Yahoo! News - Youth Violence Has Japan Struggling for Answers: Incidents of violence on school grounds have increased fivefold in Japan over the past decade to 29,300 in 2002, leading the national Mainichi newspaper to warn of Japanese schoolyards descending “into battlefields.” Violence by younger children in particular has risen rapidly, with the number of minors under 14 processed for violent crime increasing 47 percent in 2003 from a year earlier. One study by a children’s research institute found that as many as 30 percent of high school and middle school students had experienced sudden acts of rage at least once a month. In response to rising youth crime, Japan lowered the age for criminal prosecution in 2001 from 16 to 14 and might lower it further.
Experts blame the violence on low self-confidence among children, and cite pressures on family life during the country’s 13-year economic slump. Finances in Japan, the world’s second-largest economy, are on the rise, but years in the doldrums sent divorce, domestic violence and suicide rates soaring, tearing at traditional family life and alienating child from parent.
…
To be sure, violent crime is not the only social ill facing Japanese youths. Suicides by minors in Japan shot up for the fifth consecutive year in 2003, jumping 22.1 percent compared to a 6.9 percent increase for adults over the same period.
An estimated hundreds of thousands of Japanese students, from grade school to college, are suffering from a behavioral disorder known as hikikomori, meaning they are unable to leave their homes or cope with daily life, according to experts and sociologists who have studied the phenomenon.
Something is clearly very, very wrong in Japan. Obviously, the U.S. is no stranger to very similar problems - but it seems even more shocking to me to see these problems cropping up in what I’ve always perceived as a far more homogeneous and well-ordered society than we have here. Clearly, the fault could be in my own preconceptions about Japan. Nevertheless, such an increase in childhood violence and obvious mental illness can’t be good.
The bit about hikikomori is particularly interesting. I wonder how long it will be before we start acknowledging a similar syndrome here in the West.
http://www.doug-miller.net/blog/archive/arableaguebackssudan.html
Sun, 8 Aug 2004 20:18:05 -0500
http://www.doug-miller.net/blog/archive/arableaguebackssudan.html
Politics
World
demiller@gmail.com (Doug Miller)
BBC NEWS | Africa | Arab League backs Sudan on Darfur: The Arab League has rejected any sanctions or international military intervention as a response to the crisis in Sudan’s Darfur region.
Arab foreign ministers at an emergency session in Cairo backed Khartoum’s measures to disarm Arab militias and punish
BBC NEWS | Africa | Arab League backs Sudan on Darfur: The Arab League has rejected any sanctions or international military intervention as a response to the crisis in Sudan’s Darfur region.
Arab foreign ministers at an emergency session in Cairo backed Khartoum’s measures to disarm Arab militias and punish human rights violators.
They called on the UN to give Sudan more time to resolve the conflict.
Well, hey, there’s a shocker, huh? Imagine that, Arab politicians urging delay in stopping the worst on-going genocide in the world right now. Who’d have thought?
By all means, give the Sudanese more time to sort this out. I mean, they’re doing such a stellar job so far, aren’t they? Look, it isn’t like they’re inviting the refugees back into the country under the pretext that they’ll be safe, and then killing them anyway…er…
Really, is there anything more totally fucking useless in the world than an Arab government?
http://www.doug-miller.net/blog/archive/brainhacks.html
Sun, 8 Aug 2004 12:06:34 -0500
http://www.doug-miller.net/blog/archive/brainhacks.html
Books
Education
AI-IA
demiller@gmail.com (Doug Miller)
im writing a book (4 August 2004, Interconnected): I’m writing a book. Here’s what I’ve been doing since May: Co-authoring together with my friend and cognitive neuroscientist-at-large Tom Stafford a book for the O’Reilly Hacks series (with our editor, the mighty Rael Dornfest):
Codenamed, Brain Hacks.
It’s all about, well,
im writing a book (4 August 2004, Interconnected): I’m writing a book. Here’s what I’ve been doing since May: Co-authoring together with my friend and cognitive neuroscientist-at-large Tom Stafford a book for the O’Reilly Hacks series (with our editor, the mighty Rael Dornfest):
Codenamed, Brain Hacks.
It’s all about, well, let me dig out our original pitch. It’s: 100 practical and understandable probes into the design quirks of the brain, concentrating on the sensory and motor functions and their coordination.
