When we submitted the voter-address-change forms, we filled them out and
send them at the same time.
We got our confirmations in the mail at the same time.

However, while I got a confirmation of the address change, R inexplicably
got a confirmation of a new-voter registration.

This means that after voting here, she could go to the polling place at the
old address, not really that far away, and vote there again. Not that she
would, of course.

Why is our voting process so weirdly archaic and full of holes?

Math Teachers Should Encourage Their Students to Count Using Their Fingers in Class #makereducation

adafruit:

Interesting piece from The Atlantic that champions the use of fingers as counting tools in math class.

A few weeks ago I (Jo Boaler) was working in my Stanford office when the silence of the room was interrupted by a phone call. A mother called me to report that her 5-year-old daughter had come home from school crying because her teacher had not allowed her to count on her fingers. This is not an isolated event—schools across the country regularly ban finger use in classrooms or communicate to students that they are babyish. This is despite a compelling and rather surprising branch of neuroscience that shows the importance of an area of our brain that “sees” fingers, well beyond the time and age that people use their fingers to count.

Read more.

Each Tuesday is EducationTuesday here at Adafruit! Be sure to check out our posts about educators and all things STEM. Adafruit supports our educators and loves to spread the good word about educational STEM innovations!

Dreading having to deal with American education system some day.

Always pretending that I’m someplace else

I absolutely hate seeing such obvious bias in the news – especially those that I want to trust.

I tell my parents that there still is such thing as “journalistic integrity”, that “truth has a liberal bias”, and that outlets like the Times, New Yorker, Atlantic and NPR are some of the last few remaining places that have unbiased news. They say that everyone has an agenda and you can’t trust anybody.

So, seeing something like this, where both CNN and NYTimes are, for whatever unfathomable reason, make the headline look like it was some accident, and afraid to say this was an explosion , where some humans wanted other normal, ordinary, innocent people to get burned, changing their lives possibly forever, is so maddening.

It’s not unlike the horror that happened in Lahore on Easter, where children and their parents were maimed because of their religion – and it was scarcely covered.

It makes my parents and others like them right, and I hate it.

Thinking about tomorrow’s voting, and planning for 4 possible contingencies:

1. Hillary is nominated, Trumpcruzkasich wins in November.

2. Bernie is nominated, Trumpcruzkasich wins.

3. Bernie is nominated, and wins.

4. Hillary is nominated and wins.

1: We are all really screwed. Bernie fans feel vindicated, populists everywhere rejoice, Democratic party falls into soul-searching mode, fingers are pointed and the party possibly splits; centrism, moderation and openness are dead for a long while. Violence is certainly on the rise, the planet continues to warm, if no significant war is started, the revolution we’ve been long warned about is increasingly possible. We are all really screwed.

2: We are still pretty screwed, but Democrats and Hillary join forces with Bernie’s people to obstruct Republicans the way Republicans did with Obama in 2009, civic participation increases like it did in Bush years, and possibly there is left comeback in 2-3-4 years, taking Senate/Congress, though Supreme Court will be solidly right wing for many years into the future, thwarting most attempts to undo the damage.

3. Just like Obama, Bernie says nice things and pulls off moderate incremental successes and shields us from the worst, with help of the rest of the Democrats, but he will not get much done with Republican Congress and Senate. His fans, however, get pissed off, just like they did when Obama did not bring about immediate change. The thinking that voting doesn’t matter, and that “direct action “ is preferable will keep growing. #Occupy might be revived, along with #BLM, but more violent this time around. Since Bernie now is responsible for maintaining the order and growth, he will have to do something about it. It won’t be pretty for the civil society and democracy. Most importantly, all hope will now be gone.

4. Things will continue mostly as they are now. There will be more incremental changes, going insufficiently quickly for Bernie fans, but I trust Hillary to not completely alienate them (very liberal Supreme Court nominees is one way to do it), and they will be able to coalesce into a true political force, keep pushing Democrats to the left, and help get Congress and Senate back. The hope will remain alive, with Bernie and whoever else emerges to continue what he started. The gentle revolution that Bernie wants would actually be possible. This is the best possible outcome.

As with everything, voting for Hillary carries the greatest risk and the best reward. 1, 2 and 3 are all pretty awful, so I will hope for 4 and vote accordingly.

The walk in the cemetery ended with a photoshoot of L frolicking among the graves and mausolea, a milky picnic on a graveside bench and a diaper-change in the shade of a large bush.
The grass is probably the cleanest of any parks, uncontaminated by dogs and humans, and there won’t be any needles or other unpleasant finds in the soil.
Also, there are lots of pretty birds unafraid of people, and it’s quiet enough that you can hear them all. We hiked to the highest point in the borough, and the views are pretty outstanding. The place is full of life.

I kept wishing for an AR app that would give you backgrounds of all the famous and not so famous people when you point a phone at their graves.
When you google a name of someone who died in 1861 and there is an auto-complete with a detailed Wikipedia entry and a picture, he probably accomplished something worthwhile.

Subsequently we met the members of the babysitting coop at a bar, and everyone seems super-cool and everyone’s babies are super adorable.

scienceisbeauty:

Google CS Education

Google Computer Science Education Programs, Resources and Tools

Computer science (CS) education is a pathway to innovation, to creativity and to exciting career opportunities. We believe that all students deserve these opportunities. That is why Google is committed to developing programs, resources, tools and community partnerships which make CS engaging and accessible for all students.

This is pure gold, a place to live in, everything you would expect from a Google initiative of this kind, and surely more.

today’s walk (that also unfortunately involved driving)