exam

just curious, what did people think of the exam?
too difficult, too long, too easy?

Essay on Obama

kind of long, but worth reading...



Uh-Obama: Racism, White Voters and the Myth of Color-Blindness
http://www.lipmagazine.org/~timwise/Obama.html

Professors using Drugs

SO far no one is demanding that asterisks be attached to Nobels, Pulitzers or Lasker awards. Government agents have not been raiding anthropology departments, riffling book bags, testing professors’ urine. And if there are illicit trainers on campuses, shady tutors with wraparound sunglasses and ties to basement labs in Italy, no one has exposed them.

Yet an era of doping may be looming in academia, and it has ignited a debate about policy and ethics that in some ways echoes the national controversy over performance enhancement accusations against elite athletes like Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens.

In a recent commentary in the journal Nature, two Cambridge University researchers reported that about a dozen of their colleagues had admitted to regular use of prescription drugs like Adderall, a stimulant, and Provigil, which promotes wakefulness, to improve their academic performance. The former is approved to treat attention deficit disorder, the latter narcolepsy, and both are considered more effective, and more widely available, than the drugs circulating in dorms a generation ago.

Letters flooded the journal, and an online debate immediately bubbled up. The journal has been conducting its own, more rigorous survey, and so far at least 20 respondents have said that they used the drugs for nonmedical purposes, according to Philip Campbell, the journal’s editor in chief. The debate has also caught fire on the Web site of The Chronicle of Higher Education, where academics and students are sniping at one another.

But is prescription tweaking to perform on exams, or prepare presentations and grants, really the same as injecting hormones to chase down a home run record, or win the Tour de France?

Some argue that such use could be worse, given the potentially deep impact on society. And the behavior of academics in particular, as intellectual leaders, could serve as an example to others.

In his book “Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution,” Francis Fukuyama raises the broader issue of performance enhancement: “The original purpose of medicine is to heal the sick, not turn healthy people into gods.” He and others point out that increased use of such drugs could raise the standard of what is considered “normal” performance and widen the gap between those who have access to the medications and those who don’t — and even erode the relationship between struggle and the building of character.

“Even though stimulants and other cognitive enhancers are intended for legitimate clinical use, history predicts that greater availability will lead to an increase in diversion, misuse and abuse,” wrote Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, and James Swanson of the University of California at Irvine, in a letter to Nature. “Among high school students, abuse of prescription medications is second only to cannabis use.”

But others insist that the ethics are not so clear, and that academic performance is different in important ways from baseball, or cycling.

“I think the analogy with sports doping is really misleading, because in sports it’s all about competition, only about who’s the best runner or home run hitter,” said Martha Farah, director of the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Pennsylvania. “In academics, whether you’re a student or a researcher, there is an element of competition, but it’s secondary. The main purpose is to try to learn things, to get experience, to write papers, to do experiments. So in that case if you can do it better because you’ve got some drug on board, that would on the face of things seem like a plus.”

She and other midcareer scientists interviewed said that, as far as they knew, very few of their colleagues used brain-boosting drugs regularly. Many have used Provigil for jet lag, or even to stay vertical for late events. But most agreed that the next generation of scientists, now in graduate school and college, were more likely to use the drugs as study aids and bring along those habits as they moved up the ladder.

Surveys of college students have found that from 4 percent to 16 percent say they have used stimulants or other prescription drugs to improve their academic performance — usually getting the pills from other students.

“Suppose you’re preparing for the SAT, or going for a job interview — in those situations where you have to perform on that day, these drugs will be very attractive,” said Dr. Barbara Sahakian of Cambridge, a co-author with Sharon Morein-Zamir of the recent essay in Nature. “The desire for cognitive enhancement is very strong, maybe stronger than for beauty, or athletic ability.”

Jeffrey White, a graduate student in cell biology who has attended several institutions, said that those numbers sounded about right. “You can usually tell who’s using them because they can be angry, testy, hyperfocused, they don’t want to be bothered,” he said.

Mr. White said he did not use the drugs himself, considering them an artificial shortcut that could set people up for problems later on. “What happens if you’re in a fast-paced surgical situation and they’re not available?” he asked. “Will you be able to function at the same level?”

