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the status & quality of year 11 & 12 science in australian schools
Filed under: education, science teaching — Tags: biology, science and society, science education, secondary teaching — alison @ 8:26 pm
My reading assignment today was a report just out from the Australian Academy of Science(the AAS) on science in Australian secondary schools (Goodrum, Druhan & Abbs, 2011). Not what you might expect on a reading list in the week before Christmas, but I was up to speak (briefly) about it on Radio NZ & needed to have an idea what the report contained.
It's a really thorough study of the state of senior school science across the Tasman, based on an extensive literature review, a survey of students (both those taking science, & those who aren't) in NSW, South Australia & the Australian Capital Territory, a phone survey of senior science teachers in the same states, and a series of focus groups involving not only teachers and students but also scientists & members of the wider community. This allowed Goodrum & his colleagues to describe the ideal state of senior school science education in Australia (my marginal note at this point says 'Wonderful! but does it/can it happen?) in terms of students & the curriculum, teaching as a profession, the resourcing of science teaching & learning, and the value of science education. They describe the last item thusly:
Science and science education are valued by the community, have high priority in the school curriculum and science teaching is perceived as exciting and valuable, contributing significantly to the development of persons and to the economic and social well-being of the nation.
And then… they identified the actual state of affairs, "by focusing on different dimensions of the school experience: the students, the curriculum, the pedagogy, the teachers and finally the resources."
I must say that I think we are well ahead of the Australian state of play in terms of the curriculum document as discussed in the AAS report: Yes, the NZ curriculum is probably still too content-heavy, but at least the clear understanding and expectation is that senior school science should do much more than simply prepare a relatively small cohort of students for university. (This is something that I believe the universities need to be much more aware of, as otherwise we will continue to have a disjunction between lecturer expectations and the actual prior learning experiences of our new first-year students.) Also, the NZ Science curriculum explicitly requires that students be given the opportunity to learn about the nature of science; it's not all about content knowledge. However, the AAS survey found that both students and teachers in the Australian school system believed that
Year 11 and 12 science is constructed to prepare students for university study. This university preparation perspective has resulted in an overcrowded content-laden curriculum. WIth the amount of content to be covered there is little room for flexibility from either the teacher or student.
Goodrum & his colleagues also found that most senior science teaching** in the schools they surveyed is done using the transmission model (teacher talks or writes on the board – or uses powerpoint – & students simply write it all down); that teacher demonstrations are common; and that practical sessions tend to be of the 'cook-book' variety where the outcomes are already known and the students are simply following a pre-determined method. Where there isopportunity for more inquiry-based learning in labs, teachers reported that these really sucked through the time & that this in turn led schools using open-ended student projects to advise students not to take all three sciences as the demands on their time would be too great.
So what did they find when they looked at levels of participation in senior science: the proportion of students in each year's cohort who were enrolled in science subjects in their final 2 years of secondary school? The news was not good, and it's news that's obviously generating a lot of concern: looking at the proportion of students enrolled in each discipline in each year, they found that
[s]ince 1991, the percentage of students enrolled in Biology, Chemistry and Physics has been gradually falling. For Biology the fall has been from 35.9% in 1991 to 24.7% 2007, for Chemistry 23.3% in 1991 to 18.0% in 2007, and for Physics 20.9% in 1991 to 14.6% in 2007. While the fall has slowed there is no indication that it has stopped.
(The proportion taking Psychology, on the other hand, has almost doubled – from 4.9% in 1991 to 9.2% in 2006. Geology – this in a country where mineral resources are so significant to the economy – has remained at a fairly constant 1% throughout the study period.)
And looking at total science enrolments in Year 12:
there has been a dramatic fall in the percentage of students studying science in Year 12 from a height of 94.1% in 1992 to a low of 51.4% in 2010
with a particularly large drop-off in the period 2001-2002. The researchers weren't able to identify any reason for this in terms of policy changes. Part of the decline may be linked to how students perceive science in schools – something that probably needs to be addressed in junior schools, because
Some non-science students report that if science was more 'interesting and relevant to their lives' then they would consider enrolling in it… Many, however, think so poorly of their experience and achievements in junior secondary science** that they won't consider senior science under any circumstances.
This is a real pity, as the community members surveyed clearly felt that all students need to study science throughout their schooling – it shouldn't be just for those who need it for their careers. They felt that science in schools
should be relevant… and demonstrate how science understanding and process impacts daily life.
Which is great – but I did wonder if those sentiments are shared by the wider school community as a whole (parents, teachers, students, the works). Schools do seem to be under pressure to broaden their curriculum, which places time constraints on teachers in the various subjects, & at least some of that pressure comes from the communities in which the schools are situated.
So how do the Australian data stack up compared to senior science education in New Zealand? I gathered from my radio host that the PM's Chief Science Advisor, Sir Peter Gluckman, will be soon releasing a report on just this issue. Watch this space.
** The researchers make the point that this is different from the teaching methods used in junior (our years 9-11) science classes, and suggest that "[p]erhaps this more enlightened approach in the junior years should influence how science is taught in Years 11 & 12." (Some students obviously gained a different impression…)
D.Goodrum, A.Druhan & J.Abbs (2011) The Status and Quality of Year 11 and 12 Science in Australian Schools. A report prepared for the Office of the Chief Scientist.
using pseudoscience to teach science
Filed under: education, science teaching — Tags: science and society, science education, secondary teaching, thinking — alison @ 10:00 pm
The following post is an article that I originally wrote for the New Zealand Science Teacher journal (the official journal of the New Zealand Association of Science Educators), and is reproduced here (& also on my 'other' blog) by kind permission of the editor.
We live in a time when science features large in our lives, probably more so than ever before. It is important that people have at least some understanding of how science works, not least so that they can make informed decisions when aspects of science impinge on them. Yet pseudoscience seems to be on the increase. While some argue that we simply ignore it, I suggest we use pseudoscience to help teach the nature of science (and I recommend Jane Young's excellent book, The uncertainty of it all: understanding the nature of science,(2010) as a resource).
The New Zealand Curriculum (MoE, 2007) makes it clear that there's more to studying science than simply accumulating facts: Science is a way of investigating, understanding, and explaining our natural, physical world and the wider Universe. It involves generating and testing ideas, gathering evidence – including by making observations, carrying out investigations and modeling, and communicating and debating with others – in order to develop scientific knowledge, understanding and explanations (p28). In other words, studying science also involves learning about the nature of science: that it is a process as much as, or more than, a set of facts. Pseudoscience offers a lens through which to approach this.
1. Check the information
Students should be encouraged to think about the validity and reliability of particular statements. They should learn about the process of peer review. They should ask: has a particular claim been peer reviewed; who reviewed it; where was it published? There is a big difference between information that's been tested and reviewed, and information (or misinformation) that simply represents a particular point of view and is promoted via the popular press (and Internet).
'Cold fusion' is a good example. Cold fusion was a claim that nuclear fusion could be achieved in the laboratory at room temperatures. The claim was trumpeted to the world via a press release, but was subsequently debunked because other researchers tried, and failed, to duplicate its findings.
Thus checking the source of the information is vital. There is a hierarchy of journals, with publications such as Science considered prestigious, and publications such as Medical Hypotheses considered less so. The key distinction between these journals is the peer review process. For example, papers submitted to Science are subject to stringent peer review processes (and many don't make the grade), while Medical Hypotheses seems to accept submissions uncritically, with minimal review.
By considering the source of information students can begin to develop the sort of critical thinking skills that they need to make sense of the cornucopia of information on the Internet. When viewing a particular Internet site they should ask (and answer!) questions about the source of the information: has it been subject to peer review (you could argue that the Internet is an excellent 'venue' for peer review, but all too often it's simply self-referential), does it fit into our existing scientific knowledge, and do we need to know anything else about the data or its source?
2. Analyse the information
The following example is excellent for a discussion around both evolution and experimental design, in addition to the nature of science. There is an online article entitled Darwin at the drugstore: testing the biological fitness of antibiotic-resistant bacteria (Gillen & Anderson, 2008) where the researchers tested the concept that a mutation conferring antibiotic resistance rendered the bacteria less 'fit'. Note: There is an energy cost to bacteria in producing any protein, but whether this renders them less fit – in the Darwinian sense – is entirely dependent on context.
The researchers used two populations of the bacterium Serratia marcescens: an ampicillin-resistant lab-grown strain, which produces white colonies, and a pink, non-resistant ('wild-type') population obtained from pond water. 'Fitness' was defined as 'growth rate and colony "robustness" in minimal media.' After 12 hours' incubation the two populations showed no difference in growth on normal lab media (though there were differences between 4 and 6 hours) but the wild-type strain did better on minimal media. It is difficult to know whether the difference was of any statistical significance as the paper's graphs lack error bars and there are no tables showing the results of statistical comparisons. Nonetheless, the authors describe the differences in growth as 'significant'.
The authors concluded that antibiotic resistance did not enhance the fitness of Serratia marcescens: wild-type [S.marcescens] has a significant fitness advantage over the mutant strains due to its growth rate and colony size. Therefore, it can be argued that ampicillin resistance mutations reduce the growth rate and therefore the general biological fitness of S.marcescens. This study concurs with Anderson (2005) that while mutations providing antibiotic resistance may be beneficial in certain, specific, environments, they often come at the expense of pre-existing function, and thus do not provide a mechanism for macroevolution (Gillen & Anderson, 2008).
Let us now apply some critical thinking to this paper. Your students will be familiar with the concept of a fair test, so they will probably recognise fairly quickly that such a test was not performed in this case because the researchers were not comparing 'apples with apples'. When one strain of the test organism is lab-bred and not only antibiotic-resistant but forms different coloured colonies from the pond-dwelling wild-type, there are a lot of different variables involved, not just the one whose effects are supposedly being examined.
In addition, and perhaps more tellingly, the experiment did not test the fi tness of the antibiotic-resistance gene in the environment where it might convey an advantage. The two Serratia marcescens strains were not grown in media containing ampicillin! Evolutionary biology predicts that the resistant strain would be at a disadvantage in minimal media. This is due to it using energy to express a gene that provides no benefit in that environment, making it short of energy for other cellular processes. And, as I commented earlier, the data do not show any significant differences between the two bacterial strains.
Also, the authors work at Liberty University, a private faith-based institution with strong creationist leanings, and the article is an online publication in the 'Answers in Depth' section of the website of Answers in Genesis (a young-Earth creationist organisation). This is not a mainstream peer-reviewed science journal. This does suggest that a priori assumptions may have coloured the experimental design.
3. Verify the information
Your students should learn how to recognise 'bogus' science. To begin with, students should scrutinise information presented via the popular media (including websites) and ask: why is this happening? Another warning sign is the presence of conspiracy theories.
One conspiracy theory worth discussing relates to the validity of vaccination programmes: "Is vaccination really for the good of our health, or the result of a conspiracy between government and 'big pharma' to make us all sick so that pharmaceutical companies can make more money selling products to help us get better?"
Dr A. Kalokerinos is often quoted on anti-vaccination websites as saying: My final conclusion after forty years or more in this business is that the unofficial policy of the World Health Organisation and the unofficial policy of 'Save the Children's Fund and almost all those organisations is one of murder and genocide. They want to make it appear as if they are saving these kids, but in actual fact they don't.
This quote is a good example of how conspiracy theorists often use an argument from an 'authority'. Yet it is easy to pull together a list of names with PhD or MD after them to support an argument. Try giving your students a list of names of 'experts' and see if they can work out their field of expertise.
Recently, New Zealand schools received a mailout from a group called 'Scientists Anonymous' offering an article purporting to support 'intelligent design' rather than an evolutionary explanation for a feature of neuroanatomy. The article was authored by Dr Jerry Bergman.
A literature search indicates that Dr Bergman has made no recent contributions to the scientific literature in this field, but he has published a number of articles with a creationist slant. So Dr Bergman cannot really be regarded as an expert authority in this particular area. Similarly, it is well worth reviewing the credentials of many anti-vaccination 'experts' – the fact that someone has a PhD by itself is irrelevant; the discipline in which that degree was gained, is important. Observant students may also wonder why the originators of the mail out feel it necessary to remain anonymous.
Students need to know the difference between anecdote and data. Humans are pattern-seeking animals and we dohave a tendency to see non-existent correlations where in fact we are looking at coincidences. For example, a child may develop a fever a day after receiving a vaccination. But without knowing how many non-vaccinated children also developed a fever on that particular day, it's not actually possible to say that there's a causal link between the two.
Another important message to get across to students is that there are not always two equal sides to every argument, not withstanding the catchcry of "teach the controversy!" This is an area where the media, with their tendency to allot equal time to each side for the sake of 'fairness', are not helping. Balance is all very well, but not without due cause.
For example, apply scientific thinking to claims such as the health benefi ts of homeopathy. Homeopathy makes quite specific claims concerning health and well-being. How would you test those claims of efficacy? What are the mechanisms by which homeopathy – or indeed any other alternative health product – is supposed to have its effects? Claims that homeopathy works through mechanisms as yet unknown to science don't address this question, but in addition, they presuppose that it does actually work.
