Sunday, December 20, 2009

“New Programs Aim to Lure Young Into Digital Jobs - New York Times” plus 4 more

“New Programs Aim to Lure Young Into Digital Jobs - New York Times” plus 4 more

New Programs Aim to Lure Young Into Digital Jobs - New York Times

Posted: 20 Dec 2009 07:16 PM PST

Growing up in the '70s, John Halamka was a bookish child with a penchant for science and electronics. He wore black horn-rimmed glasses and buttoned his shirts up to the collar.

"I was constantly being called a geek or a nerd," he recalled, chuckling.

Dr. Halamka grew up to be something of a cool nerd, with a career that combines his deep interests in medicine and computing, and downtime that involves rock climbing and kayaking.

Now 47, Dr. Halamka is the chief information officer at the Harvard Medical School, a practicing emergency-ward physician and an adviser to the Obama administration on electronic health records.

Hybrid careers like Dr. Halamka's that combine computing with other fields will increasingly be the new American jobs of the future, labor experts say. In other words, the nation's economy is going to need more cool nerds. But not enough young people are embracing computing — often because they are leery of being branded nerds.

Educators and technologists say two things need to change: the image of computing work, and computer science education in high schools. Teacher groups, professional organizations like the Association for Computing Machinery and the National Science Foundation are pushing for these changes, but so are major technology companies including Google, Microsoft and Intel. One step in their campaign came the week of Dec. 7, National Computer Science Education Week, which was celebrated with events in schools and online.

Today, introductory courses in computer science are too often focused merely on teaching students to use software like word processing and spreadsheet programs, said Janice C. Cuny, a program director at the National Science Foundation. The Advanced Placement curriculum, she added, concentrates narrowly on programming. "We're not showing and teaching kids the magic of computing," Ms. Cuny said.

The agency is working to change this by developing a new introductory high school course and seeking to overhaul Advanced Placement courses as well. It hopes to train 10,000 high school teachers in the modernized courses by 2015.

One goal, Ms. Cuny and others say, is to explain the steady march and broad reach of computing across the sciences, industries, culture and society. Yes, they say, the computing tools young people see and use every day — e-mail, text-messaging and Facebook — are part of the story. But so are the advances in field after field that are made possible by computing, like gene-sequencing that unlocks the mysteries of life and simulations that model climate change.

That message must resonate with parents and school administrators, they say, if local school districts are to expand their computer science programs.

"We need to gain an understanding in the population that education in computer science is both extraordinarily important and extraordinarily interesting," said Alfred Spector, vice president for research and special initiatives at Google. "The fear is that if you pursue computer science, you will be stuck in a basement, writing code. That is absolutely not the reality."

Kira Lehtomaki can attest to this. She came to computing by way of art and movies. Art projects, not computers, were her childhood passions. She loved watching videos of Disney movies like "Sleeping Beauty" and "Dumbo," and wanted to grow up to be one of those artists who stirred life into characters using pencils and paper. She even took a summer job at Disneyland as a "cookie artist," painting designs and Mickey Mouse faces on baked goods, because she was allowed to spend a few days with Disney's animators.

Yet as a 19-year-old college student in 2001, Ms. Lehtomaki saw the Pixar film "Monsters, Inc." and was impressed by how good computer animation had become. At the University of Washington, she pursued computer graphics, graduating with a degree in computer science.

Today Ms. Lehtomaki, 27, is an animator at Walt Disney Animation Studios, working on "Rapunzel," which is scheduled to be released next year. She does her drawing on a computer, using specialized graphics and modeling software. Her computer science education, she said, is an asset every day in her work, less for technical skills than for what she learned about analytic thinking.

"Computer science taught me how to think about things, how to break down and solve complex problems," Ms. Lehtomaki said.

Reformulating a seemingly difficult problem into something a person can know how to solve is "computational thinking," which the new high school courses are intended to nurture. Some schools in Los Angeles County are experimenting with the introductory course, called "Exploring Computer Science," including South East High School in South Gate, Calif. Last year, 35 students were in a pilot program, and this year the course is being taken by 130 students.

