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Thank you everyone so much for sharing your quality photos which is a great way to see and keep in touch with the world from home. Also for your kind comments and favours which are much valued.
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A conspicuous show of tribal power by Mursi boys with Kalashnikovs. The Kalashnikov symbolizes wealth, status, and power. Above all, the Kalashnikov provides protection during cattle drives and fire-power in armed conflicts with neighbouring tribes.
The value of a Kalashnikov can range from five to thirty-five cows and often figures into the bride-wealth or payment made by the husband’s family to the bride's family.
This semi-nomadic pastoral Mursi settlement is situated high on the bank of the Mago River, a tributary that joins the essential Omo River in the remote southwestern corner of Ethiopia. Shot under the noonday sun near the end of a long hot dry season regularly exceeding 40°C in the shade.
Spears and other traditional weapons in the region were replaced with automatic assault rifles in the 1980s when they became more accessible during the decades-long civil war in neighbouring South Sudan. A surplus of automatic weapons circulating in the larger Horn of Africa is also accessible through other channels, including the flow of small arms and ammunition from longstanding wars across the border in Somalia and nearby northern Uganda. SKS and AK-47 assault rifles were easily available, relatively cheap, and easy to use.
Large numbers of automatic weapons were also imported from the USSR to Communist allies around the world during the Cold War, including Ethiopia. SKS semi-automatic Russian-made rifles were a precursor to the AK-47 and were widely available after the fall of the Derg, the Communist military junta that ruled Ethiopia under Mengistu Haile Mariam from 1974 to 1987. The consequent disbanding of the Ethiopian army and police force produced a flood of automatic weapons on the market. They became accessible, in part, through established tribal links with arms dealers in the Ethiopian highlands further to the east of the Omo Basin and elsewhere.
The Mursi are semi-nomadic farmers and herders who depend on shifting hoe-cultivation (mostly drought-resistant varieties of sorghum) and cattle herding for their livelihood. They number less than ten thousand today. Most Mursi live in small settlements dispersed across Mursiland, a remote territory of about thirty by eighty kilometres between the Omo and Mago Rivers in southwest Ethiopia near the border with South Sudan and northern Kenya. The terrain varies from a volcanic plain dominated by a range of hills and a major watershed to a riverine forest, wooded grasslands, and thorny bushland thickets. expl#33
When existence starts, life provides us all with an empty bag - just waiting to be filled. We value it with a great sense of duty when we carry it around because unconsciously, we understand the importance of its content. And so, over time, it begins to define who we are and who everyone thinks to be.
While we are creating the plot of this customized story, we already assess its value.
We treat it with the utmost caution as we are aware of the risk we take when revealing its content. But living frequently means that one day the concealing is doomed to failure. And eventually, a reflection of this fragile inside - what forms us, you and me - sees the light of day.
Often, it is this exposure that we fear the most. We tend to uglify the experiences that made us who we are. But in the course of a lifetime, no one is safe from getting scratched. Yet we feel ashamed for parts of our identity.
And though it is our unique narrative, we like to sell it at less than fair value.
In the end, the extraordinary beauty of life consistently lies in the unexpected. Hence, it might be that the value of our imperfection caused us to find common ground in the first place.
The Blue Lake is a large, monomictic, crater lake located in a dormant volcanic maar associated with the Mount Gambier maar complex. The lake is situated near Mount Gambier in the Limestone Coast region of South Australia, and is one of four crater lakes on Mount Gambier maar. Of the four lakes, only two remain, as the other two (Leg of Mutton and Brown) have dried up over the past 30 to 40 years as the water table has dropped.
Conflicting dates have been estimated for its last eruption, of 4,300 years ago,of 28,000 years ago, and most recently, a little before 6,000 years ago. If the youngest date is correct, this could be the most recent volcanic eruption on the Australian mainland.
Blue Lake is thought to be of an average depth of 72 m (236 ft), but in places reaches 75 m (246 ft) deep (but some unconfirmed values mention a 204 m (669 ft) maximum depth due to a natural cave section). The crater rim measures 1,200 by 824 m (3,937 by 2,703 ft), but the lake itself measures 1,087 by 657 m (3,566 by 2,156 ft). The surface of the lake is 17 m (56 ft) below the level of the main street of the nearby town. The Blue Lake supplies the town with drinking water.