Students will have some knowledge of the properties of matter and the effects of dilution, and senior classes may be aware of Avogadro's number. They could apply this to the claim that homeopathic remedies become more effective at higher and higher dilutions, something that, if correct, would overturn our understanding of basic chemistry and physics. The 10:23 Campaign – in which people take 'overdoses' of homeopathic remedies – is a humorous way of highlighting the improbability of such claims.
If students can learn to apply these tools to questions of science and pseudoscience, they will become better equipped to find their way through the maze of conflicting information that the modern world presents, regardless of whether they go on to further study in the sciences.
A.Campbell (2011) Using pseudoscience to teach science. New Zealand Science Teacher 128: 38-39
prior learning & university success in biology
Filed under: education, science teaching, university — Tags: biology, course design, curriculum design, philosophy of teaching, science education, secondary teaching, tertiary teaching, university — alison @ 10:42 pm
Like the previous post (in fact, like most of my posts!) this is something I originally wrote for the Bioblog. Much of what I write there is on biological issues of one sort or another, but it's nice to be able to share the teaching-focused ones here :-)
One of the sessions at FYBEC – on the changes in NCEA Achievement Standards in order to align them with the 2007 Curriculum document – generated a lot of discussion. It was great to have this session, as a heads-up to the changes in prior learning that we'll see in students coming in to uni-level biology from 2013 (genetics will be moved to year 12, for example). Not least because I think many tertiary educators are still not really clear on how NCEA (the National Certificate in Educational Achievement, for my non-NZ readers) & the curriculum work, in the sense that there is plenty of room for flexibility in which (& how many) standards schools may decide to offer. From the uni perspective, this means that there will be a lot more diversity in prior learning among that 2013 cohort. (Even more than exists now, that is.)
I think it's fair to say that at FYBEC responses to this information were quite wide-ranging. At one end there were those who found this quite worrying: surely schools should be given guidelines on just what they should be teaching those year 13 students, so that they all came to uni with the same general background in biology? This is certainly something that's been discussed before, but my own opinion is that if we went down that route, it would suggest that we're out of touch with what's going on in the secondary schools. It also ignores the fact that a lot of year 13 students are not actually going on to university study, & schools have a responsibility to prepare all their students for their future lives & careers, not just the uni-bound cohort. Plus, the new curriculum actually encourages schools to offer a mix of standards that suit the needs of their own students & community (eg it's possible to combine standards in chemistry & biology so that students can focus on biochemistry).
The thing is, while the current changes in standards & curriculum may increase the diversity in student backgrounds, that diversity is actually nothing new. A reasonably large number of students in my own first-year bio classes will have last studied biology in year 12, for example, and there's usually a smattering of people who've not studied the subject beyond year 11 (if that). But research has shown that this doesn't really matter: by the end of the semester there's no real difference in levels of achievement between those different groups -provided we adapt our teaching accordingly (eg Buntting, Coll & Campbell, 2005).
So when my friend Pip gave me a paper entitled Prior learning in biology at high school does not predict performance in the first year at university, by Elisa Bone & Robert Reid (2011), I was eager to read it.
There are many factors that can affect a student's transition from secondary school to university life, and Bone & Reid expected that one predictor of academic success in biology classes would be prior study in the subject. They set out to look for any correlation between students' results in a paper on cellular & molecular bioloty wtih their school results, predicting that students with prior learning in biology would have higher results than those without it, but that chemistry might also be important (for students in this particular paper, anyway). The research was carried out at the University of Adelaide which (as is the case in New Zealand) has no requirement for previous study in biology or chemistry for students intending to enrol in the paper.
Now, introductory classes typically cover a lot of material (see my previous post on the issue of content), fairly quickly, & so it's reasonable to expect that some prior learning in that area would be beneficial. Other factors that might affect success include the need to get used to large class sizes & the expectation from teaching staff that students are, or are becoming, independent learners; the need to adapt to high workloads & to become enculturated into the sometimes rather impersonal life of an academic institution; and things outside the institution's control, such as family responsibilities or work (Bone & Reid, 2011; Zepke et al., 2005).
In the period 2004-2007 the paper's organisers had streamed students, with everyone having the same lectures & labs but students who hadn't completed the final year of bio at school attended a 2-hour long tutorial each week (as opposed to the normal 1-hour class). The idea was that the students would have extra time to ask questions & work on problems but – I suspect rather to the surprise of the organisers – overall this intervention had no significant effect on either student success or retention. So, for students in the 2007-2009 cohorts, Bone & Reid looked at student performance for 3 groups: those who'd taken biology but not chemistry, those who'd completed chem but not bio, & those who'd done both subjects right through their final year of school.
Much to the researchers' surprise, they found no difference in outcomes for students who had, or hadn't, studied biology in their final year of school – unless they'd also studied chemistry:
[There] were no differences between final… grades [in the cellular & molecular paper] for students who completed biology in Year 12** and those that had not, whereas students who completed chemistry in Year 12 performed better… than those who had not.
(** In Australia year 12 is the equivalent of year 13 in New Zealand.)
Deeper analysis showed that around a third of students who studied biology weren't taking any other science, while those who took chemistry were highly likely to take another science (most commonly physics). Bone & Reid wondered if the chemists were likely to have a higher level of scientific literacy & that this was more likely to influence success than prior experience in biology. Now that would be a very interesting question to delve into! But presence or lack of prior learning in biology was not a predictor of success in the subject at university.
Because prior learning in the sciences seemed to be most important, the researchers felt that a comparison of secondary and tertiary curricula in biology would be useful – and indeed it would. For a start, students don't come to us as blank slates, & without some idea of their prior learning experiences, how on earth can we help them develop a schema that lets them build new knowledge onto that previous base?
They also noted that, while lecturers might often expect students to read the primary literature, "the language of science as presented at secondary school level may be very different to that used in the primary scientific literature". This is almost certainly true – and to be expected considering that schools are necessarily catering to a much wider range of needs. But it does imply that first-year teachers might need to develop ways to help students learn the language of academic discourse – and maybe also teach them how to read a scientific paper.
What's more,
[much] secondary school science teaching also aims to focus on broad conceptual understanding and the application of concepts to real-life experiences, whereas in the tertiary environment educators may place less emphasis on these applications and more on the learning of fundamental, potentially abstract principles… [This] change in teaching styles could lead to a decrease in student engagement.
As Deslauriers, Schelew & Wieman showed for physics students, there's no "could" about it. And – while large class sizes are pretty much the norm at university, this doesn't mean that university lecturers can't use a range of techniques to engage, encourage, and support students in their learning – and to maximise their students' chances of success regardless of background in the subject.
Bone & Reid conclude that
educators and administrators cannot expect students to be suitably prepared for first-year biology simply because they have completed biology at the senior high school-level… In addition, first-year educators face continuing issues as a result of the mismatch and need to tailor their teaching activities to suit students with widely varying levels of background knowledge.
To which I respond: hear hear!
E.Bone & R.Reid (2011) Prior learning in biology at high school does not predict performance in the first year at university. Higher Education Research & Development, 30(6): 709-724
C.Buntting, R.Coll & A.Campbell (2005) Using concept mapping to enhance conceptual understanding of diverse students in an introductory-level university biology course. Paper presented at the 36th Annual Conference of the Australasian Science Education Research Association
N.Zepke, L.Leach, T.Prebble, A.Campbell, D.Coltman, B.Dewart, M.Gibson, J.Henderson, J.Leadbeater, S.Purnall, L.Rowan, N.Solomon & S.Wilson (2005) Improving tertiary student outcomes in the first year of study. TLRI report, NZCER Distribution Services.
challenges in teaching biology
Filed under: education, science teaching, university — Tags: biology, course design, curriculum design, philosophy of teaching, science education, teaching excellence, tertiary teaching, thinking, university — alison @ 10:19 pm
I spent Monday & Tuesday of this week down in Wellington, attending the 2nd First-Year Biology Educators' Colloquium. (Yes, that's a mouthful! We usually just say FYBEC to those in the know.) It was really refreshing to spend time focusing on how we teach first-year biology at university, and on research into ways to enhance that teaching.
The first keynote was by Pauline Ross, who's at the School of Natural Sciences, University of Western Sydney. Pauline's won a large number of teaching excellence awards & it was a real privilege – & a pleasure! – to learn from her. She started her talk by identifying a number of things (aka the '7 deadly ways to see') that can offer significant challenges to students beginning their uni-level studies in biology. But before I get onto those, I'm going to quote Pauline's own words on receiving an Australian national teaching excellence award:
Although biology is supposedly the "easiest" of the science disciplines, research on student learning has shown that even high calibre, high achieving biology students at elite institutions taught by universally admired academics, fail to build a scientifically conceptual and contextual foundation in biology, perhaps because learning, teaching and assessment strategies in the discipline of biology have become ritualised. [However, a Kuhnian] paradigm shift allows me to communicate a deep conceptual and contextual understanding of biology to students. At the cornerstone of this paradigm shift is creativity; requiring students and staff to relearn their capacity for creativity and self-belief; inquiring, uncovering and overcoming barriers in their conceptual understanding, so that they think and practice as biologists.
Which pretty much sets the stage for the idea of the 7 deadly ideas (actually there were only 6, but the '7 deadly sins' thing has a certain resonance!).
(1) First up was content, something that we have an awful lot of – and of course this is as much an issue for secondary school teachers as it is for those of us at university. The textbook I use with my classes, Campbell Biology, seems to get thicker with each new edition as the frontiers of our knowledge continue to expand. Ross asks, can we decrease our coverage of content? How do we decide just which are the key content areas for students to learn about? She suggests that we should pay more attention to the research on threshold concepts, something that my colleague Michael Edmonds has previously written about over on Sciblogs.
Mastery of a threshold concept is sort of an 'aha!' moment, says Ross, because it opens your eyes to new ways of exploring a topic. (As Michael says, they're sometimes called 'troublesome knowledge', because they can clash with existing worldviews and (mis)conceptions. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing, as it can – should? – lead to a re-examination of those views & conceptions in the light of this new knowledge.) Placing more weight on threshold concepts may mean there's a reduction of content overall, but it should also lead to a much deeper conceptual and contextual understanding. And that is definitely a Good Thing, as when students don't understand they are stuck, unable to really move on in their learning. While they may be quite active in trying to gain understanding, they can also be quite confused and anxious – & they can stay that way, says Ross, for months.
So, considering threshold concepts rather than simply focusing on content knowledge can provide us with a new tool for revisiting and reviewing our teaching curricula.
(2) Next in the list was process. This is something I believe all tertiary science educators should ask themselves: do our students really graduate with all the science process skills that we fondly imagine they do? After all, our graduate profile probably says that they can do x, y, & z – but what opportunities do we give them to actually practise thinking like a scientist, for example? (Hint: they won't learn it by osmosis.) We really do need to teach science as a fluid process, not as a fixed body of knowledge (all that content again!) – and to give students plenty of opportunity to experience that fluid process that is the essential nature of science. Similarly, the writing and literacy skills that we'd like them to have – are we providing sufficient opportunities to practice and learn those skills? Here Ross gave the example of meiosis & mitosis: we tend to teach about these forms of cell division as a series of steps (interphase, prophase etc) but we don't teach their significance in context. She argues that if we want students to do more in (say) exams than simply parrot the names and chromosome states of those steps, then we need to give relevant, everyday examples to which they can anchor their knowledge. Her example was a question about a grazed knee that needed some pretty deep knowledge and writing about cell division to answer – & which couldn't be answered but just listing those steps.
Of course, that would require some reasonably large changes in assessment (see # 5)…
This is getting a bit long :-)
(3) Inquiry ie inquiry-based learning, something that's intimately linked to process. This is gaining in emphasis in schools & it's worried me for some time that students who've gained by learning using this approach in school must find 'traditional' university teaching rather a rude shock. It's why Brydget (our wonderful first-year tutor) & I are always looking for ways to include more possibilties for genuine inquiry-based learning in our lab classes, for example, & it's possible to do the same in lectures using opportunities for group problem-solving sessions. As Carl Wieman & his team (among others) have shown, this sort of approach enhances engagement & improves learning outcomes, while also giving the opportunity to practice thinking like a scientist. What's not to like?
(4) Language ie jargon. There's an awful lot of it. Yes, of course there are technical terms that students must master, but we need to ensure that mastery is properly scaffolded. I had an 'aha!' moment at this point, because Ross commented even saying a word correctly can help with learning it, but we seldom give them the chance to practice. (Phil Bishop picked up on this in his own presentation, noting that very few of his students could say 'coelom' correctly.)
(5) Assessment. Ah, I could write a whole post, in fact several of them, about assessment. Probably will, at some point. (At which point the audience may step away from the computer & walk, not run, from the room, lol.) Suffice it for now to say that how we assess has a very significant impact on how, and what, students learn – and that we may use too much of the type of assessment that encourages shallow, not deep, thinking and learning and which works against deep conceptual and contextual understanding.
(6) And innovation – how much do we really value and encourage it, Ross asks. Not innovation for innovation's sake, but innovation for good pedagogical, research-based reasons, that changes how we teach (including assessment) in ways that should have a positive impact on how students learn. Things like the 'flip teaching' described by Deslauriers, Schelew & Wieman (2011), for example, and which Kevin Gould has trialled with his first-year botany students at Victoria University: they're given a handout of information on all sorts of things (shade/sun leaves, controlling gas exchange/water loss, etc), tasked with designing a plant for a particular environment – & then asked to present their design to the rest of the class.
I am so going to steal that one, Kevin!


