One Girl's Courage - Another powerful report from Kristof of NYT

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/13/opinion/one-girls-courage.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha212

 

I think it is very valuable that reports like this come out in the New York Times. I've been impressed by the current series that Kristof has been doing researching how NGOs and NPOs have been working in Africa. A lot of powerful stories are coming out of this and showing us that we have a lot to learn about our world and how we can make a difference in it.

For one, these reports give us in the US and other countries (like Japan where I live) some perspective on how fortunate most of us are to be able to live in peace with our families and pursue our studies and dreams.

Another value is that we see how outside assistance can be helpful for bringing change to areas where violence against women or other weaker groups is structurally embedded. NPOs that work with issues like that clearly have a role to play in the lives of girls like Fulamatu, who otherwise would be a victim of a system that allows male rapists to walk free while she, as the victim, is shamed and exiled to the countryside away from her school and family.

Hopefully she will be allowed to go to a boarding school. The Internet hopefully will be a medium that allows us in developed economies to see opportunities to help assistance organizations in developing countries and help make a difference more directly.

I won the lottery! + Marathon plans

I just got the following email:
-------------------------------------------

Dear Mark CHRISTIANSON
[ID-No: 12913 ]

Congratulations!  You have been selected in the lottery to run the 2012 Tokyo Marathon.
-------------------------------------------

I guess foreigners get to run every year. This will be my 5th year in a row.

I have to apologize to the 270,000 Japanese runners who failed in the lottery again this year. Only 30,000 can run, and the odds are 10:1 for getting in if you are a Japanese citizen.

Why not just let all 300,000 people run? I guess the streets of Tokyo may not be able to handle a mob of that size.

In any case, I feel very fortunate that I can run in this fun race again!

Please leave ideas for costumes as a comment below  : - )

Last year, my time was about 4 hours 53 minutes, and that was one of my slowest times ever. This year, I still want to try to beat 4 hours...if my knees don't hurt too much and if I can lose some weight...

This weekend I have a half-marathon in Arakawa and we will see how I feel running 21km at this point.

Also, for the full Tokyo marathon in March, I wonder if I can do a fundraiser. Anyone want to sponsor me with a donation to Red Cross or some other charity?

Todai 30th in University Rankings...CalTech No.1...but No.1 in what?

What makes a good university?

This article in the Japan Times today shows that the rankings by a British magazine called Times Higher Education.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/mail/nn20111007a8.html

Todai is 30th. CalTech is No.1. Harvard and Stanford are No.2.

So...what does that mean?

Apparently the ranking is based on "their teaching and research capacities. The institutions were also judged on their international mix of staff and students, ability to transfer research into commercial gains, and research influence based on the number of citations."

I dug deeper, going to the Times Higher Education website, where they explain the weightings of the 5 areas of criteria:

• Teaching — the learning environment (worth 30 per cent of the overall ranking score)
• Research — volume, income and reputation (worth 30 per cent)
• Citations — research influence (worth 30 per cent)
• Industry income — innovation (worth 2.5 per cent)
• International outlook — staff, students and research (worth 7.5 per cent).

I'm curious about how they assess Teaching / the Learning Environment, but information on that is hard to find.

From an "undergraduate education" point of view, I'm concerned about their weight on Research/Citations/Industry Income, which adds up to 62.5% of the weight. Certainly it is important for students to be taught by professors who are active in their field and able to publish articles that get cited and get grants, but is it more important than the teaching side? For graduate students who are at a university to become researchers themselves, I can understand the importance. However, for undergrads who are not necessarily going to become academic researchers, and most of whom are going to go into professions that need a generally high level of intellectual and personal development such as the ability to understand, think, and communicate on issues...the learning environment is much more important.

So...I would think a separation of "universities for educating" and "research institutes" in the rankings would be beneficial. In Japan, I think a lot of research may be going on at Todai, but is the university really helping students develop intellectually and as a person?? I hope so, but from what I have heard, this may not exactly be the case.

What I really like about what we do here at ICU is that the focus is clearly on the development of our undergraduate students. Faculty do excellent research here, but a lot of effort goes into challenging and supporting each student on an individual basis.

