Half Right

UCLA researchers surmised about bin Laden's hideout (excerpt):

5/3/11

Two years before al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden was discovered in a fortified compound not far from Pakistan's capital, a team of U.S. researchers and undergraduate students took up the search as part of an academic exercise. Their concept turned out to be generally accurate, although their target was off the mark.

Using satellite imagery and fundamental principles of geography, the group at the University of California, Los Angeles predicted that the mastermind of the 2001 terrorist attacks was probably hiding not in the rugged mountains, but inside a walled compound in a Pakistani city designed to shelter him and his bodyguards with little detection…

That's where the similarities end. In a 2009 paper published in the MIT International Review, the UCLA researchers used modeling that placed bin Laden in the northwest Pakistan town of Parachinar, about 300 miles west of where he was actually found. They figured it was a logical hideout because it was the largest city closest to bin Laden's last known location of Tora Bora, a giant cave complex in eastern Afghanistan…

Full article at http://www.dailynews.com/ci_17983832

Severance Pay from Oil?

A new ballot initiative is going into circulation which imposes an oil severance tax for education, including higher ed. It apparently has some level of endorsement from community colleges. However, there is no money at this point for signature gathering. Hiring signature-gathering firms for an initiative costs $1-$2 million.

The backers say they will use students, Facebook, etc. So far, no one has gotten anything on the ballot in recent memory without hiring signature-gathering firms. Of course, getting something on the ballot is only a first step. You then need lots more money for TV ads, particularly if you take on the oil industry.

Below is info on the initiative:

Backers of oil tax initiative can start to gather signatures (excerpt)

Steven Harmon, Contra Costa Times, 05/03/2011, 05/04/2011

SACRAMENTO -- The Attorney General's office on Tuesday released its title and summary on a ballot measure that would tax oil companies, with proceeds used to increase education spending by $2 billion to $3 billion a year.

Backers of the initiative can now begin to collect signatures.

Easier said than done, especially for what is basically a one-man operation. Peter Mathews, a Southern California college professor, said he will be enlisting students around the state to gather the signatures, using Facebook and Twitter to generate interest.

Mathews has a website, RescueEducationCalifornia.org, and boasts the endorsement of the California Community Colleges Association.

That group's president, Ron Norton Reed, has pledged to gather signatures and send out fundraising letters.

Recently, the California State Los Angeles Associated Students Incorporated passed a resolution stating it would get the word out to begin collecting signatures...

He's also received the personal endorsement of Jack Scott, the chancellor of the state's community colleges.

But the hardy support of the education community is not the weapon they will need if the initiative gets on the ballot. They'd be going up against an industry that spent $90 million to defeat a similar oil extraction ballot measure in 2006.

The measure lost, 55 to 45 percent, despite the endorsements of former President Bill Clinton, former Vice President Al Gore and other luminaries who came to the state.

All they had to do was raise the specter of higher gas prices, and it was enough to spook voters. A difference, Mathews said, is that the revenues would have been earmarked for environmental programs. Revenues for schools might get a different reaction, he said.

...The tax would be $15 on each barrel of oil extracted from California and allocates the revenue to educational funding (for non-construction purposes) with 30 percent going to K-12, 48 percent to community colleges and 11 percent each to University of California and California State University...

The measure would prohibit oil companies from passing a tax on to refiners, gasoline stations or consumers.

Full article at http://www.contracostatimes.com/politics-government/ci_17985024

Official info on the initiative is at

http://ag.ca.gov/cms_attachments/initiatives/pdfs/i934_title_and_summary_11-0004_final.pdf

and

http://ag.ca.gov/cms_attachments/initiatives/pdfs/i934_initiative_11-0004.pdf

Be a Good Sport (at Berkeley)

Inside Higher Ed today points to the story below:

Men’s gymnastics program to continue at UC Berkeley

Herb Benenson, Intercollegiate Athletics, May 2, 2011

As a result of fundraising efforts that have raised in excess of $2.5 million, the men’s gymnastics program at the University of California, Berkeley, will be preserved as an Intercollegiate Athletics sport, campus officials announced today (Monday, May 2).

The total, though short of the $4 million necessary to fund the team’s current direct and indirect costs, will support the program for at least 7-10 years in combination with steps to reduce annual operating expenses. Specifically, until the ultimate fundraising goal is met, men’s gymnastics will be limited in its ability to provide financial aid to future student-athletes…

…Since UC Berkeley announced last September that four sports – baseball, men’s gymnastics, women’s gymnastics and women’s lacrosse – would be eliminated and rugby assigned to a newly created tier at the end of the 2010-11 academic year, donors have pledged more than $20 million to allow for the preservation of all five programs at the Intercollegiate Athletics level. These substantial commitments, in combination with expected ongoing fundraising efforts, will fully support the costs, both direct and indirect, of each team and enable Cal Athletics to remain on its path to financial sustainability and honor the campus’s decision to cap institutional support for athletics at $5 million a year by 2014…

Full story at http://newscenter.berkeley.edu/2011/05/02/gymnastics-to-continue-at-cal/

[Photo above shows men's gymnastics at UC-Berkeley in the early 1900s.]