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«Ojos de ángel» es el tercer sencillo del álbum Libido. Compuesto por Antonio Jáuregui y Manolo Hidalgo.

Vídeo
El vídeo estuvo dirigido por Percy Céspedez y muestra a un Libido con un estilo muy a los 90. Con mucha influencia del look grunge e indie. Se tomaron escenas de las primeras presentaciones de la banda.

Sencillos de 1999
Sencillos de rock alternativo
Sencillos de Libido
Canciones en español
Canciones de rock

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
Q: searching patterns in one column, multiple rows In excel, I have a column with these values:
3
6
9
12
9
12
6
9

Now I want to find patterns "9 \n 12". The conventional find menu doesn't do that. Is there anyway to implement such method?

A: Try:

*

*Menu Edit > Find

*Type 9

*Then, hold down alt and type 010 (might have to try with 013 too)

*Release alt key

*Type 12
It should work

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


Carol C. (Shuler) Fernback, of Lower Swatara Township, passed away Saturday, August 12, 2017.
She was born November 23, 1943 in Harrisburg Pa.
Carol was preceded in death by her mother Teresa Sednick Burkey.
Carol is survived by her loving husband John F. Fernback Jr.;stepdaughter Jan L. Fernback (David Hollar); a sister Joanne Lotz (David); and several nieces and nephews.
She was a faithful member of Seven Sorrows of the Blessed Virgin Mary Catholic Church and an active volunteer in her parish. She was a member of the Hershey Italian Club, Pennsylvania Association of Retired State Employees and volunteered for the Dauphin County Area Agency on Aging. Carol was an employee for the State Education Department as an administrative officer. She enjoyed dining out, traveling and going dancing.
A Mass of Christian burial will be celebrated on Wednesday, August 16, 2017 at 11 a.m. at Seven Sorrows of the Blessed Virgin Mary Catholic Church, 280 N. Race St., Middletown, Pa., with the Rev. Ted Keating as celebrant. There will be a viewing from 10 a.m. until the time of the service at the church.
Interment will be at Middletown Cemetery, Middletown.
In lieu of flowers donations may be made to the Harrisburg Area Humane Society, 7790 Grayson Rd., Harrisburg, PA 17111.