During December to March, the lake turns to a vibrant cobalt blue colour, returning to a colder steel grey colour for April to November. The exact cause of this phenomenon is still a matter of conjecture, but likely it involves the warming of the surface layers of the lake during the summer to around 20 °C (68 °F), causing calcium carbonate to precipitate out of the solution and enabling microcrystallites of calcium carbonate to form. This results in scatter of the blue wavelengths of sunlight. During winter, the lake becomes well mixed, and recent research indicates that during this phase of the colour cycle, the lake is somewhat murkier due to the redistribution of tannins and calcium carbonate particles throughout the lake. Solar elevation has also been found to influence the perceived colour of the lake. The movement of planktonic life forms within the lake during the seasons and during the day may additionally play a part in the colour change.
Circle
The circle is a universal symbol with extensive meaning. It represents the notions of totality, wholeness, original perfection, the Self, the infinite, eternity, timelessness, all cyclic movement, God ('God is a circle whose centre is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere' (Hermes Trismegistus)). As the sun, it is masculine power; as the soul and as encircling waters, it is the feminine maternal principle. "It implies an idea of movement, and symbolizes the cycle of time, the per petual motion of everything that moves, the planets' journey around the sun (the circle of the zodiac), the great rhythm of the universe. The circle is also zero in our system of numbering, and symbolizes potential, or the embryo. It has a magical value as a protective agent, ... and indicates the end of the process of individuation, of striving towards a psychic wholeness and self-realization" (Julien, 71).
With the number ten, symbolizes heaven and perfection as well as eternity. In Jung, the antithesis of the square (lowest state of man who has not achieved inner perfection), standing for the ultimate state of Oneness, with octagon in between. Circle of Necessity: birth, growth, decline, death. Defense against chaos, formlessness. Related to Yin and Yang.
Another year is almost over, hopefully we can emerge from the shadows soon although much still remains out of focus.
Handheld shot with FE 85mm f1.4 GM late in the evening along this historical street.
Haven’t bought any photographic gear this year although a couple of lenses are firmly in my sight.
The 70-200mm f2.8 zoom is a lens I’ve avoided thus far as it typically weighs as much as a high end 100-400mm zoom which is too much unless we are just carrying this lens alone.
Then came Tamron FE 70-180mm f2.8 (815g) and Canon RF 70-200mm f2.8L IS (1,070g), both however do not work with teleconverters (TC) and the Tamron additionally omits lens stabilization.
Had some initial interest in the Tamron but the just released Sony FE 70-200mm 2.8 GM OSS ii (1,045g) has both lens stabilization which is more effective than IBIS at the long end and works with TCs which can get me to 400mm f5.6 if needed. My FE 100-400mm f4.5-5.6 GM OSS works flawlessly with 2x TC and I expect the same for the new FE 70-200mm f2.8 GM ii.
The Tamron is $1,199 vs the Sony GM ii $2,798 (same as Canon’s RF version), a substantial difference. Looking at the photos taken with the Tamron, it’s a nice lens but there’s no “wow” quality in the photos taken and there are also some distracting structures within the specular highlights.
The photos from the new FE 70-200mm f2.8 GM OSS ii however, are impressive. If we don’t use a 70-200mm f2.8 zoom too often and does not need more than 8fps or TC compatibility, the Tamron version makes a lot of sense. Canon and Sony users have access to lots of lens choices, the same cannot be said for Nikon however.
It seems that Sony achieved significant weight reduction without making compromises in TC compatibility or omitting stabilization but with a more efficient design with less glass used in GM ii with 17 elements compared to 23 in the older version. Is this advancement all due to improved glass quality or software?
I do wonder if they can do the same with their future generation 2 100-400 GM and 200-600 G zooms when the time comes, perhaps even with the soon to be launched 24-70 GM ii?
Meanwhile Tamron has just released their FE 28-75mm f2.8 G2 which appears to be an improved version of its highly popular 1st Gen lens. Personally I’ll rather wait and see what Sony will do with their imminent FE 24-70mm f2.8 GM ii replacement.
