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Active Learning In Virtual Environment/Reflective Journals

Activity: #offline/long-term, #individual-work, #feedback, #critical-thinking, #needs-preparation

Outline
Reflective journals (learning journals) are students’ personal record of the learning process. Students can be asked to write down about what they have learnt during this or another lesson, concrete facts, various matters of the subject. The recordings of the journal can include student’s thoughts, questions about the course content, exam or assignments. Teacher can ask students to submit their journals for feedback. A reflective journal can be in a form of a video, tape or digitally written in a document. The purpose of writing such journals is to help students learn during the process of creating the journal or from the results of it. Moreover, the journal gives an opportunity for a student to assess and review their learning. The process of writing a journal provides a focusing point for students to organize information. Format of writing can typically be informal, however the teacher may set an exact format to follow.

Activity arrangement
Ex. of statements: What was the most interesting thing I have read for this topic?
 * a teacher should assign a limited number of questions or guiding statements for the students to answer.
 * 1)  This topic reminds me of…
 * 2)  I’ve been learning about…
 * 3)  The part I know the most about is…
 * 4)  The part that is the most confusing is…
 * 5)  I’d like to know more about…
 * 6)  Knowing about this topic helps me…
 * 7)  The part that was the newest to me was…
 * students can ask themselves the following questions:

What did I previously think was true, but now know to be wrong?

What have I changed my mind about as a result of this topic?

What is one thing I learned in this topic that I may be able to use in the future?

What am I still unsure about?

What would I like to learn more about?

What issues(s) interested me that I would like to study in more detail?
 * students should write something down every time they learn something new
 * give students feedback on what they have written if necessary

Pointers

 * students reflect on new knowledge they learnt in class
 * helps students to learn how to formulate their opinions and perspectives
 * improved writing skills
 * teachers have a better idea of students’ learning progress
 * increased participation in a learning process
 * encourages to use critical thinking skills

How to use this method in online class?
The journals can be written in a digital format in any convenient platform for both students and teachers. Students can create a Google Drive that they can share with their instructor or send via email. Journals can also be submitted into Moodle where teachers can separately add their feedback.


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Active Learning In Virtual Environment/Thinking Aloud Pair Problem Solving

Activity: #in-class/short-term, #group-work, #needs-preparation

Outline
This learning method involves presenting a problem and then observing aloud—talk about what they are thinking as they work through the problem. In thinking aloud pair problem solving students pair up with one in the role of problem solver and the other as listener. For each new problem, students switch roles. The problem solver reads the problem aloud and talks through the solution to the problem. The listener follows all of the problem solver's steps and catches any errors that occur. For the listener to be effective, he or she must also understand the reasoning process behind the steps.

Activity arrangement

 * Develop a set of field-related problems that students can solve within a limited time frame. The topic should engage students in all stages of problem-solving skills for example identifying the nature of a problem, analyzing the knowledge and skills required to reach a solution, identifying potential solutions, choosing the best solution, and evaluating outcomes.
 * Ask students to form pairs. Then explain to them the roles of problem-solver and listener. Problem-solvers read the problem aloud and talk through the reasoning process in attempting to solve the problem. Listeners encourage the problem-solver to think aloud, ask clarification questions, offer suggestions, but refrain from solving the problem.
 * Ask students to solve a set of problems, alternating roles with each new problem.
 * End the activity when students have solved all problems.
 * Review the students’ solutions to the problems they studied.
 * Review the outcomes of the activity.

Pointers

 * Students articulate their problem-solving process and listen to another’s process.
 * Increases students’ awareness of the range of problem-solving approaches.
 * Improve students’ analytical skills by helping them formulate ideas,understand the sequence of steps underlying their thinking, and identify errors in another’s reasoning.

How to use this method in online class?
In online class this method can be a little bit harder but it is possible to execute. Before the next class, instruct the students what you are going to do in the next class and divide them into pairs in which they can decide who is a listener and who is the problem solver. Then introduce the topic itself which they need to study individually so that they are prepared for the next class. As the next class arrives divide the students into the pairs and start the exercise. This all can be done via Zoom.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


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Active Learning In Virtual Environment/Team Learning

Activity: #in-class/short-term, #group-work, #needs-preparation

Outline
Is a structured form of small-group learning that emphasizes student preparation out of class and application of knowledge in class. Students are organized strategically into diverse teams of 5-7 students that work together throughout the class. Before each unit or module of the course, students prepare by reading prior to class. Achieving the learning advantage requires teamwork. Team learning marks a movement from individual learning to learning across individuals and serves as the basis for moving from individual to organizational learning.

Activity arrangement

 * Assign the students a reading that they must do before the class.
 * Ask them to take a few notes from the text that they thought were important.
 * In class divide the students into groups of 5-7 people.
 * Provide the students with a few questions and ask them to start discussing the text further.
 * Gather everybody after a while to the main session and ask what each of the groups discussed.
 * Provide feedback to the groups as well as to the whole class and then end exercise.

Pointers

 * Leading teams involves building shared beliefs and team-learning behaviors.
 * Team-learning behaviors include three interrelated processes: coordinating, continuously improving, and adapting.
 * To foster team learning, leaders must work to establish an environment that engenders appropriate levels of control and participation.
 * Team-learning processes track the experiential learning cycle and include building a shared purpose, reflective integration, critical conversations, and taking action.

How to use this method in online class?
Assign a reading to the class before the next class. When the next class arrives, assign the students into groups for example 5-7 people and then provide them with few startup questions and ask them to discuss the reading given to them. Also instruct them to reflect on what they’ve read and how the reading is relevant to their class. This all can be done via Zoom.


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User:Lord of gandalf/sandbox

Lorem Ipsum  is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry's standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book.

title: User:Lord of gandalf/sandbox


text:
User talk:Lord of gandalf/sandbox

This is a good description.

title: User talk:Lord of gandalf/sandbox


text:
Chess Opening Theory/1. e4/1...e5/2. b3

= 2. b3?! Charles' Opening = Charles' Opening is an unusual chess opening named after the British chess player and writer Charles Williams (1886–1945). Although this opening is rarely used, Vilmos Nogrady (as White) played it with mediocre success, tying with Meszaros Gyula in 1993.

Description
Charles' Opening is offbeat, but perfectly playable for White. It is mainly used to avoid highly theoretical lines such as the Ruy Lopez or the Scotch Game: Schmidt Variation, or to surprise the opponent. White intends to play Bb2 soon. After 2...c7-c5, the position is similar to an Anti-Sicilian.

Charles' Opening incurs a couple of problems for White. First, it delays the development of a minor piece, disallowing an early castle for White to bring their king to safety. The other problem is that it removes the advantage White has going first. 2. b3 delays the development of another piece with something like 2. Nf3 or 2. Bc4, instead planning to develop their dark-squared bishop to b2, which gives black more time to develop.

It is relatively easy for Black to equalise in this opening, for example, 2...Nf6, 2...Nc6, and 2...Bc5 all equalise, although Black should be careful to avoid a quick Bb2 and Nf3, putting intense pressure on the pawn on e5.

Main variations
After 1. e4 e5 2. b3, the most important continuations are:

 * 2...Nf6 (Main line)
 * 3. Bb2 (Classical Variation)
 * 3. Nf3 (Wells Variation)
 * 2...Nc6 (Fine Defense)
 * 2...Bc5 (Bishop's Defense)
 * 2...f5?! (Cincinnati Gambit)

Main line: 2...Nf6
In the main line after 2...Nf6, White has two major options. Either 3. Bb2 or 3. Nf3 offers White good chances for an equal game.