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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


My 1999 Triumph Daytona 955i a Very Clean Bike and a Most Reluctant Sale. Just 13047 Miles from new (still in light use so will rise slightly). Excellent Condition and has just been recently Resprayed and overhauled throughout. So from the Top what I have done. Metzeler Sportec M7 RR Front Tyre.
Wavy Disc and HH Sintered Front pads. Brembo Radial Brake Master Cylinder and HEL Braided Lines so it now stops very well. Tinted Screen and Upgraded Headlamp Bulbs.
The Whole Bike has been resprayed. Repro Decals were used and these have been clear coated over so it really looks the part.
NOS Triumph Carbon Tank Pad sourced. Single Seat Hump and I have an Original Pillion Seat that will be included. Black Triumph Undertray has been fitted and a Home Made Tail Tidy with really small indicators. (they pass an MOT and flash brightly and correctly).
I have and will include a Legal Number Plate and Red Reflector. Rear Pads have been Changed HH Sintered same make as front.
Rear Tyre Metzeler Sportec M7 RR. Chain and Both Sprockets replaced.
Yuasa Battery was replaced last month. Fuel Filter was recently changed along with the Fuel Pressure Regulator, Spark Plugs, Oil and Air Filter. Comes with a Whole Bundle of Paperwork and 2 Keys.
12 Months MOT expires August 2018. Any Questions or More Pictures please drop me a line. The item "TRIUMPH DAYTONA 955I Only 13000 Miles 12 MONTHS MOT" is in sale since Sunday, August 27, 2017. This item is in the category "Cars, Motorcycles & Vehicles\Motorcycles & Scooters\Triumph".
The seller is "red-n-dready" and is located in Kingston upon Thames. This item can be shipped to United Kingdom, United States, Australia.


You can have any type of floor you like were you want it. Here are some things to consider as well as a recap of the most popular floors based on common locations and why.
- They have holes, pits, cracks, and foundation work they don't want to show.
- They want to go over existing Tile, Glue, Mastic, etc with No Tear Out.
- They want it to feel like real stone yet easy clean.
- They want it to feel like real or wood yet easy clean.
- Wood/Stone Testure Top Coat in a light,medium, heavy.
- They installed our Self Leveling Overlay first to make flat for new epoxy floors.


ARTERIOR SHOWCASING ITS BUNGLOW WORK AT INDORE.
Home > Photos > Residential Design Ideas > Staircase > ARTERIOR SHOWCASING ITS BUNGLOW WORK AT INDORE.
Staircase foyer area with decent ceiling with back light and glass railing .


After an eight-month renovation of the former dental lab beneath their Meadow Vista home just outside Auburn, Birdie and Glenn Galbraith opened this 400-square-foot residence—complete with a separate entrance and full kitchen and bath—to visitors in February 2017 under the moniker The Little Hobbit House. While you won't find circular doors or low ceilings in this pint-size dwelling, you will find a snug mountain escape bedecked with an air of whimsy and boasting breathtaking river views.
From the sign at the front door that reads "Speak friend and enter" (a Lord of the Rings reference) to the farm-fresh eggs from the on-site chickens (available upon request), the details charm at every turn. Birdie's affinity for quirky kitsch—champagne corks painted like mushrooms, handmade ceramics, toadstool figurines—is displayed throughout the small den, lending fanciful notes to the earthy tones, rough-edge wood shelves and Middle-earth-style hutches with wrought-iron accents.


It is with great sadness that we announce the sudden passing of Patricia Wallis of Winnipeg, Manitoba.
She was predeceased by her mother and father Anthony and Jeanne Wallis; and her brother George Wallis.
Pat will be greatly missed by her sister-in-law Ivy; niece Sherry; nephew Derek; cousins Judy and Wendy; along with her many cherished friends who will miss her kind and generous spirit. She was like family to so many.
Thank you to the wonderful team in ICU at the St. Boniface Hospital for taking such good care of Pat.
Please join us for a come and go Celebration of Life on Tuesday, February 12, at 11:00 a.m., at Voyage Funeral Home, 220 Hespeler Ave at Henderson Hwy.


Did a couple of good things against the Dees but most of the game looked like a duck out of water.
However, overall, his height was a bonus and help to nullify Gawn. Worth another chance.
Where the hell is Stewart as a high marking and leading forward.
He could do no worse than the muppets playing up there at present.
Mind you, we would have to do something radical like actually kicking in his general direction.
New rules had little impact at Princess Park tonight. It was pretty much 36 players versus the ball. The only real difference I notice was the full back not having to do a kick to himself b fore playing on which has some merit. Do not know what all the fuss was about.
Topic: Players who you desperately wanted to make it but were just not good enough!
Check out the video of the kid on the EFC website.


text:
March 8, 2007 • 6:33 pm 0
preparing studio session
outline for the day
1- research anita's work
see her web sites
www.corbinogradystudio.co.uk and www.anitacorbin.co.uk
plan for next Friday's session with anita:
1-presentation of her work
2- personal tutorials- bring one image that represents your work
3- studio session
2- research youth cultures
divide into groups of four students
2.1.10-20m decide which subculture to represent
2.2.-do online research on that subculture
what is required:
subculture's name
style/ clothing/ accessories
hang out places
production plan for the shooting session with anita specifying the models, props,etc
afternoon –finalise overall plan for studio session (models, sequence, etc)
Filed under: anita corbin, research project
photographing youth culture
Donovan Wylie (via Kate)
His book: Loosing Ground (1998).
Review: pubished on Source magazine
Donovan was 25 when he took these photos, after he met a group of new age travellers at Lancashire, living by the side of a road and documented their lives over three years as they moved from country to city living (we see the same core group of six people in the photographs). Kate was part of the community and was already living in London when the book came out. The photos really disturbed her because it was so grim; they also came out in The Guardian newspaper , and it had a negative impact as people starting identifying these images with the travellers; the photos were taken between 1993 and 1995, and Donovan was an outsider to the community. Kate has been developing alternative means of representing the same community and her advice to someone photographing a subculture is: you need to question why are you going to photograph, what will be the effects on the person you are photographing!
Iain McKell (via georgina)
www.iainmckell.com
His book is Fashion Forever (2004). For the past three decades, Iain McKell has been photographing British youth subcultures, from the pre-ecstasy days, to rave parties, with focus on street fashion, skinheads, punks and Vegas rockers…people deliberately dressing up. Georgina is currently shooting the club scene at the end, the same area where Iain McKell was shooting his punks and new romantics, and she feels it was much more creative and now it is very boring, The people are clean and it is mainstream fashion, now there are so many cameras everywhere its more mainstream to party all night, in the mid eighties it was more difficult to get drugs people used to just drink.
Lithiumpicnic (via jessica)
Lithiumpicnic (via jessica) who found it on deviantart: http://lithiumpicnic.deviantart.com/
Philip Warner is a fashion and fine art photographer who has done many photos for suicide girls which is an alternative pinup and porn website, with models that are punk, emo, indiestyle girls, all representing a
refusal to conform which is equated with social suicide. Suicide girls is a term that stands for girls that don't fit in any specific subculture
It s a paid membersite and the girls are models, 43% of paid members are women, all models are under contract, but the community is also a very big part of it
Philip 's girl friend Apnea has her own website www.apneatic.com.
Corinne Day (via Helen)
http://www.corinneday.co.uk/
She is part of the exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery: The Face of Fashion. She is a british photographer, who came into photography through friends, when she was working as a model in Milan she started photographing her mates, models that were not wealthy, they were leaving in squats.
Her first book is diary, in the same same style as Nan Goldin, is about the youth culture 's double life, glamorous working day life as models, and living in squats and doing drugs at night. She was the first female photographer to work for Face magazine, its a plain natural vision, and her style became associated with Kate Moss whose photographs by Corinne helped her to launch her career.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/documentaries/features/corinne-day.shtml
David Lachapelle (via abdhee)
http://www.davidlachapelle.com/home.html
David lachapelle mixes surrealism with subculture's research, most famous work was romeo & juliet for h&m , and he is a good example of someone working across a range of media from photo to video.
One of his most famous image is the one of a woman addicted to diamonds as a critique of the exploitation of the african diamonds export business. He also worked with hip hop music style for jayzee's album.
gavin watson (via thomas)
found through the youth culture photographic library, specialised in global youth culture, lifestyle and music.
Gavin's blog on my space
He started photographic skinheads in the 80s, and in 1994 published Skins;
Issues: how the mods were hikjacked by the middle class in the 80s
he was 14 when he started photographic skins, from the inside out as opposed to coming in as an outsider.
he was a skinhead himself
An interview where watson comments on all the connotations with being a skinhead
simon wheatly (via paul)
paul found simon wheatly though an online search. he's from singapore and move to budapest and later london and started to take photos of the grime scene mostly in east london.
they have a cinematic feel about them
www.newyorkphotoblog.com/blog/interview_simon_wheatley.html
ric kosick (via helen)
he is a professional skateboard photographer
rickkosick.com
works w/ skateboard magazines (big brother etc) and skateboard videos
Pantelis Prodromou (via lee)
lee presents a 25 yo photographer 1st photo project about coming out now titled journeys
www.pantelis.co.uk
he photographs drag queens, fashion excentrics and make up excessives
he works professionally for photo magazines, most of his work is gay subculture orientated,erotic or homoerotic
lee is also photographin gay clubs for clickpink.com
kaarel nurk (via karel)
An estonian photographer with a psychology background , documents daily life in Tartu, the photos are in his blog and they document youth culture in a little town in estonia
he uses a snapshot aesthetics
http://thesupersnap.blogspot.com/
Filed under: youth culture

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
"Восток 3" е съветски пилотиран космически кораб.

Това е първият в света групов космически полет.

В орбита от 11 до 15 август 1962 г.

Продължителност на полета – 3 денонощия 22 часа и 22 минути. На борда лети космонавтът Андриан Николаев.

На 12 август 1962 г. в орбита е изведен и "Восток 4" с Павел Попович. Осъществена е радиовръзка между двата кораба и Земята. За първи път се предават и телевизионни изображения на космонавтите, транслирани по телевизионната мрежа на СССР и Интервизия. По време на полета космонавтите се освобождават от катапултните кресла и "плуват" свободно в кабините си в условията на безтегловност. Провеждат се и медико-биологични експерименти. Установен е нов рекорд по продължителност на полета – 94 часа и 22 минути.