Most of the school's 2,800 students come from low-income families and qualify for free or subsidized school lunches. In the new class, students create projects that address subjects of their interest, like gang violence and recycling, said John Landa, who teaches the course.

Others choose to make simple computer games.

"It's much more engaging," Mr. Landa said. "And the idea is not to have most or all of them go into computer science, but to give kids a chance to try things out. The course is designed to give kids a sense of computational thinking no matter what they do after this."

A solid grounding in computing, experts say, promises rewards well beyond computer science. Most new jobs in the modern economy will be heavily influenced by technology, said Robert Reich, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and former labor secretary in the Clinton administration. And they will require education beyond high school, though often two years or less.

"Most of them will not be pure technology jobs, designing computer software and hardware products, but they will involve applying computing and technology-influenced skills to every industry," Mr. Reich said. "Think Geek Squads in other fields," he added, referring to a popular tech-support service.

These workers, he said, will be needed in large numbers to install, service, upgrade and use computer technology in sectors like energy and health care.

The Obama administration, as part of the economic stimulus, has increased federal financing for science and technology education. More immediately, its multibillion-dollar program to accelerate the adoption of computerized health records may generate more than 200,000 jobs, analysts estimate.

"These are jobs for what I think of as digital technicians," Mr. Reich said. "And they are at the core of the new middle-wage middle class."

Still, the revamped high school courses, educators say, should entice more young people into computer science careers as well.

At South East High School, Mario Calleros, an 18-year-old senior, may be one of them. He took the new course last year, after his interest was piqued by his experience playing computer games. "I really wanted to know how they worked," he said.

Mr. Calleros picked up a sense of game technology by making his own, an action game with a knights-in-armor motif. Last summer, he won an internship at the Center for Embedded Networked Sensing at the University of California, Los Angeles. In the summer program, Mr. Calleros and a partner built a smartphone application, linking pictures, text descriptions and GPS location data to explain the history, architecture and amenities of individual buildings on the U.C.L.A. campus as users walk by.

Mr. Calleros is applying to college and plans to major in computer science. His teacher, Mr. Landa, pointing to the new high school curriculum, said: "It's small and we're just under way, but I think we're going in the right direction here."

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Long live cartoons: From ‘The Simpsons’ to Popeye, the medium ... - Toledo Blade

Posted: 20 Dec 2009 07:45 PM PST

You could say this was the Year of the Cartoon. Some of the biggest names ever to be animated celebrated milestone birthdays in 2009, even though they may not look their age.

Popeye is 80. Scooby-Doo is 40. The Simpsons is 20. And that's not the half of it.

Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner are 60. Rocky and Bullwinkle are 50.

Coincidence? Who cares. Connect the dots among these cartoon hall of famers and you've got an extraordinary window on the evolution of the art form.

Start way back with Felix the Cat. Nine decades ago when cartoon shorts more closely resembled flip books of comic strip panels than modern movies, Felix was born into the silent film era and became hugely popular. A simply designed character with a plucky spirit, he was Mickey Mouse before there was Mickey Mouse, clearing a path for the cheery rodent to follow.

"I don't think the Disney empire happens without him," said Andrew Farago, curator of the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco.

Synchronized-sound cartoons, ushered in by Mickey with 1928's Steamboat Willie, changed everything. Suddenly animators weren't limited to word bubbles and pantomime. While Felix had trouble adapting, others such as Popeye — introduced in a comic 80 years ago and a hit on the big screen — took full advantage. They used voices and sound effects to add humor and more.

"The one thing about sound was they were able to have more distinctive and defined personalities," said Jeff Lenburg, author of The Encyclopedia of Animated Cartoons, Third Edition. "It really became personality animation."

That opened up all kinds of opportunities for animators and new characters, among them Betty Boop and Donald Duck, who celebrated his 75th birthday this year. Mel Blanc made a career out of using his voice to add personality to everyone from Porky Pig to Bugs Bunny over the years.

Many of these characters took part in formulaic but popular plotlines.

"A lot of them followed the same basic story. It's something following something else," explained Charles Coletta, instructor of popular culture at Bowling Green State University.