Yet such objections — and philosophical concerns — can vaporize when students and junior faculty members face other questions: What happens if I don’t make the cut? What if I’m derailed by a bad test score, or a mangled chemistry course?

One person who posted anonymously on the Chronicle of Higher Education Web site said that a daily regimen of three 20-milligram doses of Adderall transformed his career: “I’m not talking about being able to work longer hours without sleep (although that helps),” the posting said. “I’m talking about being able to take on twice the responsibility, work twice as fast, write more effectively, manage better, be more attentive, devise better and more creative strategies.”

Dr. Anjan Chatterjee, an associate professor of neurology at the University of Pennsylvania who foresaw this debate in a 2004 paper, argues that the history of cosmetic surgery — scorned initially as vain and unnatural but now mainstream as a form of self-improvement — is a guide to predicting the trajectory of cosmetic neurology, as he calls it.

“We worship at the altar of progress, and to the demigod of choice,” Dr. Chatterjee said. “Both are very strong undercurrents in the culture and the way this is likely to be framed is: ‘Look, we want smart people to be as productive as possible to make everybody’s lives better. We want people performing at the max, and if that means using these medicines, then great, then we should be free to choose what we want as long as we’re not harming someone.’ I’m not taking that position, but we have this winner-take-all culture and that is the way it is likely to go.”

People already use legal performance enhancers, he said, from high-octane cafe Americanos to the beta-blockers taken by musicians to ease stage fright, to antidepressants to improve mood. “So the question with all of these things is, Is this enhancement, or a matter of removing the cloud over our better selves?” he said.

The public backlash against brain-enhancement, if it comes, may hit home only after the practice becomes mainstream, Dr. Chatterjee suggested. “You can imagine a scenario in the future, when you’re applying for a job, and the employer says, ‘Sure, you’ve got the talent for this, but we require you to take Adderall.’ Now, maybe you do start to care about the ethical implications.”

Economy down, but not because of IRAQ

don't know if you saw it, but last week Bush blamed homeowners for buying too much home for the downfall in the economy (also the construction industry--but he would deny that)...not the war in iraq. i don't blame homeowners who usually have no idea what they can afford, i'd blame mortgage lenders, banks, etc. before i blame homeowners--but we don't like blaming capitalism for our problems--its uhhh, un-american...

but help me with the math...we are giving all taxpayers (and then some non-payers) $600 to stimulate the economy...but the bill is $4,000 per taxpayer for iraq...if we had that $4000 wouldn't that be better than $600?

If history is a reliable guide, the recession of 2008 is now unavoidable.

The dismal jobs report released Friday showed overall employment to be lower than it was three months ago. Every time such a slump has occurred since the early 1970s, a recession has followed — or already been under way.

And if the good times have really ended, they were never that good to begin with. Most American households are still not earning as much annually as they did in 1999, once inflation is taken into account. Since the Census Bureau began keeping records in the 1960s, a prolonged expansion has never ended without household income having set a new record.

For months, policy makers and Wall Street economists have been predicting, and hoping, that the aggressive series of interest rate cuts by the Federal Reserve would keep the economy growing, despite the housing bust. But the possibility seemed to diminish almost by the hour on Friday.

Shortly after 8 a.m., the Fed announced yet another measure meant to unlock the struggling credit markets. At 8:30, the Labor Department released the unexpectedly poor jobs report. Almost immediately, the economists at JPMorgan Chase — who only last week had told clients they thought the economy was still growing — reversed course and said a recession appeared to have started earlier this year.

Stocks fell when the markets opened at 9:30, recovered and then fell again, with the Standard & Poor 500-stock index closing down 0.8 percent. Traders became even more confident, based on the price of futures contracts, that the Fed would cut its benchmark interest rate three-quarters of a point, to 2.25 percent, when policy makers meet on March 18.

“The question was always, ‘Would the economy hang on by its fingernails?’ ” said Ethan Harris, the chief United States economist at Lehman Brothers. Based on the employment report, Mr. Harris said, “there’s a very high probability that we’re in a recession now.”