Okay, that’s pretty damn cool. I can’t wait to get my hands on this one. As my brain ages, I can use every trick I can get my hands on…
via BoingBoing
http://www.doug-miller.net/blog/archive/mmosdiscourageherois.html
Sun, 8 Aug 2004 11:57:02 -0500
http://www.doug-miller.net/blog/archive/mmosdiscourageherois.html
Gaming
demiller@gmail.com (Doug Miller)
Boing Boing: MMOs discourage heroism, FRPGs encourage it: Consider. Can one make the argument that MMORPGs, as an adventuring platform, have gone astray with player = single(few)-avatar assumption? Because of the investment of time (read treadmills), social and emotional capital, players are practically limited by the number of characters they
Boing Boing: MMOs discourage heroism, FRPGs encourage it: Consider. Can one make the argument that MMORPGs, as an adventuring platform, have gone astray with player = single(few)-avatar assumption? Because of the investment of time (read treadmills), social and emotional capital, players are practically limited by the number of characters they can play. Consequently, they are loath to get in “over their heads” and virtual worlds are loath to offer dire scenarios with only heroic exits for a few. Hardly a profound point, but the question: is such a dynamic, in some guise, necessary for the organic emergence of heroic narratives in an MMORPG?
I’ve never been able to really get into MMORPG’s, and this probably goes a long way towards explaining why. The developers of MMORPG’s have managed to develop a great system for separating players from their money, while the real joy of good FRPG’s is completely missing. MMORPG’s have always seemed more like playing slot machines in Vegas that like those good old days sitting around a table with friends and the original D&D manuals.
http://www.doug-miller.net/blog/archive/youcantmakethisstuff.html
Wed, 4 Aug 2004 23:17:25 -0500
http://www.doug-miller.net/blog/archive/youcantmakethisstuff.html
Whackos
demiller@gmail.com (Doug Miller)
…or I guess you can, if you’re a right wing nut job. If there was ever any question that Florida Republican Katherine Harris (yes, that Katherine Harris) is a total fruit bat, this story should lay the question to rest:
Yahoo! News - Harris Regrets Terror-Plot Comments: Republican Rep. Katherine
…or I guess you can, if you’re a right wing nut job. If there was ever any question that Florida Republican Katherine Harris (yes, that Katherine Harris) is a total fruit bat, this story should lay the question to rest:
Yahoo! News - Harris Regrets Terror-Plot Comments: Republican Rep. Katherine Harris (news, bio, voting record) said Wednesday she regrets making the claim that a plot existed to blow up the power grid in Carmel, Ind., a notion city officials disputed.
But the Florida lawmaker stands by her statement that based on classified information, the United States has thwarted more than 100 potential terrorist attacks.
…
She told the audience that while in the Midwest recently, the mayor of Carmel told her how a man of Middle Eastern heritage had been arrested and hundreds of pounds of explosives were found in his home.
“He had plans to blow up the area’s entire power grid,” she said, according to the newspaper.
City officials in Carmel said they know of no such plot.
“We’re aware of the comments we read in the paper,” said Tim Green, assistant chief of police in Carmel, a town about 10 miles north of Indianapolis. “We’re not aware of any plans to blow up Carmel’s power grid.”
Nancy Heck, a spokeswoman for Carmel Mayor Jim Brainard, said, “The mayor never talked to Katherine Harris. They never had that conversation.”
Wow! And to think, I, a resident of Carmel and someone who has political connections in the state and city, never heard so much as a peep about this home containing hundreds of pounds of explosives! There was a little scandal last year concerning a high school student playing around with some chemicals who built a pipe bomb and set it off in a local park, maybe Kathy heard about the story and was confused on the details? The local cops did bust the kid and I think he was suspended and had to pay some sort of fine. Maybe he set the bomb off kind of sort of near a neighborhood substation?
