One of the many reasons that I did not wish to go to a large university was due to the huge class sizes. Then after transferring into one such school, I fled to small programs (one of twenty and another of less than one hundred, undergrad+grad combined). 900 students? No thanks! But this is a good idea, akin to something we were starting at the SPH when I left.


Harvard channels justice
You don’t have to shell out the $30,000-a-year tuition to sit in on one of Harvard University’s most popular courses - “Moral Reasoning 22: Justice.’’

Nearly 900 Harvard students pack into Sanders Theatre for the introduction to moral and political philosophy class, in which government professor Michael Sandel lectures about the great philosophers and debates contemporary issues such as affirmative action, income distribution, and same-sex marriage.

But you can now watch the course from the comfort of your living room.

Harvard has teamed up with WGBH-TV to produce a television series to premiere this month on public television stations nationwide. Through an interactive website, JusticeHarvard.org, the series will allow viewers to join in discussion and grapple with the ethical questions posed by students and Sandel during each class.

The 12 one-hour episodes cover such topics as cannibalism and the moral side of murder, motherhood for sale, and putting a price tag on life. Along with discussion boards, the website provides discussion guides, quiz questions, and readings.

“We’re hoping to engage viewers of all ages in a lively experiment in civic dialogue,’’ Sandel said in a written statement.

U.S. unveils new rules on border searches of laptops
Thu Aug 27, 2009 4:25pm EDT

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Obama administration unveiled new rules on Thursday for searching computers and other electronic devices when people enter the United States, attempting to address concerns about violating privacy and constitutional rights.

At the same time, the Department of Homeland Security defended such searches as necessary to detect information about potential terrorism plots as well as other crimes such as child pornography and copyright infringement.

"The new directives announced today strike the balance between respecting the civil liberties and privacy of all travelers while ensuring DHS can take the lawful actions necessary to secure our borders," DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano said in a statement.
Between October 1, 2008 and August 11, 2009, 221 million travelers were processed at U.S. borders and about 1,000 searches of laptop computers were conducted, of which 46 were in-depth examinations, the agency said.

Searches often involve asking people to turn on the device to verify it is what it appears to be, the DHS said.

Privacy groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation have pushed Congress to stop border officers from searching laptops, cell phones and other electronic devices without probable cause when people enter or return to the country.

The rules permit searches of such devices without a person's consent. The review is to be done in the presence of the owner, unless there are national security or law enforcement reasons to conduct it elsewhere.

Immigration and customs officers can also hold the devices or the data, which may be copied without the knowledge of the owner for further review, according to the rules.

The new regulations note that border officers should be particularly careful when handling legal or business materials or other sensitive data like medical records or information carried by journalists.

(Reporting by Jeremy Pelofsky; Editing by John O'Callaghan)

Of course, this was just one day after the ACLU filed a suit against the USDHS in New York, demanding information on the search policy.

Additionally:

• USDHS: Secretary Napolitano Announces New Directives on Border Searches of Electronic Media
• CBP Border Search of Electronic Devices Containing Information
• ICE Border Searches of Electronic Media
• Privacy Impact Assessment: Border Searches of Electronic Information

AP: Plague claims a 2nd life in northwest China town – 1 hour ago

BEIJING — A second man has died of pneumonic plague in northwest China, in an outbreak that prompted authorities to seal off an entire town where about a dozen people were infected with the highly contagious deadly lung disease, a state news agency said.

The man who died Sunday was identified only as 37-year-old Danzin from Ziketan, the stricken town in Qinghai province, the official Xinhua News Agency said.

Danzin was a neighbor of the first person who died, a 32-year-old herdsman whose name was not given. Another 10 people, mostly relatives of the first deceased man, were infected and undergoing isolated treatment in hospital, Xinhua said in a report late Sunday.

The town of 10,000 people has been placed under quarantine and a team of experts was being sent to the area, it said. The local health bureau warned Sunday that anyone with a cough or fever who has visited the town since mid-July should seek treatment at a hospital.