Even the one apparent piece of good news in the employment report was a mirage. The unemployment rate fell to 4.8 percent, from 4.9 percent in January, but only because more people stopped looking for work and thus were not counted as unemployed by the government.

Over the last year, the number of officially unemployed has risen by 500,000, while the number of people outside the labor force — neither working nor looking for a job — has risen by 1.3 million.

Employment has risen by 100,000, but even that comes with a caveat: there are also 600,000 more people who are working part time because they could not find full-time work, according to the Labor Department.

“The decline in the unemployment rate,” said Joshua Shapiro, an economist at MFR, a research firm in New York, “should not be viewed as good news.”

Much of the economic stimulus put in place by the government will begin to take effect in the next few months, which does leave open the possibility that the country can still escape a recession. Policy makers have reacted quite quickly to this slowdown, relative to previous ones.

The Treasury Department will begin sending out rebate checks — of up to $1,200 for couples, plus $300 per child — in May, as part of the stimulus package negotiated by President Bush and Democratic leaders in Congress. The Fed has already cut its benchmark short-term interest rate five times since September, and such reductions typically take six months or more to wash through the economy.

White House officials have predicted in recent weeks that the economy would avoid recession, but after the release of the jobs report, they offered a subtly different forecast. At the White House on Friday, Edward P. Lazear, the chairman of Mr. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers, parried reporters’ questions about whether he now thought the economy would slip into a recession.

Instead, he said, “I’m still not saying that there is a recession.”

The administration does expect growth in the current quarter to be slower than it had previously thought, before accelerating this summer. “Obviously, we are concerned,” Mr. Lazear said. But he added that he remained hopeful that “growth will pick up, and pick up quickly.”

The most commonly cited arbiter of recessions is the National Bureau of Economic Research, a group of academic economists that is based in Cambridge, Mass. (Mr. Lazear referred to the group at his briefing, saying it would not be clear whether there had been a recession until the bureau had made an announcement.)

The seven economists who sit on the bureau’s recession-dating committee began exchanging e-mail messages late last year about whether the economy was on the verge of a recession. But committee members said Friday that it remained too early to know.

The bureau defines a recession as a significant, protracted decline in activity that cuts across the economy, affecting measures like income, employment, retail sales and industrial production.

“Given that definition, the committee can’t possibly call a recession until it has been going on for a while,” said Christina D. Romer, an economics professor at the University of California, Berkeley. “There is no way to know if the downturn will be sufficiently long-lasting until it has lasted for a while.”

The committee did not announce the end of the last recession — which came in November 2001 — until more than a year-and a half later. Robert J. Gordon, a Northwestern University economist on the committee, said any announcement about the start of a new recession was unlikely before the last few months of 2008 at the earliest.

Recent recessions have inevitably brought inflation-adjusted income declines for most families, which would be particularly painful given what has happened over the last decade. For a variety of reasons that economists only partly understand — including technological change and global trade — many workers have received only modest raises in recent years, despite healthy economic growth.

The median household earned $48,201 in 2006, down from $49,244 in 1999, according to the Census Bureau. It now looks as if a full decade may pass before most Americans receive a raise.

From NYT

I'm betting we never find out where all the money goes...i do remember, however, that the war was going to cost US taxpayers about 150 million...and now 5 years later we are saying 3 trillion...supposedly around 2005-2006 Iraq would be self-sufficient due to the money they make off of oil...

Two senior members of the Senate Armed Services Committee have requested a full accounting of how Iraq is spending its soaring oil revenue, amid starkly conflicting estimates of how much the country has invested in rebuilding its broken infrastructure and providing basic services to its citizens.

The request, sent Friday to David M. Walker, the top official at the United States Government Accountability Office, estimates that Iraqi oil revenue could skyrocket above $56 billion in 2008, largely because of the rising price of oil.

That enormous influx of cash comes as the United States has been reducing spending on the reconstruction effort. Since the invasion in 2003, the United States has invested close to $50 billion in reconstruction, but the effort has achieved at best mixed results when measured by improvements in the lives of Iraqi citizens.