Oh, I know! She must be thinking about the squirrel who climbed a utility pole near my house, gnawed through some insulation on a power line, and managed to fry himself while simultaneously knocking out power in a four or five block area. I’m betting it was one of those crafty squirrels of “Middle Eastern heritage.”
http://www.doug-miller.net/blog/archive/continuedfbistupidit.html
Wed, 4 Aug 2004 22:54:57 -0500
http://www.doug-miller.net/blog/archive/continuedfbistupidit.html
Politics
World
Family
demiller@gmail.com (Doug Miller)
Daniel Drezner posts on some absolutely horrifying FBI idiocies. In particular he highlights articles that point out what appears to be a pervasive tactic of retaliation against whistleblowers within the organization.
danieldrezner.com :: Daniel W. Drezner :: What the f#$% is going on at the FBI?: Immediately after 9/11, let’s
Daniel Drezner posts on some absolutely horrifying FBI idiocies. In particular he highlights articles that point out what appears to be a pervasive tactic of retaliation against whistleblowers within the organization.
danieldrezner.com :: Daniel W. Drezner :: What the f#$% is going on at the FBI?: Immediately after 9/11, let’s say that one of your new employees tells you that some of the people doing necessary translating work (from Middle Eastern languages into English) are incompetent, helping to explain why relevant information never made it to the necessary links in the chain of command. What do you do?
A) Give this person a medal and start cleaning house;
B) Fire the person, request a gag order to prevent her from speaking publicly about the case, and attempt to retroactively label anything said about the case as a state secret?
Alas, in the case of FBI whistle-blower Sibel Edmonds, it appears that both the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Justice picked option B.
I’ll admit I’m biased - I’m 100% percent convinced that career-ending retaliation against people who make noises about egregious fraud, waste, abuse, and incompetence is pervasive throughout the Federal bureaucracy. I believe this because I watched it happen over the year to my father, who “blew the whistle” when the manager of his test lab at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base ordered him to fake the results of a competitive test for the radar warning receiver for the F-16.
Dad’s career was essentially over from the day he made his complaint. He went from an employee who routinely receive exemplary evaluations to to one who from then on never received an evaluation better than adequate. He was taken off doing simulator tests and assigned no work for a period of several years - a time during which he was awarded the base’s Technician of the Year award for wandering around parts of the lab managed by different managers, finding things no one else could fix, and fixing them. His complaints were ignored by the Office of the Inspector General, everyone in the chain of command above his manager, his new manager, and most damningly, the Congressman from his Congressional District and both of Ohio’s Senators. He finished out his years with the Air Force mostly playing Solitaire as a technician supporting the student labs at the Air Force Institute of Technology, watching many of his former colleagues who had refused to say anything or back him up collecting both Federal retirement pay and fat salaries as consultants who were re-hired the day after they retired.
So, basically, yes I’m ready to believe the absolute worst about Federal bureaucrats. I’m ready to believe that they all act primarily to protect their sheltered positions and cover their asses at every opportunity. I’m ready to believe that this is a pervasive tactic throughout the government, and that these non-elected officials don’t even care if their incompetence gets people killed, as long as they can avoid taking the fall. And I’m ready to believe that our elected officials, despite endless committees, investigations, and panels, won’t ever do a damn thing about it except when there is clear and compelling political advantage for them to do so.
For those that wonder at my cynical attitude about government and the government bureaucracy, that’s why. It isn’t based on something abstract, but experiences very personal, growing up with a father who had the best years of his life stolen from him because he wouldn’t shut up and potentially place combat pilots in danger. Yes, as Drezner puts it, he was a pain in the ass. He was also right.
I have never, ever seen an unequivocal example of a Federal bureaucrat doing good. I have some great concrete examples of them doing evil. It would be one thing if these people were corrupt. That would at least be understandable.
Instead, they are lazy and stupid, and that’s unforgivable.
http://www.doug-miller.net/blog/archive/moreaboutwikis.html
Fri, 4 Feb 2005 08:47:55 -0500
http://www.doug-miller.net/blog/archive/moreaboutwikis.html
Wiki
Technology
Education
demiller@gmail.com (Doug Miller)
David Smith shares some more excellent thoughts about wikis, particularly in the context of secondary education. David aggregates a number of observations about wikis and implementation problems he and others are encountering. He observes:
The challenge of wikis, of any paradigm busting software, is one which must necessarily send us
David Smith shares some more excellent thoughts about wikis, particularly in the context of secondary education. David aggregates a number of observations about wikis and implementation problems he and others are encountering. He observes:
The challenge of wikis, of any paradigm busting software, is one which must necessarily send us back to re-examine the ways in which we work. The challenge is bigger than “just” IT, but IT departments have to bite this bullet. As I noted before, the IT priesthood (in schools, in business — anywhere) has other interests…
The point about the IT priesthood having other interests is well taken, and a frequent observation even by those who are not particularly adept in their use of technology. IT in business and education has evolved from the old mainframe days as primarily as back office function. Those outside of IT who have an interest in more innovative and paradigm busting IT application are rightfully frustrated, but also need to consider the bind that the CIO or IT Director is in - while new and innovative applications are nice, and probably more interesting to develop and implement, they aren’t usually part of the metrics that administration uses to evaluate the performance of IT.