Двата космически кораба се приземяват успешно на 15 август 1962 г.

Параметри на полета
 Маса – 4722 кг;
 Наклон – 64,98°;
 Период – 88,33 минути;
 Перигей – 180,7 км;
 Апогей – 234,6 км.

Екипаж

Основен
 Андриан Николаев

Поддържащ
 Валери Биковски

Резервен
 Борис Волинов

Източници
  NSSDC Master Catalog: Vostok 3

Програма Восток


text:
Q: Is legacy winsock available for windows store apps? I know that code on windows store which used socket needed to use the StreamSocket class instead of the legacy winsock API (Socket class)
And it is clearly something that prevent me from migrating my open source library whose lots of app would depends.
Now, I've seen that VS 2013 update 3 add "winsock support", also announced here.
Does it means that I can use exactly the goold old and loved Socket ?

A: Yes, the bulk of the winsock APIs are available for both Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone 8.x Store Apps (and of course Universal Windows Apps in Windows 10). There are still some restrictions around access to loopback addresses etc. but the APIs should be available to you.


text:
walking the talk ›
labour and consumption
CAW-CEP merger in the works
Roystonbones
I am a union person and one of my unions these days is CEP. I have gone to several conferences, representing my local, over the last year where CEP and CAW members have gathered to talk about the merger and what we want the new Union to look like. I have to say that some of the ideas were forward looking and I was quite impressed.
Now, I am an old lefty so it takes a lot to impress me these days, but the idea of asscoaite membership is something I have brought up to Federation and CLC members more than once. The talk at the conferences was that associate members could be provided things like a death benefit and a reduced cost for health benefits as the money would be pooled from thier dues for this. Other talk at the conferences were to provide advocacy for WCB, Employment standards and providing discourse on social and union issues - solidarity across union/nonunion lines. Not unlike the old Unemployed Action Centres.The idea hasnt been fully flushed out, even it it is already in the constitution. It is a new area and some of it will be developed as it unfolds.
This is not necvesarily an unprecedented move. CAW already has retiree locals and this is sort of based on that model. If the membership is serious about providing solidarity to all then this is a huge step forward.
I agree with others though - the name sucks
1weasel
"what stops unions from partnering with other organizations (women, students, anti-poverty, aboriginal, etc.) to help provide a broader range of "go-to" resources, to workers and members of the community in general?"
Wasn't something like that going on during the student demonstrations in Quebec? I do know some of the initial discussions were influenced by that protest and the Occupy movement.
Any word on who is running for the Unifor executive? Seems too quiet with less than four weeks to the founding convention.
Unionist
1weasel wrote:
Looks more like a coronation, unfortunately. Lewenza and Coles apparently won't run, and the word is that the CAW's Jerry Dias will get the presidency. There is a secretary-treasurer's position - word used to be that it would go to Peter Kennedy (currently CAW sec-treas), but I doubt both top jobs would go to the same union. Then there are four "regional directors". Québec members of both unions have been told, since April, that the Québec director's position would go to the CEP's Michel Ouimet. No idea about the rest of the country. I'll be (pleasantly) surprised if there are any contested elections. Everything about this merger, including the choice of the name Unifor, has been done in top-down fashion. Not an encouraging start IMHO.
Is that what you meant by "executive"? Or the elected rank-and-filers who will be in the new national executive board?
If anyone has more info, please share.
Ok, here's the "unity team" nominees:
Both leaders [Coles and Lewenza] endorsed CAW Assistant to the President Jerry Dias as the nominee for President of Unifor. Dias is joined by a team of 24 other trade unionists, all of whom will be nominated to fill each of the 25 positions on the new union's National Executive Board. This includes the three top officers of the union: President, Secretary-Treasurer, and the Quebec Director. This is the only time that the complete National Executive Board will be presented at a Unifor Convention as a slate.
"CAW Secretary-Treasurer Peter Kennedy, who co-chaired the New Union Project and has served as CAW National Secretary-Treasurer since 2009, has our continuing and unwavering support," Lewenza said. Kennedy will be the Unity Team's candidate for the position of Unifor Secretary-Treasurer.
Michel Ouimet, current CEP Executive Vice President for Quebec, is the Unity Team's nominee for Quebec Director of Unifor. CAW Quebec Director Sylvain Martin will continue on as Michel's assistant.
Also nominated as part of the Unity Team is CAW Health Care Director Katha Fortier, in the role of Ontario Director, Newfoundland and Labrador Federation of Labour President Lana Payne as Atlantic Director, and CEP National Representative Scott Doherty as Western Director.
There will also be Quebec and Regional Council Chairpersons :
Quebec - Marcel Rondeau (CAW)
Atlantic - Penny Fawcett (CEP)
Ontario - Dino Chiodo (CAW)
Prairie - Christy Best (CEP)
B.C. - Andrea MacBride (CEP)
Industry Council Representatives (11):
Energy - Angela Adams (CEP)
Resources - Earle McCurdy (CAW)
Services - Cheryl Robinson (CAW)
Media - Randy Kitt (CEP)
Health Care - Nancy McMurphy (CAW)
Retail - Christine Connor (CAW)
Forestry - Jean-Pierre Lafond (CEP)
Communications - Marc Rousseau (CEP)
Manufacturing - Roland Kiehne (CAW)
Auto - Gary Beck (CAW)
Transportation - Heather Grant (CAW)
Three other designated NEB positions:
Skilled Trades - Dave Cassidy (CAW)
Retired Workers - Len Harrison (CAW)
Racialized and Indigenous Workers - Ruth Pryce (CAW)
Some good folks on there, and some others.
Now you know whom to vote for!
genstrike
I've been a little concerned with this from the start (more so recently as I'm now a CAW member). While the discussion papers touched on some interesting ideas, it seemed to me like there wasn't much talk of improving and re-invigorating rank and file democracy.
If this is just going to be some extensively stage-managed coronation ceremony where everything has been stiched up behind the scenes before the delegates arrive like every other labour convention, I'm going to have to seriously doubt that this whole Unifor project is going to be much of an improvement on what we have now.
autoworker
genstrike wrote:
I'll second that.
janfromthebruce
hopefully they vote to change the name from unifor because that is such a non starter - in my opinion.
janfromthebruce wrote:
The only input the rank and file had on the merger, as far as I could tell, was a contest to name it. As you can see, it's a winner, and what substitutes for democracy nowadays.
Sorry to hear that AW.
The CAW president also has the authority to pluck people from individual union locals and appoint them to the national staff, which has been rife with criticism about how the process to choose a new president is being conducted.
In one sign of how politically charged the process of replacing Mr. Hargrove has become, sources in the union's national office and several locals across the country said they are convinced that if Mr. Lewenza wins, he will stay on as president for just a single three-year term and then be replaced by another of Mr. Hargrove's assistants, Jerry Dias.
Mr. Dias, 49, oversees negotiations and discussions with Chrysler Canada Inc. from the national office and has responsibility for unionized auto parts plants in Canada. He was promoted to the job as Mr. Hargrove's assistant last year and took over the auto parts file from Mr. Collins.
Both he and Mr. Lewenza shot down the theory.
"I'm going to take the job for the long haul," Mr. Lewenza said. "I don't think anybody in our union could jump in and say 'well, I'm only here for one term.' That's never been my style and it's not going to be my style tomorrow."
Mr. Dias dismissed it as a conspiracy theory.
"That makes no sense," he said. "The conspiracy theory of Ken in for one term and warming the seat - that's absolutely ridiculous."
Greg Keenan, The Globe and Mail, 8 July 2008.
Mergers and acquisitions, just a normal part of the capitalist system. Of course there will be a proxy war to see who the Chairman and Board will be in the new structure.
Not even.
Breaking: Rank and file member Lindsay Hinshelwood formerly from CAW Local 707 (Ford) has been nominated from the floor to run against Jerry Dias for Unifor president.
ETA: She lost. Results: 82.51% Jerry Dias 17.49% Lindsay Hinshelwood
And Hinshelwood wrote this piece for rabble back in 2009: Saying No to Concessions. Cool chick! Hope to see more of her.
I didn't watch it all... but amidst all the tired top-down pre-programmed rhetoric, this resonated with me. A young sister of colour rose to the mic in the morning and said: "I have yet to see a single woman leader speak, or a person of colour. How is this union supposed to represent me?" Lewenza replied that they were working on these issues and that once we had Unifor, she'd see diversity etc. She replied: "You've been working on this for two years, and you still have to work some more?" You could see and hear delegates around her standing and applauding. Lewenza got impatient and said something like, "well there's nothing I can do about that at this point", and moved on.
Does anyone have a clip of that - or better direct quotes?
I haven't seen and felt the "new" that Unifor is supposed to reflect yet. And I didn't hear one single word about rank-and-file democracy. Without a commitment to building and strengthening that democracy, this labour movement (and this union) can't face and defeat the erosion and the outright onslaughts.
We need more.
ETA: Ok, I found it - it starts at about 2:17:15 of [url=http://www.newunionconvention.ca/video-on-demand-august-31-2013-morning/... video[/url].
And here's my quick transcription:
Delegate at mic: Good morning. I'm not sure if this is a point of order, or a point of privilege, but it has to be a point of something. I've been here since yesterday, and as a woman of colour, I'm getting increasingly frustrated listening to everybody talking about how our new union will be representative. I have yet to see a single woman leader from our membership stand up and speak. I have yet to see a single person of colour stand up and say something - and I don't know how this union is going to represent people like me, when... [makes a sweeping gesture with her hand indicating the front table and shrugs her shoulders].
[Applause, cheers.]
Ken Lewenza: Again, once you've passed Unifor, you'll see the diversity of the National Executive Board and obviously the officers. And all of us know in those particular areas of equality, we're always gonna have some challenging times. But we're committed to diversity and that's the best I can say. And by you reinforcing that message again reinforces us at the podium here today to contemplate how we build stronger diversity in our union.
Delegate: If this has been being built for two years, and the best you can say is that there's work to be done?
Lewenza: That's the best I can do right now, sister.
Ahh, thanks for that transcript, Unionist. I heard this go down over Twitter (and other delegates reiterated the point at later moments), but didn't know who spoke or what she said. Brava, sister!
One point: I've heard, though I don't know the relevent document, that the executive must have a certain percentage of rank and file members in it, which is a new addition to the constitution from what CAW and CEP had. I could be wrong about this, and I'll try to track it down, but it's something.
Also comforting is that sisters like the speaker you mentioned haven't abandoned the union project yet. They'll win, of course. It just might not be Unifor who gets to be there when it happens.
And rabble's new Labour reporter, H.G Watson (who has been tirelessly reporting on this convention over the past week and live tweeted it throughout the day), interviewed that delegate (Kerry Ann-Taylor) in the piece she filed tonight:
"It was just burning me up," she said "Today it was man after man talking about how good the union was and how representative it was. I was like, 'no, you're not representing me.'" Dave Coles, outgoing president of CEP, promised that delegates would be impressed by the diversity of the incoming national executive board.
As the newly elected board stands currently, 11 members are women and 14 are men. One, Ruth Pryce, the racialized and Indigenous workers representative, is a person of colour. Unifor's constitution requires that the gender composition of the national executive be proportional to gender representation of the union. Unifor has 86,000 female members, about a third of their 300,000 workers.
I wonder whether the 1% at the convention, authentically represents the values of the remaining 99% of the rank and file.