Still, the American military and State Department continue to finance a wide range of relatively small reconstruction projects as well as training and equipment for Iraqi military forces.

Despite the dire need for better health care, more electricity and clean water, a functioning sewage system and other services, the accountability office has previously estimated that Iraq spent only 22 percent of the oil money set aside for reconstruction in 2006. And in January, the office, which is charged with overseeing the Iraqi government’s finances, reported that Iraq had spent a meager 4.4 percent of its 2007 reconstruction budget by August of that year, the most recent figures available at the time.

As a result, the letter from the Armed Services Committee says, “we believe that it has been overwhelmingly U.S. taxpayer money that has funded Iraq reconstruction over the last five years, despite Iraq earning billions of dollars in oil revenue over that time period that have ended up in non-Iraqi banks.”

The letter was signed by Senator Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat who is the committee chairman, and Senator John W. Warner, a Virginia Republican who is a former chairman. Senator John McCain of Arizona, the ranking Republican on the committee and the presumptive Republican nominee for president, did not sign the letter.

Iraqi officials say they face many obstacles in what might seem to be a straightforward task: spending their plentiful money. Workers are attacked, engineers and contracting experts have fled government ministries, construction companies refuse to take jobs in risky areas and building materials are not available.

And if all of those factors were not daunting enough, the various Iraqi and American government entities involved cannot even agree on how much the notoriously opaque Iraqi bureaucracy has in fact spent on reconstruction.

Last fall, as Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top American commander in Iraq, and Ryan C. Crocker, the American ambassador to Iraq, reported to Congress on the state of the war, the Bush administration provided figures that contrasted sharply with those of the accountability office. The administration reported that by July 2007, Iraq had spent 24 percent of the $10 billion in oil revenue set aside for reconstruction that year.

The accountability office disputed those figures, saying they were based in part on projections that proved inaccurate. But in a recent phone interview, a senior Iraqi official gave even more bullish estimates of the expenditures. Citing official Iraqi Finance Ministry figures, the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in order to provide information that had not yet been publicly released, said by the end of last year, Iraq had spent 63 percent of its capital budget, a leap over the previous year that would indicate rapid progress in governmental efficiency.

“It’s totally unacceptable that there’s no decent accounting for their money,” Senator Levin said in a telephone interview Saturday. “But the problem is our money. Why are we spending our money five years later when they have a surplus? That’s just extraordinary.”

In order to resolve some of these discrepancies and track down where the oil money has gone, the letter by Senators Levin and Warner asks the accountability office to answer a series of basic questions.

The senators requested detailed information on the amount of Iraqi oil revenue from 2003 to 2007, how much of that money has gone unspent, and “how much money does the Iraqi government have deposited, in which banks, and in what countries?”

Finally, Senators Levin and Warner ask the question looming over the entire rebuilding effort: “Why has the Iraqi government not spent more of its oil revenue on reconstruction, economic development and providing essential services for the Iraqi people?”

Also on Friday, Iraqi security forces discovered a mass grave containing the remains of about 100 people in Diyala Province, said Maj. Winfield Danielson, a spokesman for Multinational Forces-Iraq.

fair or unfair

By now you probably know which way i would go with this...but does this seem fair or unfair?

Earn $1 Million a Year? Assembly Democrats Will Seek a Tax Rise Just for You

ALBANY — If you earn a million dollars in New York this year, beware. Albany has its eyes on your money.

As Democratic Assembly members try to figure out how to right the state’s finances, they are looking to the state’s fabulously wealthy — the hedge fund managers, real estate moguls and superstar shortstops — to balance the budget.

The Democrats will introduce legislation next week that would impose an income tax increase of nearly 1 percentage point for the next five years on anyone who earns more than a million dollars a year. Democrats estimated that the plan could bring in $1.5 billion in the first year alone.

The plan is certain to run up against rigid resistance by the Republican-controlled State Senate and Gov. Eliot Spitzer, who has repeatedly pledged not to raise taxes.