Classical Variation: 3. Bb2
The classical variation of the Charles' Opening is the most analyzed variation. After 3. Bb2 Black has 3...Nxe4, 3...Bc5, or 3...Nc6. After 3...Nxe4 play usually continues 4. Qe2 d5 5. Nc3 Bf5 (Black does not play 5...Nxc3 because they wants to hang on to their pawn advantage. Black would lose his pawn advantage after something like 6. Qxe5+ Qe7 7. Qxe7+ Bxe7 8. Bxc3) 6. Nxe4 dxe4 7. Qb5+ Nd7 (once again the best move hanging on to the e5 pawn) 8. Ne2 (White develops his knight instead of playing 8. Qxb7 because Black can play 8...Rb8 9. Qxa7 Bc5 10. Qa4 O-O, where White is up a pawn but Black has a major development lead and White's queen is on the awkward a4 square. The computer sees this position -1. 90 for White.) 8...Rb8 9. h4?! (This move threatens to trap black's dark-squared bishop.) 9...h5 10. O-O-O. The Stockfish Engine says Black is slightly winning but that is only because of a complicated line after 10...c6. 3...Bc5 is probably the strongest move, since it quickly develops another piece and prepares to play O-O extremely early. After 3...Bc5 play usually continues 4. Nc3 O-O 5. Qe2 Re8 6. O-O-O a5 (a7-a5 is a very good move. It plans to weaken the queenside and break White's fianchetto with an eventual a5-a4) 7. Nf3 d6 (supporting his other central pawn and his developed bishop, while allowing his other, undeveloped bishop to develop) 8. d4 exd4 9. Nxd4 a4 10. Kb1 Nc6 11. Nxc6 bxc6 12. f3 axb3 13. cxb3 Ba3 (trading off one of his most active pieces in order to expose White's king even more) 14. Bxa3 Rxa3 15. Qb2 Rb7 (planning to eventually double up his rooks on the a file with Rea8). The final response to 3. Bb2 is 3...Nc6. After 3...Nc6 play usually continues 4. Nf3 Bc5 5. Bd3 O-O 6. O-O Re8 7. Nc3 d6 8. Na4 (planning to trade their knight for Black's active bishop while activating his bishop on b2) 8...Bg4 9. Nxc5 dxc5 10. a4 Nd4 11. Bxd4 cxd4 12. h3 Bh5. This position is very even. White plans to expand queenside with moves like b3-b4 and a4-a5; Black plans to clamp the center with move like c3-c5 and slowly maneuver his pieces to the kingside for an attack. Overall, the classical variation of the Charles' Opening is the most challenging variation against 2...Nf6. If a player likes lots of opening theory and wants a new weapon for their opening repertoire, the Charles' Opening: Classical Variation is for them.

Wells Variation: 3. Nf3
The Wells variation of the Charles' Opening is playable, but definitely not the best variation after 2...Nf6. The Stockfish Engine evaluates the position after 3. Nf3 -0. 86 for White. After 3. Nf3 Black has 3...Nxe4, 3...Bc5, or 3...d5. After 3...Nxe4 play usually continues

Fine Defense: 2...Nc6
The Fine Defense often transposes to the Classical Variation of the Charles' Opening. For example, after 3. Bb2 Nf6 it is a line in the Classical Variation of the Charles' Opening. However, after 2...Nc6 White can opt not to transpose to the classical variation with 3. Nf3. 3. Nf3 can transpose to the Bishop's defense after 3...Bc5, but the best response for Black is to play 3...Nf6. After 3...Nf6 play usually continues 4. Bb5 Nxe5 5. O-O Nf6 (Black breaks the principle of not moving pieces multiple times in the opening to remove the threat of Re1, hitting the knight and, in the future, putting another attacker on the pawn on e5.) 6. Bxc6 dxc6 7. Nxe5 Bd6 (developing while attacking the knight) 8. Re1 (setting up a discovered check if they move their knight) 8...O-O (moving out of the discovered check) 9. Bb2. The Fine Defense is one of the weaker responses to the Charles' Opening; if you want an opening that is solid, yet can transpose to multiple other variations of the Charles' Opening, then the Fine Defense is for you.

Bishop's Defense: 2...Bc5
The Bishop's defense was once used by Jan Sosna in 2018, where they beat Marvin Engert in a game. After 2....Bc5 White has two major options, 3. Nf3 and 3. c3. After 3. Nf3 play usually continues 3...Nc6 4. Bb5 Nge7 5. O-O Nd4 6. Ba3 (Ba3 looks like a strange move, but it has purpose. White plays this move looking to trade off Black's most active piece, their bishop on c4.) 6...Nxf3+ 7. Qxf3 Bxa3 8. Nxa3 O-O. It's hard to decide who's winning this position. White has a lead to development, but their pieces are awkward, with a bishop on b5, pinning nothing, and a knight on a3 that's only useful squares it can see is c4 and b5. 3. c3 is a move that intends to get a big center with an eventual d2-d4. After 3. c3 play will usually continue 3...d5 4. d4 exd4 5. cxd4 Bb4+ 6. Bd2 Bxd2+ 7. Nxd2 dxe4 8. Nxe4 Nf6 9. Nxf6+ Qxf6 10. Nf3 O-O 11. Bc4 Re8+ 12. Ne5 (where White's king is severely exposed and they will have to give up a pawn in order to castle after something like 12...Nd7 13. O-O Nxe5 14. dxe5 Rxe5). Overall, the Bishop's Defense, is one of the more challenging ways to beat the Charles' Opening and is a good tool to have in your opening repertoire.

Cincinnati Gambit: 2...f5?!
The sharp 2...f5, the Cincinnati Gambit, although somewhat dubious, was played a few times by 1989 Cuban chess champion IM Pedro Paneque Martin, where they once tied with Luis E. Valdes. It may lead to complicated positions and interesting endgames, e.g. 3. exf5 Nf6 4. Bb2 d5!? 5. Bxe5 Bxf5 6. Nf3 Bd6 7. Bd3 Bxd3 8. cxd3 (where White is a pawn up, but has doubled, isolated queen's pawns.) White has multiple ways to decline the gambit. 3. d4, 3. Bb2, and 3. Nc3 are all strong ways for White to decline the gambit. After 3. d4 play usually continues 3...Nf6 4. exf5 exd4 5. Nf3 (White doesn't play 5. Qxd4 because it leaves their queen exposed, allowing black to play normal developing moves like Nc6 while forcing the queen to move) 5...Bb4+ 6. c3 Bxc3+ 7. Nxc3 dxc3 8. Ba3 (White loses a pawn in this line, but has compensation since it's bishop has a strong diagonal on a3, which doesn't let Black play O-O) After 3. Bb2 Black plays 3...Nf6 (Black doesn't play fxe4 because of the deadly 4. Qh5+!!, followed by either 4...g6 5. Qxe5+ Qe7 6. Qxh8, or 4...Ke7 5. Qxe5+ Kf7 6. Bc4+ d5 7. Bxd5+ where black has to sacrifice their queen with 7...Qxd5 in order to not get checkmated or lose even more material) 4. exf5 Nc6 5. Bb5 a6 6. Bxc6 dxc6 7. Bxe5 Bxf5 (where White is a pawn up, but Black has a minor lead in development.) 3. Nc3 is the weakest way to decline the gambit. Play usually will follow with 3...Nf6 4. f4 exf4 5. e5 Ne4 6. Nxe4 fxe4 7. Qe2 d5 8. exd6 Qf6 9. Qxe4 Kd8 (Black doesn't play 9...Be6 because 10. dxc7 Nc6 11. Ba6!! where White has a major advantage of roughly +3. 75) 10. dxc7+ Kxc7 11. d4 Bd6 (In this position, Black is a pawn down and can no longer castle, but will gain a lead in development since White's queen is exposed so moves like Bf5 force it to move.) Overall, the Cincinnati Gambit is rarely played, but is an interesting opening that is laced with tricks and traps.

title: Chess Opening Theory/1. e4/1...e5/2. b3


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Professionalism/The Google Walkouts of 2018

Introduction
On November 1, 2018, more than 20,000 Google employees walked out of their offices in protest of the company’s handling of sexual harassment allegations, sparking a growing wave of protests among tech workers.

