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Submission + - Dept of Ed CS Equity Grant Focused on All but Asian/White Boys from Cities/Burbs

theodp writes: In September, U.S. Department of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos announced new grant awards that encouraged grantees to rethink K-12 CS education. Among those receiving big grant checks was tech-bankrolled Code.org, who explained their winning entry thusly: "Our $4 million (over five years) 'Equity in AP Computer Science Principles' grant will focus on breaking down barriers that result in inequitable access and outcomes for students. We plan to produce evidence about effective interventions for reducing each of these barriers and increasing equitable outcomes for students."

On Friday, the Department of Education released further details of the $78 million in Education Innovation and Research (EIR) grants, including portions of Code.org's redacted application, which reveals that "Code.org’s [tech-funded] AP CSP curriculum is the most adopted AP CSP curriculum in the United States." It also contains some curiously-worded passages in which Asian and White boys who live in the city and suburbs are conspicuous by their absence: "Equity in AP CSP brings these components together to increase equitable participation and student outcomes in AP CSP for women, underrepresented minorities, (URM) and rural populations across five states — Alaska, Idaho, Kentucky, Texas, and West Virginia, each of whom have high numbers of students who are historically underrepresented in computer science. Equity in AP CSP will 1) train new AP CSP teachers, 2) increase the number of schools adding AP CSP into their master school schedules and 3) increase the number of women, URM, and rural students participating and earning qualifying scores on the AP CSP exam thereby demonstrating increased college readiness." The hoped outcomes, Code.org explains, include "1) Greater # and % of women, URM and rural students taking AP CSP, and 2) Greater # and % of women, URM and rural earning qualifying scores on AP CSP."

By the way, similar wording that seems designed to be inclusive of all but Asian and White boys (but regardless of where they live) can be found in the pending 21st Century STEM for Girls and Underrepresented Minorities Act, which aims "to amend the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 to provide grants to local educational agencies to encourage girls and underrepresented minorities to pursue studies and careers in STEM fields," where STEM "is inclusive of computer science" and "the term 'underrepresented minority' includes an individual who is Black, Latino, Native American, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, or a child with a disability."

Comment please take on china, necon elites! (Score -1) 41

your affirmative action military would get wiped out by china or russia, and either china or russia would send a nuke up washington DC's tailpipe, freeing americans from your tyranny...please please take on russia or china so that russia or china will do a much needed job for us

Comment trying to scare parents about the interwebs (Score 0) 108

a big part of the establishment realizes that the white males are being radicalized by white populist politics on the internet...the alt-right memes and forums etc..this scares the establishment...so there is concerted campaign to scare parents about how the internet can hurt kids...so that the parents keep white kids away from the internet long enough for the establishment to flood america with enough third worlders so that the white vote is meaningless...it's all about propping up the ponzi economy with immigration so that the corporations can keep making money.

Comment Re:Citations are abused (Score 1) 91

A comprehensive list a review shouldn't be necessary at the start of papers, yet it's frequently expected in the peer review process. Citing prior literature is important, but just to the extent necessary to support the hypothesis that the paper intends to examine.

Nope. It's an important part of academic research. It serves multiple purposes. It puts the work in perspective for the reader, that isn't necessarily up to speed on that particular area. It demonstrates that you've done your homework when you claim that this work is new and an improvement on previous work (that's why its called "previous work"), and it helps to put your work in perspective; i.e. is it a major step, or a small incremental one. None of these are strictly necessary to "support your hypothesis", that's much too narrow.

That's why its academia and not just engineering, for example. We don't just want to know that you did something or learned something new about the world. We want to also know how it fits into the bigger picture, and that's where presenting what has gone before and how compares is necessary.

Comment Re:Guns Vs. Armies (Score 1) 200

There's one problem with the "guns protect against tyranny" thing - the armed forces. If they're against the populace, then there's no amount of guns in private hands which can beat them.

That's an oversimplification. While a true conscript army with distributed hardware (like we had in Sweden) would be much better from that standpoint; if the army is the populace, then they cannot by definition be put to the task of quelling the people, armed resistance from the population is not without effect.

Now, exactly how useful an armed populace would be against a professional army in a civil war setting is a more complex issue than what you make it out to be. While a a populace armed with handguns and rifles is no panacea, many guerillas have been successful with a similar level of armaments. Especially initially. You need to be able to resist from the outset if you're going to be able to mount an effective resistance at all.

To this you have to add the motivation of the army you're up against. Killing your own people is hard. Adding armed resistance makes it harder, psychologically speaking. If people are shooting back, that makes it clear you're not popular. And while it may not do much in the situation at hand (i.e. make soldiers lay down their arms), it will give them pause later. (If history is anything to go by.)

But that's not to say that lightly armed guerillas are usually effective in the common military sense of the word. Not without outside support (c.f. Mujahedin in Afghanistan during the Soviet invasion), esp. in unfavourable terrain. However, for outside support to be effective in the first place there has to be an organisation available to use it. Hence the CIA-sponsored "stay behind" organisations that sprung up in secret in Europe after the war. Note that much of the physical support to those organisation was in the form of preplaced caches of weapons, ammunition, explosives and communications gear.

Its also not for nothing that the previous Swedish handling of firearm licenses was distributed to the local police and a purely paper based system. This so that the records could be burned on short notice, to deny an occupier knowledge of who had firearm. This in addition to the cached military arms. One would hardly come up with such a costly and less secure scheme, in a country with traditionally strict firearms legislation, if fire arms in the hands of civilians were of no, to little value in resisting a large, well armed, trained, and regulated (invasion) force.