There are infinite variations to the "chase" theme. Anyone who has seen a Tom and Jerry cartoon knows this. Some of the purest examples were the Warner Brothers cartoons featuring the Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote, who debuted 60 years ago in 1949. They entertained viewers as the coyote always tried (and failed) to catch his prey using innumerable gadgets and tricks.

In the industry's early years, cartoons were shown mostly as shorts prior to full-length features at the theater, where all ages were exposed to them. They became less profitable following a Supreme Court ruling that changed booking practices. Studios started to cut back and
adopted a more limited style of animation that used fewer cels to animate characters and sequences, Mr. Lenburg said.

While Disney stuck around as the dominant player in full-length, theatrical animation releases, many cartoon studios moved to television, where they used this more limited style. (Disney did expand to TV as well.) The result can be seen in the many Hanna-Barbera creations (Yogi Bear, Huckleberry Hound) and the unsophisticated style of Rocky and Bullwinkle, who turned 50 this year. It's a far cry from the majesty of the lush drawings of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. What the cartoon moose and flying squirrel lacked in artistic value, however, they made up for with more sophisticated humor.

"They have what looks like a very simple, funny animal cartoon, but they actually used it to comment on political figures and American society and managed to do it under the radar because it has the appearance of a simple kids cartoon," Mr. Farago said.

By bringing cartoons into the home, television allowed animators new possibilities and audiences. Specifically targeting children, who were home on Saturday mornings or after school, was what made a show like 1969's Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! so successful.

"Scooby-Doo really didn't strive for anything beyond creating a program that will be entertaining for kids," Mr. Farago said of the show about a dog and a crew of teenage mystery-solvers. "They really don't care about reaching the adult audience because the kid audience is constantly replenishing itself. ... Scooby-Doo in 1969 appealed to 5-to-10-year-olds. In 2009, it still appeals to 5-to-10-year-olds."

Contrast that with the much more mature show, The Simpsons, whose first season about a dysfunctional family started in 1989, even though the characters had been introduced earlier. With its anti-establishment mentality and "eat my shorts" catchphrase, the show got adults' attention right away. Schools banned T-shirts featuring it; parents prevented their kids from watching.

Yet it had something for everyone, including some of the best writing on television. College students especially were drawn to it, and the show proved again that cartoons could make a splash in primetime, reminiscent of The Flintsones' run in the 1960s.

"I think you could watch The Simpsons with a 5-year-old and a 55-year-old and everyone in between and they would each laugh at something different within the episode," Mr. Coletta said. "I think The Simpsons sort of really did make animation respectable for the masses."

It also led to a proliferation of cartoons trying to push the envelope — society's and the censors' — even further. Think South Park and some of the programs on the Cartoon Network's Adult Swim. The most popular cartoon among Mr. Coletta's students currently is Family Guy, which joins the more tot-friendly SpongeBob SquarePants in celebrating the 10th anniversary of its debut this year.

Even if they are seen as silly, irreverent, or even crude, modern cartoons like The Simpsons and Family Guy are worth noting because of their topical humor, the BGSU instructor said.

"They're hitting on the issues of the day much more so than these reality shows are or these dancing shows are," Mr. Coletta said.

The question for Mr. Lenburg is whether that timeliness will allow them to remain accessible from one generation to the next — like Scooby-Doo — or leave them hopelessly dated.

"I look at some of today's stuff and I'm not certain whether it will have that same legacy," he said. "The Simpsons [made it] far longer than I thought they would."

Contact Ryan E. Smith at:
ryansmith@theblade.com
or 419-724-6103

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10 Ways to Screw Over the Corporate Jackals - Stockhouse

Posted: 20 Dec 2009 07:52 PM PST

Sunday Video Club – Max Keiser on The Real Deal

Max on George Galloway's show talking about health care 'reform' and virtual currencies.
http://maxkeiser.com/2009/12/20/sunday-video-club-max-keiser-on-the-real-deal/
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10 Ways to Screw Over the Corporate Jackals Who've Been Screwing You

The New Year is nearly here, and so much has happened. Wait, what's that? Nothing major at all has happened, you say? Oh right, we've been stuck in neutral since dumping the toxic trash of the Republican Bush administration and embracing Democratic promises of hope and change,neither of which have blossomed.