Andy Rubin
Former Google executive Andy Rubin is perhaps best known for founding Android in 2003. After working at Google for over a decade, Rubin left to start a tech incubator in 2014. His reason for leaving was unknown for several years. In 2018, the New York Times wrote a scathing article revealing Rubin was let go amid a sexual assault investigation, receiving a severance package of $90 million plus another $150 million in stock. The allegations were not confirmed when Rubin was let go, but they were credible enough that Google asked for Rubin's resignation; he did not volunteer to step down. Since then, Rubin's main goals have been to save his career and reputation by denying allegations and shifting blame.

Google Management
As one of the five largest tech companies in the world, Google has many eyes watching it. Accordingly, Google makes a point to publicly denounce any workplace harassment or retaliation, and holds publicly available policies to deal with them. However, some employees doubt that Google has honored these policies, and many have personally experienced policy violations. This was exacerbated by workers having little protection from Google. Because Google is incredibly careful with its image, they wanted to push the Rubin scandal under the rug. This may be why they gave him such a generous exit package and continued to praise him as if he had not caused any damage.

Protesters/Organizers
Many employees were already unhappy with Google’s response to past abuse allegations, so news of Rubin’s hushed severance package was the final straw. In less than seven days, Google employees Claire Stapleton, Tanuja Gupta, Meredith Whittaker, Celie O'Neil-Hart, Stephanie Parker, Erica Anderson, and Amr Gaber organized the Walkout, demanding "an end to the sexual harassment, discrimination, and systemic racism that fuel this destructive culture” in tech.

The Causes
Discontent had been simmering at Google for some time, but ultimately, the company's dealing with Rubin led to the Walkout. Some employees felt that Google had "a workplace culture that has turned a blind eye to sexual harassment and discrimination." Rubin's case coming to light urged others to come forward, and the collective discontent was enough to spark the Walkout.

The Protest
The Google Walkout occurred on November 1, 2018, at 11:10 am local time in each of 50 cities around the world. More than 20,000 Google employees participated by leaving their desks and gathering outside of their buildings for part of the day. Many carried signs protesting Google's handling of harassment, with messages like, "Happy to quit for $90 million, no sexual harassment required." Reactions to the event were mixed but mostly positive. Many felt that the event was an "inspiring experience" and "a strong, united stance against inequality." Others were less convinced of the event's impact, or felt that it only appeared united due to "peer pressure."

The Walkout organizers demanded five changes from Google. First and foremost, they demanded "an end to forced arbitration." Under forced arbitration, harassed employees must settle disputes via a privately-hired arbitrator, who may be more likely to rule in favor of the company. The organizers also demanded "a commitment to end pay and opportunity inequity, … a publicly disclosed sexual harassment transparency report, … a clear, uniform, globally inclusive process for reporting sexual misconduct, … [and to] promote the Chief Diversity Officer to answer directly to the CEO and … appoint an Employee Representative to the Board."

Google's Response
Google's (specifically, Google management's) initial response was to visibly and publicly support the Walkout. CEO Sundar Pichai initially praised the Walkout, and encouraged employees to participate. Just one week after the event, Google released a memo addressing the organizers' demands and detailing their preliminary response. Most notably, they agreed to make forced arbitration completely optional. The Walkout caused this change directly, confirming that protest can be an effective vehicle for change. Google met most of the other demands partially, although they did not promote the Chief Diversity Officer or appoint an employee representative to the board.

Over time, it became clearer that Google's initial support was less out of a long-term conviction to support activism and more out of a short-term responsibility to protect their public image. Four of the seven Walkout organizers felt compelled to leave the company in the first year after the Walkout. Claire Stapleton decided to quit after she stopped getting included in meetings and some of her responsibilities were transferred to others. Meredith Whittaker also quit after she was asked to stop her work on AI ethics. These women were not explicitly demoted or fired; management preferred to shift their power away subtly, thereby avoiding negative attention. Google hired anti-unionization firm IRI Consultants a year after the Walkout, further confirming the company's motivation to disempower employee activists who could tarnish its image.

The Lawsuit
In January 2019, (Google's parent company) was sued by a few large shareholders, claiming that Alphabet had violated its, or its obligation to act in the interest of their investors, by engaging in the same behavior that led to the Walkout. The shareholders claimed that Google violated its own Code of Conduct, including a "no retaliation" clause. The lawsuit hinged on the idea that Google's reputation is valuable and was compromised by Google management's actions. While the protesters would have identified Rubin and others as professionally or morally problematic, the prosecution identified them as financially problematic.

In August 2020, Alphabet agreed to settle the lawsuit, which included a $310 million agreement to diversity, inclusion, and equity initiatives. Some, including former Google employee Timnit Gebru, have criticized these initiatives. The settlement also included a clause to end severance packages for anyone terminated for sexual misconduct (such as Rubin).

Judge Walsh, who signed off on the settlement, praised it as a credit to what lawyers can do to "address sexual harassment, sexual misconduct, discrimination, retaliation, inequity and inclusion in the workplace."

Google's Professionalism and the Implications of the Settlement
Ever since Google went public in 2004, it has had a fiduciary responsibility. By law, Google's version of  must be to maximize shareholder welfare. The lawsuit reminded Google that its public image is a crucial sub-good.

Google feared media attention and litigation when firing executives: "When Google fires lower-level employees, it typically marches them out immediately and pays little, if any, severance. But for senior executives, Google weighs other factors. A wrongful termination lawsuit could mean unwanted media attention for Google and the victims of a misconduct case, with a loss resulting in significant damages." Part of the separation agreement "precluded Mr. Rubin from working for rivals or disparaging Google publicly." Rubin repeatedly violated Google's Code of Conduct. Google had an opportunity to fully explain its rationale in a legal setting via the lawsuit filed against them. What seems unethical to protesters and financially wasteful to shareholders might have been explained by private legal bindings or some other obligation. By settling out of court, Google avoids a public explanation, leaving critics to speculate. This does not imply that the company concedes the claims. But, if Google is unable or unwilling to explain its decisions when criticized, then it continues to sacrifice employee, shareholder, and customer confidence.

In an effort to keep expensive negative press away, Google allowed a problematic corporate culture to fester and grow, delaying the inevitable uproar and culminating in the 2018 Walkout. Google risked its long-term reputation and company culture to avoid short-term bad press about one of its most valuable employees, and it failed. It lost money and worsened its reputation, both steps away from The Good for Google.

The Protesters and Organizers and Their Influence
Admittedly, some protesters may have just felt pressured by their peers. But ultimately, all participants risked their Google careers when they walked out and spoke out against Google management. They valued their profession over their career. The protesters exemplified professionalism by pushing for change in Google policies and inspiring others, like shareholders, to speak out in their own way. Their efforts produced real change at Google, and their example inspired more walkouts and demonstrations, not only at Google but also at Amazon and Microsoft.


text:
Cookbook talk:Strawberry Pie

Picture
If you know how to add a picture to the recipe summary, can you add one? Please let me know when so that I can show you the picture. Thanks!

Nat-lie16 (discuss • contribs) 19:36, 5 May 2021 (UTC)

 * ✅ -- Jules (Mrjulesd) 06:08, 6 May 2021 (UTC)

title: Cookbook talk:Strawberry Pie


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Professionalism/Shih Chi Liu and the NSF

Dr. Shih-Chi Liu is a former program director at the National Science Foundation who was accused of defrauding his employer by double-charging work related expenses.

