Georgia school leaders are turning down a new option to arm teachers, arguing that it doesn’t make kids any safer and creates more problems than state lawmakers intended to solve.

A string of attacks at schools and colleges in California, Oregon and Washington state hasn’t swayed education officials who say bluntly that they don’t believe guns belong in schools.

“We could give (teachers) all the training in the world as to how to a shoot a gun, but knowing when to shoot poses a major problem,” said Steve Smith, superintendent of the Bibb County School District. “The folks we work with day in and day out don’t have that.”

The provision was part of a sweeping law expands where Georgians can legally carry guns. It takes effect July 1 and also includes bars and churches. GOP lawmakers pushed the bill through during an election year in the largely pro-gun state, giving each district the option of arming teachers or staff — but requiring them to set training standards. The provisions were similar to a program that drew no interest from South Dakota school districts, and education officials said no districts in Georgia are pursuing it so far either.

The new law pulled Georgia education leaders into a Second Amendment discussion they say they never wanted.

School officials were quick to express their support for people who legally carry guns. But they were wary at the idea of weapons inside school buildings, despite the recent attack by an Oregon teen who killed a student and then himself at a school and the one-man rampage that left seven people dead in a California college town.

At least two Georgia district boards have publicly agreed not to create a program. Nobody asked for the power to arm staff, said Mark Scott, superintendent of the Houston County School District. Board members in the district were more comfortable relying on police officers stationed in its middle and high schools and upgrading building security, he said.

“The risk far outweighed the benefit,” Scott said.

Kathleen Foody writing in Georgia schools aren’t racing to arm teachers, principals for the Associated Press

Protests against mass surveillance have now taken to the skies above a major National Security Agency installation.

At about 6am local time on Friday, in a field about a mile from Bluffdale, Utah, two activists from the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Greenpeace launched a 135ft airship and drifted the dirigible over the NSA’s massive data center there.

With some cars below entering the center’s office park, the lighter-than-air vessel hung a banner reading ‘NSA illegal spying below’ and a web address for a new EFF site grading members of Congress on their surveillance positions.

It was the maiden patrol of the first anti-surveillance activist air force. While the dirigible, known as the AE Bates Thermal Airship, cannot match the aerial panopticon capability of military surveillance tools like the Argus camera suite – which can see an entire city and record literally decades’ worth of video daily – few protest groups have thought to capitalize on the migration of military technologies to civilian life.

Parker Higgins, the EFF activist in the gondola beneath the AE Bates, helped haul the deflated airship from a warehouse in Oakland nearly thirteen hours to Utah. After arriving Wednesday, he and his crew of six others inflated and tethered the airship in an open field near farmland and waited for a window of perfectly calm weather.

“It was surreal,” Higgins said shortly after the AE Bates touched down in the same field after flying over and around the Bluffdale center for about an hour.

“The data center is this massive, sprawling complex. I’ve seen pictures of it, but it’s different from the air. You get a sense, really, for the scope of this, the scale of what they’re doing there.”

Spencer Ackerman writing in ‘Illegal spying below’: activists launch airship in protest at NSA surveillance—Pair from Electronic Frontier Foundation and Greenpeace drift massive dirigible over NSA data center in Bluffdale, Utah for The Guardian.

Today’s headlines include:

Local News

Disaster plans
City eyes new traffic light system
Babysitter faces child sex charge
Where We Worship: Williamstown Methodist
Newport man ordered to seek help

Top Headlines Poll: Do you feel safer in an emergency than before the June 2012 derecho?/blockquote>

What’s going on here…

Previously…

• Siri Failures, Illustrated saved 940 days ago.
• Windowfarms saved 939 days ago.
• The Public Insight Network saved 939 days ago.
• Libraries: Where It All Went Wrong saved 937 days ago.
• Evolution and the Illusion of Randomness saved 937 days ago.
• I Was Wrong, and So Are You saved 935 days ago.
• big think smarter faster saved 935 days ago.
• What is a “mind trick” you know of? saved 935 days ago.
• Document: The Symbolism Survey saved 934 days ago.
• Quantum realism mounts a charge. saved 934 days ago.