That's not to disparage other tools, such as explosives, and above all: organisation, communication, and leadership. (In fact, in order to avoid a secret state-within-the-state that's all that the Swedish stay behind movement organised in peace time. Leadership cadre and comms people. That's all that needs to be in place to get a head start.) However, firearms have their place. You for instance shoot collaborators, you don't blow them up. That's far too messy and runs the risk of collateral damage. Something that an organisation relying on popular support can ill afford. Same with isolated soldiers on a break. Now of course, an regular ambush starts best with a big bang, but there are lots and lots of other operations that aren't regular ambushes. (You'll for example be shooting a lot of collaborators. Easily ten times as many as the enemy...)

After all, one must never forget that the reason COIN (COunter INsurgency) operations are so notoriously difficult is that in order to succeed, the army needs to win. The guerilla need only not lose. And not losing, i.e. being able to continue carrying out operations, is much easier than winning; aka rendering your enemy completely ineffective and unable to conduct any operation at all.

It basically comes down to popular support and motivation. Those who have it will in the end win. Those who don't will lose. Guns can be substantial motivator, and communicator.

Comment Re:Nobels in Science Seem OK, It's Peace... (Score 5, Informative) 186

The Peace prize isn't even awarded by the Nobel committee. It's just a way for Norway to make a political statement.

No, that's not really true. The peace prize is one of the original prizes set forth in Nobel's will. It further stipulates that it should be awarded by the parliament of Norway. So it's legitimate.

If you're looking for "fake" prizes, it's the economics prize "in memory of Alfred Nobel" that's the smoking gun. That was put in place by the Swedish central bank in the sixties (1968).

So, even though I as a swede wouldn't miss an opportunity to take the piss out of the Norwegians, this isn't one such opportunity.

Comment Re: Pipe bombs would have killed thousands. (Score 1) 1219

There's a large subset of Americans that only care about the 2nd amendment, the right to bear arms (own guns). They don't give a shit about the rest of our Bill of Rights as long as they keep their guns. On the other side, there are people that want open borders hell or high water.

These people are lost to reason. There can be no compromise.

But that's not necessarily an unreasonable position. With a two party system such as yours, and especially given the current political climate, it could be argued that it doesn't really matter which of the two you vote for. You'll end up in the same place anyway.

This is of course supported by the observations of the low voter turnout, liberal usage of terms such as "republicrats" etc.

These larger questions are also not necessarily in the hands of the politicians in any case; questions regarding the economy etc.

However the question of whether, and how, people should be allowed to own and shoot guns, is one of those few questions that is solely within the political domain. So if you feel that your vote doesn't matter in the larger scheme of things anyway, voting single issue becomes the rational choice. If you feel you'll be shafted anyway, you might as well use your vote for something you care about.

And then you of course also have to take into account that laws regarding weapons ownership is only a very small piece of the puzzle. We have traditionally had much stricter gun control laws in Sweden, and also a lot less violent crime than the US. However, that has recently changed significantly. When it comes to firearms violence we have to now go to southern Italy to find similar figures (and if we compare explosive/grenade violence, we have to go to Mexico).

Our firearm laws have not changed one iota during this period. The changes in violence are all due to social ills, with criminal gangs gaining a foothold (for lots of reasons) and illegal arms being smuggled here from south east Europe. (It's also the first time that firearms violence hasn't given rise to yet shriller cries for more strict licensing laws, as the AKMs and hand grenades that are used, obviously were never legally owned here in Sweden to begin with.) So restricting licensing further, would obviously not do anything to help the problem. Legally owned guns simply does not figure into this particular equation.

Comment Re: Embrace and Extend (Score 1) 269

Not really bad things, but there's several examples of him forcing people to do things, for example: http://clisp.cvs.sourceforge.n....

No. He's not forcing anyone to do anything. International law in the form of the Berne convention is the only force at work.

In the situation at hand the solution is simple. Stop using other peoples' code! It's not yours to do with as you please. In this case the author himself agrees that readline is not an integral part of the programme and could be left out without any trouble.

But he doesn't want to, and that's why he decided that he'd rather relicense his own code than do without readline. As is his right.

The GPL is the most inspired and intelligent development in the area in the last century, and probably this too. There can be no freedom if slavery is allowed. Hence the system that puts limits on others attempts to limit your freedom are more free. Not less. Freedom doesn't mean freedom from necessary rules. An absence of rules is not freedom, that's anarchy.

Comment Re:Setback for clean energy (Score 1) 390

Again look at France. Cheaper electricity than Germany and 75% of it from nuclear. And that's beating coal economically. So how much nuclear is too much then?

Now, of course you want to run your expensive plants flat out. That delivers the best economy. But that's not to say that its "uneconomical" to run them a bit below max some of the time. There is a lot of middle ground between most profitable and won't-make-back-what-they-cost.

In fact. That argument is one that's better applied to wind+solar. Since they are so unreliable, you have to really go to town when speccing out your reserves. They have to be able to cover the whole load, while still not making any money when the wind does blow. Which it does most of the time. That's uneconomical in the extreme.

And that's why neither you nor Germany could exist in isolation. Without us, Norway, France etc. to shore up your grid, you'd end up with brownouts, blackouts etc. You couldn't run a stable grid.

No-one is saying that nuclear is perfect in ever way. Far from it. I am saying that its the best available. All things considered.

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