Background
Dr. Liu was born in 1939. He received a BS in civil engineering at National Taiwan University in 1960 and both his MS and Ph.D. in civil engineering at the University of California-Berkeley in 1964 and 1967 respectively. He worked at the National Science foundation from 1975-2011. He held various program director positions during his time there, spending most of his career as the program director for the Earthquake Hazards Mitigation Program before becoming the director of the Sensors and Sensing Systems Program. Dr. Liu gained international renown for his work at the NSF. He has published many papers and scientific journals and promoted cooperation between the US, Japan, China, Europe, India, Korea, and Taiwan on earthquake engineering, smart structure technologies, bio-inspired sensing and actuation. The International Conference on Earthquake Engineering in Harbin, China described Liu as a "charismatic and creative leader, leveraging multilateral collaboration to increase the safety of our society and the reliability of civil infrastructure and building international understanding and goodwill among engineers and scientists throughout the world".

Dr. Liu's personal ethics featured a focus on scholarship and finding a balance between work and harmony. He taught his students the Five Pillars of Scholarship from Confucius and enjoyed making analogies to yin and yang, using them as a representation of Eastern and Western cultures. He appreciated what he noted to be the more traditional, communal focused values of Eastern culture in contrast to what he believed to be the more self-centered values of Western culture.

Hostility with USCIS
In 2005 one of Dr. Liu's colleagues, who he was trying to get a job at the NSF, was denied an immigrant visa by the US Citizenship and Immigration Services. Dr. Liu appealed this decision, stating that the job his colleague sought was valuable to US national interests. Dr. Liu was hostile in his appeal letters, accusing his colleague's examiners of being "lazy or incompetent" and "not competent at either reading or writing in the English [l]anguage". USCIS noted that his letters featured many spelling mistakes and grammatical errors. Although USCIS acknowledged that the work his colleague would be doing was important, Dr. Liu's appeal letters were denied on the grounds that immigrant visas must be granted based on the qualifications of the individual, not on the potential to do important work. Dr. Liu's aggressiveness towards USCIS likely played a part in the decision.

Stealing from the NSF
Dr. Liu stole over $15,000 from the National Science Foundation over the course of five years through falsified travel claims and invoices. On more than six different occasions between September 2006 and June 2010, Dr. Liu billed an unspecified accredited university in Colorado for services that were not performed and for travel expenses that were already covered by the NSF. These payments were not reported to the NSF. Annually, Dr. Liu was required to submit a financial disclosure report on any travel reimbursements and gifts over a certain amount. To hide his actions, Dr. Liu filed fake reports that failed to show the various payments he had received. He sent fake invoices to the Colorado university for university funding or billed both the university and the NSF for the same expenses.

Dr. Liu was tried on May 30th of 2012. He pled guilty to a single count of making a false statement before U.S. District Judge James C. Cacheris. He was sentenced in federal court on August 22, 2012, facing a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a fine of $250,000. Liu did not go to prison, instead paying the fines and being put on probation. As of May 2017 he is in China serving as an adjunct professor at Southeast University and Nanjing Tech.

Double billing
Liu double billed the Colorado university and the NSF for his travel expenses. In law, double billing is a violation of two American Bar Association's standards in the Model Rules of Professional Conduct. Rule 8.4 and Rule 1.5 prohibit dishonesty and unreasonable fees, respectively. In medicine, double billing can occur when a healthcare provider bills Medicare/Medicaid, a private insurer, or a patient directly more than once. This practice can violate civil and criminal law, and can incur large fines or prison time.

In government contracting, one law firm describes the practice as "increasingly common" with the "expansive, voluminous nature of the contract work." These activities are prohibited under the False Claims Act, which was enacted in 1863 to prevent defense contractor fraud during the Civil War. The act has since been amended to allow for qui tam lawsuits, in which a whistleblower can sue on behalf of the government and earn a portion of the government's damages.

Oversight
The DOJ notes that of $2.2 billion in "recovered" false claims in 2020, $1.6 billion arose from such qui tam lawsuits. The fact that around 70% of recovered false claims originate with whistleblowers indicates a non-trivial lack of oversight in the government, of which Shih-Chi Liu was an employee. Liu had worked at the NSF for nearly 45 years and had seniority status as a program director. While he was director of the Sensors and Sensing Systems program, Liu could award grants of up to $50,000 from the program's $5.5 million annual budget without supervisory approval. Like Gyges in "The Ring of Gyges" from Plato's Republic, Liu had a sort of invisibility ring in his position at the NSF. The story argues that with such an invisibility ring no man would "stand fast in justice," which Liu did not.

NSF funding guidelines
Shih-Chi Liu is listed as an author on a "request for proposals" in "Organic Electronics, Photonics and Magnetics," for which the NSF will grant funding. In reviewing a research activity, the document lists several questions a proposal must answer, including:"How well does the activity advance discovery and understanding while promoting teaching, training, and learning? To what extent will it enhance the infrastructure for research and education, such as facilities, instrumentation, networks, and partnerships? Will the results be disseminated broadly to enhance scientific and technological understanding?"While not research activities, his double-billed travel expenses cannot be squared with the fund-allocating rules that carry his name.

At the NSF
In 2012 the NSF Inspector General detailed an incident of a program officer double-, triple- and quadruple-billing travel to different clients, one of which was the NSF. The Inspector General was informed of this through a University that was conducting an investigation, where over $170 thousand in travel was estimated to be overbilled. State charges were brought rather than federal due to the "small loss to the US government;" however, the employee was terminated from the NSF.

In 1995 a professor at Cornell University resigned after an investigation into five instances of double-billing travel expenses to the NSF, totaling $5,000 in illegitimate funds. No charges were brought.

In 2014, Manoj Kumar Jha, a professor at Morgan State University, was convicted of wire fraud, mail fraud, falsification of records, and theft of government property after fraudulently obtaining $200,000 in grant funds from the NSF and using it for personal expenses. He was sentenced to three years in prison.

Stolen Research Funding
In October 2020 Dr. Geoffrey Girnun, a former professor at Stony Brook University, was sentenced to one year and one day in prison for stealing over $200,000 in cancer research funds to make personal mortgage and tuition payments. . He pleaded guilty in January 2020 and agreed to pay $225,000 in restitution to the National Institute of Health and Stony Brook University.

In 2009 Samim Anghaie, a nuclear engineering professor at the University of Florida, was found to have fraudulently obtained millions of dollars in government contracts from NASA, spending it on luxury cars and real estate. He submitted fake invoices to the university and underpaid researchers or didn't pay them at all. He was sentenced to six months in prison.

Conclusion
These white-collar embezzlement crimes, while ethically untenable, appear to avoid the full force of the law. Dr. Liu got off with probation and fines, with related cases meeting similar punishments. The honor code of the University of Virginia, under which the NSF-funded Online Ethics Center operates, prohibits "lying, cheating or stealing," famously in that order. The ethics section of the NSF website focuses primarily on scientific and academic integrity, and to a lesser degree, misuse of resources. This is perhaps because academic dishonesty, or lying, is considered worse an offense than misuse of resources, or stealing. Academic dishonesty can destroy the reputation of an institution whose mission is to "promote the progress of science," while stealing is a material loss that can be more easily repaired.