Advances in lens making have produced zooms capable of matching Prime lenses at equivalent apertures. For this reason, I stopped bothering with Primes which are just 1 stop faster than f2.8 zooms especially at focal lengths below 85mm.
Those who had aggressively suggested that the Batis 135mm f2.8 was reasonable at $2,000 are clearly shills, you can easily identify these fellas from the various gear forums by now. I’ve spoken out against the value of Batis lenses from inception and in particular the 135mm f2.8 since its release. We really need to be wary of these marketing shills as they are so rampant in gear forums masquerading as hobbyists these days. flic.kr/p/GC4PWY
MTV asked me to illustrate two of their companies core values. The illustrations were used on MTV goods such as journals, posters and other accoutrements. See both illustrations here: tadcarpenter.com/blog/mtv-core-values/
Dorrie Mack
Taken July, 2015. I scored this lace lingerie at Value Village for ten bucks. Dorrie loved it so much I gifted it to her after our shoot.
I wanted to let you all know how much you mean to me. I love looking at your photos, your works of creativity, and so appreciate your comments and feedback. What a wonderful community and Flickr family we are! I value you all so much! It rained yesterday while it was sunny out, and this is what we got. A big beautiful rainbow!
Warmest wishes and a great big hug from San Francisco, California,
Eliza
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I've certainly got my money's worth out of this dress, as its probably the most worn of all my wardrobe items. This photo is from the previous Sunday having returned home from a cup of coffee at a local Costa.
View large.
Special NOTE: On Feb. 8, 2012 I attached a comment, readable & easily discoverable on Page 2 of the comments below, that details the vast corporatist scheme, fronted by Jeb Bush, financed in part with hundreds of millions from Rupert Murdoch (FOX nooze), to privatize American public education & reduce it to 'virtual' schools - not to improve anything (as national & international educational research studies clearly show), but rather to become the final recipients of the taxes people pay so that they can skim huge profits off of the top while providing grotesquely inferior services & lots of lying propaganda to keep the public bamboozled. I beg everyone to read the report.
The McGuffey's Ecclectic Spelling Book was published in 1879.
Raymond Cyrus Hoiles (1878-1970) founded Freedom Communications, a newspaper publishing & broadcasting company that has never hesitated to shape the news to fit right wing ideology. When Hoiles was alive & roaring I lived in Orange County, California, home of the equally right wing Walt Disney & Walter Knott, & was frequently compelled to suffer people who agreed with Hoiles' constantly editorialized insistence that public education was a form of theft & communism that must at once be got rid of. Hoiles was motivated by his fundamentalist Christian persuasions, & quite serious. We should restrain our laughter at the abysmal stupidity of his example, because in many ways he & people like him won & are still winning control of public education. - To introduce the article below, I'll say a little about the Christian strategy.
For many years Orange County's teachers worked under a Draconian ruling that forbade the teaching of values. There is no way around the fact, however, that the statement, "Values may not be taught," is itself a value statement belonging to a class of propositions known as Epimenidean Paradoxes. A comparably illustrative sentence would be, "This is not a sentence." Or, a favorite of the best hypnotists, used when addressing a resistant subject, "Do not obey any instruction which I give you."
What, then, was intended by those who created the paradoxical Orange County law? Well, if any teacher dared to say or imply something that would be disagreeable to any person whose beliefs began & ended with church, flag & free-for-all capitalism, then that teacher could be charged with teaching values & be suspended. One family friend, a young man teaching at an elementary school in Anaheim, was charged, hounded, publicly disgraced, threatened with death & discharged from his post, immediately after which he died from a heart attack. The case was depicted in Life Magazine. His only crime was that he was Jewish. His wife, also a teacher, remained bereft & embittered the rest of her long life.
These people became increasingly invisible over time, largely by devising ever more clever ways for gaining control of both education policy & the public dialogue about education.