text:
Methotrexate access for rheumatoid arthritis in the post-Roe v Wade era
Lana Dykes
In the wake of the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v Wade, results of a recent study indicated that more than half of female patients treated with methotrexate, a commonly-prescribed drug used to manage rheumatic diseases, lived in states with abortion restrictions or bans.
Investigators note that these findings emphasize "the magnitude of the potential methotrexate access problem. In the short interval since the ruling, there has been a wide fluctuation in the state-by-state legal status of abortion, which could generate confusion among healthcare providers and potentially affect the accessibility of vital medications for patients with rheumatologic conditions."
Kazuki Yoshida, MD, MPH, ScD
We sat down with Kazuki Yoshia, MD, MPH, ScD, Director of Rheumatology and Principal Epidemiologist at OM1, to discuss the findings of the study and the next steps for his team.
Rheumatology Network: What were the methods your team used to identify patients treated with methotrexate?
Kazuki Yoshida, MD, MPH, ScD: We used our nation-wide data network (OM1 Real-World Data Cloud) to identify patients who used methotrexate in the last 2 years (n = 139, 288). Among them, we excluded those with cancer and ectopic pregnancy diagnoses. We deemed the remaining users of methotrexate (82%, n = 114,787) as methotrexate users who were using methotrexate for rheumatic and immunological conditions.
RN: Your results stated that in mid-September, approximately half (53%) of patients prescribed methotrexate are residing in states where abortion is banned or restricted. How has this impacted patients/access to the drug?
KY: What we assessed was the distribution of existing methotrexate users. At this point, we have NOT directly studied the ground-level impact on the methotrexate access (for example, prescription declined, reduced use in methotrexate, etc).
RN: What is the clinical significance of your findings?
KY: Our result is important in that (a) we clarified most of the methotrexate use (82%) is for rheumatic and immunological conditions for which continued life-long care is essential and (b) substantial proportion of patients are female (73%, n = 83,517) of whom 23% (n = 19,000) were of reproductive age (and likely to be susceptible to abortion-policy-related methotrexate access issues).
RN: Were there any strengths or limitations that you'd like to discuss?
KY: The strength of our study is the nation-wide nature of our data network, making it possible to quantify the potential impact of this Supreme Court ruling on methotrexate access. The main limitation is that what we studied is the distribution of existing methotrexate users, rather than changes in methotrexate use after the ruling.
RN: Does your team plan on doing any further research on this topic?
KY: One potential direction is to follow the utilization of methotrexate over time before and after the ruling in relation to the state-level policy.
Starzyk K, Hoffman V, Su Z, et al. Over Half of Methotrexate Users Reside in States in Which the Overturning of Roe v. Wade Can Jeopardize Access to Medications with Abortifacient Potential [published online ahead of print, 2022 Nov 11]. Arthritis Rheumatol. 2022;10.1002/art.42398. doi:10.1002/art.42398


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Hope You find these Mtech EEE Previous Year Question Papers of Punjab Technical university Useful.


text:
Park Sang-hak is a North Korean democracy activist and is the chairman of Fighters for a Free North Korea.

Life in North Korea
Born in 1968 at Hyesan, Park grew up in a privileged family in North Korea. Park Sang-hak attended Kim Chaek University studying IT. After graduating, he worked at Kim Il Sung Youth Alliance.  He met with other members of the community every Monday for political classes and Saturday self-criticism sessions.

Park's grandmother, returning from a rare visit to Japan, told of how much happier people were in other countries. He began to hear from fellow students, who had been chosen to study in other communist countries, share stories of the outside world. He discovered people in Europe didn't have to do self-criticisms each week, which had been a great source of stress. Yet, he still had no desire to leave. He continued to work in Kim Il Sung Youth Alliance, got a girlfriend, and got engaged. He was preparing for his planned wedding.

Then one day in the summer of 1997, Park received a message from a Chinese man. He had come on behalf of Park's father, who was in Japan working for the government. His father realized the family was in danger, and he wanted them to leave. His father discovered the scale of the famine in North Korea. Fearing fresh purges of officials in the Workers' Party, he sent for his family to leave. Suspecting a trap, Park demanded proof from the Chinese man, such as pictures of his father. It took two months for this to be arranged.

Defection to South Korea
Once they had proof, Park took his mother, brother, and sister and headed for China. After bribing North Korean guards to look the other way, Park and his brother swam across a river into China, while their mother and sister floated across the river using an inner tube. They were picked up on the other side of the border by a car, as arranged by his father, and the whole family flew on false passports to South Korea.

When he came to South Korea, he enrolled at Seoul National University. He was able to study different political theories. He was able to compare the North Korean system to the democratic system of the South. He restudied Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il and also studied South Korean presidents Syngman Rhee and Park Chung-hee. He could have lived comfortably as a researcher at the Mobile Institute, but he felt some responsibility. He felt as an intellectual he had responsibility to be a part of this movement. The reason why he engaged in these activities was because he was angry at the North Korean system.

In April 2003, Park and his family learned of what happened to his relatives back home. He  learned that his fiancée had been beaten so badly, she was left unrecognizable. His two uncles were beaten to death, and his cousins were stripped of their wealth, reducing them to street beggars. The relatives were found guilty by association as judged by the North Korean regime, and therefore punished. Learning that so many deaths were caused by his father's defection left him angry, so he decided to quit his researcher job and became a activist.

Activism
In 2006, Park became the chairman of the Democracy Network against North Korea Gulag. As of 2013, he is the chairman of Fighters for a Free North Korea.

In April, 2015 Park was detained, as protestors clashed with South Korean police over their attempts to airlift thousands of copies of The Interview into North Korea.

In July 2020, Park authored an op-ed in The Washington Post, alleging harassment by the Moon Jae-in administration. He wrote that his home address had been leaked, his bank accounts investigated, and that he had been banned from international travel by the South Korean government in response to his human rights advocacy. Park wrote, "In the hope of appeasing the North, Moon is impeding the work of activists fighting the North's human rights violations." Following this article, Park received support from international human rights groups, including the North Korea Freedom Coalition, which called on the Moon administration to end its "harassment" of Park. Park's supporters noted that the Moon administration's actions appeared to conflict with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, of which South Korea is signatory.

Fighters for a Free North Korea

Fighters for a Free North Korea is known for periodically launching balloons carrying human rights and pro-democracy literature, DVDs, transistor radios and USB flash drives from South Korea into North Korea. Over two million such balloons have been launched. The balloons, which generally reach the Pyongyang area after three to four hours in the air, are timed to release their materials in the Pyongyang area.

According to The Wall Street Journal, supporters of the balloon campaign say that it "is one of the most effective tools for change inside North Korea, where information about the outside world is highly restricted". Critics of the campaign, reported the Journal, "oppose the move for causing inter-Korean frictions".

Park and his colleagues released balloons containing leaflets from Ganghwa, an island off the west coast of South Korea, in October 2012, shortly after being prevented by authorities from releasing them from Paju, their usual launch site, which North Korea had threatened to fire upon if the balloon release went forward.

Assassination attempt
In September 2011, a North Korean defector called Ahn was arrested in Seoul by members of the National Intelligence Service on his way to meet with Park, referred to as "Enemy Zero" by the Pyongyang regime. South Korean authorities said that he had planned to kill Park either by poisoning his drink or by jabbing him with a poisoned needle. Park said that the assassin, Ahn, had phoned him earlier and asked to meet him. "Ahn told me by phone", Park said, "that he was to be accompanied by a visitor from Japan who wants to help our efforts. But then I was told by the NIS not to go to the meeting due to the risk of assassination".

The Independent of London noted that Ahn "could face the death penalty" under South Korea's National Security Law, but he ended up being sentenced to four years in prison. He was also ordered to pay 11.75 million Won in fines (about $10,000 USD ), which was the same amount he had been promised for assassinating Park. The Independent also pointed out that the assassination plot was "reminiscent of the Cold War killing of Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov, who was stabbed with a ricin-tipped umbrella in London in 1978."

In an interview in June 2020 with Foreign Policy, Park said, "It is said that the tree of peace lives off blood and that freedom is not free. Somebody has to sacrifice themselves, so if I'm killed by Kim Jong Un's gun, it'll be an honor."