A year of our collective life has flown by and our global culture is still rife with schemers, screw jobs and sorry excuses for solutions.And we just sit back and take it, year after year. But no more. When you make that hefty list of New Year's resolutions, drop some of these bombs. Then duck. You'll get your change faster than you can say,"Teabag this!"

http://www.alternet.org/workplace/144679/10_ways_to_screw_over_the_corporate_jackals_who%27ve_been_screwing_you
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pornaments ginerbread man and woman

pornaments reindeer

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Cardinals survive against Lions, clinch NFC West title - AZCentral.com

Posted: 20 Dec 2009 07:52 PM PST

slideshowPhotos from the game | Box score

DETROIT - The Cardinals departed here Sunday evening with their ninth victory of the season. Somewhere in route to Phoenix, they clinched their second consecutive NFC West title. They landed at Sky Harbor with a large amount of humility in the luggage compartment.

Or at least that should be the case.

The Cardinals 31-24 victory over the Lions at Ford Field was impressive only because of the result, certainly not the method used to achieve it. The Cardinals blew a 17-0 halftime lead and needed a touchdown drive in the closing minutes to beat the woeful Lions (2-12).

"We had our moments, which were unfortunate," Whisenhunt said. "What I'm proudest of is the way our team fought through it, especially pulling together in the end and winning the game."

It was a theme repeated across much of the Cardinals locker room, even though it appeared throughout the game that the Cardinals were playing with their on-and-off switch.

"You can write that," strong safety Adrian Wilson said, not necessarily agreeing. "It's a correctable win, that's what it is. We have to look at ourselves in the mirror. We've got some good teams coming up and we can't continue to shoot ourselves in the foot."

The nits will be picked later. First this:

The victory, coupled with the 49ers loss at Philadelphia late in the afternoon, clinched the second consecutive division for the Cardinals (9-5). They haven't accomplished that feat since 1974-75, and this is the first time they've had consecutive winning seasons since 1983-84.

With one more victory, the Cardinals will have their most wins in a season since moving to Arizona in 1988 and the most wins in a season since 1976.

Receiver Anquan Boldin has been with the Cardinals through lean years, so he wasn't grading Sunday's game on style points. "From the time I've got here, I've been trying to change the culture," he said, "and it's finally getting to that point. You see your hard work coming into play."

The Cardinals should not be returning home with inflated egos, not after nearly turning a blowout victory into a crushing upset. Leading 17-0, they blew two prime opportunities to put the game away close to halftime.

Poor protection caused quarterback Kurt Warner to fumble, ruining a scoring chance late in the second quarter. Cornerback Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie's second interception of the game set up another chance midway through the third quarter, giving the Cardinals the ball at the Lions 20.

But rookie safety Louis Delmas intercepted Warner's pass at the goal line and returned it 100 yards for a touchdown, giving the Lions life at 17-7.

"I read it in the quarterback's eyes and as soon as I saw the ball, I saw the end zone after that," Delmas said. "I tried to run 100 miles an hour."

After the game, Delmas bumped into Warner and, good-naturedly, expressed his appreciation. "Thanks for the gift," Delmas said he told Warner.

A 64-yard touchdown run by Lions running back Maurice Morris and a field goal tied the game with 2:04 left in the third quarter. That seemed to slap the Cardinals offense awake.

Behind rookie running back Beanie Wells, the Cardinals scored twice in the fourth quarter, with the final touchdown, a 5-yard pass from Warner to Boldin, coming with 1:54 left.

Wells gained 110 yards on 17 carries, his first 100-yard rushing day in the NFL. In the fourth quarter, he gained 57 yards on four runs, including an 18-yard touchdown and a 34-yarder that led to the final score.

"We didn't put the ball on the ground from our running backs today," Whisenhunt said, "which was progress."