This is my exercise in shoveling out the blogpile…

A prisoner in Florida who has spent 28 years on death row has had his murder conviction and death sentence overturned after DNA evidence destroyed the prosecution case used against him almost three decades ago.

Paul Hildwin, 54, will remain on death row as he waits to find out whether the Florida authorities intend to prosecute him for a second time after the state’s supreme court vacated his conviction and sentence and ordered a retrial. In a 5-2 ruling, the majority of the court said that “we cannot turn a blind eye to the fact that a significant pillar of the state’s case, as presented to the jury, has collapsed.”

In 1990, Hildwin came close to losing his life at the hands of Florida after a death warrant was issued and a date set for his execution. But tenacious legal work by the Innocence Project of Florida fended off his death, and painstakingly revealed crucial details pointing to his wrongful conviction.

He was put on death row for the 1985 murder of Vronzettie Cox, 42, who had been raped and whose body was found in the trunk of a car hidden in woods in Hernando County, Florida. Hildwin had accepted a ride from Cox and her boyfriend, William Haverty, and was later found to have forged a check he had stolen from her and to have some of her possessions including a radio and some money in his house.

Ed Pilkington writing in Florida death row inmate has sentence overturned after 28 years in prison

Today’s headlines include:

Local News

Landslip fix
Maximum jail time for vehicular homicide
Pharmacists ready to offer MMR vaccine
Former tobacco business must pay $5,000 fine
Career Center house auction

Top Headlines Poll: Will you go get a measles-mumps-rubella vaccination because of the recent outbreak?

What’s going on here…

Previously…

Via Pharyyngula…

If professors don’t teach a lot of job skills, don’t teach their students how to think, and don’t instill constructive work habits, why do employers so heavily reward educational success? The best answer comes straight out of the ivory tower itself. It’s called the signaling model of education – the subject of my book in progress, The Case Against Education.

According to the signaling model, employers reward educational success because of what it shows (“signals”) about the student. Good students tend to be smart, hard-working, and conformist – three crucial traits for almost any job. When a student excels in school, then, employers correctly infer that he’s likely to be a good worker. What precisely did he study? What did he learn how to do? Mere details. As long as you were a good student, employers surmise that you’ll quickly learn what you need to know on the job.

In the signaling story, what matters is how much education you have compared to competing workers. When education levels rise, employers respond with higher standards; when education levels fall, employers respond with lower standards. We’re on a treadmill. If voters took this idea seriously, my close friends and I could easily lose our jobs. As a professor, it is in my interest for the public to continue to believe in the magic of education: To imagine that the ivory tower transforms student lead into worker gold.

Bryan Caplan writing in The Magic of Education found in my blogpile.

• The Study Of Intelligence, Ctd saved 945 days ago.
• Pitch Database saved 945 days ago.
• xkcd: Money Chart saved 945 days ago.
• Republic, Lost saved 944 days ago.
• “Suppose …there wasn’t even space… what is that?”” saved 943 days ago.
• From ‘Sage on the Stage’ to ‘Guide on the Side’ saved 942 days ago.
• Bento-Ware saved 942 days ago.
• Life Without Plastic saved 942 days ago.
• Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress saved 942 days ago.
• The Magic of Education saved 940 days ago.

This is my exercise in shoveling out the blogpile…

Today’s headlines include:

Local News

Presidential home
Signs announcing cell phone ban will go up
OSHA probes explosion at Enviro-Tank
Yard Sale for Autism Saturday
Amateur Radio Club Field Day this weekend

Top Headlines Poll: Do you believe fracking has caused earthquakes?