Ralph Reed, working for Pat Robertson & the Christian Coalition, devised the "stealth agenda" to place fundamentalists in every local school board in America. The plan helped select & fund candidates, who in accord with Reed's instructions never mentioned their religion or religious connections when campaigning for office. In 1983 Reed rigged an election at his university - he got started early, in other words. Recently we learned that Mr. Reed & Jack Abramoff were associate crooks. The revelation forced Reed to abandon his run to become the lieutenant governor of Georgia. Mr. Reed will not disappear, however. He remains a darling of the far Christian right, & owns Century Strategies, a dirty-tricks political consulting & lobbying organization. In 1999 Karl Rove got reed a nice contract with Enron, which was paying Reed $30,000 per month. And guess who recently went to Georgia to try to save poor Reed? Rudy Giuliani, who has the hots to be the next U.S. president & is pandering to the Christians so he can be their new burning Bush.
Stealthiness did not go away when the Christian Coalition folded & Reed went off on his own to rig elections for big bucks. Rather, the stealth moved into policy matters. For instance, all the phony propaganda claiming religious & private education is more successful, creating the excuse to promote vouchers (for which the motives are both religious & racist). Or, most recently, Bush's No Child Left Behind Act, which was sought by the Christians not because they believed all the testing of students would lead to improved education, but rather because they wanted teachers to be made too busy preparing students for endless tests about facts to find time to do the great evil thing, which is the teaching of concepts. Teaching concepts leads to teaching logic, scientific & other academic methodologies which by their nature instill respect for critical - read, skeptical - thinking. Dogmatists, advertisers & con men have equal cause to fear skepticism.
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From: Truthdig.com
Taking Back Our Schools--and Fixing Them
Full text with links: www.truthdig.com/report/item/20060425_taking_back_our_sch...
Posted on Apr. 25, 2006
By Wellford Wilms
The recent news reported in The New York Times that schools are throwing out science, social studies and art to make time for drilling students in remedial math and reading is a sign of things gone terribly wrong. Former New York State Commissioner of Education Thomas Sobol told the Times that narrowing education to just math and reading would be akin to restricting violin students to playing scales day after day. “They’d lose their zest for music.” But most schools that serve poor populations, like those in Cuero, Texas, are squeezed to meet federal math and reading standards. Cuero Superintendent Henry Lind told the paper, “When you have so many hours per day and you’re behind in some area that’s being hammered on, you have to work on that.”
But by the looks of things, hammering students for higher test scores isn’t making much of a difference. Most students have already lost their zest for learning. How do we know? In Los Angeles, upwards of 50% of Latino and African American students never finish high school. This is just the tip of the iceberg.
I’ve been a professor of education at UCLA for more than 25 years and am convinced that despite the fads that come and go, nothing has put a dent in the public schools’ failure to educate inner-city children. In fact, things are getting worse. But I am also convinced that we’ve been looking in the wrong places for solutions. My own research across a wide array of organizations—corporations, trade unions, public schools, colleges, teacher unions and police agencies—suggests another way of looking at the problem and that solutions will come from a new direction.
This essay is a proposition—one that I hope will spark a lively debate among Truthdig readers and inform policy leaders. Future essays will examine Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s campaign to take over the public schools, analyze whether teacher unions can be a force for productive change, and expose promising ways to rebuild public investment in the schools.
Let’s start with Jonathan Kozol’s new book, “The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America.” It is a scathing indictment of American social policy that banned racial segregation in public schools in 1955 and then turned a blind eye to its implementation. Today, Kozol says, schools are more segregated than ever. But he fails to explain why resegregation has occurred. Because Kozol overlooks the root causes of the problem, his solutions—spending more money on dysfunctional schools and wishing for a social mandate to desegregate the schools—miss the point.
To be sure the problems are undeniable. Kozol examines the appalling condition of big-city schools. In school after school we see children who are brimming with potential but who are walled off from the larger society and abandoned by the schools. Most middle-class white Americans simply cannot comprehend the horrid schools that Kozol describes. Ceilings fall in, toilets are filthy, libraries, music and arts have been stripped away. Teachers in these schools, who are paid 40% less than teachers in the suburbs, are forced to teach “scripted” lessons that are written for children who are deemed incapable of learning.