Future Research
Future researchers should look at more instances of research or grant fraud at the NSF, for additional information on Shih Chi Liu is scarce. Double billing is a broad enough topic that several more casebook chapters could be made on the subject. The NSF features its own handbook on grant fraud, and it would be useful for future researchers to reference when studying how the NSF's own workers violate it. In relation to Dr. Liu's letters to USCIS, more research could be done on instances of researchers attempting to use the importance of their work for privileges not granted to other people.


text:
Professionalism/The GitHub Employee Dismissal of January 8, 2021

Background on GitHub
GitHub provides a computer code hosting platform which helps software developers and other technologists collaborate. It has been involved in multiple ethical dilemmas in recent years. For example, it maintained a contract with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to provide software and support, despite objections from many of its employees. Those employees created a petition which received a significant amount of signatures demanding that the company stop working with ICE, but nothing was done.

The company utilizes the messaging app Slack for employee communication. In their Slack channels, employees discuss many things, including, on occasion, politics. Employees have even made controversial jokes in a company Slack channel before. An employee who made a joke about Nazis and Jews did not face discipline and still works at the company, years later.

Sequence of Events
On January 6, 2021, as the U.S. Capitol riots were taking place, a Jewish GitHub employee sent a warning message in his company's Slack channel designated for employees who, like himself, lived in the D.C. metropolitan area: "stay safe homies nazis are about". One of his coworkers objected to this message, saying that it was "untasteful conduct for the workplace." A back-and-forth discussion ensued, and two days later, on January 8, the employee who sent the initial message was fired. GitHub cited "a pattern of behavior that is not conducive to company policy."

When other employees objected and created a petition expressing their disagreement with the decision, GitHub initiated an independent investigation of the firing. That investigation soon revealed errors in judgment, and the company reversed its decision. Additionally, the head of human resources, Carrie Olesen, resigned from the company.

Resolution
This incident is essentially concluded and was primarily handled internally. Although GitHub reversed its decision to fire the employee, he declined the offer to return. He did say in an interview, "Me and the company reached an amicable resolution. I appreciate that they have denounced white supremacy and the dangers it poses to everybody." The second part of that quote refers to GitHub's blog post where they addressed this situation. In that post, GitHub stated that it "[does] not and will not tolerate discrimination, harassment, or retaliation" and that "employees are free to express concerns about Nazis ... or any other form of discrimination or harassment in internal discussions."

Employee's Perspective and Ethics
Diving deeper into the perspective of the employee who was fired reveals more to this case. The employee had previously been involved in a situation where he called out GitHub's management for not being diverse enough. He stated that almost all leadership roles were filled by white males and there wasn't enough representation for other groups. In the midst of this controversy, he was threatened to be fired multiple times for speaking out. The only reason he wasn't fired is because both of his managers came to his rescue and vouched for him.

The fired GitHub employee warned his colleagues about the dangerous events occurring in their area because he wanted them to be safe. He chose his words carefully, and with purpose. His Slack message was: "stay safe homies nazis are about." He specifically called the individuals acting violently "nazis" because, as the employee explained, "We grew up saying [Nazi]. It was a story we told because we had to—the decimation of whole lines of ancestry were at the hands of people who went by that title." A simple warning like "be careful out there" would not be effective in accurately describing the events of January 6 or emphasizing their gravity.

Despite being offered his job back, the employee declined to return to GitHub. It is understandable that he would not want to continue working at a company that was so quick to unjustifiably fire him. The investigation revealed errors in judgment, and while GitHub did dismiss one human resources employee, they did not take other concrete actions that would prevent those errors in judgment from occurring again. Additionally, relationships between the employee and upper management at GitHub would likely still be damaged, as was the case with Claire Stapleton at Google.

As previously mentioned, GitHub employees were unsuccessful in their attempt to stop the company from engaging in business with ICE. This demonstrated that GitHub employees do not always have the power to sway important company decisions. However, this did not stop them from speaking out about this firing. The initiative taken by the fired employee's fellow colleagues to sign a petition is an interesting example of coworkers standing up for each other. Those 200 employees who signed the petition felt it was their duty to express their disagreement with the decision. Doing so was an attempt to help their coworker, but also an attempt to defend their rights and freedoms. A sad result of this case is that other employees may have felt as though they couldn't speak up against racism or bigotry due to a fear of punishment. If they had let this firing go without speaking up, they could have risked something similar happening to themselves in the future. This protest was also a defense of the professional autonomy that GitHub's employees felt they ought to possess. They can be considered experts in their field, and thus must be allowed to act freely according to their own expertise.

GitHub's Perspective and Ethics
GitHub's stated reason for firing the employee was a "pattern of behavior that is not conducive to company policy." However, the gravity of the January 6, 2021 Capitol riot likely contributed to the decision as well. Nazism and political extremism are very sensitive topics any day, and these riots only exacerbated such tension. Given that the same employee had already been involved in a dispute with the company regarding diversity before, GitHub probably hoped to avoid similar controversies on the future. While it is understandable that the company may not want employees getting into intense political arguments during work hours and while using company property or communication means, the single Slack message in question in this case was not close to extreme enough to merit a firing.

Despite all of those reasons for firing the employee, GitHub reversed course and determined that it was the wrong decision. Beyond the investigation which revealed errors in judgment, the petition created and signed by hundreds of employees created pressure to reverse the firing. If the company did not change course, it could have lost valuable and talented employees who refused to work there. Additionally, GitHub may have feared legal repercussions. If the fired employee sued the company for wrongful termination, it would have resulted in costly legal fees regardless of the outcome, and potentially an expensive settlement. Furthermore, such a lawsuit would certainly lead to bad publicity for the company.

Whether the appropriate person was held responsible for this incorrect firing decision or not is an open question. As implied by tweets from another human resources employee, Gia Colosi, it is possible that the decision was really made by executives, and the human resources employee who was dismissed simply took the blame. According to Colosi, human resources fires employees "only if leadership asks us." Technology companies have a history of protecting their executives even when there is clear wrongdoing, such as in the case of Andy Rubin at Google. There is no way to know for sure who is actually at fault in this situation, but the question is worth being discussed and pondered.

Given that GitHub's investigation revealed "errors in judgment," it is logical to ask what those errors were. Was this choice to fire the employee a single bad decision, or did it occur because GitHub had a flawed conception of their employees, and what those employees ought to be able to do? The company seemingly did not respect the employees' autonomy and maturity, and did not think they could discuss sensitive topics in a civil and productive manner. There was no evidence that the conversation in question negatively affected the employees' productivity or relationships with each other in any significant way. If they existed, such negative impacts could have made the firing more justifiable.

The proper use of a messaging app like Slack within the context of a professional environment is another interesting question to consider. Apps like Slack are often treated much more casually than other mediums like email. Would they then be more similar to verbal communication that occurs in the hallways, lunchroom, or parking lot? If so, are the suitable topics for discussion in these messaging apps different that those that are suitable for official emails? Employers do not police individual conversations that take place between employees, but Slack messages are visible to a much larger audience.


text:
Chess Opening Theory/1. e4/1...e5/2. Nh3

= The Basman Attack = The Basman Attack is an unusual chess opening named after the English International Master Michael John Basman who played the strange 2. Nh3 in a game versus John T Fletcher in 2013.

The Basman Attack is offbeat, but slightly playable for White. It is mainly used to avoid highly theoretical lines such as the Ruy Lopez or the Sicilian Defense: Najdorf Variation. White intends to play f2-f4 soon.

The Basman Attack incurs multiple problems for White. First, it develops a piece towards the outer edge of the board. The problem with developing your knight to h3 instead of f3 is that on h3 it doesn't control the pivotal central squares of e5 and d4. On h3, the only square the knight can move to that it couldn't move to if it was on f3 is f4. The other problem with this opening is that it loses initiative. In e4 e5 openings, White typically controls the opening. Moves like Nf3 put immediate pressure on the opponent, forcing them to defend. The move Nh3 puts none of that pressure and therefore is an almost pointless move.

