World Issues

March 25, 2020 COVID-19 Update

by

Hi everyone, I wanted to give you a frank, open reminder on what you should be doing to protect you and your family from the COVID-19 coronavirus, as recommended by the top health professionals in the country, the measures we have already taken locally here in Middlesex Centre, and other measures we’re considering to help … Read more

An In-Depth Look at Changes to BRA’s Acceptable Materials List

by

TL;DR – BRA has always strived to reach a 99.9% level of purity in what they send to buyers. This was made all the more obvious by the recent proclamations by countries like China who are now accepting only incredibly pure shipments, and BRA has been mostly unaffected by those moves. However, many of the … Read more

How to Protect Yourself from Facebook's Open Graph

by

Don’t kid yourself – Facebook cares very much about your data! They care about how much they can get their hands on, how easily they can index it, and then how much easier it becomes for them to target ads based on information you have on your profile and apps you use.

In fact, the defaults for Facebook’s privacy settings completely expose your profile not only to everyone on Facebook, but to the entire public including non-Facebook users. Meaning your current and potential employers, people you like and have pissed off, your parents – everyone – can see your Facebook profile. For a visual representation of Facebook’s expanding public defaults, click here.

Read more

The School of One

by
Not good enough anymore
Not good enough anymore

While researching innovative approaches to educating our children, I came across a pilot project that was run this past summer at a single school in New York City. It’s been dubbed “School of One,” and the approach is very similar to the types of things I mentioned as possibilities in “The Textbook of the Future?” To quote this New York Times article:

The program […] consists mainly of students working individually or in small groups on laptop computers to complete math lessons in the form of quizzes, games and worksheets. Each student must take a quiz at the end of each day; the results are fed into a computer program to determine whether they will move on to a new topic the next day.

Read more

Special Laws Harm Everyone

by

I have a lot of things I’ve been meaning to write about, but since this came out of the woodwork yesterday I can’t seem to keep my mind off of it. Once again we come to a place where one minority’s religious beliefs seem to be placed above all others. When this happens, we all suffer. Why? Well, let’s talk about it.

What prompted me to write this is the allegations that the Afghan government has signed a new law that allows Shi’ite Muslims the ability to rape their wives. Or rather, the wife is not allowed to refuse sex nor would she be allowed to leave the house without their husband’s permission. According to a female parliamentarian quoted in the Reuters article, it would also legalize marriage for girls as young as 9 years old, and also require a woman to wear make-up if her husband demanded it.

Read more