It is all part of the latest reform pushed by the Bush administration’s No Child Left Behind initiative, a reform aimed at the singular pursuit of increasing test scores. Learning has been stripped of its intrinsic meaning and reduced to simplistic steps—“Authentic Writing,” “Active Listening,” “Accountable Talk”—that hamper teachers in teaching anything but how to take a test. Behind it all is an attempt to impose control, much as mass production techniques were used a century ago, to standardize instruction to fit new immigrants to the system.
Meanwhile, millions of children are failing. In nearly half of the high schools in America’s 100 largest districts, fewer than 50% of students graduate in four years. Most of these students are from poor Latino and African-American families. And from 1993 to 2000 the number of failing schools has mushroomed by 75%. Mayor Villaraigosa calls Los Angeles’ high dropout rates “numbers that should put a chill down your spine.”
The reasons, Kozol argues, are lack of money and racial discrimination that produce inferior and segregated schools. No doubt this is partly true. We have tried to desegregate the schools for a half-century and failed. Middle-class white parents have voted for individual freedom with their feet, enrolling their children in private schools, leaving the public schools more segregated than ever. The same is true for middle-class black families. Gail Foster, an educator who has studied black independent schools, was quoted in 2004 in The New York Times as saying: “Many of the most empowered parents and families are removing their children. What’s left, in even working-class communities, are schools filled with the least empowered families. Families with the least parent involvement to offer, families with the least help with homework to offer. There’s been a continual outflow for at least 10 years, and it isn’t stopping now.”
More money is not the answer either. Kozol points to wide disparities in educational expenditures ranging from $11,700 per student in New York City to $22,000 in suburban Manhasset. Disturbing as that is, study after study shows that equalizing money does not necessarily equalize learning.
In 1966, sociologist James Coleman conducted the most extensive study ever made of desegregating education and found that what mattered most in students’ learning was the economic status of their peers rather than the racial makeup of the school. He also found that school funding was not closely related to students’ achievement—their families’ economic status was far more predictive. Coleman’s findings were controversial and led to a bitter debate, but they have been replicated many times. Daniel Patrick Moynihan summed it up best when he commented shortly after Coleman’s groundbreaking study, “We should begin to see that the underlying reality is not race but social class.”
Since social class matters because money follows privilege, and since desegregation will take generations to eradicate, what can be done now? Are poor children doomed to attend grossly inadequate schools? Surely not. We must find ways to remove the influences that have crippled the schools. Money must be diverted from bloated bureaucracies that snuff out innovation. Instead it must go directly to schools where principals and teachers can influence what is taught and what children learn, and help bring parents back into the fold. Otherwise, it is going down a rat hole.
Parents have a significant role to play in their children’s education, but their voices have been largely silenced. Over the last 40 years, we have witnessed the decline of civic involvement and the growing dominance of self-interest over the greater good, a social deterioration that sociologist Robert Putnam calls “hollowing out” in his 2000 book “Bowling Alone.” One result, as the old saying goes, is that “the rich get richer” and the poor fall ever further behind in crumbling schools.
Over the last 25 years, education in general has been taken from ordinary citizens and teachers by politicians, administrators, union leaders, publishers, test makers, consultants, university professors, hardware and software developers and the media, each playing its part in keeping alive the illusion of reform. All in all, this $1-trillion industry has replaced the common interest, and no one, it seems, can muster the will to rein it in.
Local control is only a dim memory. Decisions now come from the top—from the federal and state governments, school boards and high-level administrators who have little knowledge of what goes on in the classroom. Teachers are left out of these decisions, carrying on the best they can, safe in the assumption that the newest fad, like those before it, will blow over. Parents are all but forgotten.
While command-and-control management may seem to produce results in the short run, it strips schools of the capacity to develop the stable leadership that is necessary to sustain success. Principals are besieged with demands from district offices and from the educational fads that emanate from publishers and university researchers. Many principals know that they put their careers in peril unless they do what their bosses want. One elementary school principal told me, “District directives undermine our own abilities to think for ourselves, to believe in what we see and know.” When schools discover something that works, it is rarely sustained because they lack authority or stable leadership.