But Democrats are hopeful that it can attract broad support because it would focus on a small group of well-to-do New Yorkers. Some 26,000 New Yorkers have incomes higher than $1 million a year; of those, about 4,600 earn more than $5 million a year.

And they say the state needs to start looking hard for new ways to raise money because state revenues continue to soften with each passing day.

As part of their pitch, Democrats also plan to argue that as recently as 2003 the Legislature approved — over Gov. George E. Pataki’s veto — a temporary income tax increase for households earning more than $150,000 a year, which has since expired.

“The Senate’s already voted for this tax for people with incomes of $150,000,” said Assemblyman Richard L. Brodsky, a Democrat from Westchester County. “It should be no problem for them to vote for the same tax for people with higher incomes.”

But the Senate and the governor might not see it that way. On Wednesday, Joseph L. Bruno, the Senate majority leader, was unyielding in his opposition to higher taxes of any kind. His office issued a statement that said the thought of an income tax rise should “send shivers down the spine of every overburdened, hard-working New York taxpayer.”

Governor Spitzer was equally resolute. “That is not something that we can afford to do,” he said during a trip to Geneseo in western New York. “The idea that we would turn around at this moment and start raising taxes is the wrong way to go.”

The plan that the Assembly will take up next week calls for a new tax bracket. Anyone with income greater than $1 million would have all income taxed at 7.7 percent. Right now, their income is taxed at 6.85 percent, the state’s highest tax rate.

In the first year of the tax increase, all of the $1.5 billion in expected revenue would go into the state’s general fund. In the second year, the revenue would be split between the general fund and transportation projects, including upgrades to roads and bridges across the state and improvements to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s subways. In the third, fourth and fifth year of the plan, all revenue would go toward transportation.

Because of the money it would provide for transportation improvements, the plan would reduce the pressure on the Assembly to support Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s congestion pricing plan; revenue from congestion pricing would be used to finance transit projects. Sheldon Silver, the Assembly speaker, and many Assembly Democrats have voiced reservations about congestion pricing.

The Assembly plan differs considerably from another budget plan that is being promoted by the Working Families Party, which has gained influence among Democrats for providing critical support in important local races. That could put some Democrats in an awkward spot given the Working Families Party’s political clout.

On Wednesday, the party’s executive director, Dan Cantor, said he was disappointed that the Assembly’s plan did not include property tax relief and a tax increase on those earning more than $250,000, as the party has proposed.

“This doesn’t go far enough,” Mr. Cantor said. He said the party would continue pressing for its income tax increase and property tax relief plan.

Democrats who break with the Working Families Party on this issue could risk alienating a strong ally that has not shied away from challenging Democrats in primary races.

“You can never underestimate the Working Families Party’s ability to influence the political dialogue through the electoral process,” said Micah Lasher, who once worked as a political consultant to the party.

Mr. Cantor said he could not rule out running candidates against Democrats who oppose their plan. “We don’t know yet. It’s too soon to tell,” he said.

Some legislators said that it was far too early to predict what the Assembly’s tax increase plan would look like, and noted that it would most likely undergo several revisions before it has to be melded with the Senate’s budget on March 31.

“It’s a place to start,” said Assemblyman Darryl C. Towns, a Democrat from Brooklyn. “I think the Assembly is trying to start a conversation, and we’ll wait to see what our partners see in this.”

Scientific Proof that we don't really need Florida

Florida’s ‘Theory of ...’

From the NYT

We were cheered last year when a committee appointed by the State Department of Education drafted a new set of science standards that, for the first time, actually used the word evolution and called it a fundamental concept underlying all of biology. This was a huge advance over the previous standards, which gingerly referred only to “change over time,” leaving it up to teachers to decide whether they dared to mention the e-word in class.

The new standards were drawn up in a careful process over several months by a committee of scientists, educators, business leaders and others, with advice from scientific organizations and outside experts to ensure that they were as scientifically accurate as possible. But then the anti-evolution crowd — the advocates of creationism and intelligent design — raised a ruckus. With the help of sympathetic board of education members, they forced some last-minute revisions that squeaked through the board by a 4-to-3 vote.