Pneumonic plague is spread through the air and can be passed from person to person through coughing, according to the World Health Organization. It is caused by the same bacteria that occurs in bubonic plague — the Black Death that killed an estimated 25 million people in Europe during the Middle Ages.

While bubonic plague — which is usually transmitted by flea bite — can be treated with antibiotics if diagnosed early, pneumonic plague is one of the deadliest infectious diseases. According to the WHO, humans can die within 24 hours of infection.

Props to hanagogo for sharing~

NO PROPS TO megaversal, BECAUSE HE IS A LIAR! =0

U.S. to Join U.N. Human Rights Council, Reversing Bush Policy
By Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, March 31, 2009; 5:46 PM


UNITED NATIONS, March 31 -- The Obama administration decided Tuesday to seek a seat on the U.N. Human Rights Council, reversing a decision by the Bush administration to shun the United Nations' premier rights body to protest the influence of repressive states.

"Human rights are an essential element of American global foreign policy," Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said in a statement. "With others, we will engage in the work of improving the U.N. human rights system. . . . We believe every nation must live by and help shape global rules that ensure people enjoy the right to live freely and participate fully in their societies."

The United States announced it would participate in elections in May for one of three seats on the 47-member council, joining a slate that includes Belgium and Norway.

New Zealand, which had also been on the ballot, supports the U.S. decision and withdrew its name to make room for the United States, Foreign Minister Murray McCully announced. "Frankly, by any objective measure, membership of the Council by the U.S. is more likely to create positive changes more quickly than we could have hoped to achieve them," he said.

The decision was welcomed by U.N. officials and rights advocates, who had been briefed on the decision. Human rights activists have been advocating U.S. membership in the council since its creation in March 2006.

"This is a welcome step that gives the United States and other defenders of human rights a fighting chance to make the institution more effective," said a human rights advocate familiar with the decision. "I think everybody is just desperate to have the United States and Barack Obama run for the human rights council, and countries are willing to bend over backward to make that happen."

The Geneva-based Human Rights Council was established in March 2006 to replace the 60-year-old Human Rights Commission, which lost international credibility after countries with abysmal rights records, such as Sudan and Zimbabwe, were allowed to join and thwart criticism of their actions.

The Bush administration refused to join the new rights body, saying it was not convinced that it represented much of an improvement over its predecessor. John R. Bolton, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations when the council was created, said at the time that the United States would have more "leverage in terms of the performance of the new council" by not participating in it and thus signaling a rejection of "business as usual."

Reached Tuesday, Bolton denounced the Obama administration's decision. "This is like getting on board the Titanic after it's hit the iceberg," he said. "This is the theology of engagement at work. There is no concrete American interest served by this, and it legitimizes something that doesn't deserve legitimacy."

The Obama administration and rights advocates concede that the Human Rights Council has failed to emerge as a powerful champion of human rights, saying it has devoted excessive attention to alleged abuses by Israel and too little to abuses in places such as Darfur, Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe.

Last week, the rights council adopted a resolution sponsored by Pakistan and other Islamic states that condemns the "defamation of religion" as a violation of human rights, arguing that abuses against Muslims have mounted in the years following the 911 terror attacks. But European states criticized the Islamic resolution, saying it posed a threat to the right of free speech. However, the decision to seek a seat on the council is in keeping with what President Obama has called a "new era of engagement" with other nations to advance U.S. security interests and meet the global challenges of the 21st century.

Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said: "Those who suffer from abuse and oppression around the world, as well as those who dedicate their lives to advancing human rights, need the council to be balanced and credible." She said the United States seeks election to the body "because we believe that working from within, we can make the council a more effective forum to promote and protect human rights."

The Human Rights Council is an inter-governmental body within the U.N. system made up of 47 elected members whose mission is to strengthen the promotion and protection of human rights globally. The next round of elections to the council will be held May 15 in the U.N. General Assembly in New York, with members elected to three-year terms. The council is scheduled to undergo a formal review of its structure and procedures in 2011, offering an opportunity for reform.