In the first half, the game had a preseason feel to it, both in quality of performance and interest from fans. The crowd looked smaller than the 40,577 that was announced, and they spent the first half booing starting quarterback Daunte Culpepper.

The Cardinals defense held its ground in the first half, intercepting a pass and stopping the Lions offense like a road block. The Cardinals offense, meanwhile, spent the half trying to avoid sliding into the median.

The two swapped roles in the second half. The Lions benched Culpepper for Drew Stanton but that had little impact on the game.

The Lions exploded for 17 points in the third quarter, thanks to Delmas' interception and Morris' run.

The Cardinals needed something other than mistakes from the offense and finally got it in the fourth quarter with two touchdowns.

Cardinals nose tackle Bryan Robinson smiled incredulously when asked if Sunday's victory was tarnished at all by poor performance. "Are you serious? I've been on the opposite side of this so many times. We knew they were going to fight with us. I think within a couple of years we're going to be talking about Detroit winning their division."

In the first half, however, Detroit looked worthy of its 2-12 record, at least offensively. A muffed punt at the Lions 13 led to the Cardinals first touchdown. An interception set up a field goal.

The Lions spent the half looking as if they wanted the No. 1 pick in the draft.

"You're not going to win games playing the way we played, particularly in the first half," Lions coach Jim Schwartz said. "Missing field goals, hitting poor punts, fumbling punts, false starts, missed assignments, penalties. We put ourselves in a hole. We were luck to come out of the half only being down 17."

Then the game hit a patch of black ice and flipped. In the second half, it was the Cardinals who made mistakes and the Lions who took advantage. The Cardinals managed to straighten the wheels in time to escape harm.

They arrived home with presents, and egos, intact.

"We'll take it any way we can get it," Warner said. "I think we're excited for the win but disappointed that we didn't play better. Sometimes that happens in this business: You win ugly."

Report

Key player

Cardinals running back Beanie Wells gained 110 yards on 17 carries, including an 18-yard touchdown in the fourth quarter. Wells gained 57 yards in the fourth quarter.

Key moment

Wells took the ball off left tackle late in the game, broke a couple of tackles and gained 34 yards before he was tackled at the 11. The Cardinals scored the winning touchdown three plays later.

Injury report

Nothing to report

Did you notice?

The Cardinals kept double coverage on Lions receiver Calvin Johnson most of the game. Cornerbacks Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie and Bryant McFadden usually had deep help from free safety Antrel Rolle

Quotable

"We've been there before. There's not as much excitement in this locker room as there should be after a win. I just think, maturity-wise, this is a game that shows we just can't show up and beat anybody. You have to play your best ball throughout four quarters." - Strong safety Adrian Wilson

Up next

Cardinals (9-5) vs. Rams (1-13), 2:05 p.m. Sunday, University of Phoenix Stadium.

View from the press box

Reporters covering the Cardinals rarely have to ask players what coach Ken Whisenhunt said after the game. The players usually repeat it. That appeared to be the case again Sunday. After the game, Whisenhunt acknowledged his team was sloppy at times but pointed out that the errors were easily corrected. It's a theme several players repeated in the locker room. Clearly, no one wanted to put a damper on winning a game in December. Can't blame them. But the Cardinals hardly looked like they were playoff ready.

slideshowPhotos from the game | Box score

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A Legend as Muse: Patti Smith Fills Role - New York Times

Posted: 20 Dec 2009 07:30 PM PST

LOS ANGELES — There was a time, a decade ago, Patti Smith said, that she did not want to make a film about herself.

"To me the idea seems sort of conceited," she said in an interview. "I felt, even though I was 50 years old at the time, too young to do a documentary. I hadn't done enough work yet to merit a documentary."

It turns out that being followed around by a camera for more than a decade can help one overcome shyness. On Dec. 30, Ms. Smith's 63rd birthday, PBS will broadcast "Patti Smith: Dream of Life," a documentary filmed over 11 years by the fashion photographer and film neophyte Steven Sebring.