What’s going on here…

Previously…

• 
  Radio Mystery Theater Episode Guide saved 972 days ago.
• Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind saved 960 days ago.
• New Perspectives-Sherine Hafez saved 959 days ago.
• Confidence Game: The limited vision of the news gurus saved 956 days ago.
• How autistic adults can contribute to science saved 954 days ago.
• Guernica 3D saved 954 days ago.
• Mayor of the Sunset Strip saved 954 days ago.
• John Ruskin’s Teaching Collection At Oxford saved 954 days ago.
• It was just after dark when the truck started down the hill… saved 946 days ago.
• The Open Notebook saved 945 days ago.

This is my exercise in shoveling out the blogpile…

Seriously, I have, have you?

Dropped into my blogpile 970 days ago…

A Decalogue of Canons for observation in practical life.

1. Never put off till tomorrow what you can do to-day.
2. Never trouble another for what you can do yourself.
3. Never spend your money before you have it.
4. Never buy what you do not want, because it is cheap; it will be dear to you.
5. Pride costs us more than hunger, thirst and cold.
6. We never repent of having eaten too little.
7. Nothing is troublesome that we do willingly.
8. How much pain have cost us the evils which have never happened.
9. Take things always by their smooth handle.
10. When angry, count ten, before you speak; if very angry, an hundred.

From President Thomas Jefferson as found at Lists Of Note…

At the Children’s Hospital Colorado, doctors have reported cases of children who have gotten worse on Charlotte’s Web, and, in some cases, gone into intensive care units. Kim Clark says that dozens of families have had to give up the Charlotte’s Web treatment and move back home because it was either too expensive or didn’t work for their children.

Mae Ryan writing in Charlotte’s Web: the families using medical marijuana to help their kids in The Guardian.

Ryan buried this important piece of information as the penultimate paragraph of her story; a place, I imagine, people who read the beginning of the piece, may never, in their enthusiasm, reach. That’s bad journalism.

Kim and Chris Clark had tried almost every medical option available for their 10-year old son Caden, who has severe epilepsy. Then they discovered medical marijuana.

Caden Clark has Lennox-Gastaut Syndrome, which gives him between 10 and 70 seizures a day. On bad days he would have over 100.

“We had really started getting afraid, because he had reached what they call expiration age,” said Kim Clark. “These children tend to get to this point and they just seize so much, you know, it gets critical.”

The Clarks have tried over 20 different types of medicine, a brain lobectomy and extreme diets to alleviate Caden’s seizures – with varying degrees of success and side effects.

“I hesitate with the word ‘miracle’, because it’s not that easy. We’re experiencing things we never would have without it, but we’re still dealing with the delicate balance of his brain,” Kim said.
For Chris Clark, medical marijuana was a last resort. Chris has worked for the Atlanta police department for 26 years, and is currently in charge of monitoring Atlanta’s drug evidence.

“I was real nervous about what my peers would think about me doing this,” he said. “I finally came to the conclusion that if there is a chance that this product could help my child, then you’ve got to do it.”

In December 2013, the Clarks moved to Colorado Springs to legally obtain a strain of marijuana called Charlotte’s Web. Chris stayed behind in Atlanta for work, and visits the rest of his family whenever he can.

The move appears to have paid off. By the Clarks’ estimate, Caden has had a significant reduction in seizures. “We had never had a seizure free day ever so to go four or five days (without a seizure) was mind-blowing,” Kim Clark said.

Before everyone gets visions of dopey kids sucking on hookahs:

Charlotte’s Web was once known as ‘Hippie’s Disappointment’ because it doesn’t get its users high. The drug has higher amounts of cannabidiol (CBD) and lower doses of THC, which is the psychoactive part of the plant, compared to recreational marijuana.

As a freshman at Colorado State University in 1974, I remember gathering for beer and a television marathon of Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More and The Good, The Bad and The Ugly with my floormates. Clint Eastwood’s uomo senza nome was brilliant, but Blondie needed Eli Wallach’s Tuco Benedicto Pacifico Juan Maria Ramirez to be great.

The Obama administration has caved in to pressure from the European Union in the wake of Edward Snowden’s revelations on surveillance by promising to pass legislation granting European citizens many of the privacy protection rights enjoyed by US citizens.

