money and attention ought to be paid to “the most accessible but under-resourced schools.” The report’s authors want, in effect, to make mobility among schools easier.

I’m not sure I completely agree with the report, in part because it’s proposals rely so heavily on education sociology jargon– “value added evaluation” and the like. I like the idea, though, of making so-called non-traditional college careers easier to manage.

I did poorly the first time I went to school, and only one of my parents had a degree. I took a non-traditional path through community college, and it took five years overall to get my undergraduate degree. My sisters and most of my cousins have similar stories. Mobility isn’t a straight line.

I took seven years off between my M.A. and then my PhD and I won’t pay off these degrees until retirement. It’s easy to imagine anyone stopping at one of these points, or for any number of financial or individual reasons. Making the nuts and bolts of the system work together more smoothly couldn’t hurt.

Posted in: Autobiographical, Economics, Professional, Writing