The broadcast, part of the PBS series "POV," is but the first step in what appears to be an all-out blitz to erase any remaining notions that Ms. Smith has not done enough work yet. "Dream of Life" has already been screened at some 30 film festivals around the world, including the 2008 Sundance Film Festival, where it won an award for cinematography. The PBS broadcast will coincide with three nights of musical performances by Ms. Smith at the Bowery Ballroom in New York, to be followed in 2010 by performances in Detroit, Chicago and London.

A related art exhibition, "Objects of Life," will open on Jan. 6 at the Robert Miller Gallery in New York. And beginning Jan. 19, Ms. Smith will visit bookstores around the country in support of "Just Kids," an autobiographical account of her relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe, her close friend and fellow inhabitant of the Chelsea Hotel in New York in the late 1960s and '70s.

Patti Smith burst onto the cultural landscape in the early 1970s with poetry readings in Lower Manhattan and several-times-a-week musical performances at a new downtown club called CBGB. Her 1975 debut album, "Horses," is now viewed as a rock 'n' roll classic.

According to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, where she was inducted in 2007, the album is anchored by "vivid, disturbing imagery that poured from Smith in impassioned torrents." It arrived, according to the museum, "at a time when rock 'n roll needed a jolt from its unadventurous rut and upwardly mobile arena-rock pretensions."

"Dream of Life" provides glimpses into that creative prime of her life, via archival footage and film of recent performances captured by Mr. Sebring.

"I haven't changed all that much as a performer," Ms. Smith said. "I still have the same visions, and I still like to make a lot of noise and a lot of loud feedback on my guitar."

But the film also delves much deeper. It begins with her goodbye to the house in Detroit where, in a retreat from fame into a new role as a mother, she lived for 16 years beginning in the early 1980s. From there the film documents Ms. Smith's return to New York and to performing a decade ago, after a trio of unexpected deaths that affected her deeply — of her husband, the guitarist Fred Smith; of her brother, Todd; and of her longtime pianist, Richard Sohl.

"I had to leave Detroit," Ms. Smith said in the interview, which took place in August, when PBS was promoting the film to television journalists. "I don't drive, and I didn't want to live in Detroit alone, and so I brought my children back to the East Coast."

"But I had to get a job, to take care of them, and to send them to school," she added. "You know it's a lot more expensive to live in New York City than in Detroit. And so I went back to performing."

She was encouraged by a few close friends: Bob Dylan, who drafted Ms. Smith to tour on the East Coast with him in 1995, and Allen Ginsberg and Michael Stipe, the R.E.M. frontman.

Those men are present, at least spiritually, in the film, as is Sam Shepard, who drops by her apartment for a tranquil jam session. But as the film critic Manohla Dargis wrote in reviewing "Dream of Life" in The New York Times in 2008, "If you want to know about punk, what it was like to play CBGB when it mattered (or on its final night, as Ms. Smith did in 2006), look elsewhere." What the film presents is instead a dreamy atmosphere that, as Ms. Dargis wrote, "feels less like a documentary and more like an act of rapturous devotion."

Mr. Sebring, who sat with Ms. Smith during the interview, said he basically made up his vision for the film as he went along.

"I'm not a historian, you know," he said. "I didn't have any set plan what it was going to be. As soon as we started cutting it, I knew it wasn't going to be a typical documentary."

He filmed performances and tours in Israel and Japan and Washington. And as he was editing the film, he set up a 16-millimeter camera in her bedroom to capture Ms. Smith telling stories about herself and her life.

"We were always in her bedroom," Mr. Sebring said, "because that's where she thinks, that's where she creates, where she could show things and talk about them."

Those scenes provide the film's faint narrative, revealing a person who to many people under 40 is little more than a name or a stock character — "the godmother of punk," as she is often called.

"My main hope for the film is that people see the work that Steven does, and that Steven is appreciated for the work," Ms. Smith said. "My own personal hope is just that people get some sense that I have more dimensions than is sometimes reported. Sometimes all people know about you is, No. 1, your work, but through the media they often will be given one aspect of a human being."

"I'm happy for people to get a more humanistic view," she said. "I have a really great life. I've had, for me, really great tragedy in my life. I still mourn my people that I lost. I miss my husband. But I've had great opportunities in my life."

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