It is relatively easy for Black to equalise in this opening, for example, 2...Nf6, 2...d5, and 2...Nc6 all equalise, although Black should be careful to avoid an eventual f2-f4.


text:
User:Dwacic/sandbox

“Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry's standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. It has survived not only five centuries, but also the leap into electronic typesetting, remaining essentially unchanged. “

title: User:Dwacic/sandbox


text:
User talk:Dwacic/sandbox

boom

title: User talk:Dwacic/sandbox


text:
User talk:Nickwgo

Welcome!
Welcome to Wikibooks, Nickwgo!

 First steps tutorial Wikibooks is for collaborative development of free textbooks.

You do not need technical skills to contribute. You can easily change most books. Please introduce yourself, and let us know what interests you.

If you already contribute at other Wikimedia projects, our Wikimedia Orientation should quickly get you started. (Would you like to provide feedback on this message?)

  Getting help   Made a mistake?   Goodies, tips and tricks
 * Read the Using Wikibooks book for a friendly introduction to the project, or our help pages for more information.
 * You can get friendly help from the community in the user assistance room or our IRC channel.
 * Upload freely licensed files to Wikimedia Commons. You may request permission to upload fair use files locally. Please include author and source information and a non-free use rationale for non-free files.
 * You can restore a previously saved version.
 * Pages should follow the  naming convention.
 * Need to rename a page? Use the move tab (is available once your account is 4 days old - until then, ask for help).
 * To request a page be deleted, add to the top of the page.
 * Was a page you made deleted? Please read the deletion policy, and check the deletion log to find out why. Also check the RFD archives if applicable. You can request undeletion at WB:RFU, or ask the administrator who deleted the page.
 * Please fill in the edit summary and preview your edits before saving.
 * Sign your name on discussion pages by typing ~~~~
 * User scripts can make many tasks easier. Look at the Gadgets tab of my preferences; check off the boxes for the scripts you want, and hit save!

Thanks for your contributions -- Jules (Mrjulesd) 05:42, 6 May 2021 (UTC)

title: User talk:Nickwgo


text:
User talk:Harshiche

Welcome!
Welcome to Wikibooks, Harshiche!

 First steps tutorial Wikibooks is for collaborative development of free textbooks.

You do not need technical skills to contribute. You can easily change most books. Please introduce yourself, and let us know what interests you.

If you already contribute at other Wikimedia projects, our Wikimedia Orientation should quickly get you started. (Would you like to provide feedback on this message?)

  Getting help   Made a mistake?   Goodies, tips and tricks
 * Read the Using Wikibooks book for a friendly introduction to the project, or our help pages for more information.
 * You can get friendly help from the community in the user assistance room or our IRC channel.
 * Upload freely licensed files to Wikimedia Commons. You may request permission to upload fair use files locally. Please include author and source information and a non-free use rationale for non-free files.
 * You can restore a previously saved version.
 * Pages should follow the  naming convention.
 * Need to rename a page? Use the move tab (is available once your account is 4 days old - until then, ask for help).
 * To request a page be deleted, add to the top of the page.
 * Was a page you made deleted? Please read the deletion policy, and check the deletion log to find out why. Also check the RFD archives if applicable. You can request undeletion at WB:RFU, or ask the administrator who deleted the page.
 * Please fill in the edit summary and preview your edits before saving.
 * Sign your name on discussion pages by typing ~~~~
 * User scripts can make many tasks easier. Look at the Gadgets tab of my preferences; check off the boxes for the scripts you want, and hit save!

Thanks for your contributions -- Jules (Mrjulesd) 06:06, 6 May 2021 (UTC)

title: User talk:Harshiche


text:
User talk:Nat-lie16

Welcome!
Welcome to Wikibooks, Nat-lie16!

 First steps tutorial Wikibooks is for collaborative development of free textbooks.

You do not need technical skills to contribute. You can easily change most books. Please introduce yourself, and let us know what interests you.

If you already contribute at other Wikimedia projects, our Wikimedia Orientation should quickly get you started. (Would you like to provide feedback on this message?)

  Getting help   Made a mistake?   Goodies, tips and tricks
 * Read the Using Wikibooks book for a friendly introduction to the project, or our help pages for more information.
 * You can get friendly help from the community in the user assistance room or our IRC channel.
 * Upload freely licensed files to Wikimedia Commons. You may request permission to upload fair use files locally. Please include author and source information and a non-free use rationale for non-free files.
 * You can restore a previously saved version.
 * Pages should follow the  naming convention.
 * Need to rename a page? Use the move tab (is available once your account is 4 days old - until then, ask for help).
 * To request a page be deleted, add to the top of the page.
 * Was a page you made deleted? Please read the deletion policy, and check the deletion log to find out why. Also check the RFD archives if applicable. You can request undeletion at WB:RFU, or ask the administrator who deleted the page.
 * Please fill in the edit summary and preview your edits before saving.
 * Sign your name on discussion pages by typing ~~~~
 * User scripts can make many tasks easier. Look at the Gadgets tab of my preferences; check off the boxes for the scripts you want, and hit save!

Thanks for your contributions -- Jules (Mrjulesd) 06:08, 6 May 2021 (UTC)

Categories and templates
Hello, the correct way to add the header in a recipe is to put this template at the top. To include a recipe in a category, add the text to the recipe page and not into the Category page itself. Thanks. QuiteUnusual (discuss • contribs) 09:20, 7 May 2021 (UTC)

title: User talk:Nat-lie16


text:
Wikibooks:Reading room/Proposals/2021/January

Now under construction: Wikibooks Stacks
As part of the infrastructure overhaul I've been doing for, at this writing, just over 23 months, and following from the previous discussion here in the ongoing series of threads (link), I'm now developing a replacement for the current subject hierarchy, in the form of a book called Wikibooks Stacks.

I'm not currently asking for help with this, tbh. Somewhat embarrassingly, given the collaborative nature of wikis, just atm I really need to do this carefully, step by step, myself, because there's still new design work involved at each step. But I do want to let everyone know what I'm doing, and perhaps folks here will offer advice (or point out that I'm making a huge mistake somewhere!).

When I'm all done, all our 3000-or-so books will be filed in both the "old" subject hierarchy and the "new" stacks, and I'll be able to do the equivalent of flipping one of those big high-voltage switches and suddenly the categories visible on each book main page will be shelves instead of subjects, and then I can start the process of carefully mothballing the old subject pages, one by one. Then it'll be time to start in earnest on the final(?) stage of this multi-year overhaul of our infrastructure, the introduction of topical categories that list pages as well as books, which will enable us to provide much better targets for incoming links from sister projects, including from Wikipedia.

Grouping all of this machinery in a book is more convenient, organizationally, than the  namespace, as it happens. The new pages, equivalent to subjects, have name prefix  or, at the top level, , which are not recognized by the wiki platform as namespace prefixes, so these pages are all technically in mainspace, as is the book. Our infrastructure templates such as BookCat and BOOKNAME know to associate these name prefixes with book Wikibooks Stacks, which is convenient because most of the pages involved don't have to have the name of the book built into them at all, they can just use markup  (which expands to  ). Shelves correspond to subjects that use subject page, departments to subjects that use root subject.

There are shelf categories, each with an associated allbooks category, just as there are subject categories with associated allbooks categories. When I set up the machinery of the subject hierarchy, I arranged that when any of the pages involved detected a problem, it would flag it out, and provide buttons to help a human operator implement likely actions to fix it. This time around, I've made some improvements to this semi-automation while I was about it.