After HKU law professor Johannes Chan, a South China Morning Post photographer, and two political activists were denied entry into Macao at the beginning of this month, a group of Hong Kong's Pan-Democrats (a group from various parties who support suffrage and soon) planned to travel to Macau today to see if they could get in. One was planning to use her UK passport if others were denied. (My understanding is that the UK Consulate was aware of her plans, given that I heard this from people there.) Macao refusing their entry wouldn't have been unprecedented -- just this past December, nine were refused entry to attend a rally opposing Article 23.

34/35 set out from Tsim Sha Tsui today (on the ferry not owned by Macao's favorite polygamist gambling guru, Stanley Ho, who controls all ferries leaving from Hong Kong island) and five were denied entry: three from the more radical (but highly popular) League of Social Democrats, Leung Kwok-hung (梁國雄), a.k.a. Long Hair, Koo Sze-yiu (古思堯), and Bull Tsang Kin-shing (曾健成); the Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions' Lee Cheuk Yan (李卓人); and Lui Yuk-lin (雷玉蓮), a.k.a. "Female Long Hair", who isn't a politician but a prominent figure in her own right. This has left some saying that Macao has set up a blacklist of people who shouldn't enter.

This all comes less than a month since Macao passed article 23, state security legislation prohibiting treason, subversion of state power, etc. Only two, the lone democrats in Macao's legislature, voted against (parts of) it. Is there any guess as to who is the favorite step-child of Beijing?



( Apple Daily: 長毛曾健成等5人 澳門闖關失敗返港 (Storming the border failed for Long Hair, Bull Tsang, and three others; they return to HK) )

( Apple Daily: 李卓人： 澳門封殺工運人士 Lee Cheuk Yan: Macau Shuts Out Labor Activists )

( SCMP: Macau may turn you back, democrats warned )

( SCMP: HK-Macau relationship at risk, legislators warn )

( AFP:HK professor, politicians barred from Macau visit )

( WSJ: Muzzled in Macau (from Dec 2008) )

As I now work with heathens, I decided to share the joy that is Carnival by ending the season with a king cake!



(This was the one I made with leftover cake for tartarisaws and me. It ended up looking much nicer than the one for the office.)

Hong Kong's controversial Catholic leader to retire early next year
December 24, 2008

HONG KONG (AFP) — The leader of Hong Kong's Catholic Church, Cardinal Joseph Zen, a staunch democracy campaigner and critic of China's rights record, said Wednesday he would retire early next year.

Zen said his third request to step down had been approved by Pope Benedict XVI.

"I applied the first time when I was 75 and it was not approved. At 76, I applied for the second time and it was also turned down," he told local broadcaster RTHK.

"But fortunately, this time, I am nearly 77 and the pope said OK. In principle, it has been approved," he said, adding he had planned to leave the post in the next few months.

Zen said he would not stop serving the Church after his retirement.

"I want to devote more time to the churches in the mainland, because they are very big and very complicated," he said, adding he would not intervene in the affairs between the Vatican and China.

The Shanghai-born cardinal, well-known for his outspoken calls for democracy and religious freedom, said he hoped his successor, Coadjutor Bishop John Tong, would improve relations between the Vatican and Beijing.

"I have always hoped that through our voices, state leaders will understand that genuine religious freedom will definitely work towards the interest of the country," he said.

Liu Bainian, vice-chairman of the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association, a body set up by Beijing to supervise mainland churches, told broadcaster Cable TV that Zen should adopt a different approach in dealing with China after his retirement.

"If he insists on his former way of thinking, it will not be advantageous to the improvement of the China-Vatican relations," Liu said.

Zen, head of the 250,000 Catholics in the territory since 2002, has not been afraid to criticise China, even while the Vatican has moved to improve diplomatic ties with Beijing.

The Holy See has long been at odds with China over who controls the booming Catholic church in the world's most populous nation.