In 1969 when I worked for the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, I monitored the schools in impoverished Ocean Hill-Brownsville in New York City. The local school board hired a charismatic superintendent, who fired incompetent teachers and hired young and idealistic ones. The firings set the local board at odds with the huge teachers’ union, which demanded due process for the fired teachers. The superintendent, Rhody McCoy, was convinced that good teachers had to respect the children they taught. He put it in plain words: “If you’re convinced that this kid is doomed by nature or by something else to lead a shrunken and curtailed life, then you’re basically incompetent to teach that child.” The experiment worked. Observing classrooms left no doubt in my mind that students were learning. Eager first-graders sat attentively on the floor in semicircles shouting out answers to fraction problems and reading aloud. The schools buzzed with excitement as parent helpers streamed in and out of classrooms. But in a bitter power struggle the board seized authority and the experiment ended.
Years later, in 1985, Deborah Meier, a passionate educator who founded Harlem’s Central Park East Secondary School, achieved stunning successes that led the school to be celebrated as a model alternative school in Time magazine. But it could not be sustained beyond Meier’s unique leadership. Today, 10 years after Meier left, a respected children’s advocacy group, Insideschools and Advocates for Children, reports that the Harlem school “…has fallen on hard times in recent years with rapid staff turnover, low staff morale and uneven discipline.”
In risk-averse environments like public schools, few principals will stick out their necks, because they don’t want to buck the bosses downtown. Courageous and visionary principals like Rhody McCoy and Deborah Meier keep coming. But charismatic leadership is no match for heavy-handed district management, which always wins out.
Take Foshay Learning Center in Los Angeles, for example. In 1989, Howard Lappin took over a failing middle school. With the help of teachers and an infusion of money, Lappin wrested control from the district and transformed Foshay. The school expanded into a K-12 “learning center” and became largely autonomous of the district’s bureaucratic requirements. Teachers and administrators decided who would be hired and what would be taught. Foshay succeeded, and in 2000 its high school was selected by Newsweek as one of the 100 best in America. But in 2001 Lappin retired, and his unique leadership was lost. Today Foshay is being threatened with sanctions by the district and the county because gains in students’ test scores have stalled. As the school has fallen under the district’s “one-size-fits all” bureaucratic requirements, the impact has been to undermine the once vibrant teacher leadership that made the school so enviable.
The problem with public education is not with the teachers, or with the children, but the way we organize the schools. Probably the greatest casualties are teachers themselves, who are forced to accept decisions by authorities about teaching that they know to be nonsense. One professor interviewed by Kozol said that forcing an absurdity on teachers teaches something: acquiescence. For example, in study after study, teachers report that relying on test scores as sole marks of student achievement and teaching scripted lessons destroy students’ natural love of learning. And such practices also erode teachers’ professional authority, which is fundamental to student learning.
Why is it so hard to foster the only kind of reform that really works, which is right in the schoolhouse? Because politicians, school board members and administrators are under intense pressure to produce immediate results, i.e., higher and higher test scores—a goal that is pursued through directives from districts with little input of principals, teachers and parents. Superintendents serve at the pleasure of school boards, and most board members are elected or appointed and have limited terms of office. As test scores have become the measure of educational quality, everyone is under immense pressure to show fast results or be turned out.
No wonder that school boards hire superintendents who promise to deliver quick results. But few do. Superintendents last on average only three or four years. Many are thwarted by outmoded bureaucracies that were designed a century ago using top-down control practiced in American industry to mass-produce learning. Within these organizations, power has quietly accumulated, making them all but impervious to outside influence. Sid Thompson, former superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District, told me: “Trying to change the district is like trying to change the direction of a fast-moving freight train. You might knock it off course for a moment, but before you know it it’s rattling right down the tracks again.”