I also very much want to arrange for dialog-based assistants to replace the older-style editing buttons (with the older-style buttons reappearing if the dialog tools are not detected — thus, graceful degradation when things aren't working right). This would be very cutting-edge use of the dialog tools, and I very much want to learn as much as I can from the experience, about how to make effective use of the dialog tools. Which is actually part of what's holding me up just atm: I could be marching forward with setting up shelves, but then I'd be missing out on this major opportunity to gain experience with dialog. --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 19:51, 3 June 2018 (UTC)

 * Progress report: All our books have been shelved; they're also all listed in subjects. The shelf categories are hidden, the subject categories are visible; but I'm now in a position to switch that, so the shelf categories are visible and the subject categories hidden.  Then I can start shutting down the subjects, which also has to be done manually.  Strangely, I've got a discrepancy between the number of shelves and the number of subjects, whose cause should eventually come out during the manual shutdown.  I'm not sure what to do about possible incoming links to subject pages that are now going to be either nonexistant or redirects. --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 02:26, 29 September 2018 (UTC)

 * Cheers for all the work you have made already. I noticed two things which I'm not sure whether they are glitches or not: 1) Departments do not list any featured books. 2) Under Wikibooks Stacks/Departments the Wikijunior department correctly lists the Wikijunior shelf, but the Help department does not list the Help shelf. -- Vito F. (discuss) 23:46, 10 October 2018 (UTC)
 * On the second point, actually the link provided is to the help shelf, rather than to the help department. I'm unsure whether that should be treated differently, or if instead the wikijunior department should be treated differently. --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 04:03, 11 October 2018 (UTC)
 * I think I've got the department featured books problem . --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 06:43, 12 October 2018 (UTC)
 * I've improved both of those displays on the departments page. --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 12:44, 13 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Update: My progress on this is currently mired in the various pages associated with quality as assigned by various "WikiProjects". That part of our infrastructure was imported by Adrignola and adapted for Wikibooks —mainly by adding support for Subject pages— back in 2010; it isn't heavily used, but wants updating to support the rearrangement; except that frankly I find its internal design largely indecipherable.  How Adrignola figured it out to make changes then, I find hard to imagine, and it's worse now with existing use of the Subject-based version to accommodate. --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 13:28, 22 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Still mired. --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 21:14, 8 April 2019 (UTC) – 14:33, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

Help:Contents update
Hi, I've made a major update to Help:Contents. I've been bold and updated the page already, but if I get any strong objections I'll revert pending discussions.

Anyway its like creating a "one stop shop" on help and project pages, as it contains a good many. It also should contain all the basics on using Wikibooks, whether you want to read books or contributed.

Technical details: although the content is my own, the design is based upon wikipedia:Help:Contents. It uses CSS for two columns; it also uses CSS flexbox, which means it should render as a single column on low resolution screens such as smartphones. On obsolete browsers not supporting flexbox it will still render, although it could be a single column.

Anyway, any feedback would be nice. -- Jules (Mrjulesd) 22:29, 29 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Great work! I don't see any issues with it and it does look more appealing than previous versions. —Atcovi (Talk - Contribs) 23:15, 29 January 2021 (UTC)
 * I concur, this is a nice update from before. Didn't even know that this page existed. Leaderboard (discuss • contribs) 07:59, 30 January 2021 (UTC)


text:
Fireboy and Watergirl in the Forest Temple

This book is intended to give info about the first game in the Fireboy and Watergirl series - Fireboy and Watergirl in the Forest Temple.

Table of contents

 * 1) /Level 1/
 * 2) /Level 2/
 * 3) /Level 3/
 * 4) /Level 4/
 * 5) /Level 5/
 * 6) /Level 6/
 * 7) /Level 7/
 * 8) /Level 8/
 * 9) /Level 9/
 * 10) /Level 10/
 * 11) /Level 11/
 * 12) /Level 12/
 * 13) /Level 13/
 * 14) /Level 14/
 * 15) /Level 15/
 * 16) /Level 16/
 * 17) /Level 17/
 * 18) /Level 18/
 * 19) /Level 19/
 * 20) /Level 20/
 * 21) /Level 21/
 * 22) /Level 22/
 * 23) /Level 23/
 * 24) /Level 24/
 * 25) /Level 25/
 * 26) /Level 26/
 * 27) /Level 27/
 * 28) /Level 28/
 * 29) /Level 29/
 * 30) /Level 30/
 * 31) /Level 31/
 * 32) /Level 32/
 * 33) /Forest Temple Levels/
 * 34) /Authors & Contributors/


text: File:Fireboy watergirl forest temple levels.png


text:
Women's Writing Before Woolf: A Social Reference/Margo Hendricks

= Margo Hendricks (1948-) = Margo Hendricks was born on the 26th of January, 1948. She was born and raised in California, in the United States of America. Hendricks is a well-known and respected African-American academic, author and activist.

Early Life
The details surrounding the early life of Margo Hendricks are minimal, due to her private nature. However, during a speech at the Folger Institute in September 2019, she revealed that Zeola Culpepper Jones, her great-grandmother, her father was born enslaved, but she was not.

The majority of Hendricks research and activism stems from her own experiences growing up Black in America, and the social and cultural impact that has on her own individual, and the wider context of society. She has written articles and delivered speeches on what it is to grow up African-American in America, blackness in history, the representation of black people within those histories and how all of these experiences affect the modern world.

Higher Academia and Career
In 1987, Hendricks attended the University of California, Riverside campus where she received a doctorate for her thesis The Roaring Girls: A Study of Seventeenth Century Feminism and the Development of Feminist Drama.

Hendricks has worked at multiple universities in California. She worked as a literature professor at San Jose State University for several years. In 1999 she attained a fellowship with the American Council of Learned Societies during this time as well as a Ford Fellowship. Her thesis was Cultural Property: Patronage and the Professional Women Playwright in Seventeenth Century England.

In the 2000’s she moved onto teaching at University of California, Santa Cruz campus. In 2010 she received an emerita (an academic honorary title). Her current title at the university is Professor Emerita of Renaissance and Early Modern English Literature. Within a majority of her work, Hendricks wants to question the deficiency of female authors in history as well as BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Colour) people in general. In her academic essays on the interrelationship between race and gender in pre-modern literature, Hendricks describes herself as being unapologetically vocal and without filter (Hendricks 1:25). Though she hasn’t written an academic article in many years, she maintains an important role as a scholar and academic in the field. She stepped away due to her discomfort with the direction the field was going. As a black person, Hendricks has made a concerted effort to teach people to detach from their “whiteness” and move towards a lesson colonised view of Shakespeare and Seventeenth Century writing. She notes that her essay, Women, Race, and Writing in the Early Modern Period, was never intended solely for literary dialogue, its purpose was to be a piece that initiated conversations amongst academics working within the early modern period that are consistently seeing the distinct social markers of race and gender. She does this while also trying to maintain the concept of “Indigeneity”, as it is often overlooked.

Hendricks created a pseudonym in 2008 to creatively express her desire to write fiction. She had always wanted to write fiction stories but had been nervous to do so due to her well-respected career as an academic. She writes under the pen name Elysabeth Grace. Hendricks has maintained that she often had trouble separating the “two voices” in her head, her academic works and her fiction works. She has two on going series, Sisters of Saria series and the Midsummer Sisters series.

She is the recipient of academic grants and fellowships from ACLS, Folger Library, Stanford Humanities centre, and Romance Writers of America (Arizona State University). In 1997, Hendricks formulated a collaborative research group comprised of classic, medieval, and early modern academics at the University of California Humanities Research Institute entitled “Theorising Race in Pre- and Early Modern Contexts” (Hendricks 5:04).

In 2020 Hendricks was offered a Fellowship at Folger Institute. Her work titled Race and Romance: Colouring the Past, goes into ideas of race and academia. That there are certain places BIPOC people have been told they can and cannot exist in historical texts. How this is damaging to the works, modern academia, and the studies of fellow BIPOC.