Controversy
He appeared at far-right internet forum Ilbe Storehouse and he declared himself to be an Ilbe member in 2013. He supported far-right pastor Jeon Kwang-hoon and attended Jeon's National Revolutionary Party inauguration ceremony. He was charged on November 25, 2020 with beating and throwing bricks at producers and crew from the Seoul Broadcasting System on June 23.

Awards and honors
In May 2013, Park was presented with the Václav Havel Prize for Creative Dissent by the Human Rights Foundation.

References

External links

Park Sang-hak  Freedom Collection interview

1968 births
North Korean human rights activists
North Korean defectors
Living people
Democracy activists
20th-century North Korean people
21st-century South Korean people


text:
Live as domestic a life as possible
Charlotte Perkins Gilman is best known perhaps for her short story 'The Yellow Wallpaper'. In that story, a young mother, suffering from postnatal depression, is cared for by a loving husband who is also her doctor in a quiet country house. Her husband makes sure that in order to recover, she does not exert herself, does not do anything too stimulating, such as seeing lively friends, or writing; that she rest, that she spends time with her baby (but with the help of her sister in law for any actual work involved caring for the baby). This sounds like a loving and reasonable way to treat someone who is depressed. But at the end of the story, the heroine has lost her mind, thinking that she has been taken over by a woman who'd been imprisoned inside the hideous yellow wallpaper of her bedroom.
The story is seminal, in that it depicts clearly and painfully, a malaise that Betty Friedan would later call the 'problem with no name'. Neither the heroine nor her husband are able to articulate what it feels to be her, as a woman suffering from depression – specifically postnatal depression -, and they're stuck with some very unsatisfatory and harmful prejudices, that she needs rest and inactivity, mental and physical, that she will be fulfilled by motherhood, and that she doesn't need anything else in life.
Perkins Gilman, when she penned that story, was writing from experience.
She too had suffered from post-natal depression, and she too had been advised to rest and spend time with her child in order to get better.
Perkins Gilman had in fact visited a famous physician Dr Silas Weir Mitchell, a pioneer of neurology who specialized, among other things, in the treatment of 'hysterical women'.
His mission, when treating discounted women was to help become 'more loving, giving, gentle with her family, and more peacefully content with herself' through overfeeding and oversleeping. (Mary A. Hill: Charlotte Perkins Gilman: The Making of a Radical Feminist 1860-1896. Temple University Press, Philadelphia 1980, p.148)
Perkins Gilman took Weir Mitchell's rest cure, and of course hated it. Most of her difficulties with motherhood, on top of the hormonal issues that most sufferers of postnatal depression have to deal with, was the fact that she had less time to do the work or the physical exercise she thrived on. Like her aunt Catharine Beecher, Perkins Gilman was a fitness freak, going to the gym daily, taking classes, and running.
In an article published in the October 1913 issue of The Forerunner (14 years after the publication of the short story) "Why I wrote the Yellow Wallpaper" Perkins Gilman describes her experience with Weir Mitchell's rest cure:
For many years I suffered from a severe and continuous nervous breakdown tending to melancholia -- and beyond. During about the third year of this trouble I went, in devout faith and some faint stir of hope, to a noted specialist in nervous diseases, the best known in the country. This wise man put me to bed and applied the rest cure, to which a still-good physique responded so promptly that he concluded there was nothing much the matter with me, and sent me home with solemn advice to "live as domestic a life as far as possible," to "have but two hours' intellectual life a day," and "never to touch pen, brush, or pencil again" as long as I lived. This was in 1887. I went home and obeyed those directions for some three months, and came so near the borderline of utter mental ruin that I could see over.
from "Collected Works of Charlotte Perkins Gilman: Short Stories, Novels, Poems and Essays" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman)
Virginia Woolf was also prescribed the rest cure, and like Perkins Gilman, she suffered much from the requirement that she not exert herself by doing what she loved best, writing and talking. Whatever the benefits of the cure, it was clearly also designed to domesticate intelligent women and keep them within the domestic circle.
'The Shards and Shells of Slavery'
Frances Harper (1825-1911), free-born abolitionist poet and speaker, and Anna Julia Cooper (1859-1964), philosopher and historian born into slavery, both contemporaries of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, also wrote about the home and its place in human progress. Unlike Perkins Gilman, they believed that domesticity was an aid to women's emancipation. Perkins Gilman, a racist, regarded black people as inferior, and therefore did not concern herself with any particular issues that black women might face. Harper and Cooper both argued that black women faced the same problems that white women did, but that as black women, and women who had often been born into slavery, they also faced a number of other issues. Harper, or indeed Cooper, were not merely agreeing with the likes of Catharine Beecher who promoted a difference feminism where women drew strength from the good management of home and children. [1] For Harper and Cooper, part of the defense of domesticity was aimed at the betterment of the life conditions of the black people of America.
In a letter to a Philadelphia correspondent, Frances Harper wrote the following:
While I am in favor of Universal suffrage, yet I know that the colored man needs something more than a vote in his hand: he needs to know the value of a home life; to rightly appreciate and value the marriage relation; to know how and to be incited to leave behind him the old shards and shells of slavery and to rise in the scale of character, wealth and influence. Like the Nautilus outgrowing his home to build for himself more 'stately temples' of social condition. A man landless, ignorant and poor may use the vote against his interests; but with intelligence and land he holds in his hand the basis of power and elements of strength. (William Still, The Underground Railroad, 1872).
Part of Harper's concern is with men and drinking: as a temperance activist, she fears that the whole human race is at risk of hereditary depravity and that black people, more vulnerable to social ills because of their recent insertion in free American society, are particularly to be protected. A good home, where you can come home to after a day's work, where you can be happy surrounded by a loving family, and where churchgoing and bible reading are common pastimes, is the best remedy against alcoholism.
She also knew from her own experience that it is hard for a black female to maintain a home without a husband. Having lost her own husband to premature death, she found herself kicked out of her home, all her possessions reclaimed. "I did not feel" she recalled in a 1866 talk to a National Woman's Rights convention in New York, "as keenly as others, that I had these rights, in common with other women, which are now demanded."
Notwithstanding the above considerations, the passage cited above may strike one as a little moralizing: why should the home be a priority for someone who has had no freedom of movement, someone who was forced to live and work on the land of a man who had the right to beat them, rape them or sell them? Why should such people, upon becoming free, seek to live in the way of their oppressors, adopting the same notions of respectability, the same structures and the same values?
A slightly more nuanced interpretation is needed here. We saw that in any case Harper's arguments came from a different position than Beecher's and the American cult of domesticity. Her position takes into account the lives of black men and women, their attempts at making a place for themselves in American society, and the backlash they were confronted with from people who'd agreed they should be free, but nonetheless did not want them to live among them as equals and looked for every opportunity to show that they were not. So a non-domesticated, alcohol addicted black man, was not just that, but also an indictment against all black men and women. On the other hand a home meant a way of entering society from a stable position, that is not only a home, a church, but a school district, a job, shops and access to medical care. For that reason it is wrong to read Harper as moralizing even if we can question her actual allegiance to the value of domesticity.
Cooper's vision of domesticity is, perhaps more obviously than Harper's, a feminist one: domesticity empowers women, it enable them to put their particular strengths and virtues to practice for the betterment of humanity.
A stream cannot rise higher than its source. The atmosphere of homes is no rarer and purer than sweeter than are the mothers in those homes. A race is but a total of families. The nation is the aggregate of its homes. As the whole is sum of all its parts so the character of the parts will determine the characteristics of the whole. A Voice from the South, Dover Thrift edition – 11.
The home is essential to the nation. Until black people have homes which are well run by educated women, they will not be in a position to take up their full and rightful place into American society. That women are essential to this process is clear from the fact Cooper says they must be educated: this is in part because their principle task as home-makers is the training of children 'a task on which an infinity of weal and woe depends. Who does not covet it?' - 8.
Cooper is in some sense a perfectionist, who believes that happiness lies in the progress we make towards evolving goals, not in the achievement of perfection.[2] We need to be active in our pursuit of these goals, and indeed in the setting of them in order to flourish. And education, the higher the better is a large part of that process. In order for black Americans to partake and participate in the general flourishing, they need homes where future generations will be shaped. And for that to be successful, she argues, black women must be educated. So domesticity Cooper argues, as it requires educated women, can help emancipate women.
[1] For Beecher, women derived power specifically from domesticity: '[Woman's] true position in society, as having equal rights with the other sex; and that, in fact, they have secured to American women a lofty and fortunate position, which, as yet, has been attained by the women of no other nation.' 35Treatise on Domestic Economy, Miss Catharine E. Beecher, Boston: T. H. Webb, & Co.1842
[2] She cites Stael, on p.2: "Happiness consists not in perfections attained, but in a sense of progress, the result of our own endeavor under conspiring circumstances towards a goal which continually advances and broadens and deepens till it is swallowed up in the Infinite". I could not trace the original.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman on why you may not need a home with a kitchen.
Social philosopher Charlotte Perkins Gilman, a contemporary of Shaw – Judith Allen said that 'she is the Bernard Shaw of America; or should we say that Bernard Shaw is the Charlotte Perkins Gilman of England?' (2009, 2) – wrote that :
every human being should have a home. The single person his or her own home; and the family their home. […] The home should offer to the individual rest, peace, quiet, comfort, health and that degree of personal expression requisite; and those condition should be maintained by the best methods of the time
Unfortunately, Gilman goes on to argue in The Home, Its Work and Influence, these conditions do not in general obtain for most people who do have homes. Homes as they were in nineteenth century North America did not provide much for children, especially in terms of health, education or personal development, no peace, rest or comfort for servants, who lived in a house that was not their home, but that of their employers, and very little for women, for whom the home meant first and foremost confinement, and domestic labour. The myth of the home, Gilman argued, was a dangerous one, which not only perpetuated misery for many, but also obscured the importance of the public sphere, in particular places of learning, for human progress and wellbeing.
The home, for Perkins Gilman, was a necessary part of human flourishing, but a very different institution from what it was perceived to be in the era of the Cult of Domesticity, where women were perceived as angelic creatures, making the home a place of health and virtue by drawing on their natural feminine character: nurturing, patient, and pious.[1] So Perkins Gilman believed everyone ought to have a home, but not a 'home' in the full sense understood by many. Insofar as her work is a critique of the existing understanding and realization of the home (in early 20th century USA), it does not consider whether the home is in fact necessary for human fulfillment, and whether other ways of living might not work as well, or indeed better for some portions of the population, such as communal dwellings, movable monadic dwellings, or a series of temporary dwellings, whether hotel rooms, or the home of friends and family members, or indeed dwellings provided by the work place.
Yet nor does Perkins Gilman deny that these non-traditional (if tradition is late nineteenth century, early twentieth white, middle class America) types of home can bring about flourishing. In fact, her central argument, that the home's main function should be to complete and support the framework supplied by the states' institutions, in particular educational ones, would seem to favour a more minimal approach to the home. In that sense, Perkins Gilman's picture is very Athenian: it is the public life that shapes us and ensures our flourishing, the city is responsible for educating its citizens, and organizing their lives so they can make the most of what have. The role of the home is simply to keep us warm, fed and rested in between excursions to the public forum.
The main problem presented by the home, for Gilman, is that the home, such as it was at the time she wrote, fails to do even that, that it, it fails to keep its citizens healthy and safe. The American home, she says, exercises too much control over the health, nutrition and education of its inhabitants, with too little qualification to do it well. Home cooking, she says, is not by its very nature superior to food that be bought in restaurants or hotels – it is simply more convenient for feeding the young, but at the same time keeps a woman tied to her home. But unless each home cooking woman is educated on healthy diet and food preparation, there is no reason to think that home cooking will be anything else than 'slow-poisoning' of our bodies, resulting in 'Dyspepsia' and 'false teeth before they are thirty' (chapter 8). As far as safety of the young is concerned, she says, houses which serve as homes are not in fact designed with the safety or well-being of children in mind, they are out of scale for them, and inhospitable and dangerous. Because parents are not trained in the treatment of childhood ailments, she adds, when homes are considered the best place for a child to grow up, mothers will simply transmit and perpetuate the mistakes that were committed on them as a child, resulting in ill-health but more generally stunted development of children (ch. 12). Finally, she argues, the home, no matter how good a home it is supposed to be, cannot provide enough in the way of social progress, it cannot train citizens, nor make them fit into the society they are meant to help build or improve, if children are under the control of the home during the period where they should develop, and all their lives, if they are women.
What is most problematic about the home then, according to Gilman, is not only that it fails to keep its inhabitants safe, but that at the same time it blocks their access to the educational, health and civic resources that they would need in order to flourish and to contribute to human progress. The image of the home as the place where we can live safe, happy, and in privacy; a place where we can retreat from the world and at the same time be educated to live in it, she claims, is both a fundamental to what we understand the home to be, and deeply flawed. There is a feeling, she says, that 'home is more secure and protective than anywhere else', and that feeling, she claims is at the heart of whatever myths we still believe about the home. These myths, she concludes, must be dispelled, and the home must open up to social progress, and change to accommodate our real needs as human beings and citizens.
What shape should the new home take? Gilman doesn't say. But we can derive some possibilities from suggestions she makes. First, she points out that all homes are built according to a model that is nearly identical, and in particular, that those homes that are deemed unsuitable for families by landlords, are the very same as those in which families do live. So perhaps she would argue that families with children need to live in different sorts of buildings than families without children, and that these choices should be made not according to income size, as they mostly are, but need.
Secondly, she points out that we may be better off in many cases eating out than cooking in. And her arguments that women become slaves of domestic work seems to suggest that she would be a fan of take out dinners (though perhaps not daily pizza). Simone de Beauvoir, drew a similar conclusion, bypassing the question of health (perhaps because French restaurant food at the beginning of the century was no less healthy or balanced than what people prepared at home), when she pointed out that single working women often made life more difficult for themselves, compared to their male colleagues, by insisting on cooking their own meals instead of eating out at conveniently located restaurants and hotels (vol 2, part 4, ch 13, 593.) The point is that not all homes need kitchen, not all home-cooked food is better, and very little home-cooked food is better than the freedom of not having to cook everyday for your entire family. Kitchens are also dangerous places, where knifes and heavy objects are kept, intense heat, and of course, germs, which require constant and intensive cleaning.
The very realization that home life does not necessarily requires cooking may change our expectations as to the shape of the home. Unless cooking is something that is essential to one's flourishing, unless someone enjoys spending time preparing food on a large scale, there is not much need for a kitchen in a home. A kitchenette is sufficient, such as may be found in a trailer home, or a shared kitchen, as in students halls, or, if you don't cook at all and you live alone, a hotel room (which is Beauvoir's own recommendation) is even better, as you will not be required to do any housekeeping, but will be guaranteed a clean place to sleep every night, and somewhere safe to keep your things.
Perkins Gilman, as we saw at the beginning of this section, does not claim that we do not need homes. Rather, she argues for a twofold position. First, the home as her nineteenth century readers knew it, was harmful both because it didn't provide a safe or healthy environment for its inhabitants, but also because it promoted itself as an ideal, which could not and should not be modified. Secondly, she recommended that we recognize the cult of domesticity for the harmful myth it was and start thinking in terms of modifying the home, adapting it to a less dominant but still essential role, that of supporting human beings in their quest for flourishing in society. Taking up where Perkins Gilman left off, we can now ask whether the home, in this minimal role, must still resemble in any way what we now think of as a home.
This is where I blog about my new project, a history of the philosophy of the home and domesticity, from the perspective of women philosophers.