Of course, doing things like helping staff implement paradigm busting technologies (and generally being more staff-centric in their approach) is exactly what IT departments ought to be doing. The best CIO’s and IT Directors take that approach, somehow find a way to make it all work while still getting the CFO his or her reports, and their organizations flourish because they do so. Pulling that off, however, requires not only a skillful senior IT person (and staff), but also other senior administrators who have the vision and foresight to allow it to happen, to support it, and to consider the end results of doing so valid metrics for evaluating IT effectiveness. The problem, therefore, is not just one of the IT Priesthood having other interests, but in creating an organizational vision and culture where the contributions of IT beyond back office functionality are valued.
David goes on to say:
This autumn, we will be trialling wiki/wiki-based software with classes, but I have found that even Basecamp, a fairly straightforward collaborative software environment, just isn’t given the time by (most) students that it requires if it is to yield the greatest benefit. (It tends to end up as a teacher-directed portal for pushing out information and as a node of online study references. None of this is bad, but I’d had greater hopes for it than this.)
I suspect that giving students word processors to write with and the Internet to do research with made them neither better writers nor better researchers. I can attest from first hand experience that giving managers and sales people presentation software didn’t make them better presenters, on the whole. I would expect the same to be true of wikis - making the tool available is not the same thing as making it effective - though the two are conflated far too often.
Further, I’d expect the problem to be exacerbated among 13 to 18 year old students in an academic setting. In trying to teach interaction and collaboration, at least in American schools, you’re fighting against years of indoctrination that teach just the opposite. Beyond that, using software like a wiki effectively is outside the bounds of what the typical 13 to 18 year old wants to do in school. I imagine a conversation something like this:
INSTRUCTOR: ..and you have to use the new wiki to collect, annotate, and link you research to the research of your fellow students. Your use of the wiki will be reflected in your grade.
STUDENT: How will you grade our use of the wiki?
INSTRUCTOR: Well, by the number of times you use it, and the quality of the information you contribute.
STUDENT: Right, well how many times do we have to use it to get a passing grade?
INSTRUCTOR: Now look, see it isn’t just how many times you use it, it’s how you use it…
STUDENT: Then how do we know if what we’re doing will get us a good grade?!
Again, I’m only speaking about U.S. schools here; David’s experience in the U.K. may be radically different. Motivated, bright U.S. students for the most part are concerned primarily with getting good grades - because good grades are what influences what colleges you can attend, and the college you attend has an enormous impact on the sort of job you can expect to get after college (I should also note that while working on my MS, the most common question asked of an instructor after giving an assignment was “how many pages does it have to be?”). They want, and need the metrics to be as concrete as possible. There is minimal desire to learn for learning’s sake alone. Despite such preparation being cruelly inadequate in preparing them for a successful and happy future, it is how the system generally works.
Such a system is clearly antithetical to the successful employment of software as unstructured, ambiguous, and as open-ended as a wiki as a learning aid. This problem is also clearly not something a school IT department is going to be able to solve.
Clearly, IT departments, and for that matter, software developers can and should do a better job of supporting the educational aims and goals of teachers and students. There are a host of reasons they don’t, some valid, most not. Equally though, David hits it on the head when he says:
It comes back to what we want IT to be about in schools and how we prepare pupils for a world in which electronically conducted/assisted collaborative activities (something that wikis are so good at) will be part of their adult working environment. Of course, wikis won’t work if just dropped in to classrooms and the worst thing would be if we end up turning them into electronic work-sheets.
But the pressure to do exactly that is enormous. Wikis are a knowledge-worker tool and are directly at odds with the industrial-age educational model in place in most U.S. schools. Putting wikis in the classroom, even with vastly improved IT support and training, won’t fix this. Only a grassroots re-examination of the fundamental paradigms of what education is about and how we go about it can do that.