Frustration and suspicion about who might emerge from the shadows to sabotage their plans often lead superintendents to jealously guard their power. In 2002, Day Higuchi, then president of United Teachers Los Angeles, the Los Angeles teacher union, had high hopes for working with the school district’s new “can-do” superintendent, Roy Romer. Higuchi hoped that Romer would endorse a new union initiative called Lesson Study, a plan to help teachers work collectively to improve classroom lessons. At a breakfast meeting that I attended, Higuchi presented Romer with an invitation to work with the union to develop and spread Lesson Study across the district. When Higuchi finished, Romer flipped over his paper placemat and with a red felt pen drew a box with an S in it. “That’s me,” he said. Beneath he drew 11 boxes with smaller s’s in them, representing the 11 local superintendents, and below that, a number of small boxes with roofs, representing schools and teachers. Then, pulling his face near to Higuchi’s, he drew bold red arrows pointing downward from the top. Romer jabbed his pen in the air to accentuate each word: “You cannot usurp my authority to manage this district!” It was a dumbfounding moment, one that revealed the true underside of the use of power. Here was a chance for a new superintendent to forge a small but significant step with the union, but Romer, who recently announced his resignation, explained that he was “in a hurry.” He clearly had little time for ideas that were at odds with his own. In the end his refusal to work with the union undermined the possibility of creating a broader base of power that could transcend self-interest.
Nor are the unions exempt from self-interest. A few years ago I helped establish a national group of union presidents called TURN (Teacher Union Reform Network) who were dedicated to remaking their unions as forces to improve education. One way was to cooperate with administrators and encourage teachers to use their classroom know-how to redesign teaching at the schoolhouse. But hostility and mistrust run deep. The union leaders became nervous, fearing that fellow unionists would attack them for “collaborating” with the enemy and that if the effort to collaborate failed they would share the blame. Don Watley, president of the New Mexico Federation of Educational Employees, commented: “It’s like the Normandy landing. We’ve got the best troops in the world. We’ve got the best officers in the world. And we’ve got the best equipment in the world. But at 0800 when we hit the beach half of us are going to get killed!” Sadly, in the years to come, the ingrained mistrust, and the unpredictable dance of union politics, prevented these unionists from becoming a positive force in educational reform. Instead, they have been reduced to stockpiling power, much as the Soviets and Americans stockpiled nuclear weapons during the Cold War, to oppose any hostile moves the other side might make.
So what can be done to break the standoff between teacher unions and districts? How can teachers’ professional authority be restored? How can parents be awakened and brought back into the fold? Experience shows that it can be done. Schools such as Harlem’s Central Park East Secondary, Los Angeles’ Foshay Learning Center, those in Ocean Hill-Brownsville, and many others attest to the fact that schools can be made into safe places where children learn. Sustaining them is the hard part.
There is little doubt that trying to build good schools with command-and-control management doesn’t work. School boards, superintendents and union officials need to clear the obstacles—unnecessary bureaucratic requirements and outmoded work rules—to make innovation at the schoolhouse possible. These top-level educational leaders also must make resources available to support new ways of teaching. Jonathan Kozol has it right. Teaching is the only reform that counts and it can be done only at the schoolhouse by teachers, principals, parents and students working together.
Turning school districts upside down will also mean turning a century of top-down management on its head. But where is such bold leadership to be found? One promising place is among big-city mayors. But they must resist trying to take over the schools, as they did in New York, Chicago and Boston with mixed results at best. Instead, popular mayors could use their influence and visibility to tell the truth about the condition of education and to build a popular consensus about how change must occur.
In the next essay I am going to examine what mayors can do. Waiting for the schools to be saved by someone else is nonsense. Only concerted local action offers a chance. Doubters should recall Margaret Mead’s observation: “Never doubt that a small group of concerned people can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”
A Progressive Journal of News and Opinion. Editor, Robert Scheer. Publisher, Zuade Kaufman.
Copyright © 2006 Truthdig, L.L.C. All rights reserved.
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box by photoscape
final ver.
framed
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The filter is named after its inventor, Cornelius Lanczos (Hungarian)
Lanczos resampling
It can be used as a low-pass filter or used to smoothly interpolate the value of a digital signal between its samples.
by irfan edited and resized
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with Lanczos-Filter
Durch die Fensterfunktion führt der Lanczos-Filter zu weniger Ringing
from raw IMG_0108
preset
C1
Iso preset 160
Exposure Mode
Auto bracket
Self Timer - 10 s, Custom
tripod
"P" -
AF Point
Manual AF point selection
Canon Exposure Mode
Program AE
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Exif data
Camera
Canon PowerShot SX60 HS
Exposure
0.013 sec (1/80)
Aperture
f/6.5
Focal Length
247 mm
ISO Speed
160
Measured EV
12.56
Exposure Bias
+2/3 EV
Record Mode
CR2+JPEG
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File Number
879-0108
Canon Firmware Version
Firmware Version 1.00
Canon did nothing - to emiminate some bugs!
e.g.