The Vatican wants all Chinese Catholics -- currently divided between an "official" Church sanctioned by the Chinese government and an underground one loyal to the Vatican -- to be brought under papal authority.

China severed its ties with the Vatican in 1951 in anger at the Holy See's diplomatic recognition of Taiwan, which remains a contentious issue.

The Independent ran a story today on Germany's MaxPlanckForschung using a Cantonese brothel ad -- which it supposedly ran by a German Sinologist -- on the cover of a report on China.

The ad in question?

重金禮聘長駐日場
加美,KK主任親率青春玉女 (how to rend that when writing like this?
儀態萬千北方佳麗
身材惹火住家少婦
風騷迷人即日登場

("Elegant Northern beauties"! "Young housewives with provocative figures"! XDD)

The article mentions that this has appeared on anti-cnn.com, and indeed, it has!


Chinese 'classical poem' was brothel ad
Science journal mistakenly uses flyer for Macau brothel to illustrate report on China
By Clifford Coonan in Beijing
Tuesday, 9 December 2008

A respected research institute wanted Chinese classical texts to adorn its journal, something beautiful and elegant, to illustrate a special report on China. Instead, it got a racy flyer extolling the lusty details of stripping housewives in a brothel.

Chinese characters look dramatic and beautiful, and have a powerful visual impact, but make sure you get the meaning of the characters straight before jumping right in.

There were red faces on the editorial board of one of Germany's top scientific institutions, the Max Planck Institute, after it ran the text of a handbill for a Macau strip club on the front page of its latest journal. Editors had hoped to find an elegant Chinese poem to grace the cover of a special issue, focusing on China, of the MaxPlanckForschung journal, but instead of poetry they ran a text effectively proclaiming "Hot Housewives in action!" on the front of the third-quarter edition. ( Their "enchanting and coquettish performance" was highly recommended. )

sertrel sent me this bit of obviousness this morning.

I'd be interested in seeing the results for St. James Parish (from which my mother's family hails), as it is notorious for its residents' lack of mobility. (I consulted ACS's survey -- St. James was missing, as were St. John the Baptist, Assumption, and many others.)



Moving out of state
Louisiana keeps losing prime taxpayers

By MARK BALLARD
Advocate Capitol News Bureau
Published: Nov 16, 2008 - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

Two-thirds of the people who left Louisiana in the year after the 2005 hurricanes were white, well-educated and in their prime tax-paying years, according to a recent survey by the U.S. Census Bureau.

Nearly one in four made more than $50,000 per year, according to Census Bureau estimates based on responses from 27,905 people in 2006, after the tumult from hurricanes Katrina and Rita subsided. Previous census estimates were calculated from utility hookups, birth certificates and other sources.

( The numbers show the longtime trend of people leaving Louisiana — a trend called “out-migration” — continued unabated despite extraordinary efforts to rebuild damaged portions of the state to lure residents back after the massive hurricane evacuations. )

Movers by age
Louisiana residents who moved out of state in 2006:

UNDER THE AGE OF 19:	32,619.
20 TO 29 YEARS:	31,113.
30 TO 54 YEARS:	40,458.
OVER THE AGE OF 55:	12,934.
TOTAL LEAVING STATE:	117,124.

Source: American Community Survey, 2007

EBR numbers
East Baton Rouge Parish in 2006:

BASE POPULATION:	423,984.
LIVED IN THE SAME HOUSE A YEAR AGO:	346,033.
MOVED WITHIN THE PARISH:	50,331.
MOVED TO A DIFFERENT PARISH:	17,182.
MOVED TO A DIFFERENT STATE:	11,099.

Source: American Community Survey, 2007

And it seems that Landrieu's going to make it as well. Fingers crossed!!


(OMG FLORIDA!)

According to the Audubon Nature Institute, Mr. Green Genes will be on The Today Show on Thursday, October 23, during the 7:00 a.m.—8:00 a.m. segment.


