California’s Governor has recently announced an initiative to allow the use of electronic textbooks in the classroom. This is being done to reduce costs in a time when the state’s budget is in crisis. Unfortunately, at least in my opinion, the stated initiative misses the mark.
Instead of allowing textbook publishers to present their materials in an electronic format we should be looking into bypassing the textbook publishers entirely. There is no reason that the educational material could not be crowd-sourced to the thousands of certificated teachers currently working in California. Sure it would take some time to compile the material and there would need to be a strict approval policy, but a wiki-like textbook would be effective, efficient and cheap.
Imagine the combined brain trust of thousands of teachers all contributing, discussing and editing an evolving, online repository of information that is available free of cost or copyright restriction to anyone, anywhere. Additionally, local repositories could be branched off to suite the needs of individual communities and we could allow for a free and open discussion of contentious topics to ensure that the children being educated by the state are receiving the information in a manner that is judged to be fitting by people. Parents could comment, object or provide insight into any number of topics included and these comments, objections or insights would be available directly to the content providers. I am not suggesting a completely open system ala Wikipedia, but certainly something similar with controls over who can edit.
The change to the CAFE regulations from the Obama administration seem to be much less stringent than I originally thought. The 35.5 MPG requirement is filled with as many loopholes as our street are with potholes.
The largest loophole is that instead of a strict, clear cut rule, the automakers will be able to base the fuel mileage in 2016 on estimates of what the Green House Gas emissions from that year will be. What this will allow the automakers to do is to reduce the Green House Gases by improving the Air Conditioners in their vehicles, which will effectively reduce their estimated fuel mileage that is being based on Green House Gas emissions. Huh?
Perhaps even more dumbfounding than the convoluted and idiotic fuel mileage mess is the provisions that will allow automakers to reduce their CAFE requirements based on the “footprint” (square footage) of the vehicles that they sell. The larger the vehicle, the less stringent the CAFE requirement. This also means that the CAFE standard for each company will be different based on the size of the vehicles they sell. How is this different than what we have now? How is this “Change We Can Believe In”?
President Obama, we do not need more of the same. The leadership of the last few administrations has left this country in dire straits regarding foreign oil dependence and emissions standards. Please, simply set strict rules without loopholes and allowances. Allow all car companies to compete on a level playing field and let them know what is required of them. Why is this so difficult to do in Washington D.C.?
Via: Autoblog
President Obama has recently announced an increase and standardization of the CAFE Standards for new vehicles. For those of you who think I may be talking about coffee the CAFE Standards are the minimum fuel economy standards automakers in the US must conform to, These changes are a big step forward, especially considering the utter lack of progress made over the last eight years.
These new standards apply more stringent fuel economy requirements and (of equal importance) these rules are to be standardized across Federal agencies (EPA and DOT) as well as being adopted by the individual states. Recently, California was involved in a court battle with the Federal government because California wanted more stringent emissions requirements than the Bush Administration (aka rich, white, oil magnates) would allow.
Unfortunately, these new regulations will only increase the CAFE by 5% each year until 2016 when cars will be required to average 42 MPG and light trucks will be required to average 26 MPG. While this is certainly a significant improvement, I would like to see more. I would like to see something in the range of 60 MPG and a mandatory minimum of 30 MPG. I think this is an extremely important part of weaning us from our dependence on foreign oil, not to mention the environmental significance.
In addition, I think that separate standards for passenger cars and light trucks is a serious flaw in the current regulations. The overwhelming majority of light trucks (which includes most SUVs) are used primarily to ferry passengers to and fro, just like a passenger car. I see no need for a separate standard for these vehicles. I understand that there are legitimate cases where a light truck or SUV may be required (contractors or other business uses) and I would not mind a separate standard for these, perhaps based upon a different licensing scheme (commercial vs. personal). Allow vehicles licensed for commercial use to be excluded from the passenger vehicle CAFE standard and instead fall under a commercial vehicle CAFE standard. This would allow anyone that needs an SUV or light truck to license it appropriately, perhaps even paying a higher licensing fee for the increased environmental costs associated with that vehicles operation. In California, this system is already in place with personal and commercial plates having different numbering schemes.
via: Digg
Kottke.org has an article “The country’s new robots.txt file” that shows what will hopefully be the first of many, many changes to the way the President of the United States of America executes the duties of his office.
Basically, the Bush administration was blocking search engines from finding information on the official White House website (almost 2,400 individual blocking statements). As soon as the Obama administration changed the site, all of those restrictions have been removed. Hopefully by the end of Obama’s tenure he will not find it necessary to try so hard to hide information from the people he serves.
We Californians just passed Proposition 1A which provides funding to build a high-speed rail network throughout California! There is some information on the rail system at http://www.cahighspeedrail.ca.gov/. I can’t wait for this to happen. I think that the outdated system of freeways and the current lack of viable public transportation is a terrible thing. Finally we can catch up to where we should have been 20 years ago.
Record voter turnout, relatively accurate elections and a Presidential race that was tempered with respect and fairness (for the most part). I am pleased with the outcome and hopeful for our future.
I was impressed with Senator McCain’s conciliatory speech. Had he ran his campaign in the same manner, the outcome may have been different. He spoke well and truly seemed sincere in his support of his new President Elect.
President Elect Obama’s speech was, as I have come to expect, nothing short of eloquent and moving. His unrivaled ability to motivate people to better themselves and their community is most welcome.
I read an interesting article on Time.com with statements from a variety of foreign leaders and prominent members of foreign society that reflects the hope that the entire world shares for Barack Obama.
I hope that the proliferation of this sort of police / fascist control is not the change that Barack Obama wants us to believe in.
http://newsproject.org/videos/113
“There’s a powerful police presence here. The chill of 1968 is in the air of Denver,” Ron Kovic
I hope that, if elected, Barack Obama will adhere to the following:
US Constitution, Amendment I
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
With all recent news regarding the impending mortgage crisis, especially the FDIC takeover of IndyMac Banc Corp., I think it is time to stop bailing out large corporations and simply let them fail.
If “we the people” keep bailing out these large corporations, then the large corporations will never need to exercise restraint. They will be able to make enormous profits off of us by making foolhardy business decisions knowing full well that should things turn out badly, the people that they just raped will offer up their hard earned tax dollars to shore up the corporation so they can do it all over again. We need to end this vicious cycle now.
If we bail out anyone, it should be ourselves. I say, take whatever money we are planning on using to bail out the large mortgage lenders and secure the sale of the their loans to more solvent banks. I don’t think we should be helping out the banks, we should be helping the people. We should restructure and underwrite the loans that are failing and offer them up for sale to banks that aren’t failing. This way, we avoid the looming crises and people don’t lose their homes.
Of course, this will only be a temporary solution. A more permanent solution is to regulate the mortgage market so that sub-prime loans can not happen.
You may have noticed some new graphics on the site, specifically the following in the upper left corner:
Up until this point, I have remained fairly silent regarding my thoughts about who should be our next President. I was very interested in the campaign of Ron Paul, unfortunately he has not received the Republican Party’s nomination.
I won’t spend a great deal of time here talking about why I think Barack Obama is the best choice, but I will say that I do think he is the best choice.
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