Time to Kick the Can Down the Road?

When he was governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger use to speak pejoratively about "kicking the can down the road" when considering state budget remedies. In fact, when he came into office in 2003-04, he basically borrowed his way out of the budget crisis of that time that he inherited. Such borrowing effectively kicks the can down the road.

Right now, no one in Sacramento seems to have a Plan B after Governor Brown's plan to put tax extensions on the ballot seems to have failed for lack of a 2/3 vote. The governor is being pushed, as an earlier post noted, to get the legislature just to enact the tax extensions without a vote of the people. But that approach also requires a 2/3 vote - which he doesn't have.

Gov. Brown is due to issue a new budget plan - the May revise - in a couple of weeks. Undoubtedly, there will be new estimates of revenue and expenditure as part of the May revise. But using his old (January 2011) numbers, the original objective was to go from a negative reserve in the general fund of over $5 billion at the start of the current fiscal year (July 1, 2010) to a positive reserve of around $2 billion by the end of the next fiscal year (June 30, 2012). That's a swing of around $7 billion. But do we need to accomplish everything, including that $7 billion swing by the next fiscal year?

At the time of the original proposal, the Legislative Analyst pointed out that everything needed not be done within that time period, i.e., by June 30, 2012. A multiyear approach - kicking the can down the road if you like that phrase - should be considered. See the video below for that opinion. So perhaps it is time to drop the seeming choice between a budget that is a mix of taxes and cuts (the governor's January proposal) or a cuts-only budget. There is a third approach.

Hello!! Is anyone listing?

Hot Potato?

The Assn. of American Universities (AAU) is a organization with major research universities as its members including UCLA. Its current president, Robert Berdahl, is a past chancellor of UC-Berkeley. UC-Berkeley is a member. Davis, Irvine, San Diego, and Santa Barbara are also members. On March 31, the AAU issued the press release below with other organizations concerning the federal deficit. (This is not a timely piece of information; yours truly just stumbled on it, a month late.)

Also a signatory to the document is the Assn. of Public and Land-Grant Universities which includes the UC campuses above plus Santa Cruz and Riverside (and some CSUs).

The motivation for the statement from the perspective of higher ed seems to be that federal budget cuts threaten research and other higher ed-related funding. However, the statement goes beyond expressing concern about higher ed funding and gets into complex territory, calling (sort of) for reductions in Social Security and Medicare, for example, not calling for tax increases but rather for tax "reform," and (sort of) endorsing Simpson-Bowles.

I suspect that there would be different perspectives on the issues here within the faculty of the various UCs that seem to be endorsing this document and within the Regents for that matter. Perhaps the Regents discussed this matter, but I am unaware of it if they have. I don't think the Academic Senate did.

Dealing with federal fiscal policy is a potential hot potato. It's not clear that the AAU in fact speaks for the various member UC campuses on this issue, or - if it does - how that decision was made.

STATEMENT ON THE FEDERAL DEFICIT

As representatives of the nation’s business, university, science and engineering communities, we believe the future of our nation depends on our willingness to take immediate actions to rein in the federal deficit and drive economic growth.

Americans know the exploding federal debt is unsustainable. The Congressional Budget Office projects a 90 percent debt-to-GDP ratio within 10 years, a dangerous prospect that would saddle the country with crippling interest payments on the debt. If we do not act soon, the country at some point will be forced to make truly draconian cuts in government expenditures and impose huge tax increases, while simultaneously experiencing prolonged slow or zero growth. This will weaken our nation and reduce the standard of living of current and future generations.

We can still choose our path, however. Past generations of Americans have risen to great challenges, and so can we.

Current discussions about deficit reduction by the Administration and Congress have largely concentrated on domestic discretionary expenditures, which are only about one sixth of the budget. If defense and security-related expenditures were included, the debate would still be focused on only about one-third of the budget. We would need to eliminate nearly all of this spending to balance the FY2012 budget. Moreover, concentrating exclusively on reducing discretionary expenditures threatens to undermine the human capital and the physical, technological and scientific infrastructure upon which our future economy, health, and security depend.