More information is here.

Authorstream embedding test for 20x20

Cloning20x20sample

More PowerPoint presentations from Mark Christianson

This was an experiment I did earlier this year with posting presentation slides online.

The voice recording audio on this slide show is really scratchy, so I need to redo this on a new file with a better microphone.

Also, this is an incomplete presentation still. I have a more complete one that I show students, but I haven't added voice recording to it yet. I plan to do that in the near future.

However, other than that, the voice and animation seem to work quite well.

ARW students, you will be creating something like this using your research essay content!

Upon re-reading To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

This was one of my favorite novels in my high school English classes, and I decided to read it again a few weeks ago because many of my students had read it for their summer reading.

Atticus Finch, the lawyer who defends a Negro slave wrongly accused of rape, is still one of my greatest heros, and I love these quotes:

"You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view - until you climb into his skin and walk around in it."

The whole novel's lesson is about learning to "stand in someone's shoes". In a sense, there is nothing more important than that concept of empathy as we try to live together with others in society.

He also says, in connection with telling his son why a certain crabby old lady was a very brave (she was kicking a morphine habit to die with a clear head):

"Courage is not a man with a gun in his hand. It's knowing you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do."

That's a beauty as is the final one about why Atticus stands up to do what is right, rather than what everyone wants:

 "The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience."

A tragedy of religious intolerance: Agora (2009)...inaccurate in places, but worth watching

Agora is a movie based in 5th century AD Alexandria and the life and death of a female philosopher and mathematician in the city named Hypatia.

Here is a Smithsonian feature of the life of Hypatia and how she was killed by a Christian mob in 415AD.

As a fan of history based movies, I watched this this weekend and felt it was worth watching because it brought up many interesting historical questions about the process of the expansion of the early Christian church--how it interacted with the politics of the Roman Empire, with local pagan beliefs, with Jews in the communities, with female leaders in the those communities, and with scientific pursuits such as the heliocentric theory.

In Agora, the Christians take over Alexandria as their numbers grow among the lower classes and slave. This process includes a number of bouts of religious violence and the gradual increase of political power connected with the Christianization of the Roman Empire. Pagans massacre Christians first, followed by a violent riot led by the Christians that leads to a marginalization of the pagans. Christians harrass Jews, followed by a Jewish attack on a group of Christians, followed by a massacre of Jews and their banishment from the city. Finally, the Christian bishop of Alexandria denounces Hypatia as being a bad influence because she is a woman who speaks her mind and believes in nothing (only philosophy and science) and a group of zealots catch and kill her.

I watched the movie first, and then read the historical accounts available on the Internet. Apparently the movie spins a lot of fictional threads for dramatic effect and there are inaccuracies in terms of how the library of Alexandria of sacked by a Christian mob or how she was killed. In the film, she dies quietly in the arms of a man who used to be her slave (and in love with her) but now is part of a group of violent Christian zealots. He kills her mercifully by choking just before the mob gets to her and the events after that are not shown. It seems that the real way she was killed and paraded through the streets was a lot worse.

Despite the historical inaccuracies and dramatic license taken by the director, the film makes you want to know more about how Christianity grew in influence around the Mediterranean and in Europe in the early centuries of its existence. Hopefully the reality of the expansion was not as brutal and un-Christian as shown in the movie, but at the same time it is probably true that violence accompanied the conversion process when intolerant zealots forgot that they were trying to spread faith in peace, forgiveness, and love, a tragedy that should never occur.

A culture of political apathy among Japanese youth...Japan Times article by Roger Pulvers

I think this would make an interesting issue for an essay for some of our students research.

Pulvers poses the question:

Why are today's young people (in Japan) so deliriously apathetic and passive? And for how long will they remain that way?

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/mail/fl20111002rp.html

Pulvers cites this book by Yoshimoto Takaaki, which I have never read, but may try to get from the library. Looks interesting.


Personally, I have tended to be moderate in politics, and perhaps the "new" way to demonstrate dissatisfaction with the government and start a political movement is to raise voices on Twitter or Facebook. But a spirit of concern and a desire to do something to ensure change is necessary in all ages.