Sunset mode does not run!
raw processing could be better
AGAIN:
Bad, bad panda!
Come on. We want photos.
We’re aware of the problem and are fixing it. Thanks for your patience.
2016-05-29-069f4d92
Today's assignment was "value" as in worth, not lightness and darkness. The picture has to be taken on the day for which the assignment is made. The greatest value I could photograph today is nature. I especially love this time of year and the cheeriness of these yellow flowers/weeds that are found nearby. This little stand of yellow usually gets sprayed to kill the "weeds." Sigh.
The other day I Went to see an exhibition.After we Went to a fleemarcet and I took this photo from a hidden part on the ground.On the top of the Shell there where other dolls with cambed hair and pretty dresses..they where not hidded...
It hit me on the night and a new Idea was born that trigged a comming Project....
Take care dear friends.It takes so Little but means so much to just be kind.
Big hug!
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#357 in interestingness (on 2008-09-09)
Basic exposure: f/16, 0.013 sec (1/80), ISO 100, 12 mm
Location: Borgercompagnie-Noord, Hoogezand-Sappemeer (Gr.), The Netherlands.
Processing info for newbies: Manual blending - layer masks - from several variations of a single exposure.
The following basic steps are taken into account when working towards an end-result - from camera import to posting a low-res version. Depending on some in-camera settings here are the steps some have been asking for:
1. convert to sRGB mode
there's no need for Adobe RGB.
2. Lens correction
you and I may not need it, but sometimes I like to straighten things up.
3. crop
14:9 ratio being my personal preferable format. Yours may differ.
4. modest pre-sharpening
don't exaggerate clearly visible noise, otherwise reverse steps 4 - 5 and forgo step 8.
5. noise reduction
artistic choice, not a necessity. Sometimes I like to add film grain instead.
6. toning
changing white-balance, selective coloring or color contrast enhancements.
7. Burn & Dodge
emphasize shadows and lights to your needs. I forgo the standard tools and use B/W brushes on a 50% gray filled layer in Overlay mode instead.
8. after-sharpening
don't overdo. Take care of 100% white halos around edges, especially with the High-Pass filter. Too enthusiastic usage will result in spit-ugly optic grayish areas throughout your image.
9. contrast curve
mostly linear to medium in Luminosity layer mode, just because I like curves.
10. editable hi-res storage
personally I like to store 16-bit Photoshop files for all sorts of printing purposes when needed. Someone may ask for a customized version tomorrow..
Depending on your working mode, convert to 8-bit, resize and shave down to your preferable low-res format - to prevent shameless thieves from getting away with your hi-res work. One final slight sharpening for the extra awe from Flickr friends.
Between steps 6 - 8 - actually it could be anywhere - sometimes other effects happen to occur to spice up my end-result.
This all seems an awful lot of work to some - from whom I got questions almost daily - but basically it isn't when certain steps obviously become routine. Also note that I like to process everything that's coming from a lousy camera-sensor anyway, full-frame or not. That said you may conclude that I'm not a photography purist and I don't pretend to be. Instead I'm simply an image maker and it's not even my sole intent to reproduce reality in any way. I do this stuff both personally and professionally for many years and I still love to experiment and learn as much as I can.
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Clean Stream Comment Policy: I like to read personal words instead of Automatic lines, which were lamely picked from a dropdown-box without any other effort to be taken. The latter won't be valued and will be removed. If my work just doesn't bother you, no hard feelings, just move on.
If you like my work, faving or leaving a personal note is all it takes, really.
Also having trouble digging through all these pesty group awards to extract those scarce clean comments someone personally wrote? The Flickr No Award Greasemonkey script hides them all and works like a charm. Warning: when installed, changes are you're staring at an empty stream :)
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