text:
Doodle Jump has landed on the Marketplace
By Paul Acevedo
The 6 Weeks of Must Have Games is in full effect. Following on the heels of Hydro Thunder Go comes this week's Xbox Live release, Doodle Jump. It's out now on the Marketplace.
Doodle Jump is the progenitor of the jumping game subgenre. It distills the essence of platformers – jumping onto platforms, avoiding death by falling, and defeating enemies – into a simpler game. Here players control the Doodler by tilting the phone. He's always jumping, so you only need to worry about where you're going to land, collecting powerups, and tapping enemies to kill them.
The Windows Phone version of Doodle Jump (like Pocket God (opens in new tab) before it) contains the main game but loses a bit of content. Namely, a few themes are missing. Each theme changes the appearances of Doodle Jumper and his enemies as well as completely changing the background. Five themes are currently included on Windows Phone: Original, Halloween, Christmas, Jungle, and Space. For those keeping track, indie clone MonsterUp (similar if not better in quality) only has three themes right now, so Doodle Jump still has the leg up there.
Doodle Jump is a monster hit on other platforms. It's extremely cute and easy to play. The Windows Phone version costs $2.99 and there is a free, short trial. Jump on it here (Zune link) on the Marketplace.
Paul Acevedo
Paul Acevedo is the Games Editor at Windows Central. A lifelong gamer, he has written about videogames for over 15 years and reviewed over 350 games for our site. Follow him on Twitter @PaulRAcevedo. Don't hate. Appreciate!
its £2.49 in the UK, its 59p on iOS, i think ill give it a miss at that price
Yeah I just heard that. I also heard it gets boring quickly even at 59p. Drop the price MSFT.
I'm going to agree with you guys. I don't think there's anything wrong with the game, but it's very, very limited. It's the true essence of a $1 game. $3, cheap as that is, is a bit much for something that's amusing for maybe 3 minutes at a bus stop.
Can someone explain to me why this game is laggy (low framerate?) on my Omnia 7?I compare the character jumping on the menu screen with an iPhone 4 and it is much smoother on iPhone than on WP7, unfortunately :(1) Something is wrong with my device2) Bad port/bad XNA code from DoodleJump crew3) Performance isn't enough with Qualcomm CPU4) General problem with XNA?5) Because WP7 is limited to 30 fps (does iOS use 60 fps?)6) General problem with WP7 as an OSI hope that this will be handled better with Mango and/or new hardware specs later this year.
Is pretty smooth on my Optimus 7. I'm not gonna buy it now that I hear it lacks features. Why do I have to pay more for less?
It runs great on my Samsung Focus. Hmm...
Same here with my Focus. I'm not thinking this is the same kind of disparity we saw with Hydro Thunder either.
Monster Up is so much better!!! I wish it was Live Integrated instead
What do you prefer about MonsterUp exactly?
Graphics, style, gameplay modes, sound... Everything!
Can't argue with you there! I like both games though. Doodle Jump feels a bit different due to its enemies and unique hazards and platforms.
All my comments are being flagged as SPAM...I don't think I'm using any banned language...Let me try my post again as an edit: Am I wrong in thinking this whole class of games is dumb?
That is unnecessarily dismissive. Not that you have to like it, but Doodle Jump is popular for a reason.
Definitely choppier when compared to the iPhone version. Still playable, but I'm debating a purchase. However, if you don't have this game already, it's worth getting.Paul, this mode is also missing 2 costumes, 'Bunny' and 'Ooga.'
Microsoft Teams will reportedly sit at center of EU antitrust probe based on Slack complaint
Microsoft Teams is down: Outages take out Office, Azure, Xbox, and more (Update)
Destiny 2 servers are down and will remain offline for bug fixes, rollback planned (Update)


Earls Court Centre is a major exhibition and events venue located in Earls Court which is in London SW5.
Some of the most iconic musical performances have been hosted here including Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon, Elton John's Louder Than Concorde Tour, Oasis, David Bowie, Kylie Minogue, The Spice Girls and Arctic Monkeys to name a few. The Brit Awards were also hosted at the Earls Court Centre from 2000 to 2010.
When London hosted the 2012 Summer Olympics, the Volleyball competitions were held at the Earls Court Centre.
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