Largely missing in the budget discussions to-date are entitlement programs, particularly the major ones: Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. These three programs alone account for about 40 percent of the budget and their expenditures will grow dramatically in the decade ahead: Social Security by an estimated 71 percent, Medicare by 75 percent, and Medicaid by 125 percent. Any serious and sincere deficit reduction plan must include entitlement reform.

An effective deficit reduction plan cannot focus entirely on decreasing discretionary expenditures; it must also include tax reform, spending prioritization and actions to strengthen economic growth. Economic growth and job creation require federal investment to prepare our children with world-class educations and to support the scientific and technology research and innovation infrastructure that enable the private sector to create jobs and compete in the global economy.

Americans must set priorities and share in the sacrifice required to put our fiscal house in order. This is consistent with the model discussed in the bipartisan majority report of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform – the Bowles-Simpson commission. We applaud those bipartisan efforts now underway among some Senators to put a broad-based deficit reduction plan on the table, and we welcome the recent letter signed by 64 Senators calling for a ‘broader discussion about a comprehensive deficit reduction package.’

We urge the President and the Congress to emphasize bipartisan compromise rather than contention. We call upon them to join together with Congress in making the tough choices on all elements of the federal budget in order to reduce deficits, bring the national debt under control and empower economic growth and job production.

Norman R. Augustine
Chairman and CEO (retired)
Lockheed Martin Corporation

Robert M. Berdahl
President Association of American Universities

John Engler
President
Business Roundtable

M. Peter McPherson
President Association of Public and Land-grant Universities

Charles M. Vest
President
National Academy of Engineering

Deborah L. Wince-Smith
President & CEO
Council on Competitiveness

The document can be found at http://www.aplu.org/NetCommunity/Document.Doc?id=3095

UCLA History: Kerckhoff Hall

Kerckhoff Hall is dedicated in 1930. From left to right: Governor James Rolph, Louise Kerckhoff, UC President Robert Gordon Sproul.

Font of Wisdom

Use PowerPoint in class? Research suggests using hard-to-read fonts will increase student learning. (Of course, your teacher ratings will suffer when students complain.) See below:

…New research finds that people retain significantly more material - whether science, history or language - when they study it in a font that is not only unfamiliar but also hard to read…

In a recent study published in the journal Cognition, psychologists at Princeton and Indiana University had 28 men and women read about three species of aliens, each of which had seven characteristics, like "has blue eyes," and "eats flower petals and pollen." Half the participants studied the text in 16-point Arial font, and the other half in 12-point Comic Sans MS or 12-point Bodoni MT, both of which are relatively unfamiliar and harder for the brain to process.

After a short break, the participants took an exam, and those who had studied in the harder-to-read fonts outperformed the others on the test, 85.5 percent to 72.8 percent, on average.

To test the approach in the classroom, the researchers conducted a large experiment involving 222 students at a public school in Chesterland, Ohio. One group had all its supplementary study materials, in English, history and science courses, reset in an unusual font, like Monotype Corsiva. The others studied as before. After the lessons were completed, the researchers evaluated the classes' relevant tests and found that those students who'd been squinting at the stranger typefaces did significantly better than the others in all the classes - particularly in physics.

"The reason that the unusual fonts are effective is that it causes us to think more deeply about the material," a co-author of the study, Daniel M. Oppenheimer, a psychologist at Princeton, wrote in an e-mail. "But we are capable of thinking deeply without being subjected to unusual fonts. Think of it this way, you can't skim material in a hard-to-read font, so putting text in a hard-to-read font will force you to read more carefully." …

Full article: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/04/30/BU9B1J32JG.DTL#ixzz1L6vVFyJV

Better yet, you can write on the board in script:

For centuries, cursive handwriting has been an art. To a growing number of young people, it is a mystery. The sinuous letters of the cursive alphabet, swirled on countless love letters, credit card slips and banners above elementary school chalk boards are going the way of the quill and inkwell. With computer keyboards and smartphones increasingly occupying young fingers, the gradual death of the fancier ABC’s is revealing some unforeseen challenges...

Students nationwide are still taught cursive, but many school districts are spending far less time teaching it and handwriting in general than they were years ago, said Steve Graham, a professor of education at Vanderbilt University. Most schools start teaching cursive in third grade, Professor Graham said. In the past, most would continue the study until the fifth or sixth grades — and some to the eighth grade — but many districts now teach cursive only in third grade, with fewer lessons.

“Schools today, we say we’re preparing our kids for the 21st century,” said Jacqueline DeChiaro, the principal of Van Schaick Elementary School in Cohoes, N.Y., who is debating whether to cut cursive. “Is cursive really a 21st-century skill?”

With schools focused on preparing students for standardized tests, there is often not enough time to teach handwriting, educators said...

Full article at http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/28/us/28cursive.html