Glowing cat may shed light on disease-fighting strategy
by John Pope
Monday October 20, 2008, 10:40 AM

Everyone knows that cats can see in the dark, but that wasn't good enough for some New Orleans scientists. They produced Mr. Green Genes, a cat that glows in the dark and is destined to be more than just a novelty for Halloween parties.

He's a nearly 6-month-old orange tabby but, under ultraviolet light, his eyes, gums and tongue glow a vivid lime green, the result of a genetic experiment at the Audubon Center for Research of Endangered Species.

Mr. Green Genes is the first fluorescent cat in the United States, said Betsy Dresser, the center's director.

The researchers made him so they could learn whether a gene could be introduced harmlessly into the feline's genetic sequence to create what is formally known as a transgenic cat. If so, it would be the first step in a process that could lead to the development of ways to combat diseases via gene therapy.

The gene, which was added to Mr. Green Genes' DNA when he was created earlier this year in the Audubon center's laboratory, has no effect on his health, Dresser said.

Cats are ideal for this project because their genetic makeup is similar to that of humans, said Dr. Martha Gomez, a veterinarian and staff scientist at the center.

To show that the gene went where it was supposed to go, the researchers settled on one that would glow.

The gene "is just a marker," said Leslie Lyons, an assistant professor of population health and reproduction at the School of Veterinary Medicine at the University of California, Davis, who is familiar with the Audubon center's work.

( "The glowing part is the fun part," she said. )

tartarisaws just informed me that he had never heard Erykah Badu's "Call Tyrone", which is just all kinds of wrong.

In case you too have not:

From Foreign Policy:

New Orleans, United States

Population: 220,614 to 312,000 (2007); estimates vary due to displacement of people after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Murder rate: Estimates range from 67 (New Orleans Police Department) to 95 (Federal Bureau of Investigation) per 100,000

What’s happening: With its grinding poverty, an inadequate school system, a prevalence of public housing, and a high incarceration rate, the Big Easy has long been plagued with a high rate of violent crime. Katrina didn’t help. Since the hurricane struck in 2005, drug dealers have been fighting over a smaller group of users, leading to many killings. On just one four-block stretch of Josephine Street, in the city center, four people were murdered in 2007 and 15 people shot, including a double homicide on Christmas day. A precise murder rate is hard to pinpoint because the population is swelling quickly, approaching its pre-Katrina numbers. Whether you use New Orleans’s own figures or the FBI’s, however, the city remains the most deadly in the United States, easily surpassing Detroit and Baltimore with 46 and 45 murders per 100,000 people, respectively.

Excellent.

I hadn't been to the CODOFIL page in so long, I didn't know that they now have a Creole version! (There's also a Cajun version, but that's totally not as awesome.)

Someone on neworleans asked about the early 90s NOLA rap Marrero. While I did vaguely remember that one (enough to have found it on YouTube, at least), the one I recall the easiest is DJ Jubilee's crazy-long "Do the Jubilee All":



I think that my sister played this single at least 10 times a day when it was released.


1825 Tulane has far too many songs that bring back the times that my sister and her friends would torment us all with her local singles. (But I had to go elsewhere to find the Rosenberg's commercial.)

From NOLA.com:


On the scene: Water coming over Industrial Canal floodwall
by The Times-Picayune
Monday September 01, 2008, 10:07 AM



A small river of water is rushing down North Robertson Street toward Poland Avenue, coming from water splashing over the western side of the Industrial Canal floodwall. Army Corps of Engineers officials said the spillage does not pose a major threat.

Water is overtopping for several hundred yards on the Upper Ninth Ward side of the Industrial Canal on both sides of the Claiborne Avenue bridge. Poland is parallel to the canal.

Army Corps of Engineers said that the walls are designed to handle the overtopping without incident. The floodwalls have been strengthened since Katrina and are equipped with cement "spash pads" to prevent scouring from water coming over the walls, officials said. On the scene, the spillage was landing on the cement pads, which reduces its impact at the base of the wall.

( "We're confident in the stability of that wall...." )

Thanks, sertrel.