The compromise was to insert the phrase “scientific theory of” before the word evolution as a sop to opponents who contend that evolution is just a theory, not a fact. But it looks to us like the scientists got the better of the argument. School officials inserted the same “scientific theory of” before every other major scientific consensus. The document now refers, for example, to “the scientific theory of cells,” the “scientific theory of atoms,” and the “scientific theory of electromagnetism.”

Although some supporters of teaching evolution grouse that the standards were watered down, they actually look more airtight with the revisions. The standards make it clear that a “scientific theory” is well supported by evidence, not a mere claim, and that evolution is no different in this respect than many other widely accepted “theories.”

Some anti-evolutionists are now pushing Florida’s Legislature to step in and allow the teaching of alternative explanations of biological origins. The alternatives that they have in mind would almost certainly not be deemed “scientific” and would have no legitimate place in science classes.

If the standards are strictly followed, Florida may finally be on the way toward improving the quality of its science curriculum and the subpar performance of its students in national assessments.

NIU

just curious but what do you think they should do--and why...

Illinois: University Rethinks Razing

Published: March 6, 2008

Less than a week after plans were announced to raze the Northern Illinois University lecture hall where five students were killed last month, there is now talk that more thought must be given to the idea. Six days ago, the university’s president, John Peters, left, announced that the building, Cole Hall, would be torn down. Mr. Peters changed course on Tuesday and called for a campuswide discussion on the building’s fate. Also, the backyard gun shop where the gunman bought five weapons has closed. Special Agent Thomas Ahern of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said the owner of the shop, Tony’s Guns and Ammo in Champaign, gave up his federal dealer’s license this week and closed.

Liberal or Conservative Media

A response to another post has me wondering (though i can wager a guess), how many of you think that the US media has a liberal bias? Why do you think this?

So Why Then?

Ok, we all know this because we talked about it earlier in the year, some of you even found some stats for us. So why do you think we don't also make hands-free cell phone use a primary offense?

TRENTON, N.J. - For New Jersey drivers, the message is clear: Keep your thumbs on the wheel and off the keypad.

Beginning Saturday, police can slap drivers with a $100 fine for talking or sending a text message on hand-held devices.

New Jersey joins four other states, including neighboring New York, where talking on a hand-held cell phone is reason enough to get pulled over. The Garden State is the first where text-messaging on the road is a primary offense, meaning police need no other reason to pull a driver over, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Pam Fischer, director of New Jersey's Division of Highway Traffic Safety, said officers will be on the lookout for telltale signs of distracted drivers — slow driving and the "cell-phone weave."

Drivers can still use their cell phones to contact police or emergency services, and can talk at any time with a hands-free device. But crash statistics suggest that those headsets and earpieces may not make conversations in the car any safer.

In 2006, nearly half of the 3,580 phone-related crashes in New Jersey involved a hands-free device, according to transportation officials. Five of 11 fatal accidents involving a cell phone that year also involved a hands-free device.

Russ Rader of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety said those figures are consistent with recent research showing no difference in crash risk between hand-held and hands-free cell phones.

"The conversation itself is the distraction," Rader said. "You are in another place when you are talking on the phone."

Trucker Lou Cataldo hopes the new law will cut down on the distracted drivers he sees across the state.

"I see a car in the middle lane doing 50 miles per hour, and 99.9 percent of the time it's someone yakking on a cell phone," he said.

But Cataldo questioned how police would spot drivers typing out a message.

"If you're doing 75 miles per hour," he said, "the cop has to be right alongside to see you."

Driving while using a hand-held cell phone has been illegal in New Jersey since 2004, when the state became the second in the nation to pass a ban. However, it was considered a secondary offense — something drivers could be ticketed for if they were pulled over for another reason. Over the past year, state courts have recorded 16,000 tickets issued for the offense.

Fischer predicted that number would rise significantly now that drivers can be pulled over for cell phone use alone.

Twenty-one state legislatures this year are considering some kind of ban on texting while driving.

"It's a popular issue this year," said Matt Sundeen, a transportation analyst with the National Conference of State Legislatures. "We expect to see some movement on this."