Well, I’ve made sure that everyone who wants one has a blog, and I’m still finding that the girls are the ones who’re updating them while the boys are not.
This is a small class, so we can’t have any statistical confidence in this observation, but for now at least, the trend continues.
I have also noticed that some of my bloggers are using their Personal World time to blog. I did not require this, or even suggest it, but I think this is great because they’re doing exactly the type of self-reflection that Personal World is intended to elicit.
Following the ongoing convulsions in the Egyptian streets, I’m becoming more and more impressed by the research and thought that Terry Pratchett must have put into his novel Night Watch.
In typical Pratchett fashion, Night Watch has an amalgamation of influences, from fictional sources like Les Miserables, to historical events, like the Peterloo Massacre of 1819; however, the book follows a character immersed in the events that are remarkably parallel to what’s going on Egypt right now, especially with the Army trying to sit out events and things becoming somewhat medieval.
This is the first time I’ve been able to follow a revolution so closely, and it’s largely thanks to the volumes of raw reports streaming across the twitterverse, blogosphere and media websites. Pratchett gives us the wonderful characters that highlight the inherent conflict in the revolution: the police with their conflicting allegiances; the secret police that have to be dealt with; the idealists whose high hopes are bound to be dashed on the rocky shoals of human nature; and even down to the men selling food to the protesters behind the barricades.
I think I’m going to have to add this book to our reading list for next year.
At the end of Night Watch, the protesters win, and barricades come down when the old dictator is deposed. However, he’s replaced by a new dictator, who turns out to be just as bad as his predecessor. To paraphrase Pratchett, they’re called revolutions because they go round and round.
Back in 1991, Jay Anderson wrote and interesting article (free pdf) on how exactly to go about measuring “naturalness”.
After all, anywhere you go in this world, you’ll find it has been impacted by humans to some degree: agriculture in Brazil is affecting rainfall patterns in the remotest parts of the Amazon basin; and soot and anthropogenic chemicals gently, and subtly, contaminate the remotest Antarctic Ice Caps.
Anderson came up with three things to look at, but I think the two key are:
how much things would change if you removed people,
how many native species there are compared to how many their were in the past.
I think it’s important to try to at least better define what we mean by the word “natural” as we think about conserving the environment.
Anderson’s first point, about how much things would change if you removed the people, also brings to mind Alan Weisman’s book, The World without Us, which imagines what the world would look like if humans disappeared: what would happen to the cities and artifacts we leave behind?
Anti-government protesters, who’ve been occupying Tahrir Square for the last week, fought off pro-government protesters yesterday in a vicious turn to the insurrection in Egypt. The army stood out of the way, and the police were no where to be found, except for reports that some captured pro-government rioters had police identification cards on them.
Although there was some shooting, the battle was mostly fought with impromptu weapons: rocks, Molotov cocktails, knives, and swords. Then there were the horses, camels and catapults.
A number of horsemen were pulled off by the anti-government portesters and beaten (WARNING: the video below is quite vicious).
Progressive approaches to education focus on students taking ownership of their education. It works in education, it works in economics, and it works in politics too.
Protesters are also working with students and the army to protect the priceless antiquities at the Egyptian Museum and the books at Bibliotecha Alexindrina.
One of the more interesting observations from today’s reenactment of the ongoing protests in Egypt, was the almost instinctive eagerness of, at least some of the simulated protesters, to want to confront the simulated army.
One protester, who’d been given the role of “angry student demonstrator” was extremely eager to get in the face of the army.
We were, after all, playing a simulation game, and that particular student had been told that he was angry, frustrated with the lack of opportunities, and all riled up. However, the way the actual Egyptian protesters are dealing with the army is really important to observe. They’re treating them like the friends and brothers they actually are: taking them in, rather than fighting against them.
I did have one of the protesters offer to hug the “army”, so, in the end, I hope the message that co-option can be much better than confrontation.
We reenacted the Egyptian protests today. Each student in the group of protesters was assigned to represent a different demographic. Their signs (adapted from The Best Egypt Protest Signs From Around The World) were created to be representative of the different sub-groups (to the best of our ability to tell):
Buzzfeed has an excellent collection of photos from the protests themselves. For example:
We had presentations on current immigration issues today, and, just coincidentally, NPR had an article on the lead singer of Bright Eyes taking political stands against laws like Arizona 1070.