The proposed law would apply to data on European citizens being transferred to the US for what Washington says is law enforcement purposes.

After the first Snowden revelations appeared in June last year, the Obama administration irritated many by insisting that while US citizens were protected by law from snooping by US spy agencies, this did not apply to non-Americans.

On Wednesday the US attorney general, Eric Holder, promised at a US-EU meeting of home affairs and justice ministers in Athens that legislation would be sent to Congress to extend the US Privacy Act to EU citizens.

The EU, as well as human rights and privacy groups, welcomed Holder’s announcement but coupled it with expressions of scepticism, describing it as a vague promise.

Viviane Reding, the EU justice commissioner, said it was an important step in the right direction but added: “Words only matter if put into law. We are waiting for the legislative step.”

Human rights groups said the US Privacy Act, in spite of being touted as a beacon for the rest of the world, had a relatively weak regulatory framework. They said Holder’s pledge did not address many of the other issues raised by mass surveillance worldwide by the NSA and its partners, including Britain’s GCHQ.

Ewen MacAskill writing in US to extend privacy protection rights to EU citizens for The Guardian.

There has been some noise of late concerning the reported disappearnace of Chris Hadfield’s cover of David Bowie’s Space Oddity. The Ottawa Citizen has formally apologized for spreading the rumor.

And for good measure…

Previously…

In 1973, the Supreme Court held that police officers did not need a warrant to look inside a pack of cigarettes that they found in the coat pocket of a man who had been arrested. Those kinds of warrantless searches were allowed, the Court reasoned back then, to protect police officers and to prevent the destruction of evidence.

Forty years later, California and the federal government urged the Supreme Court to adopt the same rule for cellphones. Once someone is arrested, they contended, police should be able to go through the entire contents of his phone without a warrant because cellphones are just like any other item that you can carry in your hand or pocket. But today the Supreme Court emphatically rejected that argument. Therefore, unless it’s an emergency, police need to get a warrant before they can search your cellphone. Let’s talk about the decision in Riley v. California in Plain English.

[T]he Court was actually reviewing two cases involving cellphone privacy: those of David Riley, a California man whose smartphone police officers searched and Brima Wurie, a Massachusetts man who was carrying an older “flip phone” when he was arrested. The Court essentially treated the two cases as one, in a sweeping ruling which repeatedly invoked the Founding Fathers’ intense hatred of the British practice of virtually limitless searches for evidence of any crime.

In his opinion for the Court, Chief Justice John Roberts began by noting that cellphones are “now such a pervasive and insistent part of daily life that the proverbial visitor from Mars might conclude they were an important feature of human anatomy.” Moreover, he added, cellphones like Riley’s and Wurie’s “are based on technology nearly inconceivable just a few decades ago” when the Court had upheld the search of the arrestee’s pack of cigarettes. Those observations would make the Court’s job seem easy.

Amy Howe writing in Get a warrant! Today’s cellphone privacy decision in Plain English for SCOTUSBlog

• Top Ten American Columns in History saved 992 days ago.
• Cinevault–The largest collection of classic films online save 988 days ago.
• Thelonious Monk – Straight No Chaser saved 988 days ago.
• WARNING: contains bacon. also possibly hipsters saved 986 days ago.
• 50 of the World’s Best Breakfasts saved 986 days ago.
• Mason Crumpacker and the Hitchens reading list saved 986 days ago.
• The Lean Publishing Manifesto saved 985 days ago.
• Correspondence with Hunter S. Thompson saved 981 days ago.
• One-stop publishing saved 981 days ago.
• Adventures in self-publishing: Why I took a year’s work and tried my hardest to give it away saved 981 days ago.

I use a Firefox app called Pocket/Read It Later to download stories from the Intertubes that I find interesting but don’t have time at the moment to dive into. Unfortunately, as life rushes forward my pocket/blogpile grows taller and taller. This morning there were a whopping 670 files waiting to be read and the oldest was only eight days from being in my file for 1,000 days. So, I’ve finally returned to shoveling out the blogpile…