As a prominent black academic, Hendricks has also leant her voice to uplifting the struggles of fellow BIPOC. She often engages with programs, such as the RaceB4Race series at Arizona Centre for Medieval and Renaissance studies. Her goals are to add continued support to the BIPOC community in these uncertain times.

Hendricks currently resides in Nevada where she “remains an unrepentant scholar of Shakespeare and other academic things”, according to the about me section of her website. She is currently writing an academic memoir and undergoing research to complete ‘Heliodorus’ Daughters: Black Women and the Romance Industry’, from which she received an academic research grant from the Romance Writers of America (RWA).

Work in Shakespeare
Notable themes in Hendrick’s study of Shakespeare include her acknowledgement that the study of race is anachronistic, and her focus instead follows the clear lines that trace through these texts and into the 21st Century. Hendricks argues that the investigation of racial implications in early texts requires an understanding of how the contextual and current audiences would both construct and recognise the concept of race, and its linguistic inflections (Hendricks 20). Continued efforts by Hendricks include her distinction that the early modern usage of ‘race’ varied and could specify differences born of class-based concepts, such as genealogy, psychological nature, and group typology (Hendricks 20). An example of closer examinations includes Hendricks’ interrogation of modern scholarly interpretations and representations of Shakespeare’s ‘Othello’. Hendricks accuses them of completely ignoring Othello’s skin colour, which she recognises as an acute scheme to redirect the reader’s attention away from his colouring, and onto his stature as a warrior (Hendricks 1).

"Women, Race and Writing"
Hendricks is the co-editor of “Women, Race and Writing in the Early Modern Period” (Arizona State University). Hendricks comments that the purpose of the text was to initiate conversations among academics working in the fields of race and gender in the early modern period (Hendricks 4:31). A distinguishable comment made within her addition to the text includes her statement that whiteness in literature can often be disguised as a neutral racial category, against which all differences were measured (Adams).

Interrogating the Academy
At the ‘RaceB4Race Roundtable’, Hendricks inspected, interrogated and reenvisioned the phrase “To protect and to serve”, developed by the LAPD in 1955 (ACMRS 0:41). This was not done in relation to uprisings in 2020 regarding police brutality, but rather how this idea operates in pre and early modern studies and how the members of higher education address equity and inclusion in their fields (ACMRS 1:45). Hendricks comments on how BIPOC and other marginalised scholarly bodies are affected by the policing in the academic world through a complex system of academic gatekeeping and the subsequent issues regarding publication, employment, and retention (ACMRS 2:18). Hendricks calls upon modern scholars to protect and serve the marginalised communities in the academy against pernicious attacks and urges them to take a stand against the protective badge of anonymity, which she refers to as a tool of white academic supremacy. Hendricks finalises her lecture by declaring that the ongoing silence of the academics implicates them all (6:01).

Declaration of white colonisation in Premodern Race Studies
Hendricks highlights a distinction between Premodern Race Studies and Premodern Critical Race Studies. She claims that Premodern Race Studies are a practice that mirrors white settler colonisation, as the scholars approach race studies as if they have “just discovered the land” (Hendricks 5:55). Hendricks continues this analogy by declaring the scholars either ignore the pre-existing work on the study or if they deign to acknowledge it, they view it as uncultivated and something that needs to be done ‘properly’ (Hendricks 6:09). She claims all work done in the field is either ignored or briefly alluded to, rather than correctly cited, thus ‘erasing the ancestry’ as the scholars intend to destroy to replace (Hendricks 6:23). Where Hendricks recognised Premodern Race Studies as something that intersects with ideologies of white supremacy, she defines Premodern Critical Race Studies as a humanist approach that actively works to destabilise the academy’s role in furthering capitalism’s use of white supremacy to sustain itself (Hendricks 19:34).

Additional Work
Hendricks has an extensive career of books and articles, here is a condensed selection of works:

 * Hendricks, M. 1987. The Roaring Girls: A Study of Seventeenth Century Feminism and the Development of Feminist Drama. Ph.D. diss., University of California, Riverside.
 * Hendricks, M. 1992. "Managing the Barbarian: "The Tragedy of Dido, Queen of Carthage", Renaissance Drama 23, 165–188.
 * Hendricks, M. and Parker, P. 1994. Women, 'Race' and Writing in the Early Modern Period.
 * Hendricks, M. 1996. "‘The Moor of Venice,’ or the Italian on the Renaissance English Stage." Shakespearean Tragedy and Gender, pp.193-209.
 * Hendricks, M. 1996. “‘Obscured by Dreams’: Race, Empire, and Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream.” Shakespeare Quarterly, vol. 47, no. 1, 1996, pp. 37–60.
 * Hendricks, M. 2010. "Race: A Renaissance Category?". A Companion to English Renaissance Literature and Culture, 2, pp.535-44.
 * Hendricks, M. 2016. "'A word, sweet Lucrece': Confession, Feminism, and The Rape of Lucrece", in D. Callaghan ed. A Feminist Companion to Shakespeare, 2nd, ed.

Ongoing Legacy
Hendricks has been an inspiration for many black academic, especially women. Hendricks ongoing work is seen to outspokenly challenge the epistemological and historiographical practices that have dominated and centred the scholarship for ‘far too long’ (Adams). Adams comments that Hendricks’ unapologetic, interdisciplinary literary and historiographical research on the intersections of race and gender should guide all research in early modern studies until the field has fully reckoned with its history of inclusion. She has opened the door to black academics who not only want to study feminist and historic literature, but to seek empowerment within those spaces. She has spent a lot of her more recent career admonishing how race is taught in premodern academia and how this affects modern academia. As she is now retired, Hendricks spends most of her time on her fiction writing, but still participates in academia. On writing she said, “this is more than a passion, this is the air we breathe.” 17

The influence of 'Women, Race and Writing'
The influence of ‘Women, Race and Writing’ has been commended for inspiring scholarship over twenty-five years later, which continues to be marginalised in the field at large (Adams). Adams comments that the novel’s discussion of the dangers associated with black existence has given many scholars; particularly those marginalised and under-represented in the field, the permission, encouragement, and academic framework to think deeply about the roles of gender and race in history and literature (Adams). The volume has been applauded for encouraging a scholarly renaissance in early modern studies and influencing a new generation of academics to study the critical intersections of race in the field (Adams).


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Firaol Muluneh Endashaw

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Cookbook:Habichuela con Dulce (Dominican Sweet Beans)

Habichuela con dulce, also known as sweet beans or sweet cream of beans is a Dominican dessert that is mostly made during Good Friday.

Ingredients

 * 4 cups soft-boiled red kidney beans
 * ½ cup raisins

 * 3 cups evaporated milk

 * 2 cups sweetened condensed milk

 * ½ tsp salt (or 1 pinch)
 * 1 cup granulated sugar
 * 1 tsp vanilla extract
 * 2 cinnamon sticks
 * 10 cloves
 * 1 sweet potato (batata), cubed small
 * Milk cookies

Procedure

 * 1) Blend cooked beans, including the water they cooked in, into a purée.
 * 2) Strain beans into a pot in order to get rid of any skins.
 * 3) Mix in sweetened condensed milk, evaporated milk, vanilla extract, salt, sugar, sweet potatoes, cinnamon sticks, and cloves.
 * 4) Simmer over low heat until the sweet potatoes are fully cooked. Stir occasionally so that it will not stick on the bottom.
 * 5) Add raisins and simmer for 10 minutes. You can also add the milk cookies if you want them to become soft.
 * 6) Remove beans from heat.
 * 7) If you want, you may remove the cinnamon sticks and cloves.
 * 8) Serve beans in a bowl, and add milk cookies on top. You may serve warm or chilled.